LESSONS IN SURVIVAL Thursday, June 7, 1973 (Henry is 27, and 9)

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 wears thick glasses and peers at Henry through them as he
speaks and Henry reaches around under the man’s jacket and steals his wallet. Since
Henry is wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt I walk behind him and he passes the wallet
to me. The tall thin brown-suited man points at the stairs, explaining to Henry how to
turn in the wallet. Henry toddles off in the direction the man has indicated, and I
follow, overtake Henry and lead him right through the museum to the entrance and
out, past the guards, onto Michigan Avenue and south, until we end up, grinning like
fiends, at the Artists Cafe, where we treat ourselves to milkshakes and french fries
with some of our ill-gotten gains. Afterwards we throw all the wallets in a mailbox,

sans cash, and I get us a room at the Palmer House.

“So?” I ask, sitting on the side of the bathtub watching Henry brush his teeth.

“ ot?” returns Henry with a mouth full of toothpaste.

“What do you think?”

He spits. “About what?”

“Pick-pocketing.”

He looks at me in the mirror. “It’s okay.” He turns and looks directly at me. “I did

it!” He grins, largely.

“You were brilliant!”

“Yeah!” The grin fades. “Henry, I don’t like to time travel by myself. It’s better

with you. Can’t you always come with me?”

He is standing with his back to me, and we look at each other in the mirror. Poor
small self: at this age my back is thin and my shoulder blades stick out like incipient


wings. He turns, waiting for an answer, and I know what I have to tell him—me. I
reach out and gently turn him and bring him to stand by me, so we are side by side,
heads level, facing the mirror.

“Look.” We study our reflections, twinned in the ornate gilt Palmer House
bathroom splendor. Our hair is the same brown-black, our eyes slant dark and fatigue-
ringed identically, we sport exact replicas of each other’s ears. I’m taller and more
muscular and shave. He’s slender and ungainly and is all knees and elbows. I reach
up and pull my hair back from my face, show him the scar from the accident.
Unconsciously, he mimics my gesture, touches the same scar on his own forehead.

“It’s just like mine,” says my self, amazed. “How did you get it?”

“The same as you. It is the same. We are the same.”

A translucent moment. I didn’t understand, and then I did, just like that. I watch it
happen. I want to be both of us at once, feel again the feeling of losing the edges of
my self, of seeing the admixture of future and present for the first time. But I’m too
accustomed, too comfortable with it, and so I am left on the outside, remembering the
wonder of being nine and suddenly seeing, knowing, that my friend, guide, brother
was me. Me, only me. The loneliness of it.

“You’re me.”
“When you are older.”
“But...what about the others?”
“Other time travelers?”
He nods.
“I don’t think there are any. I mean, I’ve never met any others.”
A tear gathers at the edge of his left eye. When I was little, I imagined a whole


society of time travelers, of which Henry, my teacher, was an emissary, sent to train
me for eventual inclusion in this vast camaraderie. I still feel like a castaway, the last
member of a once numerous species. It was as though Robinson Crusoe discovered
the telltale footprint on the beach and then realized that it was his own. My self, small
as a leaf, thin as water, begins to cry. I hold him, hold me, for a long time.

Later, we order hot chocolate from room service, and watch Johnny Carson. Henry
falls asleep with the light on. As the show ends I look over at him and he’s gone,
vanished back to my old room in my dad’s apartment, standing sleep-addled beside
my old bed, falling into it, gratefully. I turn off the TV and the bedside lamp. 1973
street noises drift in the open window. I want to go home. I lie on the hard hotel bed,
desolate, alone. I still don’t understand.

Sunday, December 10, 1978 (Henry is 15, and 15)


HENRY: I’m in my bedroom with my self. He’s here from next March. We are doing
what we often do when we have a little privacy, when it’s cold out, when both of us
are past puberty and haven’t quite gotten around to actual girls yet. I think most
people would do this, if they had the sort of opportunities I have. I mean, I’m not gay
or anything.

It’s late Sunday morning. I can hear the bells ringing at St. Joe’s. Dad came home
late last night; I think he must have stopped at the Exchequer after the concert; he was
so drunk he fell down on the stairs and I had to haul him into the apartment and put
him to bed. He coughs and I hear him messing around in the kitchen.

My other self seems distracted; he keeps looking at the door. “What?” I ask him.
“Nothing,” he says. I get up and check the lock. “ No,” he says. He seems to be
making a huge effort to speak. “Come on,” I say.

I hear Dad’s heavy step right outside my door. “Henry?” he says, and the knob of
the door slowly turns and I abruptly realize that I have inadvertently unlocked the
door and Henry leaps for it but it’s too late: Dad sticks his head in and there we are,
in flagrante delicto. “Oh,” he says. His eyes are wide and he looks completely
disgusted. “Jesus, Henry.” He shuts the door and I hear him walking back to his room.
I throw my self a reproachful glare as I pull on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I walk
down the hall to Dad’s bedroom. His door is shut. I knock. No answer. I wait. “Dad?”
Silence. I open the door, stand in the doorway. “Dad?” He’s sitting with his back to
me, on his bed. He continues to sit, and I stand there for a while, but I can’t bring
myself to walk into the room. Finally I shut the door, walk back to my own room.

