sks.
"Mostly."
"I did what you said."
"What time?"
"Around six. I was afraid his parents would come home and find him. It was
hard to cut him out. The tape ripped off all his chest hair."
"Good. Did a lot of people see him?"
"Yeah, everybody. Well, all the girls. No guys, as far as I know." The halls are
almost empty. I'm standing in front of my French classroom. "Clare, I understand
why you did it, but what I don't get is how you did it."
"I had some help."
The passing bell rings and Ruth jumps. "Oh my god. I've been late to gym five
times in a row!" She moves away as though repelled by a strong magnetic field.
"Tell me at lunch," Ruth calls as I turn and walk into Madame Simone's room.
" Ah, Mademoiselle Abshire, asseyez-vous, s'il vous plait." I sit between Laura and
Helen. Helen writes me a note: Good for you. The class is translating Montaigne.
We work quietly, and Madame walks around the room, correcting. I'm having
trouble concentrating. The look on Henry's face after he kicked Jason: utterly
indifferent, as though he had just shaken his hand, as though he was thinking
about nothing in particular, and then he was worried because he didn't know
how I would react, and I realized that Henry enjoyed hurting Jason, and is that
the same as Jason enjoying hurting me? But Henry is good. Does that make it
okay? Is it okay that I wanted him to do it?
" Clare, attendez" Madame says, at my elbow.
After the bell once again everyone bolts out. I walk with Helen. Laura hugs
me apologetically and runs off to her music class at the other end of the building.
Helen and I both have third-period gym.
Helen laughs. "Well, dang, girl. I couldn't believe my eyes. How'd you get
him taped to that tree?"
I can tell I'm going to get tired of that question. "I have a friend who does
things like that. He helped me out."
"Who is 'he'?"
"A client of my dad's," I lie.
Helen shakes her head. "You're such a bad liar." I smile, and say nothing.
"It's Henry, right?"
I shake my head, and put my finger to my lips. We have arrived at the girls'
gym. We walk into the locker room and abracadabra! all the girls stop talking.
Then there's a low ripple of talk that fills the silence. Helen and I have our lockers
in the same bay. I open mine and take out my gym suit and shoes. I have thought
about what I am going to do. I take off my shoes and stockings, strip down to my
undershirt and panties. I'm not wearing a bra because it hurt too much.
"Hey, Helen," I say. I peel off my shirt, and Helen turns.
"Jesus Christ, Clare!" The bruises look even worse than they did yesterday.
Some of them are greenish. There are welts on my thighs from Jason's belt. "Oh,
Clare." Helen walks to me, and puts her arms around me, carefully. The room is
silent, and I look over Helen's shoulder and see that all the girls have gathered
around us, and they are all looking. Helen straightens up, and looks back at
them, and says, "Well?" and someone in the back starts to clap, and they are all
clapping, and laughing, and talking, and cheering, and I feel light, light as air.
Wednesday, July 12, 1995 (Clare is 24, Henry is 32)
Clare: I'm lying in bed, almost asleep, when I feel Henry's hand brushing over my
stomach and realize he's back. I open my eyes and he bends down and kisses the
little cigarette burn scar, and in the dim night light I touch his face. "Thank you,"
I say, and he says, "It was my pleasure," and that is the only time we ever speak
of it.
Sunday, September 11, 1988 (Henry is 36, Clare is 17)
Henry: Clare and I are in the Orchard on a warm September afternoon. Insects
drone in the Meadow under golden sun. Everything is still, and as I look across
the dry grasses the air shimmers with warmth. We are under an apple tree. Clare
leans against its trunk with a pillow under her to cushion the tree roots. I am
lying stretched out with my head in her lap. We have eaten, and the remains of
our lunch lie scattered around us, with fallen apples interspersed. I am sleepy
and content. It is January in my present, and Clare and I are struggling. This
summer interlude is idyllic.
Clare says, "I'd like to draw you, just like that."
"Upside down and asleep?"
"Relaxed. You look so peaceful."
Why not? "Go ahead." We are out here in the first place because Clare is
supposed to be drawing trees for her art class. She picks up her sketchbook and
retrieves the charcoal. She balances the book on her knee. "Do you want me to
move?" I ask her.
"No, that would change it too much. As you were, please." I resume staring
idly at the patterns the branches make against the sky.
Stillness is a discipline. I can hold quite still for long stretches of time when
I'm reading, but sitting for Clare is always surprisingly difficult.
