A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING Sunday, June 16, 1968
HENRY: The first time was magical. How could I have known what it meant? It was
my fifth birthday, and we went to the Field Museum of Natural History. I don’t think
I had ever been to the Field Museum before. My parents had been telling me all week
about the wonders to be seen there, the stuffed elephants in the great hall, the
dinosaur skeletons, the caveman dioramas. Mom had just gotten back from Sydney,
and she had brought me an immense, surpassingly blue butterfly, Papilio ulysses,
mounted in a frame filled with cotton. I would hold it close to my face, so close I
couldn’t see anything but that blue. It would fill me with a feeling, a feeling I later
tried to duplicate with alcohol and finally found again with Clare, a feeling of unity,
oblivion, mindlessness in the best sense of the word. My parents described the cases
and cases of butterflies, hummingbirds, beetles. I was so excited that I woke up
before dawn. I put on my gym shoes and took my Papilio ulysses and went into the
backyard and down the steps to the river in my pajamas. I sat on the landing and
hatched the light come up. A family of ducks came swimming by, and a raccoon
appeared on the landing across the river and looked at me curiously before washing
its breakfast and eating it. I may have fallen asleep. I heard Mom calling and I ran
back up the stairs, which were slippery with dew, careful not to drop the butterfly.
She was annoyed with me for going down to the landing by myself, but she didn’t
make a big deal about it, it being my birthday and all.
Neither of them were working that night, so they took their time getting dressed
and out the door. I was ready long before either of them. I sat on their bed and
pretended to read a score. This was around the time my musician parents recognized
that their one and only offspring was not musically gifted. It wasn’t that I wasn’t
trying; I just could not hear whatever it was they heard in a piece of music. I enjoyed
music, but I could hardly carry a tune. And though I could read a newspaper when I
was four, scores were only pretty black squiggles. But my parents were still hoping I
might have some hidden musical aptitude, so when I picked up the score Mom sat
down next to me and tried to help me with it. Pretty soon Mom was singing and I was
chiming in with horrible yowling noises and snapping my fingers and we were
giggling and she was tickling me. Dad came out of the bathroom with a towel around
his waist and joined in and for a few glorious minutes they were singing together and
Dad picked me up and they were dancing around the bedroom with me pressed
between them. Then the phone rang, and the scene dissolved. Mom went to answer it,
and Dad set me on the bed and got dressed.
Finally, they were ready. My mom wore a red sleeveless dress and sandals; she
had painted her toenails and fingernails so they matched her dress. Dad was
resplendent in dark blue pants and a white short-sleeved shirt, providing a quiet
background for Mom’s flamboyance. We all piled into the car. As always, I had the
whole backseat to myself, so I lay down and watched the tall buildings along Lake
Shore Drive flicking past the window.
“Sit up, Henry” said Mom. “We’re here.”
I sat up and looked at the museum. I had spent my childhood thus far being carted
around the capital cities of Europe, so the Field Museum satisfied my idea of
“Museum,” but its domed stone facade was nothing exceptional. Because it was
Sunday, we had a little trouble finding parking, but eventually we parked and walked
along the lake, past boats and statues and other excited children. We passed between
the heavy columns and into the museum.
And then I was a boy enchanted.
Here all of nature was captured, labeled, arranged according to a logic that seemed
as timeless as if ordered by God, perhaps a God who had mislaid the original
paperwork on the Creation and had requested the Field Museum staff to help Him out
and keep track of it all. For my five-year-old self, who could derive rapture from a
single butterfly, to walk through the Field Museum was to walk through Eden and see
all that passed there.
We saw so much that day: the butterflies, to be sure, cases and cases of them, from
Brazil, from Madagascar, even a brother of my blue butterfly from Down Under. The
museum was dark, cold, and old, and this heightened the sense of suspension, of time
and death brought to a halt inside its walls. We saw crystals and cougars, muskrats
and mummies, fossils and more fossils. We ate our picnic lunch on the lawn of the
museum, and then plunged in again for birds and alligators and Neanderthals. Toward
the end I was so tired I could hardly stand, but I couldn’t bear to leave. The guards
came and gently herded us all to the doors; I struggled not to cry, but began to
anyway, out of exhaustion and desire. Dad picked me up, and we walked back to the
car. I fell asleep in the backseat, and when I awoke We were home, and it was time
for dinner.
We ate downstairs in Mr. and Mrs. Kim’s apartment. They were our landlords. Mr.
Kim was a gruff, compact man who seemed to like me but never said much, and Mrs.
Kim (Kimy, my nickname for her) was my buddy, my crazy Korean card-playing
babysitter. I spent most of my waking hours with Kimy. My mom was never much of
a cook, and Kimy could produce anything from a soufflé to bi him bop with panache.
Tonight, for my birthday, she had made pizza and chocolate cake.