“That was completely and totally your fault,” I tell my self severely. He is wearing
jeans, sitting on the chair with his head in his hands. “You knew, you knew that was
going to happen and you didn’t say a word. Where is your sense of self preservation?
What the hell is wrong with you? What use is it knowing the future if you can’t at
least protect us from humiliating little scenes—”

“Shut up ” Henry croaks. “Just shut up.”

“I will not shut up,” I say, my voice rising. “I mean, all you had to do was say—”

“Listen.” He looks up at me with resignation. “It was like.. .it was like that day at
the ice-skating rink.”

“Oh. Shit.” A couple years ago, I saw a little girl get hit in the head with a hockey
puck at Indian Head Park. It was horrible. I found out later that she died in the
hospital. And then I started to time travel back to that day, over and over, and I
wanted to warn her mother, and I couldn’t. It was like being in the audience at a
movie. It was like being a ghost. I would scream, No, take her home, don’t let her
near the ice, take her away, she’s going to get hurt, she’s going to die, and I would
realize that the words were only in my head, and everything would go on as before.


Henry says, “You talk about changing the future, but for me this is the past, and as
far as I can tell there’s nothing I can do about it. I mean, I tried, and it was the trying
that made it happen. If I hadn’t said something, you wouldn’t have gotten up....”

“Then why did you say anything?”

“Because I did. You will, just wait.” He shrugs. “It’s like with Mom. The accident.
Immer wieder.” Always again, always the same.

“Free will?”

He gets up, walks to the window, stands looking out over the Tatingers’ backyard.
“I was just talking about that with a self from 1992. He said something interesting: he
said that he thinks there is only free will when you are in time, in the present. He says
in the past we can only do what we did, and we can only be there if we were there.”

“But whenever I am, that’s my present. Shouldn’t I be able to decide—”

“No. Apparently not.”

“What did he say about the future?”

“Well, think. You go to the future, you do something, you come back to the
present. Then the thing that you did is part of your past. So that’s probably inevitable,
too.”

I feel a weird combination of freedom and despair. I’m sweating; he opens the
window and cold air floods into the room. “But then I’m not responsible for anything
I do while I’m not in the present.”

He smiles. “Thank God.”

“And everything has already happened.”

“Sure looks that way.” He runs his hand over his face, and I see that he could use a

shave. “But he said that you have to behave as though you have free will, as though
you are responsible for what you do.”

“Why? What does it matter?”

“Apparently, if you don’t, things are bad. Depressing.”

“Did he know that personally?”

“Yes.”

“So what happens next?”

“Dad ignores you for three weeks. And this”—he waves his hand at the bed—
“we’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

I sigh. “Right, no problem. Anything else?”

“Vivian Teska.”

Vivian is this girl in Geometry whom I lust after. I’ve never said a word to her.

“After class tomorrow, go up to her and ask her out.”

“I don’t even know her.”


“Trust me.” He’s smirking at me in a way that makes me wonder why on earth I
would ever trust him but I want to believe. “Okay.”

“I should get going. Money, please.” I dole out twenty dollars. “More.” I hand him
another twenty.

“That’s all I’ve got.”

“Okay.” He’s dressing, pulling clothes from the stash of things I don’t mind never
seeing again. “How about a coat?” I hand him a Peruvian skiing sweater that I’ve
always hated. He makes a face and puts it on. We walk to the back door of the
apartment. The church bells are tolling noon. “Bye,” says my self.

“Good luck,” I say, oddly moved by the sight of me embarking into the unknown,
into a cold Chicago Sunday morning he doesn’t belong in. He thumps down the
wooden stairs, and I turn to the silent apartment.

Wednesday, November 17/Tuesday, September 28, 1982 (Henry is 19)

HENRY: I’m in the back of a police car in Zion, Illinois. I am wearing handcuffs and
not much else. The interior of this particular police car smells like cigarettes, leather,
sweat, and another odor I can’t identify that seems endemic to police cars. The odor
of freak-outedness, perhaps. My left eye is swelling shut and the front of my body is
covered with bruises and cuts and dirt from being tackled by the larger of the two
policemen in an empty lot full of broken glass. The policemen are standing outside
the car talking to the neighbors, at least one of whom evidently saw me trying to
break into the yellow and white Victorian house we are parked in front of. I don’t
know where I am in time. I’ve been here for about an hour, and I have fucked up
completely. I’m very hungry. I’m very tired. I’m supposed to be in Dr. Quarrie’s
Shakespeare seminar, but I’m sure I’ve managed to miss it. Too bad. We’re doing
Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The upside of this police car is: it’s warm and I’m not in Chicago. Chicago’s
Finest hate me because I keep disappearing while I’m in custody, and they can’t
figure it out. Also I refuse to talk to them, so they still don’t know who I am, or where
I live. The day they find out, I’m toast because there are several outstanding warrants
for my arrest: breaking and entering, shoplifting, resisting arrest, breaking arrest,
trespassing, indecent exposure, robbery, und so weiter. From this one might deduce
that I am a very inept criminal, but really the main problem is that it’s so hard to be
inconspicuous when you’re naked. Stealth and speed are my main assets and so, when
I try to burgle houses in broad daylight stark naked, sometimes it doesn’t work out.
I’ve been arrested seven times, and so far I’ve always vanished before they can
fingerprint me or take a photo.


