FOUR Wednesday, July 21, 1999/September 8, 1998 (Henry is 36, Clare is 28)

FOUR



Wednesday, July 21, 1999/September 8, 1998 (Henry is 36, Clare is 28)

HENRY: We are lying in bed. Clare is curled on her side, her back to me, and I am
curled around her, facing her back. It’s about two in the morning, and we have just
turned out the light after a long and pointless discussion of our reproductive
misadventures. Now I lie pressed against Clare, my hand cupping her right breast,
and I try to discern if we are in this together or if I have been somehow left behind.

“Clare,” I say softly, into her neck.

“Mmm?”

“Let’s adopt.” I’ve been thinking about this for weeks, months. It Ferris like a
brilliant escape route: we will have a baby. It will be healthy. Clare will be healthy.
We will be happy. It is the obvious answer.

Clare says, “But that would be fake. It would be pretending.” She sits UP» faces
me, and I do the same.

It would be a real baby, and it would be ours. “What’s pretend about that? I’m sick
of pretending. We pretend all the time. I want to really do this.”

“We don’t pretend all the time. What are you talking about?”

“We pretend to be normal people, having normal lives! I pretend it’s perfectly
okay with me that you’re always disappearing God knows where. You pretend
everything is okay even when you almost get killed and Kendrick doesn’t know what
the hell to do about it! I pretend I don’t care when our babies die...” She is sobbing,
bent double, her face covered by her hair, a curtain of silk sheltering her face.

I’m tired of crying. I’m tired of watching Clare cry. I am helpless before her tears,
there is nothing I can do that will change anything.

“Clare...”I reach out to touch her, to comfort her, to comfort myself, and she
pushes me away. I get out of bed, and grab my clothes. I dress in the bathroom. I take
Clare’s keys from her purse, and I put on my shoes. Clare appears in the hall.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know.”

“Henry—”

I walk out the door, and slam it. It feels good to be outside. I can’t remember
where the car is. Then I see it across the street. I walk over to it and get in.

My first idea was to sleep in the car, but once I am sitting in it I decide to drive
somewhere. The beach: I will drive to the beach. I know that this is a terrible idea.
I’m tired, I’m upset, it would be madness to drive...but I just feel like driving. The
streets are empty. I start the car. It roars to life. It takes me a minute to get out of the
parking space. I see Clare’s face in the front window. Let her worry. For once I don’t
care.


I drive down Ainslie to Lincoln, cut over to Western, and drive north. It’s been a
while since I’ve been out alone in the middle of the night in the present, and I can’t
even remember the last time I drove a car when I didn’t absolutely have to. This is
nice. I speed past Rosehill Cemetery and down the long corridor of car dealerships. I
turn on the radio, punch through the presets to WLUW; they’re playing Coltrane so I
crank up the volume and wind the window down. The noise, the wind, the soothing
repetition of stoplights and streetlights make me calm, anesthetize me, and after a
while I kind of forget why I’m out here in the first place. At the Evanston border I cut
over to Ridge, and then take Dempster to the lake. I park near the lagoon, leave the
keys in the ignition, get out, and walk. It’s cool and very quiet. I walk out onto the
pier and stand at the end of it, looking down the shoreline at Chicago, flickering
under its orange and purple sky.

I’m so tired. I’m tired of thinking about death. I’m tired of sex as a means to an
end. And I’m frightened of where it all might end. I don’t know how much pressure I
can take from Clare.

What are these fetuses, these embryos, these clusters of cells we keep making and
losing? What is it about them that is important enough to risk Clare’s life, to tinge
every day with despair? Nature is telling us to give up, Nature is saying: Henry,
you’re a very fucked-up organism and we don’t want to make any more of you. And I
am ready to acquiesce.

I have never seen myself in the future with a child. Even though I have spent quite
a bit of time with my young self, even though I spend a lot of time with Clare as a
child, I don’t feel like my life is incomplete without one of my very own. No future
self has ever encouraged me to keep plugging away at this. I actually broke down and
asked, a few weeks ago; I ran into my self in the stacks at the Newberry, a self from
2004. Are we ever going to have a baby? I asked. My self only smiled and shrugged.
You just have to live it, sorry, he replied, smug and sympathetic. Oh, Jesus, just tell
me I cried, raising my voice as he raised his hand and disappeared. Asshole, I said
loudly, and Isabelle stuck her head in the security door and asked me why I was
yelling in the stacks and did I realize that they could hear me in the Reading Room?

I just don’t see any way out of this. Clare is obsessed. Amit Montague encourages
her, tells her stories about miracle babies, gives her vitamin drinks that remind me of
Rosemary s Baby. Maybe I could go on strike. Sure, that’s it; a sex strike. I laugh to
myself. The sound is swallowed by the waves gently lapping the pier. Fat chance. I’d
be groveling on my knees within days.

