The Time Traveler’s Wife: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Saturday, October 27, 1984 (Clare is 13, Henry is 43). Clare wakes up from a deep sleep when she hears her name being called outside. Suspecting it might be Henry, she runs out to the Meadow. She finds her father, Philip, and Mark in hunting gear, then she sees Henry standing next to them. They ask her what she is doing up, and she explains what she heard. She looks to Henry for an explanation, but he shakes his head at her. Clare knows they were looking at something on the ground, but nothing is there now. Her father tells her she is dreaming and sends her back inside. Henry smiles at her reassuringly as she leaves, but she can tell her father and brother are distressed. Back in her bed, Clare suspects something terrible has happened.

Monday, February 2, 1987 (Clare is 15, Henry is 38). Clare comes home after school and visits Henry in the Reading Room, a closed-off part of the basement she made so he could stay warm in the winter. Clare notices he looks exhausted and disheveled; she asks when he is from. Henry responds that he has traveled from 2001. Clare asks him why, but Henry only shares that it’s something tiring and important. Henry tells her she looks thin, and Clare assures him she’s fine. He explains he only worries because her mother Lucille used to nag her about her weight. Clare notices that Henry uses the past tense to refer to her mother and begins to panic despite his efforts to calm her.

Henry is livid at himself for giving away Lucille’s death. He wishes he could return to the present to ask grown-up Clare what he should say about her mother’s passing. He realizes he slipped and told her the truth because of his lack of sleep in the present, and he knows that Clare picks up on his attempts to cover it with a lie. Henry tries to comfort her, but Clare insists he tell her the truth immediately. Henry explains that knowing the future will only make things messy. Clare, growing more frantic, guesses that her mother dies by suicide. Henry is adamant that she does not. Clare continues to spiral nonetheless, which convinces Henry that he must be honest. He tells Clare that Lucille dies from ovarian cancer. Clare is relieved.

Friday, June 5, 1987 (Clare is 16, Henry is 32). Clare waits for Henry in their usual spot. Earlier in the day she obtained her driver’s license, and she now plans to go to a party at Ruth’s house that evening. Henry arrives in the Meadow right before Clare needs to go inside. She notices he looks younger than usual this time. Clare demands a kiss to celebrate her license, and Henry concedes. He tells Clare that he is jealous; he can’t drive because it would be too dangerous if he disappeared. Clare then invites him to the party. Henry is hesitant, so she suggests he just wait in the car while she makes a quick appearance.

At the party, Clare leaves Henry in the car parked down the road. She is worried to find there are more boys than girls, and they all appear to be drunk. She dodges unwanted attention from classmates who make fun of her for never dating. She finds Helen, and they go upstairs to join Ruth and Laura. They admire the boys swimming in the pool from their spot near the window. Helen asks Clare why she hasn’t had sex with anyone yet, and Ruth guesses that she’s waiting for a particular person. Helen leaves, saying she’s going to grab the ingredients to make bellinis.

While waiting in the car, Henry is surprised when Helen appears outside the window. She introduces herself, addressing him as “Clare’s boyfriend.” Helen insists that he come out and says she’s suspected his existence for a while. Henry insists that he’s merely a friend of Clare’s parents who has volunteered to be a designated sober driver. Clare arrives then, assuring Helen that Henry is not her boyfriend. The two drive away, leaving Helen behind. Clare, frustrated by the interaction, drives recklessly. Henry chastises her, but Clare reminds him that nothing bad can happen because he would know if it did.

Henry makes Clare pull over and promise not to do something so dangerous in the future because he loves her. This breaks Clare out of her rebellious attitude. She touches Henry intimately, but he removes her hand from his lap. They notice his hands are bleeding, and Henry realizes he dug his fingernails into his palm in fear while Clare was driving. Clare apologizes. Henry explains that he was in a bad car accident as a child. When they calm down and notice the late hour, Clare leaves Henry on the road and drives home.

Sunday, September 27, 1987 (Henry is 32, Clare is 16). Henry arrives in the clearing where he finds Clare unusually quiet and largely unresponsive to his questions. He suspects she’s been crying. Finally, she asks him if he would hurt someone for her if she asked. Henry asks for more information, but Clare doesn’t want to talk about it. He remembers something that she told him in the future, and he asks if it’s about a classmate she went on a date with. Clare explains she went out with Jason to refute recent school gossip that she is a lesbian because she doesn’t date. Their date had been uneventful until she refused to make out with him. Instead of taking her home, he took her to an isolated cottage where he beat her and burned her with a cigarette.