The neighbors keep peering in the windows of the police car at me. I don’t care. I
don’t care. This is taking a long time. Fuck, I hate this. I lean back and close my eyes.

A car door opens. Cold air—my eyes fly open—for an instant I see the metal grid
that separates the front of the car from the back, the cracked vinyl seats, my hands in
the cuffs, my gooseflesh legs, the flat sky through the windshield, the black visored
hat on the dashboard, the clipboard in the officer’s hand, his red face, tufted graying
eyebrows and jowls like drapes—everything shimmers, iridescent, butter fly-wing
colors and the policeman says, “Hey, he’s having some kinda fit—” and my teeth are
chattering hard and before my eyes the police car vanishes and I am lying on my back
in my own backyard. Yes. Yes! I fill my lungs with the sweet September night air. I
sit up and rub my wrists, still marked where the handcuffs were.

I laugh and laugh. I have escaped again! Houdini, Prospero, behold me! for I am a
magician, too.

Nausea overcomes me, and I heave bile onto Kimy’s mums.

Saturday, May 14, 1983 (Clare is 11 almost 12)

CLARE: It’s Mary Christina Heppworth’s birthday and all the fifth-grade girls from St.
Basil’s are sleeping over at her house. We have pizza and Cokes and fruit salad for
dinner, and Mrs. Heppworth made a big cake shaped like a unicorn’s head with
Happy Birthday Mary Christina! in red icing and we sing and Mary Christina blows
out all twelve candles in one blow. I think I know what she wished for; I think she
wished not to get any taller. That’s what I would wish if I were her, anyway. Mary
Christina is the tallest person in our class. She’s 5’9“. Her mom is a little shorter than
her, but her dad is really, really tall. Helen asked Mary Christina once and she said
he’s 67”. She’s the only girl in her family. and her brothers are all older and shave
and they’re really tall, too. They make a point of ignoring us and eating a lot of cake
and Patty and Ruth especially giggle a lot whenever they come where we are. It’s so
embarrassing. Mary Christina opens her presents. I got her a green sweater just like
my blue one that she liked with the crocheted collar from Laura Ashley. After dinner
we watch The Parent Trap on video and the Heppworth family kind of hangs around
watching us until we all take turns putting on our pajamas in the second floor
bathroom and we crowd into Mary Christina’s room that is decorated totally in pink,
even the wall-to-wall carpet. You get the feeling Mary Christina’s parents were really
glad to finally have a girl after all those brothers. We have all brought our sleeping
bags, but we pile them against one wall and sit on Mary Christina’s bed and on the
floor. Nancy has a bottle of Peppermint Schnapps and we all drink some. It tastes
awful, and it feels like Vicks VapoRub in my chest. We play Truth or Dare. Ruth
dares Wendy to run down the hall without her top on. Wendy asks Francie what size


bra Lexi, Francie’s seventeen-year-old sister, wears. (Answer: 38D.) Francie asks
Gayle what she was doing with Michael Planner at the Dairy Queen last Saturday.
(Answer: eating ice cream. Well, duh.) After a while we all get bored with Truth or
Dare, mainly because it’s hard to think of good dares that any of us will actually do,
and because we all pretty much know whatever there is to know about each other,
because we’ve been going to school together since kindergarten. Mary Christina says,
“Let’s do Ouija board,” and we all agree, because it’s her party and cause Ouija board
is cool. She gets it out of her closet. The box is all mashed, and the little plastic thing
that shows the letters is missing its plastic window. Henry told me once that he went
to a séance and the medium had her appendix burst in the middle of it and they had to
call an ambulance. The board is only really big enough for two people to do it at once,
so Mary Christina and Helen go first. The rule is you have to ask what you want to
know out loud or it won’t work. They each put their fingers on the plastic thing.
Helen looks at Mary Christina, who hesitates and Nancy says, “Ask about Bobby,” so
Mary Christina asks, “Does Bobby Duxler like me?” Everybody giggles.

The answer is no, but the Ouija says yes, with a little pushing by Helen. Mary
Christina smiles so hugely I can see her braces, top and bottom. Helen asks if any
boys like her. The Ouija circles around for a while, and then stops on D, A, V. “David
Hanley?” says Patty, and everybody laughs. Dave is the only black kid in our class.
He’s real shy and small and he’s good at math. “Maybe he’ll help you with long
division” says Laura, who is also very shy. Helen laughs. She’s terrible at math.
“Here, Clare. You and Ruth try.” We take Helen and Mary Christina’s places. Ruth
looks at me and I shrug. “I don’t know what to ask,” I say. Everybody snickers; how
many possible questions are there? But there are so many things I want to know. Is
Mama going to be okay? Why was Daddy yelling at Etta this morning? Is Henry a
real person? Where did Mark hide my French homework? Ruth says, “What boys like
Clare?” I give her a mean look, but she just smiles. “Don’t you want to know?”

