its glass home, open it to
Flamingo, shut the case, lock it. Henry jumps off the chair and eats his Oreo. I
return the felt to the desk and push the chair in. Henry turns out the light, and we
leave the library.
We wander, chattering amiably of things that fly and things that slither, and
eating our Oreos. Henry tells me about Mom and Dad and Mrs. Kim, who is
teaching him to make lasagna, and Brenda, whom I had forgotten about, my best
pal when I was little until her family moved to Tampa, Florida, about three
months from now. We are standing in front of Bushman, the legendary silverback
gorilla, whose stuffed magnificence glowers at us from his little marble stand in a
first floor hallway, when Henry cries out, and staggers forward, reaching
urgently for me, and I grab him, and he's gone. The T-shirt is warm empty cloth
in my hands. I sigh, and walk upstairs to ponder the mummies for a while by
myself. My young self will be home now, climbing into bed. I remember, I
remember. I woke up in the morning and it was all a wonderful dream. Mom
laughed and said that time travel sounded fun, and she wanted to try it, too.
That was the first time.

FIRST DATE, TWO
Friday, September 23, 1977 (Henry is 36, Clare is 6)
Henry: I'm in the Meadow, waiting. I wait slightly outside the clearing, naked,
because the clothes Clare keeps for me in a box under a stone are not there; the
box isn't there either, so I am thankful that the afternoon is fine, early September,
perhaps, in some unidentified year. I hunker down in the tall grass. I consider.
The fact that there is no box full of clothes means that I have arrived in a time
before Clare and I have met. Perhaps Clare isn't even born yet. This has
happened before, and it's a pain; I miss Clare and I spend the time hiding naked
in the Meadow, not daring to show myself in the neighborhood of Clare's family.
I think longingly of the apple trees at the western edge of the Meadow. At this
time of year there ought to be apples, small and sour and munched by deer, but
edible. I hear the screen door slam and I peer above the grass. A child is running,
pell mell, and as it comes down the path through the waving grass my heart
twists and Clare bursts into the clearing.
She is very young. She is oblivious; she is alone. She is still wearing her school
uniform, a hunter green jumper with a white blouse and knee socks with penny
loafers, and she is carrying a Marshall Field's shopping bag and a beach towel.
Clare spreads the towel on the ground and dumps out the contents of the bag:
every imaginable kind of writing implement. Old ballpoint pens, little stubby
pencils from the library, crayons, smelly Magic Markers, a fountain pen. She also
has a bunch of her dad's office stationery. She arranges the implements and gives
the stack of paper a smart shake, and then proceeds to try each pen and pencil in
turn, making careful lines and swirls, humming to herself. After listening
carefully for a while I identify her humming as the theme song of "The Dick Van
Dyke Show."
I hesitate. Clare is content, absorbed. She must be about six; if it's September
she has probably just entered first grade. She's obviously not waiting for me, I'm
a stranger, and I'm sure that the first thing you learn in first grade is not to have
any truck with strangers who show up naked in your favorite secret spot and
know your name and tell you not to tell your mom and dad. I wonder if today is
the day we are supposed to meet for the first time or if it's some other day.
Maybe I should be very silent and either Clare will go away and I can go munch
up those apples and steal some laundry or I will revert to my regularly
scheduled programming, I snap from my reverie to find Clare staring straight at
me. I realize, too late, that I have been humming along with her.
"Who's there?" Clare hisses. She looks like a really pissed off goose, all neck
and legs. I am thinking fast,
"Greetings, Earthling," I intone, kindly.
"Mark! You nimrod!" Clare is casting around for something to throw, and
decides on her shoes, which have heavy, sharp heels. She whips them off and
does throw them. I don't think she can see me very well, but she lucks out and
one of them catches me in the mouth. My lip starts to bleed.
"Please don't do that." I don't have anything to staunch the blood, so I press
my hand to my mouth and my voice comes out muffled. My jaw hurts.
"Who is it?" Now Clare is frightened, and so am I.
"Henry. It's Henry, Clare. I won't hurt you, and I wish you wouldn't throw
anything else at me."
"Give me back my shoes. I don't know you. Why are you hiding?" Clare is
glowering at me.
I toss her shoes back into the clearing. She picks them up and stands holding
them like pistols. "I'm hiding because I lost my clothes and I'm embarrassed. I
came a long way and I'm hungry and I don't know anybody and now I'm
bleeding."
"Where did you come from? Why do you know my name?"
The whole truth and nothing but the truth. "I came from the future. I am a time
traveler. In the future we are friends."