My head hurts. I try to ignore it; I know it’s because I’m tired. I wonder if I could
sleep on the beach without anyone bothering me. It’s a beautiful night. Just at this
moment I am startled by an intense beam of light that pans across the pier and into
my face and suddenly I’m in Kimy’s kitchen, lying on my back under her kitchen


table, surrounded by the legs of chairs. Kimy is seated in one of the chairs and is
peering at me under the table. My left hip is pressing against her shoes.

“Hi, buddy,” I say weakly. I feel like I’m about to pass out.

“You gonna give me a heart attack one of these days, buddy,” Kimy says. She
prods me with her foot. “Get out from under there and put on some clothes.”

I flop over and back out from under the table on my knees. Then I curl up on the
linoleum and rest for a moment, gathering my wits and trying not to gag.

“Henry.. .you okay?” She leans over me. “You want something to eat? You want
some soup? I got minestrone soup...Coffee?” I shake my head. “You want to lie on
the couch? You sick?”

“No, Kimy, it’s okay, I’ll be okay.” I manage to get to my knees and then to my
feet. I stagger into the bedroom and open Mr. Kim’s closet, which is almost empty
except for a few pairs of neatly pressed jeans in various sizes ranging from small boy
to grown-up, and several crisp white shirts, my little clothing stash, ready and waiting.
Dressed, I walk back to the kitchen, lean over Kimy, and give her a peck on the cheek.
“What’s the date?”

“September 8, 1998. Where you from?”

“Next July.” We sit down at the table. Kimy is doing the New York Times

crossword puzzle.

“What’s going on, next July?”

“It’s been a very cool summer, your garden’s looking good. All the tech stocks are
up. You should buy some Apple stock in January.”

She makes a note on a piece of brown paper bag. “Okay. And you? How are you
doing? How’s Clare? You guys got a baby yet?”

“Actually, I am hungry. How about some of that soup you were mentioning?”

Kimy lumbers out of her chair and opens the fridge. She gets out a saucepan and

starts to heat up some soup. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“No news, Kimy. No baby. Clare and I fight about it just about every waking
moment. Please don’t start on me.”

Kimy has her back to me. She stirs the soup vigorously. Her back radiates chagrin.
“I’m not ‘starting on you,’ I just ask, okay? I just wondering. Sheesh.”

We are silent for a few minutes. The noise of the spoon scraping the bottom of the
saucepan is getting to me. I think about Clare, looking out the window at me as I

drove away.

“Hey, Kimy.”

“Hey, Henry.”

“How come you and Mr. Kim never had kids?”


Long silence. Then: “We did have child.”

“You did?”

She pours the steaming soup into one of the Mickey Mouse bowls I loved when I
was a kid. She sits down and runs her hands over her hair, smoothes the white
straggling hairs into the little bun at the back. Kimy looks at me. “Eat your soup. I be
right back.” She gets up and walks out of the kitchen, and I hear her shuffling down
the plastic runner that covers the carpeting in the hall. I eat the soup. It’s almost gone
when she comes back.

“Here. This is Min. She is my baby.” The photograph is black and white, blurry. In
it a young girl, perhaps five or six years old, stands in front of Mrs. Kim’s building,
this building, the building I grew up in. She is wearing a Catholic school uniform,
smiling, and holding an umbrella. “It’s her first day school. She is so happy, so
scared.”

I study the photo. I am afraid to ask. I look up. Kimy is staring out the window,
over the river. “What happened?”

“Oh. She died. Before you were born. She had leukemia, she die.”

I suddenly remember. “Did she used to sit out in a rocker in the backyard? In a red
dress?”

Mrs. Kim stares at me, startled. “You see her?”

“Yes, I think so. A long time ago. When I was about seven. I was standing on the
steps to the river, buck naked, and she told me I better not come into her yard, and I
told her it was my yard and she didn’t believe me. I couldn’t figure it out.” I laugh.
“She told me her mom was gonna spank me if I didn’t go away.”

Kimy laughs shakily. “Well, she right, huh?”

“Yeah, she was just off by a few years.”

Kimy smiles. “Yeah, Min, she a little firecracker. Her dad call her Miss Big Mouth.
He loved her very much.” Kimy turns her head, surreptitiously touches her hand to
her eyes. I remember Mr. Kim as a taciturn man who spent most of his time sitting in
his armchair watching sports on TV.

“What year was Min born?”

“1949. She died 1956. Funny, she would be middle-aged lady with kids now,
herself. She would be forty-nine years old. Kids would be maybe in college, maybe a

little older.” Kimy looks at me, and I look back at her.

“We’re trying, Kimy. We’re trying everything we can think of.”

“I didn’t say nothing.”

“Uh-huh.”