“No,” I say, but I put my fingers on the white plastic anyway. Ruth puts her
fingers on too and nothing moves. We are both touching the thing very lightly, we are
trying to do it right and not push. Then it starts to move, slow. It goes in circles, and
then stops on H. Then it speeds up. E, N, R, Y. “Henry,” says Mary Christina, “who’s
Henry?” Helen says, “I don’t know, but you’re blushing, Clare. Who is Henry?” I just
shake my head, like it’s a mystery to me, too. “You ask, Ruth.” She asks (big surprise)
who likes her; the Ouija spells out R, I, C, K. I can feel her pushing. Rick is Mr.
Malone, our Science teacher, who has a crush on Miss Engle, the English teacher.
Everybody except Patty laughs; Patty has a crush on Mr. Malone, too. Ruth and I get
up and Laura and Nancy sit down. Nancy has her back to me, so I can’t see her face
when she asks, “Who is Henry?” Everybody looks at me and gets real quiet. I watch
the board. Nothing. Just as I’m thinking I’m safe, the plastic thing starts to move. H,
it says. I think maybe it will just spell Henry again; after all, Nancy and Laura don’t


know anything about Henry. I don’t even know that much about Henry. Then it goes
on: U, S, B, A, N, D. They all look at me. “Well, I’m not married; I’m only eleven.”

“But who’s Henry?” wonders Laura. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s somebody I
haven’t met yet.” She nods. Everyone is weirded out. I’m very weirded out. Husband?
Husband?

Thursday, April 12, 1984 (Henry is 36, Clare is 12)

HENRY: Clare and I are playing chess in the fire circle in the woods. It’s a beautiful
spring day, and the woods are alive with birds courting and birds nesting. We are
keeping ourselves out of the way of Clare’s family, who are out and about this
afternoon. Clare has been stuck on her move for a while; I took her Queen Three
moves ago and now she is doomed but determined to go down fighting.

She looks up, “Henry, who’s your favorite Beatle?”

“John. Of course.”

“Why ‘of course’?”

“Well, Ringo is okay but kind of a sad sack, you know? And George is a little too

New Age for my taste.”

“What’s ‘New Age’?”

“Oddball religions. Sappy boring music. Pathetic attempts to convince oneself of

the superiority of anything connected with Indians. Non-Western medicine.”

“But you don’t like regular medicine ”

“That’s because doctors are always trying to tell me I’m crazy. If I had a broken

arm I would be a big fan of Western medicine.”

“What about Paul?”

“Paul is for girls.”

Clare smiles, shyly. “I like Paul best.”

“Well, you’re a girl.”

“Why is Paul for girls?”

Tread carefully, I tell myself. “Uh, gee. Paul is, like, the Nice Beatle, you know?”

“Is that bad?”

“No, not at all. But guys are more interested in being cool, and John is the Cool

Beatle.”
“Oh. But he’s dead.”


I laugh. “You can still be cool when you’re dead. In fact, it’s much easier, because
you aren’t getting old and fat and losing your hair.”

Clare hums the beginning of “When I’m 64.” She moves her rook forward five
spaces. I can checkmate her now, and I point this out to her and she hastily takes back
the move.

“So why do you like Paul?” I ask her. I look up in time to see her blushing
fervently.

“He’s so... beautiful,” Clare says. There’s something about the way she says it that
makes me feel strange. I study the board, and it occurs to me that Clare could
checkmate me if she took my bishop with her knight. I wonder if I should tell her this.
If she was a little younger, I would. Twelve is old enough to fend for yourself. Clare
is staring dreamily at the board. It dawns on me that I am jealous. Jesus. I can’t
believe I’m feeling jealous of a multimillionaire rock star geezer old enough to be
Clare’s dad.

“Hmpf,” I say.

Clare looks up, smiling mischievously. “Who do you like?”

You, I think but don’t say. “You mean when I was your age?”

“Um, yeah. When were you my age?”

I weigh the value and potential of this nugget before I dole it out. “I was your age

in 1975. I’m eight years older than you.”

“So you’re twenty?”

“Well, no, I’m thirty-six.” Old enough to be your dad.

Clare furrows her brow. Math is not her strongest subject. “But if you were twelve

in 1975....”
“Oh, sorry. You’re right. I mean, I myself am thirty-six, but somewhere out

there”—I wave my hand toward the south—“I’m twenty. In real time.”

Clare strives to digest this. “So there are two of you?”

“Not exactly. There’s always only one me, but when I’m time traveling sometimes

I go somewhere I already am, and yeah, then you could say there are two. Or more.”

“How come I never see more than one?”

“You will. When you and I meet in my present that will happen fairly frequently.”

More often than I’d like, Clare.

“So who did you like in 1975?”

“Nobody, really. At twelve I had other stuff to think about. But when I was
thirteen I had this huge crush on Patty Hearst.”

Clare looks annoyed. “A girl you knew at school?”


I laugh. “No. She was a rich Californian college girl who got kidnapped by these
awful left-wing political terrorists, and they made her rob banks. She was on the news
every night for months.”

“What happened to her? Why did you like her?”

“They eventually let her go, and she got married and had kids and now she’s a rich
lady in California. Why did I like her? Ah, I don’t know. It’s irrational, you know? I
guess I kind of knew how she felt, being taken away and forced to do stuff she didn’t

want to do, and then it seemed like she was kind of enjoying it.”

