 The blush spreads like drops of blood in a bowl of milk.
"Are you hungry? I made us a feast!"
"Of course I'm hungry. I'm famished, gaunt, and considering cannibalism."
"That won't be necessary just yet."
There is something in her tone that pulls me up. Something is going on that I
don't know about, and Clare expects me to know it. She is practically humming
with excitement. I contemplate the relative merits of a simple confession of
ignorance versus continuing to fake it. I decide to let it go for a while. Clare is
spreading out a blanket which will later end up on our bed. I carefully sit down
on it and am comforted by its pale green familiarity. Clare unpacks sandwiches,
little paper cups, silverware, crackers, a tiny black jar of supermarket caviar, Thin
Mint Girl Scout cookies, strawberries, a bottle of Cabernet with a fancy label, Brie
cheese which looks a bit melted, and paper plates.
"Clare. Wine! Caviar!" I am impressed, and somehow not amused. She hands
me the Cabernet and the corkscrew. "Um, I don't think I've ever mentioned this,
but I'm not supposed to drink. Doctor's orders." Clare looks crestfallen. "But I
can certainly eat.. .I can pretend to be drinking. I mean, if that would be helpful."
I can't shake the feeling that we are playing house. "I didn't know you drank.
Alcohol. I mean, I've hardly ever seen you drink any."
"Well, I don't really like it, but since this is a momentous occasion I thought it
would be nice to have wine. Champagne probably would have been better, but
this was in the pantry, so I brought it along."
I open the wine and pour us each a small cup. We toast each other silently. I
pretend to sip mine. Clare takes a mouthful, swallows it in a businesslike
fashion, and says, "Well, that's not so bad."
"That's a twenty-something-dollar bottle of wine."
"Oh. Well, that was marvelous."
"Clare." She is unwrapping dark rye sandwiches which seem to be
overflowing with cucumbers. "I hate to be obtuse...I mean, obviously it's your
birthday...."
"My eighteenth birthday" she agrees.
"Um, well, to begin with, I'm really upset that I don't have a present for you..."
Clare looks up, surprised, and I realize that I'm warm, I'm on to something here,
"but you know I never know when I'm coming, and I can't bring anything with
me..."
"I know all that. But don't you remember, we worked it all out last time you
were here; because on the List today is the last day left and also my birthday.
You don't remember?" Clare is looking at me very intently, as though
concentration can move memory from her mind to mine.
"Oh. I haven't been there yet. I mean, that conversation is still in my future. I
wonder why I didn't tell you then? I still have lots of dates on the list left to go. Is
today really the last day? You know, we'll be meeting each other in the present in
a couple years. We'll see each other then."
"But that's a long time. For me."
There is an awkward pause. It's strange to think that right now I am in
Chicago, twenty-five years old, going about my business, completely unaware of
Clare's existence, and for that matter, oblivious to my own presence here in this
lovely Michigan meadow on a gorgeous spring day which is the eighteenth
anniversary of her birth. We are using plastic knives to apply caviar to Ritz
crackers. For a while there is much crunching and furious consumption of
sandwiches. The conversation seems to have foundered. And then I wonder, for
the first time, if perhaps Clare is being entirely truthful with me here, knowing as
she does that I am on slippery terms with statements that begin "I never," since I
never have a complete inventory of my past handy at any given moment, since
my past is inconveniently compounded with my future. We move on to the
strawberries.
"Clare." She smiles, innocently. "What exactly did we decide, the last time
you saw me? What were we planning to do for your birthday?"
She's blushing again. "Well, this " she says, gesturing at our picnic.
"Anything else? I mean, this is wonderful."
"Well. Yes." I'm all ears, because I think I know what's coming.
"Yes?"
Clare is quite pink but manages to look otherwise dignified as she says, "We
decided to make love."
"Ah." I have, actually, always wondered about Clare's sexual experiences
prior to October 26, 1991, when we met for the first time in the present. Despite
some pretty amazing provocation on Clare's part I have refused to make love to
her and have spent many amusing hours chatting with her about this and that
while trying to ignore painful hard-ons. But today, Clare is legally, if perhaps not
emotionally, an adult, and surely I can't warp her life too much.. .that is to say,
I've already given her a pretty weird childhood just by being in her childhood at
all. How many girls have their very own eventual husband appearing at regular
intervals buck naked before their eyes? Clare is watching me think this through. I
am thinking about the first time I made love to Clare and wondering if it was the
first time she made love to me. I decide to ask her about this when I get back to
my present. Meanwhile, Clare is tidying things back into the picnic basket.
