nfortunately, I am not allowed to meet your
family until 1991."
Clare is utterly perplexed. I think part of the problem is that she can't imagine
dates beyond the 70s. I remember having the same problem with the '60s when I
was her age. "Why not?"
"It's part of the rules. People who time travel aren't supposed to go around
talking to regular people while they visit their times, because we might mess
things up." Actually, I don't believe this; things happen the way they happened,
once and only once. I'm not a proponent of splitting universes.
"But you talk to me."
"You're special. You're brave and smart and good at keeping secrets."
Clare is embarrassed. "I told Ruth, but she didn't believe me."
"Oh. Well, don't worry about it. Very few people ever believe me, either.
Especially doctors. Doctors don't believe anything unless you can prove it to
them."
"I believe you."
Clare is standing about five feet away from me. Her small pale face catches the
last orange light from the west. Her hair is pulled back tightly into a ponytail and
she is wearing blue jeans and a dark sweater with zebras running across the
chest. Her hands are clenched and she looks fierce and determined. Our
daughter, I think sadly, would have looked like this.
"Thank you, Clare."
"I have to go in now."
"Good idea."
"Are you coming back?"
I consult the List, from memory. "I'll be back October 16. It's a Friday. Come
here, right after school. Bring that little blue diary Megan gave you for your
birthday and a blue ballpoint pen" I repeat the date, looking at Clare to make
sure she is remembering.
"Au revoir, Clare."
"Aurevoir...."
"Henry."
" Au revoir, Henri." Already her accent is better than mine. Clare turns and runs
up the path, into the arms of her lighted and welcoming house, and I turn to the
dark and begin to walk across the meadow. Later in the evening I chuck the tie in
the dumpster behind Dina's Fish 'n Fry.
LESSONS IN SURVIVAL
Thursday, June 7, 1973 (Henry is 27, and 9)
Henry: I am standing across the street from the Art Institute of Chicago on a
sunny June day in 1973 in the company of my nine-year-old self. He is traveling
from next Wednesday; I have come from 1990. We have a long afternoon and
evening to frivol as we will, and so we have come to one of the great art
museums of the world for a little lesson in pick-pocketing.
"Can't we just look at the art?" pleads Henry. He's nervous. He's never done
this before.
"Nope. You need to know this. How are you going to survive if you can't steal
anything?"
"Begging."
"Begging is a drag, and you keep getting carted off by the police. Now, listen:
when we get in there, I want you to stay away from me and pretend we don't
know each other. But be close enough to watch what I'm doing. If I hand you
anything, don't drop it, and put it in your pocket as fast as you can. Okay?"
"I guess. Can we go see St. George?"
"Sure." We cross Michigan Avenue and walk between students and
housewives sunning themselves on the museum steps. Henry pats one of the
bronze lions as we go by.
I feel moderately bad about this whole thing. On the one hand, I am providing
myself with urgently required survival skills. Other lessons in this series include
Shoplifting, Beating People Up, Picking Locks, Climbing Trees, Driving,
Housebreaking, Dumpster Diving, and How to Use Oddball Things like
Venetian Blinds and Garbage Can Lids as Weapons. On the other hand, I'm
corrupting my poor innocent little self. I sigh. Somebody's got to do it.
It's Free Day, so the place is swarming with people. We stand in line, move
through the entry, and slowly climb the grandiose central staircase. We enter the
European Galleries and make our way backward from the seventeenth-century
Netherlands to fifteenth-century Spain. St. George stands poised, as always,
ready to transfix his dragon with his delicate spear while the pink and green
princess waits demurely in the middleground. My self and I love the
yellow-bellied dragon wholeheartedly, and we are always relieved to find that
his moment of doom has still not arrived.
Henry and I stand before Bernardo Martorell's painting for five minutes, and
then he turns to me. We have the gallery to ourselves at the moment.
"It's not so hard," I say. "Pay attention. Look for someone who is distracted.
Figure out where the wallet is. Most men use either their back pocket or the
inside pocket of their suit jacket. With women you want the purse behind their
back. If you're on the street you can just grab the whole purse, but then you have
to be sure you can outrun anybody who might decide to chase you. It's much
quieter if you can take it without them noticing."
"I saw a movie where they practiced with a suit of clothes with little bells and
if the guy moved the suit while he took the wallet the bells rang."