“Do you do things you don’t want to do?”

“Yeah. All the time.” My leg has fallen asleep and I stand up and shake it until it

tingles. “I don’t always end up safe and sound with you, Clare. A lot of times I go
places where I have to get clothes and food by stealing.”

“Oh.” Her face clouds, and then she sees her move, and makes it, and looks up at
me triumphantly. “Checkmate!”

“Hey! Bravo!” I salaam her. “You are the chess queen dujour.”

“Yes, I am,” Clare says, pink with pride. She starts to set the pieces back in their
starting positions. “Again?”

I pretend to consult my nonexistent watch. “Sure.” I sit down again. “You
hungry?” We’ve been out here for hours and supplies have run low; all we have left is
the dregs of a bag of Doritos.

“Mmhmm.” Clare holds the pawns behind her back; I tap her right elbow and she
shows me the white pawn. I make my standard opening move, Queen’s Pawn to Q4.
She makes her standard response to my standard opening move, Queen’s Pawn to Q4.
We play out the next ten moves fairly rapidly, with only moderate bloodshed, and
then Clare sits for a while, pondering the board. She is always experimenting, always
attempting the coup d’eclat. “Who do you like now?” she asks without looking up.

“You mean at twenty? Or at thirty-six?”

“Both.”

I try to remember being twenty. It’s just a blur of women, breasts, legs, skin, hair.
All their stories have jumbled together, and their faces no longer attach themselves to
names. I was busy but miserable at twenty. “Twenty was nothing special. Nobody
springs to mind.”

“And thirty-six?”

I scrutinize Clare. Is twelve too young? I’m sure twelve is really too young. Better
to fantasize about beautiful, unattainable, safe Paul McCartney than to have to

contend with Henry the Time Traveling Geezer. Why is she asking this anyway?

“Henry?”

“Yeah?”


“Are you married?”

“Yes,” I admit reluctantly.

“To who?”

“A very beautiful, patient, talented, smart woman.”

Her faces falls. “Oh.” She picks up one of my white bishops, which she captured
two moves ago, and spins it on the ground like a top. “Well, that’s nice.” She seems
kind of put out by this news.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Clare moves her queen from Q2 to KN5. “Check.”

I move my knight to protect my king.

“Am I married?” Clare inquires.

I meet her eyes. “You’re pushing your luck today.”

“Why not? You never tell me anything anyway. Come on, Henry, tell me if I’m
gonna be an old maid.”

“You’re a nun,” I tease her.

Clare shudders. “Boy, I hope not.” She takes one of my pawns with her rook.
“How did you meet your wife?”

“Sorry. Top secret information.” I take her rook with my queen.

Clare makes a face. “Ouch. Were you time traveling? When you met her?”

“ I was minding my own business.”

Clare sighs. She takes another pawn with her other rook. I’m starting to run low on
pawns. I move Queen’s Bishop to KB4.

“It’s not fair that you know everything about me but you never tell me anything
about you.”

“True. It’s not fair.” I try to look regretful, and obliging.

“I mean, Ruth and Helen and Megan and Laura tell me everything and I tell them
everything.”

“Everything?”

“Yeah. Well, I don’t tell them about you.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

Clare looks a bit defensive. “You’re a secret. They wouldn’t believe me, anyway.”
She traps my bishop with her knight, flashes me a sly smile. I contemplate the board,
trying to find a way to take her knight or move my bishop. Things are looking grim
for White. “Henry, are you really a person?”

I am a bit taken aback. “Yes. What else would I be?”

“I don’t know. A spirit?”


“I’m really a person, Clare.”

“Prove it.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean, I don’t think you could prove that you’re a person, Clare.”

“Sure I can.”

“How?”

“I’m just like a person.”

“Well, I’m just like a person, too.” It’s funny that Clare is bringing this up; back in
1999 Dr. Kendrick and I are engaged in philosophical trench warfare over this very
issue. Kendrick is convinced that I am a harbinger of a new species of human, as
different from everyday folks as Cro-Magnon Man was from his Neanderthal
neighbors. I contend that I’m just a piece of messed-up code, and our inability to have
kids proves that I’m not going to be the Missing Link. We’ve taken to quoting
Kierkegaard and Heidegger at each other and glowering. Meanwhile, Clare regards
me doubtfully.

“ People don’t appear and disappear the way you do. You’re like the Cheshire
Cat.”

“Are you implying that I’m a fictional character?” I spot my move, finally: King’s
Rook to QR3. Now she can take my bishop but she’ll lose her queen in the process. It
takes Clare a moment to realize this and when she does she sticks out her tongue at
me. Her tongue is a worrisome shade of orange from all the Doritos she’s eaten.

“It makes me kind of wonder about fairy tales. I mean, if you’re real, then why
shouldn’t fairy tales be real, too?” Clare stands up, still pondering the board, and does
a little dance, hopping around like her pants are on fire. “I think the ground is getting
harder. My butt’s asleep.”

“Maybe they are real. Or some little thing in them is real and then people just
added to it, you know?”

“Like maybe Snow White was in a coma?”

“And Sleeping Beauty, too.”