"So?"
What the hell. "Yes."
Clare is excited and also scared. "Henry. You've made love to me lots of
times...."
"Many, many times."
She's having trouble saying it.
"It's always beautiful," I tell her. "It's the most beautiful thing in my life. I will
be very gentle." Having said this I am suddenly nervous. I'm feeling responsible
and Humbert Humbertish and also as though I am being watched by many
people, and all of those people are Clare. I have never felt less sexual in my life.
Okay. Deep breath. "I love you."
We both stand up, lurching a bit on the uneven surface of the blanket. I open
my arms and Clare moves into them. We stand, still, embracing there in the
Meadow like the bride and groom on top of a wedding cake. And after all, this is
Clare, come to my forty-one-year-old self almost as she was when we first met.
No fear. She leans her head back. I lean forward and kiss her.
"Clare."
"Mmmm?"
"You're absolutely sure we're alone?"
"Everyone except Etta and Nell is in Kalamazoo."
"Because I feel like I'm on Candid Camera, here."
"Paranoid. Very sad"
"Never mind."
"We could go to my room."
"Too dangerous. God, it's like being in high school."
"What?"
"Never mind."
Clare steps back from me and unzips her dress. She pulls it over her head and
drops it on the blanket with admirable unconcern. She steps out of her shoes and
peels off her stockings. She unhooks her bra, discards it, and steps out of her
panties. She is standing before me completely naked. It is a sort of miracle: all the
little marks I have become fond of have vanished; her stomach is flat, no trace of
the pregnancies that will bring us such grief, such happiness. This Clare is a little
thinner, and a lot more buoyant than the Clare I love in the present. I realize
again how much sadness has overtaken us. But today all of that is magically
removed; today the possibility of joy is close to us. I kneel, and Clare comes over
and stands in front of me. I press my face to her stomach for a moment, and then
look up; Clare is towering over me, her hands in my hair, with the cloudless blue
sky around her.
I shrug off my jacket and undo the tie. Clare kneels and we remove the studs
deftly and with the concentration of a bomb squad. I take off the pants and
underwear. There's no way to do this gracefully. I wonder how male strippers
deal with this problem. Or do they just hop around on stage, one leg in, one out?
Clare laughs. "I've never seen you get undressed. Not a pretty sight."
"You wound me. Come here and let me wipe that smirk off your face."
"Uh-oh." In the next fifteen minutes I'm proud to say that I have indeed
removed all traces of superiority from Clare's face. Unfortunately she's getting
more and more tense, more.. .defended. In fourteen years and heaven only knows
how many hours and days spent happily, anxiously, urgently, languorously
making love with Clare, this is utterly new to me. I want, if at all possible, for her
to feel the sense of wonder I felt when I met her and we made love for what I
thought (silly me) was the first time. I sit up, panting. Clare sits up as well, and
circles her arms around her knees, protectively.
"You okay?"
"I'm afraid."
"That's okay." I'm thinking. "I swear to you that the next time we meet you're
going to practically rape me. I mean, you are really exceptionally talented at
this." I am?
"You are incandescent," I am rummaging through the picnic basket: cups,
wine, condoms, towels. "Clever girl." I pour us each a cup of wine. "To virginity.
' Had we but world enough, and time' Drink up." She does, obediently, like a small
child taking medicine. I refill her cup, and down my own.
"But you aren't supposed to drink."
"It's a momentous occasion. Bottoms up." Clare weighs about 120 pounds, but
these are Dixie cups. "One more."
"More? I'll get sleepy."
"You'll relax." She gulps it down. We squash up the cups and throw them in
the picnic basket. I lie down on my back with my arms stretched out like a
sunbather, or a crucifixion. Clare stretches out beside me. I gather her in so that
we are side by side, facing each other. Her hair falls across her shoulders and
breasts in a very beautiful and touching way and I wish for the zillionth time that
I was a painter.
"Clare?"
"Hmmm?"
"Imagine yourself as open; empty. Someone's come along and taken out all
your innards, and left only nerve endings." I've got the tip of my index finger on
her clit.
"Poor little Clare. No innards."
"Ah, but it's a good thing, you see, because there's all this extra room in there.
Think of all the stuff you could put inside you if you didn't have all those silly
kidneys and stomachs and pancreases and what not."
"Like what?" She's very wet. 