ve tied it up around her knees.
People have been giving us strange looks all afternoon. I guess we don't exactly
look like an average father and daughter at the beach. But we have done our best;
we have swum, and we have built a sand castle. We have eaten hotdogs and fries
we bought from the vendor in the parking lot. We don't have a blanket, or any
towels, and so we are kind of sandy and damp and pleasantly tired, and we sit
watching little children running back and forth in the waves and big silly dogs
loping after them. The sun is setting behind us as we stare at the water.
"Tell me a story," says Alba, leaning against me like cold cooked pasta.
I put my arm around her. "What kind of story?"
"A good story. A story about you and Mama, when Mama was a little girl"
"Hmm. Okay. Once upon a time-"
"When was that?"
"All times at once. A long time ago, and right now."
"Both?"
"Yes, always both."
"How can it be both?"
"Do you want me to tell this story or not?"
"Yeah...."
"All right then. Once upon a time, your mama lived in a big house beside a
meadow, and in the meadow was a place called the clearing where she used to
go to play. And one fine day your mama, who was only a tiny thing whose hair
was bigger than she was, went out to the clearing and there was a man there-"
"With no clothes!"
"With not a stitch on him" I agree. "And after your mama had given him a
beach towel she happened to be carrying so he could have something to wear, he
explained to her that he was a time traveler, and for some reason she believed
him-"
"Because it was true!" .
"Well, yes, but how was she going to know that? Anyway, she did"" believe
him, and then later on she was silly enough to marry him and here we are,"
Alba punches me in the stomach. "Tell it right" she demands.
"Ooof. How can I tell anything if you beat on me like that? Geez."
Alba is quiet. Then she says, "How come you never visit Mama in the future?"
"I don't know, Alba. If I could, I'd be there." The blue is deepening over the
horizon and the tide is receding. I stand up and offer Alba my hand, pull her up.
As she stands brushing sand from her nightgown she stumbles toward me and
says, "Oh!" and is gone and I stand there on the beach holding a damp cotton
nightgown and staring at Alba's slender footprints in the fading light.
RENASCENCE
Thursday, December 4, 2008 (Clare is 37)
Clare: It's a cold, bright morning. I unlock the door of the studio and stamp snow
off my boots. I open the shades, turn up the heat. I start a pot of coffee brewing. I
stand in the empty space in the middle of the studio and I look around me.
Two years' worth of dust and stillness lies over everything. My drawing table
is bare. The beater sits clean and empty. The molds and deckles are neatly
stacked, coils of armature wire sit untouched by the table. Paints and pigments,
jars of brushes, tools, books; all are just as I left them. The sketches I had
thumbtacked to the wall have yellowed and curled. I untack them and throw
them in the wastebasket.
I sit at my drawing table and I close my eyes.
The wind is rattling tree branches against the side of the house, A car splashes
through slush in the alley. The coffeemaker hisses and gurgles as it spits the last
spurt of coffee into the pot. I open my eyes, shiver and pull my heavy sweater
closer.
When I woke up this morning I had an urge to come here. It was like a flash of
lust: an assignation with my old lover, art. But now I'm sitting here waiting for..
.something.. .to come to me and nothing comes. I open a flat file drawer and take
out a sheet of indigo-dyed paper. It's heavy and slightly rough, deep blue and
cold to the touch like metal. I lay it on the table. I stand and stare at it for a while.
I take out a few pieces of soft white pastel and weigh them in my palm. Then I
put them down and pour myself some coffee. I stare out the window at the back
of the house. If Henry were here he might be sitting at his desk, might be looking
back at me from the window above his desk. Or he might be playing Scrabble
with Alba, or reading the comics, or making soup for lunch. I sip my coffee and
try to feel time revert, try to erase the difference between now and then. It is only
my memory that holds me here. Time, let me vanish. Then what we separate by our
very presence can come together.
I stand in front of the sheet of paper, holding a white pastel. The paper is vast,
and I begin in the center, bending over the paper though I know I would be more
comfortable at the easel. I measure out the figure, half-life-sized: here is the top of
the head, the groin, the heel of the foot. I rough in a head. I draw very lightly,
from memory: empty eyes, here at the midpoint of the head, long nose, bow
mouth slightly open. The eyebrows arch in surprise: oh, it's you. The pointed chin
and the round jawline, the forehead high and the ears only indicated. Here is the
neck, and the shoulders that slope into arms that cross protectively over the
breasts, here is the bottom of the rib cage, the plump stomach, full hips, legs
slightly bent, feet pointing downward as though the figure is floating in midair.
The points of measurement are like stars in the indigo night sky of the paper; the
figure is a constellation. I indicate highlights and the figure becomes three
dimensional, a glass vessel. I draw the features carefully, create the structure of
the face, fill in the eyes, which regard me, astonished at suddenly existing. The
hair undulates across the paper, floating weightless and motionless, linear
pattern that makes the static body dynamic. What else is in this universe, this
drawing? Other stars, far away. I hunt through my tools and find a needle. I tape
the drawing over a window and I begin to prick the paper full of tiny holes, and
each pin prick becomes a sun in some other set of worlds. And when I have a
galaxy full of stars I prick out the figure, which now becomes a constellation in
earnest, a network of tiny lights, I regard my likeness, and she returns my gaze. I
place my finger on her forehead and say, "Vanish," but it is she who will stay; I
am the one who is vanishing.

ALWAYS AGAIN
Thursday, July 24, 2053 (Henry is 43, Clare is 82)
Henry: I find myself in a dark hallway. At the end of the hall is a door, slightly
open with white light spilling around its edges. The hall is full of galoshes and
rain coats. I walk slowly and silently to the door and carefully look into the next
room. Morning light fills up the room and is painful at first, but as my eyes
adjust I see that in the room is a plain wooden table next to a window. A woman
sits at the table facing the window. A teacup sits at her elbow. Outside is the lake,
the waves rush up the shore and recede with calming repetition which becomes
like stillness after a few minutes. The woman is extremely still. Something about
her is familiar. She is an old woman; her hair is perfectly white and lies long on
her back in a thin stream, over a slight dowager's hump. She wears a sweater the
color of coral. The curve of her shoulders, the stiffness in her posture say here is
someone who is very tired, and I am very tired, myself. I shift my weight from one
foot to the other and the floor creaks; the woman turns and sees me and her face
is remade into joy; I am suddenly amazed; this is Clare, Clare old! and she is
coming to me, so slowly, and I take her into my arms.

Monday, July 14, 2053 (Clare is 82)
Clare: This morning everything is clean; the storm has left branches strewn
around the yard, which I will presently go out and pick up: all the beach's sand
has been redistributed and laid down fresh in an even blanket pocked with
impressions of rain, and the daylilies bend and glisten in the white seven a.m.
light. I sit at the dining room table with a cup of tea, looking at the water,
listening. Waiting.
Today is not much different from all the other days. I get up at dawn, put on
slacks and a sweater, brush my hair, make toast, and tea, and sit looking at the
lake, wondering if he will come today. It's not much different from the many
other times he was gone, and I waited, except that this time I have instructions:
this time I know Henry will come, eventually. I sometimes wonder if this
readiness, this expectation, prevents the miracle from happening. But I have no
choice. He is coming, and I am here.
Now from his breast into his eyes the ache
of longing mounted, and he wept at last,
his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,
longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
spent in rough water where his ship went down
under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big surf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,
her white arms round him pressed as though forever.
- from, The Odyssey
Homer translated
by Robert Fitzgerald