“And Jack the beanstalk guy was just a real terrific gardener.”

“And Noah was a weird old man with a houseboat and a lot of cats.”

Clare stares at me. “Noah is in the Bible. He’s not a fairy tale.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.” I’m getting very hungry. Any minute now Nell will ring the
dinner bell and Clare will have to go in. She sits back down on her side of the board. I
can tell she’s lost interest in the game when she starts building a little pyramid out of
all the conquered pieces.


“You still haven’t proved you’re real” Clare says.

“Neither have you.”

“Do you ever wonder if I’m real?” she asks me, surprised.

“Maybe I’m dreaming you. Maybe you’re dreaming me; maybe we only exist in
each other’s dreams and every morning when we wake up we forget all about each
other.”

Clare frowns, and makes a motion with her hand as though to bat away this odd
idea. “Pinch me,” she requests. I lean over and pinch her lightly on the arm.
“Harder!” I do it again, hard enough to leave a white and red mark that lingers for
some seconds and then vanishes. “Don’t you think I would wake up, if I was asleep?
Anyway, I don’t feel asleep.”

“Well, I don’t feel like a spirit. Or a fictional character.”

“How do you know? I mean, if I was making you up, and I didn’t want you to
know you were made up, I just wouldn’t tell you, right?”

I wiggle my eyebrows at her. “Maybe God just made us up and He’s not telling
us.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” Clare exclaims. “Besides, you don’t even

believe in God. Do you?”

I shrug, and change the subject. “I’m more real than Paul McCartney.”

Clare looks worried. She starts to put all the pieces back in their box, carefully

dividing white and black. “Lots of people know about Paul McCartney—I’m the only
one who knows about you.”

“But you’ve actually met me, and you’ve never met him.”

“My mom went to a Beatles concert.” She closes the lid of the chess set and
stretches out on the ground, staring up at the canopy of new leaves. “It was at
Comiskey Park, in Chicago, August 8,1965.” I poke her in the stomach and she curls
up like a hedgehog, giggling. After an interval of tickling and thrashing around, we
lie on the ground with our hands clasped across our middles and Clare asks, “Is your
wife a time traveler too?”

“Nope. Thank God.”

“Why ‘thank God’? I think that would be fun. You could go places together.”

“One time traveler per family is more than enough. It’s dangerous, Clare.”

“Does she worry about you?”

“Yes,” I say softly. “She does.” I wonder what Clare is doing now, in 1999.
Maybe she’s still asleep. Maybe she won’t know I’m gone.

“Do you love her?”


“Very much,” I whisper. We He silently side by side, watching the swaying trees,
the birds, the sky. I hear a muffled sniffling noise and glancing at Clare I am
astonished to see that tears are streaming across her face toward her ears. I sit up and
lean over her. “What’s wrong, Clare?” She just shakes her head back and forth and
presses her lips together. I smooth her hair, and pull her into a sitting position, wrap
my arms around her. She’s a child, and then again she isn’t. “What’s wrong?”

It comes out so quietly that I have to ask her to repeat it: “It’s just that I thought
maybe you were married to me.”

Wednesday, June 27, 1984 (Clare is 13)

CLARE: I am standing in the Meadow. It’s late June, late afternoon; in a few minutes
it will be time to wash up for supper. The temperature is dropping. Ten minutes ago
the sky was coppery blue and there was a heavy heat over the Meadow, everything
felt curved, like being under a vast glass dome, all near noises swallowed up in the
heat while an overwhelming chorus of insects droned. I have been sitting on the tiny
footbridge watching waterbugs skating on the still small pool, thinking about Henry.
Today isn’t a Henry day; the next one is twenty-two days away. It is now much
cooler. Henry is puzzling to me. All my life I have pretty much just accepted Henry
as no big deal; that is, although Henry is a secret and therefore automatically
fascinating, Henry is also some kind of miracle and just recently it’s started to dawn
on me that most girls don’t have a Henry or if they do they’ve all been pretty quiet
about it. There’s a wind coming; the tall grass is rippling and I close my eyes so it
sounds like the sea (which I have never seen except on TV). When I open them the
sky is yellow and then green. Henry says he comes from the future. When I was little
I didn’t see any problem with that; I didn’t have any idea what it might mean. Now I
wonder if it means that the future is a place, or like a place, that I could go to; that is
go to in some way other than just getting older. I wonder if Henry could take me to
the future. The woods are black and the trees bend over and whip to the side and bow
down. The insect hum is gone and the wind is smoothing everything, the grass is flat
and the trees are creaking and groaning. I am afraid of the future; it seems to be a big
box waiting for me. Henry says he knows me in the future. Huge black clouds are
moving up from behind the trees, they come up so suddenly that I laugh, they are like
puppets, and everything is swirling toward me and there is a long low peal of thunder.
I am suddenly aware of myself standing thin and upright in a Meadow where
everything has flattened itself down and so I lie down hoping to be unnoticed by the
storm which rolls up and I am flat on my back looking up when water begins to pour
down from the sky. My clothes are soaked in an instant and I suddenly feel that


Henry is there, an incredible need for Henry to be there and to put his hands on me
even while it seems to me that Henry is the rain and I am alone and wanting him.

