 So you gotta pass the
time somehow. And Ingrid was very-patient. Overly patient. Willing to put up
with odd behavior, in the hope that someday I would shape up and marry her
martyred ass. And when somebody is that patient, you have to feel grateful, and
then you want to hurt them. Does that make any sense?"
"I guess. I mean, no, not to me, but I don't think that way."
Henry sighs. "It's very charming of you to be ignorant of the twisted logic of
most relationships. Trust me. When we met I was wrecked, blasted, and damned,
and I am slowly pulling myself together because I can see that you are a human
being and I would like to be one, too. And I have been trying to do it without you
noticing, because I still haven't figured out that all pretense is useless between
us. But it's a long way from the me you're dealing with in 1991 to me, talking to
you right now from 1996. You have to work at me; I can't get there alone."
"Yes, but it's hard. I'm not used to being the teacher."
"Well, whenever you feel discouraged, think of all the hours I spent, am
spending, with your tiny self. New math and botany, spelling and American
history. I mean, you can say nasty things to me in French because I sat there and
drilled you on them."
"Too true. Il a les defauts de ses qualites. But I bet it's easier to teach all that than
to teach how to be-happy."
"But you make me happy. It's living up to being happy that's the difficult
part." Henry is playing with my hair, twirling it into little knots. "Listen, Clare,
I'm going to return you to the poor imbecile you came in with. I'm sitting upstairs
feeling depressed and wondering where you are."
I realize that I have forgotten my present Henry in my joy at seeing my once
and future Henry, and I am ashamed. I feel an almost maternal longing to go
solace the strange boy who is becoming the man before me, the one who kisses
me and leaves me with an admonition to be nice. As I walk up the stairs I see the
Henry of my future fling himself into the midst of the slam dancers, and I move
as in a dream to find the Henry who is my here and now.
CHRISTMAS EVE, THREE
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, December 24, 25, 26, 1991 (Clare is 20, Henry is 28)
Clare: It's 8:32 a.m. on the twenty-fourth of December and Henry and I are on our
way to Meadowlark House for Christmas. It's a beautiful clear day, no snow here
in Chicago, but six inches on the ground in South Haven. Before we left, Henry
spent time repacking the car, checking the tires, looking under the hood. I don't
think he had the slightest idea what he was looking at. My car is a very cute 1990
white Honda Civic, and I love it, but Henry really hates riding in cars, especially
small cars. He's a horrible passenger, holding onto the armrest and braking the
whole time we're in transit. He would probably be less afraid if he could be the
driver, but for obvious reasons Henry doesn't have a driver's license. So we are
sailing along the Indiana Toll Road on this fine winter day; I'm calm and looking
forward to seeing my family and Henry is a basket case. It doesn't help that he
didn't run this morning; I've noticed that Henry needs an incredible amount of
physical activity all the time in order to be happy. It's like hanging out with a
greyhound. It's different being with Henry in real time. When I was growing up
Henry came and went, and our encounters were concentrated and dramatic and
unsettling. Henry had a lot of stuff he wasn't going to tell me, and most of the
time he wouldn't let me get anywhere near him, so I always had this intense,
unsatisfied feeling. When I finally found him in the present, I thought it would be
like that. But in fact it's so much better, in many ways. First and foremost, instead
of refusing to touch me at all, Henry is constantly touching me, kissing me,
making love to me. I feel as though I have become a different person, one who is
bathed in a warm pool of desire. And he tells me things! Anything I ask him
about himself, his life, his family-he tells me, with names, places, dates. Things
that seemed utterly mysterious to me as a child are revealed as perfectly logical.
But the best thing of all is that I see him for long stretches of time-hours, days. I
know where to find him. He goes to work, he comes home. Sometimes I open my
address book just to look at the entry: Henry DeTamble, 714 Dearborn, lie,
Chicago, IL 60610, 312-431-8313. A last name, an address, a phone number. lean
call him on the phone. It's a miracle. I feel like Dorothy, when her house
crash-landed in Oz and the world turned from black and white to color. We're not
in Kansas anymore.
In fact, we're about to cross into Michigan, and there's a rest stop. I pull into
the parking lot, and we get out and stretch our legs. We head into the building,
and there's the maps and brochures for the tourists, and the huge bank of
vending machines.
