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A VERY SMALL SHOE Spring, 1996 (Clare is 24, Henry is 32)

A VERY SMALL SHOE


Spring, 1996 (Clare is 24, Henry is 32)

CLARE: When Henry and I had been married for about two years we decided, without
talking about it very much, to see if we could have a baby. I knew that Henry was not


at all optimistic about our chances of having a baby and I was not asking him or
myself why this might be because I was afraid that he had seen us in the future
without any baby and I just didn’t want to know about that. And I didn’t want to think
about the possibility that Henry’s difficulties with time travel might be hereditary or
somehow mess up the whole baby thing, as it were. So I was simply not thinking
about a lot of important stuff because I was completely drunk with the notion of a
baby: a baby that looked sort of like Henry, black hair and those intense eyes and
maybe very pale like me and smelled like milk and talcum powder and skin, a sort of
dumpling baby, gurgling and laughing at everyday stuff, a monkey baby, a small
cooing sort of baby. I would dream about babies. In my dreams I would climb a tree
and find a very small shoe. In a nest; I would suddenly discover that the
cat/book/sandwich I thought I Was holding was really a baby; I would be swimming
in the lake and find a colony of babies growing at the bottom.

I suddenly began to see babies everywhere; a sneezing red-haired girl in a
sunbonnet at the A&P; a tiny staring Chinese boy, son of the owners, in the Golden
Wok (home of wonderful vegetarian eggrolls); a sleeping almost bald baby at a
Batman movie. In a fitting room in a JCPenney a very trusting woman actually let me
hold her three-month-old daughter; it was all I could do to continue sitting in that
pink-beige vinyl chair and not spring up and run madly away hugging that tiny soft
being to my breasts.

My body wanted a baby. I felt empty and I wanted to be full. I wanted someone to
love who would stay: stay and be there, always. And I wanted Henry to be in this
child, so that when he was gone he wouldn’t be entirely gone, there would be a bit of
him with me.. .insurance, in case of fire, flood, act of God.

Sunday, October 2, 1966 (Henry is 33)

HENRY: I am sitting, very comfortable and content, in a tree in Appleton, Wisconsin,
in 1966, eating a tuna fish sandwich and wearing a white T-shirt and chinos stolen
from someone’s beautiful sun-dried laundry. Somewhere in Chicago, I am three; my
mother is still alive and none of this chrono-fuckupedness has started. I salute my
small former self, and thinking about me as a child naturally gets me thinking about
Clare, and our efforts to conceive. On one hand, I am all eagerness; I want to give
Clare a baby, see Clare ripen like a flesh melon, Demeter in glory. I want a normal
baby who will do the things normal babies do: suck, grasp, shit, sleep, laugh; roll
over, sit up, walk, talk in nonsense mumblings. I want to see my father awkwardly
cradling a tiny grandchild; I have given my father so little happiness—this would be a
large redress, a balm. And a balm to Clare, too; when I am snatched away from her, a
part of me would remain.


But: but. I know, without knowing, that this is very unlikely. I know that a child of
mine is almost certainly going to be The One Most Likely to Spontaneously Vanish, a
magical disappearing baby who will evaporate as though carried off by fairies. And
even as I pray, panting and gasping over Clare in extremities of desire, for the miracle
of sex to somehow yield us a baby, a part of me is praying just as vehemently for us
to be spared. I am reminded of the story of the monkey’s paw, and the three wishes
that followed so naturally and horribly from each other. I wonder if our wish is of a
similar order.

I am a coward. A better man would take Clare by the shoulders and say, Love, this
is all a mistake, let us accept it and go on, and be happy. But I know that Clare would
never accept, would always be sad. And so I hope, against hope, against reason and I
make love to Clare as though anything good might come of it.

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