and now. That is, time travel is sort of
an altered state, so I'm more...aware when I'm out there, and it seems important,
somehow, and sometimes I think that if I could just be that aware here and now,
that things would be perfect. But there's been some great things, lately." He
smiles, that beautiful crooked radiant smile, all innocence, and I allow my guilt
to subside, back to the little box where I keep it crammed in like a parachute.
"Alba."
"Alba is perfect. And you are perfect. I mean, as much as I love you, back
there, it's the shared life, the knowing each other...."
"Through thick and thin...."
"The fact that there are bad times makes it more real. It's the reality that I
want."
Tell him, tell him.
"Even reality can be pretty unreal..." If I'm ever going to say it, now's the time.
He waits. I just. Can't.
"Clare?" I regard him miserably, like a child caught in a complicated fib, and
then I say it, almost inaudibly.
"I slept with someone." Henry's face is frozen, disbelieving.
"Who?" he asks, without looking at me,
"Gomez."
"Why?" Henry is still, waiting for the blow.
"I was drunk. We were at a party, and Charisse was in Boston-"
"Wait a minute. When was this?"
"1990."
He starts to laugh. "Oh, God. Clare, don't do that to me, shit. 1990. Jesus, I
thought you were telling me something that happened, like, last week." I smile,
weakly. He says, "I mean, it's not like I'm overjoyed about it, but since I just got
through telling you to go out and experiment I can't really...I dunno." He's
getting restless. He gets up and starts pacing around the studio. I am
incredulous. For fifteen years I've been paralyzed with fear, fear that Gomez
would say something, do something in his big lumbering Gomez callousness,
and Henry doesn't mind. Or does he?
"How was it?" he asks, quite casually, with his back to me as he messes with
the coffeemaker.
I pick my words with care. "Different. I mean, without getting real critical of
Gomez-"
"Oh, go ahead."
"It was sort of like being a china shop, and trying to get off with a bull."
"He's bigger than me." Henry states this as fact.
"I wouldn't know about now, but back then he had no finesse at all. He
actually smoked a cigarette while he was fucking me." Henry winces. I get up,
walk over to him. "I'm sorry. It was a mistake." He pulls me to him, and I say,
softly, into his collar, "I was waiting very patiently..." but then I can't go on.
Henry is stroking my hair. "It's okay, Clare," he says. "It's not so bad." I wonder if
he is comparing the Clare he has just seen, in 1989, with the duplicitous me in his
arms, and, as if reading my mind he says, "Any other surprises?"
"That was it."
"God, you can really keep a secret." I look at Henry, and he stares back at me,
and I can tell that I have altered for him somehow.
"It made me understand, better...it made me appreciate..."
"You're trying to tell me that I did not suffer by comparison?"
"Yes." I kiss him, tentatively, and after a moment of hesitation Henry begins to
kiss me back, and before too long we are on our way to being all right again.
Better than all right. I told him, and it was okay, and he still loves me. My whole
body feels lighter, and I sigh with the goodness of confessing, finally, and not
even having a penance, not one Hail Mary or Our Father. I feel like I've walked
away scot free from a totaled car. Out there, somewhere, Henry and I are making
love on a green blanket in a meadow, and Gomez is looking at me sleepily and
reaching for me with his enormous hands, and everything, everything is
happening now, but it's too late, as usual, to change any of it, and Henry and I
unwrap each other on the studio couch like brand new never before boxes of
chocolate and it's not too late, not yet, anyway.
Saturday, April 14, 1990 (Clare is 18)
(6:43 a.m.)
Clare: I open my eyes and I don't know where I am. Cigarette smell. Venetian
blind shadow across cracked yellow wall. I turn my head and beside me,
sleeping, in his bed, is Gomez. Suddenly I remember, and I panic.
Henry. Henry will kill me. Charisse will hate me. I sit up. Gomez's bedroom is
a wreck of overfilled ashtrays, clothes, law textbooks, newspapers, dirty dishes.
My clothes lie in a small, accusing pile on the floor beside me.
Gomez sleeps beautifully. He looks serene, not like a guy who's just cheated
on his girlfriend with his girlfriend's best friend. His blond hair is wild, not in its
usual perfect controlled state. He looks like an overgrown boy, exhausted from
too many boyish games.
My head is pounding. My insides feel like they've been beaten. I get up,
shakily, and walk down the hall to the bathroom, which is dank and
mold-infested and filled with shaving paraphernalia and damp towels. Once I'm
in the bathroom I'm not sure what I wanted; I pee and I wash my face with the
hard soap sliver, and I look at myself in the mirror to see if I look any different, to
see if Henry will be able to tell just by looking at me.. .I look kind of nauseous,
but otherwise I just look the way I look at seven in the morning.