We ate. Everyone sang Happy Birthday and I blew out the candles. I don’t
remember what I wished for. I was allowed to stay up later than usual, because I was
still excited by all the things we’d seen, and because I had slept so late in the
afternoon. I sat on the back porch in my pajamas with Mom and Dad and Mrs. and
Mr. Kim, drinking lemonade and watching the blueness of the evening sky, listening
to the cicadas and the TV noises from other apartments. Eventually Dad said,
“Bedtime, Henry.” I brushed my teeth and said prayers and got into bed. I was
exhausted but wide awake. Dad read to me for a while, and then, seeing that I still
couldn’t sleep, he and Mom turned out the lights, propped open my bedroom door,
and went into the living room. The deal was: they would play for me as long as I
wanted, but I had to stay in bed to listen. So Mom sat at the piano, and Dad got out
his violin, and they played and sang for a long time. Lullabies, lieder, nocturnes;
sleepy music to soothe the savage boy in the bedroom. Finally Mom came in to see if
I was asleep. I must have looked small and wary in my little bed, a nocturnal animal
in pajamas.
“Oh, baby. Still awake?”
I nodded.
“Dad and I are going to bed. Are you okay?”
I said Yes and she gave me a hug. “It was pretty exciting today at the museum,
huh?”
“Can we go back tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow, but we’ll go back real soon, okay?” Okay.
“G’night.” She left the door open and flipped off the hall light. “Sleep tight. Don’t
let the bedbugs bite.”
I could hear little noises, water running, toilet flushing. Then all was quiet. I got
out of bed and knelt in front of my window. I could see lights in the house next door,
and somewhere a car drove by with its radio blaring. I stayed there for a while, trying
to feel sleepy, and then I stood up and everything changed.
Saturday, January 2, 1988, 4:03 a.m. /Sunday, June 16, 1968, 10:46 p.m.
(Henry is 24, and 5)
HENRY: It’s 4:03 a.m. on a supremely cold January morning and I’m just getting
home. I’ve been out dancing and I’m only half drunk but utterly exhausted. As I
fumble with my keys in the bright foyer I fall to my knees, dizzy and nauseated, and
then I am in the dark, vomiting on a tile floor. I raise my head and see a red
illuminated EXIT sign and as my eyes adjust I see tigers, cavemen with long spears,
cavewomen wearing strategically modest skins, wolfish dogs. My heart is racing and
for a long liquor-addled moment I think Holy shit, I’ve gone all the way back to the
Stone Age until I realize that EXIT signs tend to congregate in the twentieth century. I
get up, shaking, and venture toward the doorway, tile icy under my bare feet,
gooseflesh and all my hairs standing up. It’s absolutely silent. The air is clammy with
air conditioning. I reach the entrance and look into the next room. It’s full of glass
cases; the white streetlight glow through the high windows shows me thousands of
beetles. I’m in the Field Museum, praise the Lord. I stand still and breathe deeply,
trying to clear my head. Something about this rings a bell in my fettered brain and I
try to dredge it up. I’m supposed to do something. Yes. My fifth birthday... someone
was there, and I’m about to be that someone...I need clothes. Yes. Indeed.
I sprint through beetlemania into the long hallway that bisects the second floor,
down the west staircase to the first floor, grateful to be in the pre-motion-detector era.
The great elephants loom menacingly over me in the moonlight and I wave to them
on my way to the little gift shop to the right of the main entrance. I circle the wares
and find a few promising items: an ornamental letter opener, a metal bookmark with
the Field’s insignia, and two T-shirts that feature dinosaurs. The locks on the cases
are a joke; I pop them with a bobby pin I find next to the cash register, and help
myself. Okay. Back up the stairs, to the third floor. This is the Field’s “attic,” where
the labs are; the staff have their offices up here. I scan the names on the doors, but
none of them suggests anything to me; finally I select at random and slide my
bookmark along the lock until the catch pushes back and I’m in.
The occupant of this office is one V. M. Williamson, and he’s a very untidy guy.
The room is dense with papers, and coffee cups and cigarettes overflow from ashtrays;
there’s a partially articulated snake skeleton on his desk. I quickly case the joint for
clothes and come up with nothing. The next office belongs to a woman, J. F. Bettley.
On the third try I get lucky. D. W. Fitch has an entire suit hung neatly on his coat rack,
and it pretty much fits me, though it’s a bit short in the arms and legs and wide in the
lapels. I wear one of the dinosaur T-shirts under the jacket. No shoes, but I’m decent.
D. W. also keeps an unopened package of Oreo cookies in his desk, bless him. I
appropriate them and leave, closing the door carefully behind me.
Where was I, when I saw me? I close my eyes and fatigue takes me bodily,
caressing me with her sleepy fingers. I am almost out on my feet, but I catch myself
and it comes to me: a man in silhouette walking toward me backlit by the museum’s
front doors. I need to get back to the Great Hall.
