e shirt
and khakis and hugging my knees to my chest, obviously freezing and hungry.
There's a cup of coffee sitting outside the Cage. Roberto and Matt and Catherine
watch us silently.
"When are you from?" I ask.
"August, 2006." I pick up the coffee, hold it at chin level, poke the straw
through the side of the Cage. He sucks it down. "You want this sweet roll?" He
does. I break it into three parts and push it in. I feel like I'm at the zoo. "You're
hurt," I say. "I hit my head on something," he says. "How much longer are you
going to be here?"
"Another half hour or so." He gestures to Roberto. "You see?"
"What is going on?" Catherine asks.
I consult my self. "You want to explain?"
"I'm tired. Go ahead."
So I explain. I explain about being a time traveler, the practical and genetic
aspects of it. I explain about how the whole thing is really a sort of disease, and I
can't control it. I explain about Kendrick, and about how Clare and I met, and met
again. I explain about causal loops, and quantum mechanics and photons and the
speed of light. I explain about how it feels to be living outside of the time
constraints most humans are subject to. I explain about the lying, and the
stealing, and the fear. I explain about trying to have a normal life. "And part of
having a normal life is having a normal job," I conclude.
"I wouldn't really call this a normal job," Catherine says.
"I wouldn't call this a normal life," says my self, sitting inside the Cage.
I look at Roberto, who is sitting on the stairs, leaning his head against the wall.
He looks exhausted, and wistful. "So," I ask him. "Are you going to fire me?"
Roberto sighs. "No. No, Henry, I'm not going to fire you." He stands up
carefully, and brushes off the back of his coat with his hand. "But I don't
understand why you didn't tell me all this a long time ago."
"You wouldn't have believed me," says my self. "You didn't believe me just
now, until you saw."
"Well, yes-" Roberto begins, but his next words are lost in the odd noise
vacuum that sometimes accompanies my comings and goings. I turn and see a
pile of clothes lying on the floor of the Cage. I will come back later this afternoon
and fish them out with a clothes hanger. I turn back to Matt, Roberto, and
Catherine. They look stunned.
"Gosh," says Catherine. "It's like working with Clark Kent."
"I feel like Jimmy Olsen," says Matt. "Ugh."
"That makes you Lois Lane," Roberto teases Catherine.
"No, no, Clare is Lois Lane," she replies.
Matt says, "But Lois Lane was oblivious to the Clark Kent/Superman
connection, whereas Clare.
"Without Clare I would have given up a long time ago," I say. "I never
understood why Clark Kent was so hell bent on keeping Lois Lane in the dark."
"It makes a better story," says Matt.
"Does it? I don't know," I reply.
Friday, July 7, 2006 (Henry is 43)
Henry: I'm sitting in Kendrick's office, listening to him explain why it's not going
to work. Outside the heat is stifling, blazing hot wet wool mummification. In here
it's air-conditioned enough that I'm hunched gooseflesh in this chair. We are
sitting across from each other in the same chairs we always sit in. On the table is
an ashtray full of cigarette filters. Kendrick has been lighting each cigarette off the
end of the previous one. We're sitting with the lights off, and the air is heavy with
smoke and cold. I want a drink. I want to scream. I want Kendrick to stop talking
so I can ask him a question. I want to stand up and walk out. But I sit, listening.
When Kendrick stops talking the background noises of the building are
suddenly apparent.
"Henry? Did you hear me?"
I sit up and look at him like a schoolchild caught daydreaming. "Um, no."
"I asked you if you understood. Why it won't work."
"Um, yeah." I try to pull my head together. "It won't work because my
immune system is all fucked up. And because I'm old. And because there are too
many genes involved."
"Right." Kendrick sighs and stubs out his cigarette in the mound of stubs.
Tendrils of smoke escape and die. "I'm sorry." He leans back in his chair and
clasps his soft pink hands together in his lap. I think about the first time I saw
him, here in this office, eight years ago. Both of us were younger and cockier,
confident in the bounty of molecular genetics, ready to use science to confound
nature. I think about holding Kendrick's time-traveling mouse in my hands,
about the surge of hope I felt then, looking at my tiny white proxy. I think about
the look on Clare's face when I tell her it's not going to work. She never thought it
would work, though.
I clear my throat. "What about Alba?"
Kendrick crosses his ankles and fidgets. "What about Alba?"
"Would it work for her?"
"We'll never know, will we? Unless Clare changes her mind about letting me
work with Alba's DNA. And we both know perfectly well that Clare's terrified of
gene therapy. She looks at me like I'm Josef Mengele every time I try to discuss it
with her."