Even a pose that seems very comfortable at first becomes torture after fifteen
minutes or so. Without moving anything but my eyes, I look at Clare. She is deep
in her drawing. When Clare draws she looks as though the world has fallen
away, leaving only her and the object of her scrutiny. This is why I love to be
drawn by Clare: when she looks at me with that kind of attention, I feel that I am
everything to her. It's the same look she gives me when we're making love. Just at
this moment she looks into my eyes and smiles.
"I forgot to ask you: when are you coming from?"
"January, 2000."
Her face falls. "Really? I thought maybe a little later."
"Why? Do I look so old?"
Clare strokes my nose. Her fingers travel across the bridge and over my
brows. "No, you don't. But you seem happy and calm, and usually when you
come from 1998, or '99 or 2000, you're upset, or freaked out, and you won't tell
me why. And then in 2001 you're okay again."
I laugh. "You sound like a fortune teller. I never realized you were tracking
my moods so closely."
"What else have I got to go on?"
"Remember, it's stress that usually sends me in your direction, here. So you
shouldn't get the idea that those years are unremittingly horrible. There are lots
of nice things in those years, too."
Clare goes back to her drawing. She has given up asking me about our future.
Instead she asks, "Henry, what are you afraid of?"
The question surprises me and I have to think about it. "Cold," I say. "I am
afraid of winter. I am afraid of police. I am afraid of traveling to the wrong place
and time and getting hit by a car or beat up. Or getting stranded in time, and not
being able to come back. I am afraid of losing you."
Clare smiles. "How could you lose me? I'm not going anywhere."
"I worry that you will get tired of putting up with my undependableness and
you will leave me."
Clare puts her sketchbook aside. I sit up. "I won't ever leave you," she says.
"Even though you're always leaving me."
"But I never want to leave you."
Clare shows me the drawing. I've seen it before; it hangs next to Clare's
drawing table in her studio at home. In the drawing I do look peaceful. Clare
signs it and begins to write the date. "Don't," I say. "It's not dated."
"It's not?"
"I've seen it before. There's no date on it."
"Okay." Clare erases the date and writes Meadowlark on it instead. "Done." She
looks at me, puzzled. "Do you ever find that you go back to your present and
something has changed? I mean, what if I wrote the date on this drawing right
now? What would happen?"
"I don't know. Try it," I say, curious. Clare erases the word Meadowlark and
writes September 11, 1988.
"There," she says, "that was easy." We look at each other, bemused. Clare
laughs. "If I've violated the space-time continuum it isn't very obvious."
"I'll let you know if you've just caused World War III." I'm starting to feel
shaky. "I think I'm going, Clare." She kisses me, and I'm gone.
Thursday, January 13, 2000 (Henry is 36, Clare is 28)
Henry: After dinner I'm still thinking about Clare's drawing, so I walk out to her
studio to look at it. Clare is making a huge sculpture out of tiny wisps of purple
paper; it looks like a cross between a Muppet and a bird's nest. I walk around it
carefully and stand in front of her table. The drawing is not there.
Clare comes in carrying an armful of abaca fiber. "Hey." She throws it on the
floor and walks over to me. "What's up?"
"Where's that drawing that used to hang right there? The one of me?"
"Huh? Oh, I don't know. Maybe it fell down." Clare dives under the table and
says, "I don't see it. Oh, wait here it is." She emerges holding the drawing
between two fingers. "Ugh, it's all cobwebby." She brushes it off and hands it to
me. I look it over. There's still no date on it.
"What happened to the date?"
"What date?"
"You wrote the date at the bottom, here. Under your name. It looks like it's
been trimmed off."
Clare laughs. "Okay. I confess. I trimmed it."
"Why?"
"I got all freaked by your World War III comment. I started thinking, what if
we never meet in the future because I insisted on testing this out?"
"I'm glad you did."
"Why?"
"I don't know. I just am." We stare at each other, and then Clare smiles, and I
shrug, and that's that. But why does it seem as though something impossible
almost happened? Why do I feel so relieved?
CHRISTMAS EVE, ONE ALWAYS CRASHING
IN THE SAME CAR
Saturday, December 24, 1988 (Henry is 40, Clare is 17)
Henry: It's a dark winter afternoon. I'm in the basement in Meadowlark House in
the Reading Room. Clare has left me some food: roast beef and cheese on whole
wheat with mustard, an apple, a quart of milk, and an entire plastic tub of
Christmas cookies, snowballs, cinnamon-nut diamonds, and peanut cookies with
Hershey's Kisses stuck into them. I am wearing my favorite jeans and a Sex
Pistols T-shirt. I ought to be a happy camper, but I'm not: Clare has also left me
today's South Haven Daily; it's dated December 24, 1988. Christmas Eve. This
evening, in the Get Me High Lounge, in Chicago, my twenty-five-year-old self
will drink until I