Kimy bats her eyelashes at me like she’s Louise Brooks or somebody. “Hey,

buddy, I am stuck on this crossword. Nine down, starts with K—”


CLARE: I watch the police divers swim out into Lake Michigan. It’s an overcast
morning, already very hot. I am standing on the Dempster Street pier. There are five
fire engines, three ambulances, and seven squad cars standing on Sheridan Road with
their lights blinking and flashing. There are seventeen firemen and six paramedics.
There are fourteen policemen and one policewoman, a short fat white woman whose
head seems squashed by her cap, who keeps saying stupid platitudes intended to
comfort me until I want to push her off the pier. I’m holding Henry’s clothes. It’s five
o’clock in the morning. There are twenty-one reporters, some of whom are TV
reporters with trucks and microphones and video people, and some of whom are print
reporters with photographers. There is an elderly couple hanging around the edges of
the action, discreet but curious. I try not to think about the policeman’s description of
Henry jumping off the end of the pier, caught in the beam of the police car searchlight.
I try not to think.

Two new policemen come walking down the pier. They confer with some of the
police who are already here, and then one of them, the older one, detaches and walks
to me. He has a handlebar mustache, the old-fashioned kind that ends in little points.
He introduces himself as Captain Michels, and asks me if I can think of any reason
my husband might have wanted to take his own life.

“Well, I really don’t think he did, Captain. I mean, he’s a very good swimmer,
he’s probably just swimming to, urn, Wilmette or someplace”—

I wave my hand vaguely to the north—“and he’ll be back any time now....”

The Captain looks dubious. “Does he make a habit of swimming in toe middle of
the night?” He’s an insomniac. “Had you been arguing? Was he upset?”

“No,” I lie. “Of course not.” I look out over the water. I am sure I don’t sound very
convincing. “I was sleeping and he must have decided to go swimming and he didn’t
want to wake me up.”

“Did he leave a note?”

“No.” As I rack my brains for a more realistic explanation I hear a splash near the
shore. Hallelujah. Not a moment too soon. “There he is!” Henry starts to stand up in

the water, hears me yell, and ducks down again and swims to the pier.

“Clare. What’s going on?”

I kneel on the pier. Henry looks tired, and cold. I speak quietly. “They thought you

drowned. One of them saw you throw yourself off the pier. They’ve been searching
for your body for two hours.”

Henry looks worried, but also amused. Anything to annoy the police. All the
police have clustered around me and they are peering down at Henry silently.

“Are you Henry DeTamble?” asks the captain.


“Yes. Would you mind if I got out of the water?” We all follow Henry to the shore,
Henry swimming and the rest of us walking along beside him on the pier. He climbs
out of the water and stands dripping on the beach like a wet rat. I hand him his shirt,
which he uses to dry himself off. He puts on the rest of his clothes, and stands calmly,
waiting for the police to figure out what they want to do with him. I want to kiss him
and then kill him. Or vice versa. Henry puts his arm around me. He is clammy and
damp. I lean close to him, for his coolness, and he leans into me, for warmth. The
police ask him questions. He answers them very politely. These are the Evanston
police, with a few Morton Grove and Skokie police who have come by just for the
heck of it. If they were Chicago police they would know Henry, and they would arrest
him.

“Why didn’t you respond when the officer told you to get out of the water?”

“I was wearing earplugs, Captain.”

“Earplugs?”

“To keep the water out of my ears.” Henry makes a show of digging in his pockets.
“I don’t know where they got to. I always wear earplugs when I swim.”

“Why were you swimming at three o’clock in the morning?”

“I couldn’t sleep ”

And so on. Henry lies seamlessly, marshaling the facts to support his thesis. In the
end, grudgingly, the police issue him a citation, for swimming when the beach is
officially closed. It’s a $500 fine. When the police let us go, the reporters and
photographers and TV cameras converge on us as we walk to the car. No comment.
Just out for a swim. Please, we would really rather not have our picture taken. Click.
We finally make it to the car, which is sitting all by itself with the keys in it on
Sheridan Road. I start the ignition and roll down my window. The police and the
reporters and the elderly couple are all standing on the grass, watching us. We are not
looking at each other.

“Clare.”

“Henry.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.” He looks over at me, touches my hand on the steering wheel. We drive

home in silence.

Friday, January 14, 2000 (Clare is 28, Henry is 36)

CLARE: Kendrick leads us through a maze of carpeted, drywalled, acoustical-tiled
hallways and into a conference room. There are no windows, only blue carpet and a


long, polished black table surrounded by padded swivel chairs. There’s a whiteboard
and a few Magic Markers, a clock over the door, and a coffee urn with cups, cream,
and sugar ready beside it. Kendrick and I sit at the table, but Henry paces around the
room. Kendrick takes off his glasses and massages the sides of his small nose with his
fingers. The door opens and a young Hispanic man in surgical scrubs wheels a cart
into the room. On the cart is a cage covered with a cloth. “Where d’ya want it?” the
young man asks, and Kendrick says, “Just leave the whole cart, if you don’t mind,”
and the man shrugs and leaves. Kendrick walks to the door and turns a knob and the
lights dim to twilight. I can barely see Henry standing next to the cage. Kendrick
walks to him and silently removes the cloth.

