The time traveler's wife by Audrey Niffenegger Page A

up." Actually, I don't believe
this; things happen the way they happened, once and only once. I'm not a
proponent of splitting universes.
    "But you talk to me."
    "You're special. You're brave and smart
and good at keeping secrets." Clare is embarrassed. "I told Ruth, but
she didn't believe me."
    "Oh. Well, don't worry about it. Very few
people ever believe me, either. Especially doctors. Doctors don't believe
anything unless you can prove it to them."
    "I believe you."
    Clare is standing about five feet away from me.
Her small pale face catches the last orange light from the west. Her hair is
pulled back tightly into a ponytail and she is wearing blue jeans and a dark
sweater with zebras running across the chest. Her hands are clenched and she
looks fierce and determined. Our daughter, I think sadly, would have looked
like this.
    "Thank you, Clare." "I have to
go in now." "Good idea." "Are you coming back?"
    I consult the List, from memory. "I'll be
back October 16. It's a Friday. Come here, right after school. Bring that
little blue diary Megan gave you for your birthday and a blue ballpoint
pen" I repeat the date, looking at Clare to make sure she is remembering.
    "Au revoir, Clare."
    "Aurevoir         "
    "Henry."
    " Au revoir, Henri." Already her
accent is better than mine. Clare turns and runs up the path, into the arms of
her lighted and welcoming house, and I turn to the dark and begin to walk
across the meadow. Later in the evening I chuck the tie in the dumpster behind
Dina's Fish 'n Fry.

 
    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