When I get there all is quiet and still. I walk across the middle of the floor, trying
to replicate the view of the doors, and then I seat myself near the coat room, so as to
enter stage left. I can hear blood rushing in my head, the air conditioning system
humming, cars whooshing by on Lake Shore Drive. I eat ten Oreos, slowly, gently
prying each one apart, scraping the filling out with my front teeth, nibbling the
chocolate halves to make them last. I have no idea what time it is, or how long I have
to wait. I’m mostly sober now, and reasonably alert. Time passes, nothing happens.
At last: I hear a soft thud, a gasp. Silence. I wait. I stand up, silently, and pad into the
Hall, walking slowly through the light that slants across the marble floor. I stand in
the center of the doors and call out, not loud: “Henry.”
Nothing. Good boy, wary and silent. I try again. “It’s okay, Henry. I’m your guide,
I’m here to show you around. It’s a special tour. Don’t be afraid, Henry.”
I hear a slight, oh-so-faint noise. “I brought you a T-shirt, Henry. So you won’t get
cold while we look at the exhibits.” I can make him out now, standing at the edge of
the darkness. “Here. Catch.” I throw it to him, and the shirt disappears, and then he
steps into the light. The T-shirt comes down to his knees. Me at five, dark spiky hair,
moon pale with brown almost Slavic eyes, wiry, coltish. At five I am happy,
cushioned in normality and the arms of my parents. Everything changed, starting now.
I walk forward slowly, bend toward him, speak softly. “Hello. I’m glad to see you,
Henry. Thank you for coming tonight.”
“Where am I? Who are you?” His voice is small and high, and echoes a little off
the cold stone.
“You’re in the Field Museum. I have been sent here to show you some things you
can’t see during the day. My name is also Henry. Isn’t that funny?”
He nods.
“Would you like some cookies? I always like to eat cookies while I look around
museums. It makes it more multi-sensory.” I offer him the package of Oreos. He
hesitates, unsure if it’s all right, hungry but unsure how many he can take without
being rude. “Take as many as you want. I’ve already eaten ten, so you have some
catching up to do.” He takes three. “Is there anything you’d like to see first?” He
shakes his head. “Tell you what. Let’s go up to the third floor; that’s where they keep
all the stuff that isn’t on display. Okay?”
“Okay.”
We walk through darkness, up the stairs. He isn’t moving very fast, so I climb
slowly with him.
“Where’s Mom?”
“She’s at home, sleeping. This is a special tour, only for you, because it’s your
birthday. Besides, grown-ups don’t do this sort of thing.”
“Aren’t you a grown-up?”
“I’m an extremely unusual grown-up. My job is to have adventures. So naturally
when I heard that you wanted to come back to the Field Museum right away, I
jumped at the chance to show you around.”
“But how did I get here?” He stops at the top of the stairs and looks at me with
total confusion.
“Well, that’s a secret. If I tell you, you have to swear not to say anything to
anyone.”
“Why?”
“Because they wouldn’t believe you. You can tell Mom, or Kimy if you want, but
that’s it. Okay?”
“Okay....”
I kneel in front of him, my innocent self, look him in the eyes. “Cross your heart
and hope to die?”
“Uh-huh....”
“Okay. Here’s how it is: you time traveled. You were in your bedroom, and all of
a sudden, poof! you are here, and it’s a little earlier in the evening, so we have plenty
of time to look at everything before you have to go home.” He is silent and quizzical.
“Does that make sense?”
“But...why?”
“Well, I haven’t figured that out yet. I’ll let you know when I do. In the meantime,
we should be moving along. Cookie?”
He takes one and we walk slowly down the corridor. I decide to experiment.
“Let’s try this one.” I slide the bookmark along a door marked 306 and open it. When
I flick on the lights there are pumpkin-sized rocks all over the floor, whole and halved,
craggy on the outside and streaked with veins of metal inside. “Ooh, look, Henry.
Meteorites.”
“What’s meteorites?”
“Rocks that fall from outer space.” He looks at me as though I’m from outer space.
“Shall we try another door?” He nods. I close the meteorite room and try the door
across the corridor. This room is full of birds. Birds in simulated flight, birds perched
eternally on branches, bird heads, bird skins. I open one of the hundreds of drawers; it
contains a dozen glass tubes, each holding a tiny gold and black bird with its name
wrapped around a foot. Henry’s eyes are the size of saucers. “Do you want to touch
one?”
“Uh-huh.”
I remove the cotton wadding from the mouth of a tube and shake a goldfinch onto
my palm. It remains tube-shaped. Henry strokes its small head, lovingly. “It’s
sleeping?”