"Yeah, I remember that movie. You can try that at home. Now follow me." I
lead Henry from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth; we arrive suddenly in the
midst of French Impressionism. The Art Institute is famous for its Impressionist
collection. I can take it or leave it, but as usual these rooms are jam-packed with
people craning for a glimpse of La Grande Jatte or a Monet Haystack. Henry can't
see over the heads of the adults, so the paintings are lost on him, but he's too
nervous to look at them anyway. I scan the room. A woman is bending over her
toddler as it twists and screams. Must be nap time. I nod at Henry and move
toward her. Her purse has a simple clasp and is slung over her shoulder, across
her back. She's totally focused on getting her child to stop screeching. She's in
front of Toulouse-Lautrec's At the Moulin Rouge. I pretend to be looking at it as I
walk, bump into her, sending her pitching forward, I catch her arm, "I'm so sorry,
forgive me, I wasn't looking, are you all right? It's so crowded in here...." My
hand is in her purse, she's flustered, she has dark eyes and long hair, large
breasts, she's still trying to lose the weight she gained having the kid. I catch her
eye as I find her wallet, still apologizing, the wallet goes up my jacket sleeve, I
look her up and down and smile, back away, turn, walk, look over my shoulder.
She has picked up her boy and is staring back at me, slightly forlorn. I smile and
walk, walk. Henry is following me as I take the stairs down to the Junior
Museum. We rendezvous by the men's toilets.
"That was weird," says Henry. "Why'd she look at you like that?"
"She's lonely," I euphemize. "Maybe her husband isn't around very much."
We cram ourselves into a stall and I open her wallet. Her name is Denise Radke.
She lives in Villa Park, Illinois. She is a member of the museum and an alumna of
Roosevelt University. She is carrying twenty-two dollars in cash, plus change. I
show all this to Henry, silently, put the wallet back as it was, and hand it to him.
We walk out of the stall, out of the men's room, back toward the entrance to the
museum. "Give this to the guard. Say you found it on the floor."
"Why?"
"We don't need it; I was just demonstrating." Henry runs to the guard, an
elderly black woman who smiles and gives Henry a sort of half-hug. He conies
back slowly, and we walk ten feet apart, with me leading, down the long dark
corridor which will someday house Decorative Arts and lead to the
as-yet-unthought-of Rice Wing, but which at the moment is full of posters. I'm
looking for easy marks, and just ahead of me is a perfect illustration of the
pickpocket's dream. Short, portly, sun burnt, he looks as though he's made a
wrong turn from Wrigley Field in his baseball cap and polyester trousers with
light blue short-sleeved button-down shirt. He's lecturing his mousy girlfriend
on Vincent van Gogh.
"So he cuts his ear off and gives it to his girl-hey, how'd you like that for a
present, huh? An ear! Huh. So they put him in the loony bin..."
I have no qualms about this one. He strolls on, braying, blissfully unaware,
with his wallet in his left back pocket. He has a large gut but almost no backside,
and his wallet is pretty much aching for me to take it. I amble along behind them.
Henry has a clear view as I deftly insert my thumb and forefinger into the mark's
pocket and liberate the wallet. I drop back, they walk on, I pass the wallet to
Henry and he shoves it into his pants as I walk ahead.
I show Henry some other techniques: how to take a wallet from the inside
breast pocket of a suit, how to shield your hand from view while it's inside a
woman's purse, six different ways to distract someone while you take their
wallet, how to take a wallet out of a backpack, and how to get someone to
inadvertently show you where their money is. He's more relaxed now, he's even
starting to enjoy this. Finally, I say, "Okay, now you try."
He's instantly petrified. "I can't."
"Sure you can. Look around. Find someone." We are standing in the Japanese
Print Room. It's full of old ladies.
"Not here."
"Okay, where?"
He thinks for a minute. "The restaurant?"
We walk quietly to the restaurant. I remember this all vividly. I was totally
terrified. I look over at my self and sure enough, his face is white with fear. I'm
smiling, because I know what comes next. We stand at the end of the line for the
garden restaurant. Henry looks around, thinking.
In front of us in line is a very tall middle-aged man wearing a beautifully cut
brown lightweight suit; it's impossible to see where the wallet is. Henry
approaches him, with one of the wallets I've lifted earlier proffered on his
outstretched hand.
"Sir? Is this yours?" says Henry softly. "It was on the floor."
"Uh? Oh, hmm, no," the man checks his right back pants pocket, finds his
wallet safe, leans over Henry to hear him better, takes the wallet from Henry and
opens it. "Hmm, my, you should take this to the security guards, hmm, there's
quite a bit of cash in here, yes," the man 