mes in, unzips, and stands in front of the urinal pissing. When he's
done he zips and then stands for a moment and right then I happen to sneeze.
"Who's there?" says Roberto. I sit silently. Through the space between the
door and the stall I see Roberto slowly bend down and look under the door at
my feet.
"Henry?" he says. "I will have Matt bring your clothes. Please get dressed and
come to my office."
I slink into Roberto's office and sit down across from him. He's on the phone,
so I sneak a look at his calendar. It's Friday. The clock above the desk says 2:17.
I've been gone for a little more than twenty-two hours. Roberto places the phone
gently in its cradle and turns to look at me. "Shut the door," he says. This is a
mere formality because the walls of our offices don't actually go all the way up to
the ceiling, but I do as he says.
Roberto Calle is an eminent scholar of the Italian Renaissance and the Head of
Special Collections. He is ordinarily the most sanguine of men, golden, bearded,
and encouraging; now he gazes at me sadly over his bifocals and says, "We
really can't have this, you know."
"Yes," I say. "I know."
"May I ask how you acquired that rather impressive black eye?" Roberto's
voice is grim.
"I think I walked into a tree."
"Of course. How silly of me not to think of that." We sit and look at each other.
Roberto says, "Yesterday I happened to notice Matt walking into your office
carrying a pile of clothing. Since it was not the first time I had seen Matt walking
around with clothing I asked him where he had gotten this particular pile, and he
said that he had found it in the Men's Room. And so I asked him why he felt
compelled to transport this pile of clothing to your office and he said that it
looked like what you were wearing, which it did. And since no one could find
you, we simply left the clothing on your desk."
He pauses as though I'm supposed to say something, but I can't think of
anything appropriate. He goes on, "This morning Clare called and told Isabelle
you had the flu and wouldn't be in." I lean my head against my hand. My eye is
throbbing. "Explain yourself," Roberto demands.
It's tempting to say, Roberto, I got stuck in 1973 and I couldn't get out and I was in
Muncie, Indiana, for days living in a barn and I got decked by the guy who owned the barn
because he thought I was trying to mess with his sheep. But of course I can't say that. I
say, "I don't really remember, Roberto. I'm sorry."
"Ah. Well, I guess Matt wins the pool."
"What pool?"
Roberto smiles, and I think that maybe he's not going to fire me. "Matt bet that
you wouldn't even attempt to explain. Amelia put her money on abduction by
aliens. Isabelle bet that you were involved in an international drug-running cartel
and had been kidnapped and killed by the Mafia."
"What about Catherine?"
"Oh, Catherine and I are convinced that this is all due to an unspeakably
bizarre sexual kink involving nudity and books."
I take a deep breath. "It's more like epilepsy," I say.
Roberto looks skeptical. "Epilepsy? You disappeared yesterday afternoon.
You have a black eye and scratches all over your face and hands. I had Security
searching the building top to bottom for you yesterday; they tell me you are in
the habit of taking off your clothing in the stacks."
I stare at my fingernails. When I look up, Roberto is staring out the window. "I
don't know what to do with you, Henry. I would hate to lose you; when you are
here and fully clothed you can be quite...competent. But this just will not do!"
We sit and look at each other for minutes. Finally Roberto says, "Tell me it
won't happen again "
"I can't. I wish I could."
Roberto sighs, and waves his hand at the door. "Go. Go catalogue the Quigley
Collection, that'll keep you out of trouble for a while." (The Quigley Collection,
recently donated, is over two thousand pieces of Victorian ephemera, mostly
having to do with soap.) I nod my obedience and stand up.
As I open the door Roberto says, "Henry. Is it so bad that you can't tell me?"
I hesitate. "Yes " I say. Roberto is silent. I close the door behind me and walk
to my office. Matt is sitting behind my desk, transferring stuff from his calendar
into mine. He looks up as I come in. "Did he fire you?" Matt asks.
"No," I reply.
"Why not?"
"Dunno."
"Odd. By the way, I did your lecture for the Chicago Hand Bookbinders."
"Thanks. Buy you lunch tomorrow?"
"Sure." Matt checks the calendar in front of him. "We've got a Show and Tell
for a History of Typography class from Columbia in forty-five minutes." I nod
and start rummaging in my desk for the list of items we're about to show.
"Henry?"
"Yeah?"
"Where were you?"
"Muncie, Indiana. 1973."
"Yeah, right." Matt rolls his eyes and grins sarcastically. "Never mind."