"Wow," Henry says. He goes over and inspects all the junk food, and then
starts reading the brochures. "Hey, let's go to Frankenmuth! 'Christmas 365 Days
a Year!' God, I'd commit hara-kiri after about an hour of that. Do you have any
change?"
I find a fistful of change in the bottom of my purse and we gleefully spend it
on two Cokes, a box of Good & Plenty, and a Hershey bar. We walk back out into
the dry cold air, arm in arm. In the car, we open our Cokes and consume sugar.
Henry looks at my watch. "Such decadence. It's only 9:15."
"Well, in a couple minutes, it'll be 10:15."
"Oh, right, Michigan's an hour ahead. How surreal."
I look over at him. "Everything is surreal. I can't believe you're actually going
to meet my family. I've spent so much time hiding you from my family."
"Only because I adore you beyond reason am I doing this. I have spent a lot of
time avoiding road trips, meeting girls' families, and Christmas. The fact that I
am enduring all three at once proves that I love you."
"Henry-" I turn to him; we kiss. The kiss starts to evolve into something more
when out of the corner of my eye I see three prepubescent boys and a large dog
standing a few feet away from us, watching with interest. Henry turns to see what
I am looking at and the boys all grin and give us the thumbs up. They amble off
to their parents' van.
"By the way-what are the sleeping arrangements at your house?"
"Oh, dear. Etta called me yesterday about that. I'm in my own room and you
are in the blue room. We're down the hall from each other, with my parents and
Alicia in between."
"And how committed are we to maintaining this?"
I start the car and we get back on the highway. "I don't know because I've
never done this before. Mark just brings his girlfriends downstairs to the rec
room and boffs them on the couch in the wee hours, and we all pretend not to
notice. If things are difficult we can always go down to the Reading Room; I used
to hide you down there."
"Hmm. Oh, well." Henry looks out the window for a while. "You know, this
isn't too bad."
"What?"
"Riding. In a car. On the highway."
"Golly. Next you'll be getting on planes."
"Never."
"Paris. Cairo. London. Kyoto."
"No way. I am convinced that I would time travel and Lord knows if I would
be able to get back to something flying 350 miles an hour. I'd end up falling out
of the sky a la Icarus."
"Seriously?"
"I'm not planning to find out for sure."
"Could you get there by time travel?"
"Well. Here's my theory. Now, this is only a Special Theory of Time Travel as
Performed by Henry DeTamble, and not a General Theory of Time Travel."
"Okay."
"First of all, I think it's a brain thing. I think it's a lot like epilepsy, because it
tends to happen when I'm stressed, and there are physical cues, like flashing
light, that can prompt it. And because things like running, and sex, and
meditation tend to help me stay put in the present. Secondly, I have absolutely
no conscious control over when or where I go, how long I stay, or when I come
back. So time travel tours of the Riviera are very unlikely. Having said that, my
subconscious seems to exert tremendous control, because I spend a lot of time in
my own past, visiting events that are interesting or important, and evidently I
will be spending enormous amounts of time visiting you, which I am looking
forward to immensely. I tend to go to places I've already been in real time,
although I do find myself in other, more random times and places. I tend to go to
the past, rather than the future."
"You've been to the future? I didn't know you could do that."
Henry is looking pleased with himself. "So far, my range is about fifty years in
each direction. But I very rarely go to the future, and I don't think I've ever seen
much of anything there that I found useful. It's always quite brief. And maybe I
just don't know what I'm looking at. It's the past that exerts a lot of pull. In the
past I feel much more solid. Maybe the future itself is less substantial? I don't
know. I always feel like I'm breathing thin air, out there in the future. That's one
of the ways I can tell it is the future: it feels different. It's harder to run, there."
Henry says this thoughtfully, and I suddenly have a glimpse of the terror of
being in a foreign time and place, without clothes, without friends...
"That's why your feet-"
"Are like leather." The soles of Henry's feet have thick calluses, as though they
are trying to become shoes. "I am a beast of the hoof. If anything ever happens to
my feet you might as well shoot me."
We ride on in silence for a while. The road rises and dips, dead fields of
cornstalks flash by. Farmhouses stand washed in the winter sun, each with their
vans and horse trailers and American cars lined up in the long driveways. I sigh.
Going home is such a mixed experience. I'm dying to see Alicia and Etta, and I'm
worried about my mother, and I don't especially feel like dealing with my father
and Mark. But I'm curio