"But if you had Alba's DNA" I say, "you could make some mice and work on
stuff for her and when she turns eighteen if she wants she can try it."
"Yes."
"So even if I'm fucked at least Alba might benefit someday."
"Yes."
"Okay, then." I stand and rub my hands together, pluck my cotton shirt away
from my body where it has been adhered by now-cold sweat. "That's what we'll
do."
Friday, July 14, 2006 (Clare is 35, Henry is 43)
Clare: I'm in the studio making gampi tissue. It's a paper so thin and transparent
you can see through it; I plunge the su-ketta into the vat and bring it up, rolling
the delicate slurry around until it is perfectly distributed. I set it on the corner of
the vat to drain, and I hear Alba laughing, Alba running through the garden, Alba
yelling, "Mama! Look what Daddy got me!" She bursts through the door and
clatters toward me, Henry following more sedately. I look down to see why she
is clattering and I see: ruby slippers.
"They're just like Dorothy's!" Alba says, doing a little tap dance on the
wooden floor. She taps her heels together three times, but she doesn't vanish. Of
course, she's already home. I laugh. Henry looks pleased with himself.
"Did you make it to the post office?" I ask him.
His face falls. "Shit. No, I forgot. Sorry. I'll go tomorrow, first thing." Alba is
twirling around, and Henry reaches out and stops her. "Don't, Alba. You'll get
dizzy."
"I like being dizzy."
"It's not a good idea."
Alba is wearing a T-shirt and shorts. She has a Band-Aid over the skin in the
crook of her elbow. "What happened to your arm?" I ask her. Instead of
answering she looks at Henry, so I do, too.
"It's nothing," he says. "She was sucking on her skin and she gave herself a
hickey."
"What's a hickey?" Alba asks. Henry starts to explain but I say, "Why does a
hickey need a Band-Aid?"
"I dunno " he says. "She just wanted one."
I have a premonition. Call it the sixth sense of mothers. I walk over to Alba.
"Let's see."
She hugs her arm close to her, clutching it tight with her other arm. "Don't take
off the Band-Aid. It'll hurt."
"I'll be careful." I grip her arm firmly. She makes a whimpering noise, but I am
determined. Slowly I unbend her arm, peel off the bandage gently. There's a
small red puncture wound in the center of a purple bruise. Alba says, "It's sore,
don't" and I release her. She sticks the Band-Aid back down, and watches me,
waiting.
"Alba, why don't you go call Kimy and see if she wants to come over for
dinner?" Alba smiles and races out of the studio. In a minute the back door of the
house bangs. Henry is sitting at my drawing table, swiveling slightly back and
forth in my chair. He watches me. He waits for me to say something.
"I don't believe it," I finally say. "How could you?"
"I had to" Henry says. His voice is quiet. "She-I couldn't leave her without at
least-I wanted to give her a head start. So Kendrick can be working on it,
working for her, just in case." I walk over to him, squeaking in my galoshes and
rubber apron, and lean against the table. Henry tilts his head, and the light rakes
his face and I see the lines that run across his forehead, around the edges of his
mouth, his eyes. He has lost more weight. His eyes are huge in his face. "Clare, I
didn't tell her what it was for. You can tell her, when... it's time."
I shake my head, no. "Call Kendrick and tell him to stop."
"No."
"Then I will."
"Clare, don't-"
"You can do whatever you want with your own body, Henry, but-"
"Clare!" Henry squeezes my name out through clenched teeth.
"What?"
"It's over, okay? I'm done. Kendrick says he can't do anything more."
"But-" I pause to absorb what he's just said. "But then...what happens?"
Henry shakes his head. "I don't know. Probably what we thought might
happen...happens. But if that's what happens, then...I can't just leave Alba
without trying to help her...oh, Clare, just let me do this for her! It may not work,
she may never use it-she may love time traveling, she may never be lost, or
hungry, she may never get arrested or chased or raped or beat up, but what if she
doesn't love it? What if she wants to just be a regular girl? Clare? Oh, Clare, don't
cry..." But I can't stop, I stand weeping in my yellow rubber apron, and finally
Henry stands up and puts his arms around me. "It's not like we ever were
exempt, Clare," he says softly. "I'm just trying to make her a safety net." I can feel
his ribs through his T-shirt. "Will you let me at least leave her that?" I nod, and
Henry kisses my forehead. "Thank you," he says, and I start to cry again.
Saturday, October 27, 1984 (Henry is 43, Clare is 13)
Henry: I know the end, now. It goes like this: I will be sitting in the Meadow, in
the early morning, in autumn. It will be overcast, and chilly, and I will be
wearing a black wool overcoat and boots and gloves. It will be a date that is not
on the List. Clare will be asleep, in her 