Sunday, December 17, 1995 (Clare is 24, Henry is 8)
Clare: I'm visiting Kimy. It's a snowy Sunday afternoon in December. I've been
Christmas shopping, and I'm sitting in Kimy's kitchen drinking hot chocolate,
warming my feet by the baseboard radiator, regaling her with stories of bargains
and decorations. Kimy plays solitaire while we talk; I admire her practiced
shuffle, her efficient slap of red card on black card. A pot of stew simmers on the
stove. There's a noise in the dining room; a chair falls over. Kimy looks up, turns.
"Kimy" I whisper. "There's a little boy under the dining room table."
Someone giggles. "Henry?" Kimy calls. No answer. She gets up and stands in
the doorway. "Hey, buddy. Stop that. Put some clothes on, mister." Kimy
disappears into the dining room. Whispering. More giggles. Silence. Suddenly a
small naked boy is staring at me from the doorway, and just as suddenly he
vanishes. Kimy comes back in, sits down at the table, and resumes her game.
"Wow," I say.
Kimy smiles. "That don't happen so much these days. Now he's a grown-up,
when he comes. But he don't come as much as he used to."
"I've never seen him go forward like that, into the future."
"Well, you don't have so much future with him, yet."
It takes me a second to figure out what she means. When I do, I wonder what
kind of future it will be, and then I think about the future expanding, gradually
opening enough for Henry to come to me from the past. I drink my chocolate and
stare out into Kimy's frozen yard.
"Do you miss him?" I ask her.
"Yeah, I miss him. But he's grown-up now. When he comes like a little boy, it's
like a ghost, you know?" I nod. Kimy finishes her game, gathers up the cards. She
looks at me, smiles. "When you guys gonna have a baby, huh?"
"I don't know, Kimy. I'm not sure we can."
She stands up, walks over to the stove and stirs the stew. "Well, you never
know."
"True." You never know.
Later, Henry and I are lying in bed. Snow is still falling; the radiators make
faint clucking noises. I turn to him and he looks at me and I say, "Let's make a
baby."
Monday, March 11, 1996 (Henry is 32)
Henry: I have tracked down Dr. Kendrick; he is affiliated with the University of
Chicago Hospital. It is a vile wet cold day in March. March in Chicago seems like
it ought to be an improvement over February, but sometimes it isn't. I get on the
IC and sit facing backwards. Chicago streams out behind us and soon enough we
are at 59th Street. I disembark and struggle through the sleety rain. It's 9:00 a.m.,
it's Monday. Everyone is drawn into themselves, resisting being back in the
workweek. I like Hyde Park. It makes me feel as though I've fallen out of Chicago
and into some other city, Cambridge, perhaps. The gray stone buildings are dark
with rain and the trees drip fat icy drops on passersby. I feel the blank serenity of
the fait accompli; I will be able to convince Kendrick, though I have failed to
convince so many doctors, because I do convince him. He will be my doctor
because in the future he is my doctor.
I enter a small faux Mies building next to the hospital. I take the elevator to
Three, open the glass door that bears the golden legend Drs. C. P. Shane and D. L
Kendrick, announce myself to the receptionist and sit in one of the deep lavender
upholstered chairs. The waiting room is pink and violet, I suppose to soothe the
patients. Dr. Kendrick is a geneticist, and not incidentally, a philosopher; the
latter, I think, must be of some use in coping with the harsh practical realities of
the former. Today there is no one here but me. I'm ten minutes early. The
wallpaper is broad stripes the exact color of Pepto-Bismol. It clashes with the
painting of a watermill opposite me, mostly browns and greens. The furniture is
pseudocolonial, but there's a pretty nice rug, some kind of soft Persian carpet,
and I feel kind of sorry for it, stuck here in this ghastly waiting room. The
receptionist is a kind-looking middle-aged woman with very deep wrinkles from
years of tanning; she is deeply tanned now, in March in Chicago.
At 9:35 I hear voices in the corridor and a blond woman enters the waiting
room with a little boy in a small wheelchair. The boy appears to have cerebral
palsy or something like it. The woman smiles at me; I smile back. As she turns I
see that she is pregnant. The receptionist says, "You may go in, Mr. DeTamble,"
and I smile at the boy as I pass him. His enormous eyes take me in, but he doesn't
smile back.
As I enter Dr. Kendrick's office, he is making notes in a file. I sit down and he
continues to write. He is younger than I thought he would be; late thirties. I
always expect doctors to be old men. I can't help it, it's left over from my
childhood of endless medical men. Kendrick is red-haired, thin-faced, bearded,
with thick wire-rimmed glasses. He looks a little bit like D. H. Lawrence. He's
wearing a nice charcoal-gray suit and a narrow dark green tie with a rainbow
trout tie clip. An ashtray overflows at his elbow; the room is suffused with
cigarette smoke, although he isn't smoking rig