The smell of cedar wafts from the cage. I stand and stare into it. I don’t see
anything but the core of a roll of toilet paper, some food bowls, a water bottle, an
exercise wheel, fluffy cedar chips. Kendrick opens the top of the cage and reaches in,
scoops out something small and white. Henry and I crowd around, staring at the tiny
mouse that sits blinking on Kendrick’s palm. Kendrick takes a tiny penlight out of his
pocket, turns it on and rapidly flashes it over the mouse. The mouse tenses, and then
it is gone.

“Wow,” I say. Kendrick places the cloth back over the cage and turns the lights up.

“It’s being published in next week’s issue of Nature,” he says, smiling. “It’s the
lead article.”

“Congratulations,” Henry says. He glances at the clock. “How long are they
usually gone? And where do they go?”

Kendrick gestures at the urn and we both nod. “They tend to be gone about ten
minutes or so,” he says, pouring three cups of coffee as he speaks and handing us
each one. “They go to the Animal Lab in the basement, where they were born. They

don’t seem to be able to go more than a few minutes either way.”

Henry nods. “They’ll go longer as they get older.”

“Yes, that’s been true so far.”

“How did you do it?” I ask Kendrick. I still can’t quite believe that he has done it.

Kendrick blows on his coffee and takes a sip, makes a face. The coffee is bitter,
and I add sugar to mine. “Well,” he says, “it helped a lot that Celera has been
sequencing the whole mouse genome. It told us where to look for the four genes we
were targeting. But we could have done it without that.

“We started by cloning your genes and then used enzymes to snip out the damaged
portions of DNA. Then we took those pieces and snuck them into mouse embryos at
the four-cell-division stage. That was the easy part.”

Henry raises his eyebrows. “Sure, of course. Clare and I do that all the time in our
kitchen. So what was the hard part?” He sits on the table and sets his coffee beside
him. In the cage I can hear the squeaking of the exercise wheel.


Kendrick glances at me. “The hard part was getting the dams, the mother mice, to
carry the altered mice to term. They kept dying, hemorrhaging to death.”

Henry looks very alarmed. “The mothers died?”

Kendricks nods. “The mothers died, and the babies died. We couldn’t figure it out,
so we started watching them around the clock, and then we saw what was going on.
The embryos were traveling out of their dam’s womb, and then in again, and the
mothers bled to death internally. Or they would just abort the fetus at the ten-day
mark. It was very frustrating.”

Henry and I exchange looks and then look away. “We can relate to that,” I tell
Kendrick.

“Ye-ess,” he says. “But we solved the problem.”

“How?” Henry asks.

“We decided that it might be an immune reaction. Something about the fetal mice
was so foreign that the dams’ immune systems were trying to fight them as though
they were a virus or something. So we suppressed the dams’ immune systems, and
then it all worked like magic.”

My heart is beating in my ears. Like magic.

Kendrick suddenly stoops and grabs for something on the floor. “Gotcha,” he says,
displaying the mouse in his cupped hands.

“Bravo!” Henry says. “What’s next?”

“Gene therapy,” Kendrick tells him. “Drugs.” He shrugs. “Even though we can
make it happen, we still don’t know why it happens. Or how it happens. So we try to
understand that.” He offers Henry the mouse. Henry cups his hands and Kendrick tips
the mouse into them. Henry inspects it curiously.

“It has a tattoo,” he says.

“It’s the only way we can keep track of them,” Kendrick tells him. “They drive the
Animal Lab technicians nuts, they’re always escaping.”

Henry laughs. “That’s our Darwinian advantage,” he says. “We escape.” He
strokes the mouse, and it shits on his palm.

“Zero tolerance for stress,” says Kendrick, and puts the mouse back in its cage,
where it flees into the toilet-paper core.

As soon as we get home I am on the phone to Dr. Montague, babbling about
immuno-suppressants and internal bleeding. She listens carefully and then tells me to
come in next week, and in the meantime she will do some research. I put down the
phone and Henry regards me nervously over the Times business section. “It’s worth a

try,” I tell him.

“Lots of dead mouse moms before they figured it out,” Henry says.

“But it worked! Kendrick made it work!”


Henry just says, “Yeah ” and goes back to reading. I open my mouth and then
change my mind and walk out to the studio, too excited to argue. It worked like magic.
Like magic.