The house is quiet. There's a clock ticking somewhere nearby. Gomez shares
this house with two other guys, friends who are also at Northwestern's Law
School. I don't want to run into anyone. I go back to Gomez's room and sit on the
bed.
"Good morning." Gomez smiles at me, reaches out to me. I recoil, and burst
into tears. "Whoa. Kitten! Clare, baby, hey, hey..." He scrambles up and soon I
am weeping in his arms. I think of all the times I have cried on Henry's shoulder.
Where are you? I wonder desperately. I need you, here and now. Gomez is saying rny
name, over and over. What am I doing here, without any clothes on, crying in the
embrace of an equally naked Gomez? He reaches over and hands me a box of
tissue, and I blow my nose, and wipe my eyes, and then I look at him with a look
of unconditional despair, and he looks back at me in confusion.
"Okay now?"
No. How can I be okay? "Yeah."
"What's wrong?"
I shrug. Gomez shifts into cross-examining fragile witness mode.
"Clare, have you ever had sex before?" I nod. "Is it Charisse? You feel bad
about it 'cause of Charisse?" I nod. "Did I do something wrong?" I shake my
head. "Clare, who is Henry?" I gape at him incredulously.
"How do you know?..." Now I've done it. Shit. Son of a bitch.
Gomez leans over and grabs his cigarettes from the bedside table, and lights
one. He waves out the match and takes a deep drag. With a cigarette
in his hand, Gomez seems more...dressed, somehow, even though he's not. He
silently offers me one, and I take it, even though I don't smoke. It just seems like
the thing to do, and it buys me time to think about what to say. He lights it for
me, gets up, rummages around in his closet, finds a blue bathrobe that doesn't
look all that clean, and hands it to me. I put it on; it's huge. I sit on the bed,
smoking and watching Gomez put on a pair of jeans. Even in my wretchedness I
observe that Gomez is beautiful, tall and broad and...large, an entirely different
sort of beauty from Henry's lithe panther wildness. I immediately feel horrible
for comparing. Gomez sets an ashtray next to me, and sits down on the bed, and
looks at me.
"You were talking in your sleep to someone named Henry."
Damn. Damn. "What did I say?"
"Mostly just 'Henry' over and over, like you were calling someone to come to
you. And 'I'm sorry.' And once you said 'Well, you weren't here,' like you were
really angry. Who is Henry?"
"Henry is my lover."
"Clare, you don't have a lover. Charisse and I have seen you almost every day
for six months, and you never date anyone, and no one ever calls you."
"Henry is my lover. He's been gone for a while, and he'll be back in the fall of
1991."
"Where is he?" Somewhere nearby.
"I don't know." Gomez thinks I am making this up. For no reason I am
determined to make him believe me. I grab my purse, open my wallet, and show
Gomez the photo of Henry. He studies it carefully.
"I've seen this guy. Well, no: someone a lot like him. This guy is too old to be
the same person. But that guy's name was Henry."
My heart is beating like a mad thing. I try to be casual as I ask, "Where did
you see him?"
"At clubs. Mostly Exit, and Smart Bar. But I can't imagine that he's your guy;
he's a maniac. Chaos attends his every move. He's an alcoholic, and he's just... I
don't know, he's really rough on women. Or so I hear."
"Violent?" I can't imagine Henry hitting a woman.
"No. I don't know."
"What's his last name?"
"I don't know. Listen, kitten, this guy would chew you up and spit you out..
.he's not at all what you need."
I smile. He's exactly what I need, but I know that it is futile to go chasing
through clubland trying to find him. "What do I need?"
"Me. Except you don't seem to think so."
"You have Charisse. What do you want me for?"
"I just want you. I don't know why."
"You a Mormon or something?"
Gomez says very seriously, "Clare, I.. .look, Clare-"
"Don't say it."
"Really, I-"
"No. I don't want to know." I get up, stub out my cigarette, and start to put my
clothes on. Gomez sits very still and watches me dress. I feel stale and dirty and
creepy putting on last night's party dress in front of Gomez, but I try not to let it
show. I can't do the long zipper in the back of the dress and Gomez gravely helps
me with it.
"Clare, don't be mad."
"I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at myself."
"This guy must be really something if he can walk away from a girl like you
and expect you to be around two years later."
I smile at Gomez. "He is amazing." I can see that I have hurt Gomez's feelings.
"Gomez, I'm sorry. If I was free, and you were free..." Gomez shakes his head,
and before I know it, he's kissing me. I kiss back, and there's just a moment when
I wonder.... "I've got to go now, Gomez."
He nods.
I leave.
Friday, April 27, 1990 (Henry is 26)
Henry: Ing