The Time Traveler’s Wife

“Clare, why in the world would you want to marry such a person? Think of the children you would have! Popping into next week and back before breakfast!”

I laugh. “But it will be exciting! Like Mary Poppins, or Peter Pan.”

She squeezes my hand just a little. “Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it’s always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window.”

[…] “Do you ever miss him?” she asks me.

“Everyday. Every minute.”

“Every minute,” she says. “Yes. It’s that way, isn’t it?”

“What we need,” Henry says, “is a fresh start. A blank slate. Let’s call her Tabula Rasa.”

“Let’s call her Titanium White.”

[…] “Alba DeTamble.” It rolls around in my mouth as I say it.

“That nice, all the little iambs, tripling along […] ‘Alba (Latin) White. (Provencal) Dawn of Day’. Hmm.”

[…] “A white city on a hill. A fortress.”

“He made the boxes because he was lonely. He didn’t have anyone to love, and he made the boxes so he could love them, and so people would know that he existed, and because birds are free and the boxes are hiding places for the birds so they will feel safe, and he wanted to be free and safe. The boxes are so he can be a bird.”

“Say the poem about the lovers on the carpet.”

I blank, and then I remember.

[…] Angel! If there were a place that we didn’t know if, and there,
On some unsayable carpet, lovers displayed
What they could never bring to mastery here—the bold
Exploits of their high-flying hearts,
Their towers of pleasure, their ladders
That have long since been standing where there was no ground, leaning
Just on each other, trembling—and could master all of this,
Before the surrounding spectators, the innumerable soundless dead:
Would these, then, throw down their final, forever saved-up,
Forever hidden, unknown to us, eternally valid
Coins of happiness before the at last
Genuinely smiling pair on the gratified
Carpet?”

“There,” says Dr. Montague, clicking off the monitor. “Everyone is serene.”

I am somehow alone with Alba in the midst of everyone. […] Alba is tunneling headfirst into me, a bone and flesh excavator of my flesh and bone, a deepener of my depths. I imagine her swimming through me, imagine her falling into the stillness of a morning pond, water parting at her velocity.

The sunlight covers Alba now. She stirs, brings her small hand over her eyes, and sighs. I write her name, and my name, and the date at the bottom of the paper.

The drawing is finished. It will serve as a record—I loved you, I made you, and I made this for you—long after I am gone, and Henry is gone, and even Alba is gone. It will say, we made you, and you are here and now.

This is a secret: sometimes I am glad when Henry is gone. Sometimes I enjoy being alone. Sometimes I walk through the house late at night and I shiver with the pleasure of not talking, not touching, just walking, or sitting, or taking a bath. […] Sometimes I go for long walks with Alba and I don’t leave a note saying where I am. […] Sometimes I get a babysitter and I go to the movies or I ride my bicycle after dark along the bike path by Montrose beach with no lights; it’s like flying.

“You can do whatever you want with your own body, Henry, but—”

“Clare! […] It’s over, okay? I’m done. Kendrick says he can’t do anything more.”

“But—” I pause to absorb what he 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’s not like we were ever exempt, Clare,” he says softly. “I’m just trying to make her a safety net.”

“[…] Clare leans over me, crying, and Alba whispers, “Daddy…”

“Love you…”

“Henry—”

“Always…”

“Oh God oh God—”

“World enough…”

“No!”

“And time…”

[…] Henry’s skin is warm, his eyes are open, staring past me, he is heavy in my arms, so heavy, his pale skin torn apart, red everywhere, ripped flesh framing a secret world of blood.