This information infuriates Henry, who demands that Clare take him to Jason. In the car, Clare and Henry discuss the fact that Jason is much bigger than Henry. She pulls her father’s handgun from her purse. Henry removes the bullets, afraid he’d actually use them, and decides to use the gun as a threat. Clare tells Henry she wants to watch while Henry hurts Jason enough to scare him permanently. Henry is hesitant to inflict actual damage, but Clare’s pleas convince him.

Henry and Clare arrive at Jason’s house and use the gun to force him into the car. They drive to the woods, where they start to duct tape him to a tree. Jason begins to have an asthma attack, so Clare goes to the car for his inhaler. Henry asks Jason why he hurt Clare. He explains that Clare toyed with his emotions, and Henry responds that Clare is too innocent to intentionally lead him on. After administering his inhaler, Henry resumes taping Jason to the tree while Clare cuts off his clothing. Jason is left fully covered in tape aside from his erection.

Clare laughs darkly at Jason’s state, and Henry hears in her tone the loss of her innocence. Clare uses a marker to write what Jason did to her on the duct tape. Henry then tells Jason that if he mentions anything about his being there, he will return for him. When Jason talks back, Henry kicks him in the groin. Clare and Henry leave after calling all Clare’s female classmates to come cut him down. On their drive home, Henry can tell he will disappear soon. Clare thanks him and kisses him goodbye.

Monday, September 28, 1987 (Clare is 16). When Clare returns to school, she can feel her classmates’ attention on her. Ruth makes sure Clare is okay before assuring her that she and the other girls went and cut Jason down like Clare asked. In French class, Clare considers the nonchalance with which Henry hurt her attacker. She worries that Henry relished in it the same way Jason had relished hurting her. She reminds herself of Henry’s goodness and that she was the one to insist he hurt Jason. On the way to gym class, Helen asks if Henry helped her, and Clare denies it. As they change, Helen and the other girls see Clare’s injuries and begin clapping in celebration of her revenge.

Wednesday, July 12, 1995 (Clare is 24, Henry is 32). Henry returns from somewhere else in time and rouses Clare from near sleep. She feels his hands on her, then his lips on the scar she still bears from Jason’s cigarette. Understanding that Henry has just returned from the woods that day, Clare thanks him. Henry tells her that he was happy to help, then he kisses her. Clare says that they shouldn’t talk about the incident ever again.

Sunday, September 11, 1988 (Henry is 36, Clare is 17). Henry and Clare enjoy a sunny September day in the Meadow. Henry has his head in Clare’s lap, and he is especially thankful for this serene visit because he and Clare are struggling through a challenging winter in his present. Clare, seeing Henry’s peaceful expression, decides to draw him. Henry studies her as she sketches him, noticing how absorbed she is in her task. Being the object of her intense focus makes him feel loved and reminds him of when they have sex in his present.  

Clare asks Henry what time he has come from and is surprised when he says 2000; she explains that he is usually visiting from later years when he arrives stressed. Henry responds that she must track his moods closely, and Clare agrees it’s all she can do when he withholds so much about the future. When she asks what he is afraid of, Henry admits that he is primarily concerned she will leave him in their present when she gets tired of his unpredictability. Clare stops drawing. She tells him that despite the fact he is constantly leaving her, she won’t abandon him. Henry reminds her that he doesn’t have a choice.

When Clare shows Henry her finished drawing, he recognizes it as one that Clare has in her art studio in their future home. Clare begins to write the date, but Henry tells her not to because the one hanging by her desk is undated. She wonders if he ever notices that things have changed when he returns to the present. Henry indulges her curiosity, telling her to write the date after all. They joke that they’ve caused some horrible rift in time, and before long, Henry is gone.

Thursday, January 13, 2000 (Henry is 36, Clare is 28). When Henry returns to the present, he still wonders about the conversation he had with Clare in the Meadow. In Clare’s studio, he finds her working on sculpture that looks like a purple nest. The drawing is nowhere in sight at first, but Clare tells him it may have fallen. She finds it eventually, but there is no date on it. Henry panics, but Clare explains she cut the date off after their conversation in 1988 out of fear they really would affect the time continuum. Henry can’t say why, but this relieves his anxiety.