“More or less.” He looks at me sharply, distrusting my equivocation. I insert the
finch gently back into the tube, replace the cotton, replace the tube, shut the drawer. I
am so tired. Even the word sleep is a lure, a seduction. I lead the way out into the hall,
and suddenly I recollect what it was I loved about this night when I was little.
“Hey, Henry. Let’s go to the library.” He shrugs. I walk, quickly now, and he runs
to keep up. The library is on the third floor, at the east end of the building. When we
get there, I stand for a minute, contemplating the locks. Henry looks at me, as though
to say, Well, that’s that. I feel in my pockets, and find the letter opener. I wiggle the
wooden handle off, and lo, there’s a nice long thin metal prong in there. I stick one
half of it into the lock and feel around. I can hear the tumblers springing, and when
I’m all the way back I stick in the other half, use my bookmark on the other lock and
presto, Open Sesame!
At last, my companion is suitably impressed. “How’d you do that?”
“It’s not that hard. I’ll teach you another time. Entrez!” I hold open the door and
he walks in. I flip on the lights and the Reading Room springs into being; heavy
wooden tables and chairs, maroon carpet, forbidding enormous Reference Desk. The
Field Museum’s Library is not designed to appeal to five-year-olds. It’s a closed
stacks library, used by scientists and scholars. There are bookcases lining the room,
but they hold mostly leather-bound Victorian science periodicals. The book I’m after
is in a huge glass and oak case by itself in the center of the room. I spring the lock
with my bobby pin and open the glass door. Really, the Field ought to get more
serious about security. I don’t feel too terrible about doing this; after all, I’m a bona
fide librarian, I do Show and Tells at the Newberry all the time. I walk behind the
Reference Desk and find a piece of felt and some support pads, and lay them out on
the nearest table. Then I close and carefully lift the book out of its case and onto the
felt. I pull out a chair. “Here, stand on this so you can see better.” He climbs up, and I
open the book.
It’s Audubon’s Birds of America, the deluxe, wonderful double-elephant folio
that’s almost as tall as my young self. This copy is the finest in existence, and I have
spent many rainy afternoons admiring it. I open it to the first plate, and Henry smiles,
and looks at me. “ ‘Common Loon’” he reads. “It looks like a duck.”
“Yeah, it does. I bet I can guess your favorite bird.”
He shakes his head and smiles.
“What’ll you bet?”
He looks down at himself in the T-Rex T-shirt and shrugs. I know the feeling.
“How about this: if I guess you get to eat a cookie, and if I can’t guess you get to
eat a cookie?”
He thinks it over and decides this would be a safe bet. I open the book to Flamingo.
Henry laughs.
“Am I right?”
“Yes!”
It’s easy to be omniscient when you’ve done it all before. “Okay, here’s your
cookie. And I get one for being right. But we have to save them ‘til we’re done
looking at the book; we wouldn’t want to get crumbs all over the bluebirds, right?”
“Right!” He sets the Oreo on the arm of the chair and we begin again at the
beginning and page slowly through the birds, so much more alive than the real thing
in glass tubes down the hall.
“Here’s a Great Blue Heron. He’s really big, bigger than a flamingo. Have you
ever seen a hummingbird? I saw some today!”
“Here in the museum?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Wait ‘til you see one outside—they’re like tiny helicopters, their wings go so fast
you just see a blur....” Turning each page is like making a bed, an enormous expanse
of paper slowly rises up and over. Henry stands attentively, waits each time for the
new wonder, emits small noises of pleasure for each Sandhill Crane, American Coot,
Great Auk, Pileated Woodpecker. When we come to the last plate, Snow Bunting, he
leans down and touches the page, delicately stroking the engraving. I look at him,
look at the book, remember, this book, this moment, the first book I loved, remember
wanting to crawl into it and sleep.
“You tired?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Should we go?” Okay.
I close Birds of America, return it to its glass home, open it to
Flamingo, shut the case, lock it. Henry jumps off the chair and eats his Oreo. I
return the felt to the desk and push the chair in. Henry turns out the light, and we
leave the library.
We wander, chattering amiably of things that fly and things that slither, and eating
our Oreos. Henry tells me about Mom and Dad and Mrs. Kim, who is teaching him to
make lasagna, and Brenda, whom I had forgotten about, my best pal when I was little
until her family moved to Tampa, Florida, about three months from now. We are
standing in front of Bushman, the legendary silverback gorilla, whose stuffed
magnificence glowers at us from his little marble stand in a first floor hallway, when
Henry cries out, and staggers forward, reaching urgently for me, and I grab him, and
he’s gone. The T-shirt is warm empty cloth in my hands. I sigh, and walk upstairs to
ponder the mummies for a while by myself. My young self will be home now,
climbing into bed. I remember, I remember. I woke up in the morning and it was all a
wonderful dream. Mom laughed and said that time travel sounded fun, and she
wanted to try it, too.
That was the first time.
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