Sunday, September 23, 1984 (Henry is 35, Clare is 13)

HENRY: I am in the clearing, in the Meadow. It’s very early in the morning, just
before dawn. It’s late summer, all the flowers and grasses are up to my chest. It’s
chilly. I am alone. I wade through the plants and locate the clothes box, open it up,
and find blue jeans and a white oxford shirt and flip-flops. I’ve never seen these
clothes before, so I have no idea where I am in time. Clare has also left me a snack:
there’s a peanut butter and jelly sandwich carefully wrapped in aluminum foil, with
an apple and a bag of lay’s potato chips. Maybe this is one of Clare’s school lunches.
My expectations veer in the direction of the late seventies or early eighties. I sit down
on the rock and eat the food, and then I feel much better. The sun is rising. The whole
Meadow is blue, and then orange, and pink, the shadows are elongated, and then it is
day. There’s no sign of Clare. I crawl a few feet into the vegetation, curl up on the
ground even though it is wet with dew, and sleep.

When I wake up the sun is higher and Clare is sitting next to me reading a book.
She smiles at me and says, “Daylight in the swamp. The birds are singing and the
frogs are croaking and it’s time to get up!”

I groan and rub my eyes. “Hi, Clare. What’s the date?”

“Sunday, September 23, 1984.”

Clare is thirteen. A strange and difficult age, but not as difficult as what we are
going through in my present. I sit up, and yawn. “Clare, if I asked very nicely, would
you go into your house and smuggle out a cup of coffee for me?”

“Coffee?” Clare says this as though she has never heard of the substance. As an
adult she is as much of an addict as I am. She considers the logistics.

“Pretty please?”

“Okay, I’ll try.” She stands up, slowly. This is the year Clare got tall, quickly. In
the past year she has grown five inches, and she has not yet become accustomed to
her new body. Breasts and legs and hips, all newly minted. I try not to think about it
as I watch her walk up the path to the house. I glance at the book she was reading. It’s
a Dorothy Sayers, one I haven’t read. I’m on page thirty-three by the time she gets
back. She has brought a Thermos, cups, a blanket, and some doughnuts. A summer’s
worth of sun has freckled Clare’s nose, and I have to resist the urge to run my hands
through her bleached hair, which falls over her arms as she spreads out the blanket.


“Bless you.” I receive the Thermos as though it contains a sacrament. We settle
ourselves on the blanket. I kick off the flip-flops, pour out a cup of coffee, and take a
sip. It’s incredibly strong and bitter. “Yowza! This is rocket fuel, Clare.”

“Too strong?” She looks a little depressed, and I hasten to compliment her.

“Well, there’s probably no such thing as too strong, but it’s pretty strong. I like it,
though. Did you make it?”

“Uh-huh. I never made coffee before, and Mark came in and was kind of bugging
me, so maybe I did it wrong.”

“No, it’s fine.” I blow on the coffee, and gulp it down. I feel better immediately. I
pour another cup.

Clare takes the Thermos from me. She pours herself half an inch of coffee and
takes a cautious sip. “Ugh,” she says. “This is disgusting. Is it supposed to taste like
this?”

“Well, it’s usually a little less ferocious. You like yours with lots of cream and
sugar.”

Clare pours the rest of her coffee into the Meadow and takes a doughnut. Then she
says, “You’re making me into a freak.”

I don’t have a ready reply for this, since the idea has never occurred to me. “Uh,

no I’m not.”

“You are so.”

“Am not.” I pause. “What do you mean, I’m making you into a freak? I’m not

making you into anything.”

“You know, like telling me that I like coffee with cream and sugar before I hardly
even taste it. I mean, how am I going to figure out if that’s what I like or if I just like
it because you tell me I like it?”

“But Clare, it’s just personal taste. You should be able to figure out how you like
coffee whether I say anything or not. Besides, you’re the one who’s always bugging

me to tell you about the future.”

“Knowing the future is different from being told what I like,” Clare says.

“Why? It’s all got to do with free will.”

Clare takes off her shoes and socks. She pushes the socks into the shoes and places
them neatly at the edge of the blanket. Then she takes my cast-off flip-flops and
aligns them with her shoes, as though the blanket is a tatami mat. “I thought free will
had to do with sin.”

I think about this. “No, ” I say, “why should free will be limited to right and wrong?
I mean, you just decided, of your own free will, to take off your shoes. It doesn’t
matter, nobody cares if you wear shoes or not, and it’s not sinful, or virtuous, and it
doesn’t affect the future, but you’ve exercised your free will”


Clare shrugs. “But sometimes you tell me something and I feel like the future is
already there, you know? Like my future has happened in the past and I can’t do
anything about it.”

“That’s called determinism,” I tell her. “It haunts my dreams.”

Clare is intrigued. “Why?”

“Well, if you are feeling boxed in by the idea that your future is unalterable,
imagine how I feel. I’m constantly running up against the fact that I can’t change
anything, even though I am right there, watching it.”

“But Henry, you do change things! I mean, you wrote down that stuff that I’m
supposed to give you in 1991 about the baby with Down Syndrome, And the List, if I
didn’t have the List I would never know when to come meet you. You change things
all the time.”