"People only time travel in movies."
"That's what we want you to believe."
"Why?"
"If everybody time traveled it would get too crowded. Like when you went to
see your Grandma Abshire last Christmas and you had to go through O'Hare
Airport and it was very, very crowded? We time travelers don't want to mess
things up for ourselves, so we keep it quiet."
Clare chews on this for a minute. "Come out."
"Loan me your beach towel." She picks it up and all the pens and pencils and
papers go flying. She throws it at me, overhand, and I grab it and turn my back as
I stand and wrap it around my waist. It is bright pink and orange with a loud
geometric pattern. Exactly the sort of thing you'd want to be wearing when you
meet your future wife for the first time. I turn around and walk into the clearing; I
sit on the rock with as much dignity as possible. Clare stands as far away from
me as she can get and remain in the clearing. She is still clutching her shoes.
"You're bleeding."
"Well, yeah. You threw a shoe at me."
"Oh."
Silence. I am trying to look harmless, and nice. Nice looms large in Clare's
childhood, because so many people aren't.
"You're making fun of me."
"I would never make fun of you. Why do you think I'm making fun of you?"
Clare is nothing if not stubborn. "Nobody time travels. You're lying."
"Santa time travels."
"What?"
"Sure. How do you think he gets all those presents delivered in one night? He
just keeps turning back the clock a few hours until he gets down every one of
those chimneys."
"Santa is magic. You're not Santa."
"Meaning I'm not magic? Geez, Louise, you're a tough customer."
"I'm not Louise,"
"I know. You're Clare. Clare Anne Abshire, born May 24, 1971. Your parents
are Philip and Lucille Abshire, and you live with them and your grandma and
your brother, Mark, and your sister, Alicia, in that big house up there."
"Just because you know things doesn't mean you're from the future."
"If you hang around a while you can watch me disappear" I feel I can count on
this because Clare once told me it was the thing she found most impressive about
our first meeting.
Silence. Clare shifts her weight from foot to foot and waves away a mosquito.
"Do you know Santa?"
"Personally? Um, no." I have stopped bleeding, but I must look awful. "Hey,
Clare, do you happen to have a Band-Aid? Or some food? Time traveling makes
me pretty hungry."
She thinks about this. She digs into her jumper pocket and produces a
Hershey bar with one bite out of it. She throws it at me.
"Thank you. I love these." I eat it neatly but very quickly. My blood sugar is
low. I put the wrapper in her shopping bag. Clare is delighted.
"You eat like a dog."
"I do not!" I am deeply offended. "I have opposable thumbs, thank you very
much."
"What are posable thumbs?"
"Do this." I make the "okay" sign. Clare makes the "okay" sign. "Opposable
thumbs means you can do that. It means you can open jars and tie your shoes
and other things animals can't do."
Clare is not happy with this. "Sister Carmelita says animals don't have souls."
"Of course animals have souls. Where did she get that idea?"
"She said the Pope says."
"The Pope's an old meanie. Animals have much nicer souls than we do. They
never tell lies or blow anybody up."
"They eat each other."
"Well, they have to eat each other; they can't go to Dairy Queen and get a large
vanilla cone with sprinkles, can they?" This is Clare's favorite thing to eat in the
whole wide world (as a child. As an adult Clare's favorite food is sushi,
particularly sushi from Katsu on Peterson Avenue).
"They could eat grass."
"So could we, but we don't. We eat hamburgers."
Clare sits down at the edge of the clearing. "Etta says I shouldn't talk to
strangers."
"That's good advice."
Silence.
"When are you going to disappear?"
"When I'm good and ready to. Are you bored with me?" Clare rolls her eyes.
"What are you working on?"
"Penmanship."
"May I see?"
Clare gets up carefully and collects a few pieces of stationery while fixing me
with her baleful stare. I lean forward slowly and extend my hand as though she is
a Rottweiler, and she quickly shoves the papers at me and retreats. I look at them
intently, as though she has just handed me a bunch of Bruce Rogers' original
drawings for Centaur or the Book of Kells or something. She has printed, over
and over, large and larger, "Clare Anne Abshire." All the ascenders and
descenders have swirling curlicues and all the counters have smiley faces in
them. It's quite beautiful.
"This is lovely."
Clare is pleased, as always when she receives homage for her work. "I could
make one for you."
"I would like that. But I'm not allowed to take anything with me when I time
travel, so maybe you could keep it for me and I could just enjoy it while I'm
here."
"Why can't you ta