"Hi."
"Hi, Clare. Thanks for the clothes. They're perfect, and they'll keep me nice and warm tonight." "I have to go in soon."
"That's okay, it's almost dark. Is it a school night?"
"Uh-huh." "What's the date?"
"Thursday, September 29,1977." "That's very helpful. Thanks." "How come you don't know that?"
"Well, I just got here. A few minutes ago it was Monday, March 27, 2000. It was a rainy morning and I was making toast."
"But you wrote it down for me." She takes out a piece of Philip's law office letterhead and holds it out for me. I walk to her and take it, and am interested to see the date written on it in my careful block lettering. I pause and grope for the best way to explain the vagaries of time travel to the small child who is Clare at the moment.
"It's like this. You know how to use a tape recorder?"
"Mmhmm."
"Okay. So you put in a tape and you play it from the beginning to the end, right?"
"Yeah "
"That's how your life is. You get up in the morning and you eat breakfast and you brush your teeth and you go to school, right? You don't get up and suddenly find yourself at school eating lunch with Helen and Ruth and then all of a sudden you're at home getting dressed, right?"
Clare giggles. "Right."
"Now for me, it's different. Because I am a time traveler, I jump around a lot from one time to another. So it's like if you started the tape and played it for a while but then you said Oh I want to hear that song again, so you played that song and then you went back to where you left off but you wound the tape too far ahead so you rewound it again but you still got it too far ahead. You see?"
"Sort of."
"Well, it's not the greatest analogy in the world. Basically, sometimes I get lost in time and I don't know when I am." " What's analogy?"
"It's when you try to explain something by saying it's like another thing. For example, at the moment I am as snug as a bug in a rug in this nice sweater, and you are as pretty as a picture, and Etta is going to be as mad as a hatter if you don't go in pretty soon."
"Are you going to sleep here? You could come to our house, we have a guest room." "Gosh, that's very nice of you. Unfortunately, I am not allowed to meet your family until 1991."
Clare is utterly perplexed. I think part of the problem is that she can't imagine dates beyond the 70s. I remember having the same problem with the '60s when I was her age. "Why not?"
"It's part of the rules. People who time travel aren't supposed to go around talking to regular people while they visit their times, because we might mess things 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.