I smile. “I can only do things that work toward what has already happened. I can’t,
for example, undo the fact that you just took off your shoes.”

Clare laughs. “Why would you care if I take them off or not?”

“I don’t. But even if I did, it’s now an unalterable part of the history of the
universe and I can’t do a thing about it.” I help myself to a doughnut. It’s a Bismarck,
my favorite. The frosting is melting in the sun a little, and it sticks to my fingers.

Clare finishes her doughnut, rolls up the cuffs of her jeans and sits cross-legged.
She scratches her neck and looks at me with annoyance. “Now you’re making me
self-conscious. I feel like every time I blow my nose it’s a historic event.”

“Well, it is.”

She rolls her eyes. “What’s the opposite of determinism?”

“Chaos.”

“Oh. I don’t think I like that. Do you like that?”

I take a big bite out of the Bismarck and consider chaos. “Well, I do and I don’t.
Chaos is more freedom; in fact, total freedom. But no meaning. I want to be free to
act, and I also want my actions to mean something.”

“But, Henry, you’re forgetting about God—why can’t there be a God who makes
it mean something?” Clare frowns earnestly, and looks away across the Meadow as
she speaks.

I pop the last of the Bismarck into my mouth and chew slowly to gain time.
Whenever Clare mentions God my palms start to sweat and I have an urge to hide or
run or vanish.

“I don’t know, Clare. I mean, to me things seem too random and meaningless for
there to be a God.”

Clare clasps her arms around her knees. “But you just said before that everything
seems like it’s all planned out beforehand.”


“Hpmf,” I say. I grab Clare’s ankles, pull her feet onto my lap, and hold on. Clare
laughs, and leans back on her elbows. Clare’s feet are cold in my hands; they are very
pink and very clean. “Okay,” I say, “let’s see. The choices we’re working with here
are a block universe, where past, present and future all coexist simultaneously and
everything has already happened; chaos, where anything can happen and nothing can
be predicted because we can’t know all the variables; and a Christian universe in
which God made everything and it’s all here for a purpose but we have free will
anyway. Right?”

Clare wiggles her toes at me. “I guess.”

“And what do you vote for?”

Clare is silent. Her pragmatism and her romantic feelings about Jesus and Mary
are, at thirteen, almost equally balanced. A year ago she would have said God without
hesitation. In ten years she will vote for determinism, and ten years after that Clare
will believe that the universe is arbitrary, that if God exists he does not hear our
prayers, that cause and effect are inescapable and brutal, but meaningless. And after
that? I don’t know. But right now Clare sits on the threshold of adolescence with her
faith in one hand and her growing skepticism in the other, and all she can do is try to
juggle them, or squeeze them together until they fuse. She shakes her head. “I don’t
know. I want God. Is that okay?”

I feel like an asshole. “Of course it’s okay. That’s what you believe.”

“But I don’t want to just believe it, I want it to be true.”

I run my thumbs across Clare’s arches, and she closes her eyes. “You and St.
Thomas Aquinas both,” I say.

“I’ve heard of him,” Clare says, as though she’s speaking of a long-lost favorite
uncle, or the host of a TV show she used to watch when she was little.

“He wanted order and reason, and God, too. He lived in the thirteenth century and
taught at the University of Paris. Aquinas believed in both Aristotle and angels.”

“I love angels,” says Clare. “They’re so beautiful. I wish I could have wings and
fly around and sit on clouds.”

“Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.‘”

Clare sighs, a little soft sigh that means I don’t speak German, remember? “Huh?”

“‘Every angel is terrifying.’ It’s part of a series of poems called The Duino Elegies,
by a poet named Rilke. He’s one of our favorite poets.”

Clare laughs. “You’re doing it again!”

“What?”

“Telling me what I like.” Clare burrows into my lap with her feet. Without
thinking I put her feet on my shoulders, but then that seems too sexual, somehow, and
I quickly take Clare’s feet in my hands again and hold them together with one hand in


the air as she lies on her back, innocent and angelic with her hair spread nimbus-like
around her on the blanket. I tickle her feet. Clare giggles and twists out of my hands
like a fish, jumps up and does a cartwheel across the clearing, grinning at me as if to
dare me to come and get her. I just grin back, and she returns to the blanket and sits
down next to me.

“Henry?”

“Yeah?”

“You are making me different.”

“I know”

I turn to look at Clare and just for a moment I forget that she is young, and that
this is long ago; I see Clare, my wife, superimposed on the face of this young girl,
and I don’t know what to say to this Clare who is old and young and different from
other girls, who knows that different might be hard. But Clare doesn’t seem to expect
an answer. She leans against my arm, and I put my arm around her shoulders.

“ Clare!” Across the quiet of the Meadow Clare’s dad is bellowing her name.
Clare jumps up and grabs her shoes and socks.

“It’s time for church ” she says, suddenly nervous.

“Okay,” I say. “Um, bye.” I wave at her, and she smiles and mumbles goodbye
and is running up the path, and is gone. I lie in the sun for a while, wondering about
God, reading Dorothy Sayers. After an hour or so has passed I too am gone and there
is only a blanket and a book, coffee cups, and clothing, to show that we were there at
all.