"Oh, why can't we do something!" I whisper into Henry's neck.
"Clare—" Henry's arms are wrapped around me. I close my eyes,
"Stop it. Refuse to let it happen. Change it,"
"Oh, Clare." Henry's voice is soft and I look up at him, and his eyes shine with tears in the light reflected by the snow. I lay my cheek against Henry's shoulder. He strokes my hair. We stay like this for a long time. Henry is sweating. I put my hand on his face and he's burning up with fever.
"What time is it?"
"Almost midnight."
"I'm scared." I twine my arms through his, wrap my legs around his. It's impossible to believe that Henry, so solid, my lover, this real body, which I am holding pressed to mine with all my strength, could ever disappear:
"Kiss me!"
I am kissing Henry, and then I am alone, under the blanket, on the divan, on the cold porch. It is still snowing. Inside, the record stops, and I hear Gomez say, "Ten! nine! eight!" and everyone says, all together, "seven! six! five! four! three! two! one! Happy New Year!" and a champagne cork pops, and everyone starts talking all at once, and someone says, "Where are Henry and Clare?" Outside in the street someone sets off firecrackers. I put my head in my hands and I wait.
A TREATISE ON LONGING
His forty-third year. His small time's end. His time— Who saw Infinity through the countless cracks In the blank skin of things, and died of it.
— A. S. Byatt, Possession
She followed slowly, taking a long time, as though there were some obstacle in the way; and yet: as though, once it was overcome, she would be beyond all walking, and would fly.
— from Going Blind, Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Stephen Mitchell
Saturday, October 27, 1984/Monday, January 1, 2007 (Henry is 43, Clare is 35)
Henry: The sky is blank and I'm falling into the tall dry grass let it be quick and even as I try to be still the crack of a rifle sounds, far away, surely nothing to do with me but no: I am slammed to the ground, I look at my belly which has opened up like a pomegranate, a soup of entrails and blood cradled in the bowl of my body; it doesn't hurt at all that can't be right but I can only admire this cubist version of my insides someone is running all I want is to see Clare before before I am screaming her name Clare, Clare and Clare leans over me, crying, and Alba whispers, "Daddy...."
"Love you... "
"Henry—"
"Always "
"Oh God oh God—"
"World enough "
"No!"
"And time... "
"Henry!"
Clare: The living room is very still. Everyone stands fixed, frozen, staring down at us. Billie Holiday is singing, and then someone turns off the CD player and there is silence. I sit on the floor, holding Henry. Alba is crouching over him, whispering in his ear, shaking him. Henry's skin is warm, his eyes are open, staring past me, he is heavy in my arms, so heavy, his pale skin torn apart, red everywhere, ripped flesh framing a secret world of blood. I cradle Henry. There's blood at the corner of his mouth. I wipe it off. Firecrackers explode somewhere nearby. Gomez says, "I think we'd better call the police."
DISSOLUTION
Friday, February 2, 2007 (Clare is 35)
Clare: I sleep all day. Noises flit around the house—garbage truck in the alley, rain, tree rapping against the bedroom window. I sleep. I inhabit sleep firmly, willing it, wielding it, pushing away dreams, refusing, refusing. Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion. The phone rings and rings. I have turned off the machine that answers with Henry's voice. It is afternoon, it is night, it is morning. Everything is reduced to this bed, this endless slumber that makes the days into one day, makes time stop, stretches and compacts time until it is meaningless. Sometimes sleep abandons me and I pretend, as though Etta has come to get me up for school. I breathe slowly and deeply. I make my eyes still under eyelids, I make my mind still, and soon, Sleep, seeing a perfect reproduction of himself, comes to be united with his facsimile. Sometimes I wake up and reach for Henry. Sleep erases all differences: then and now; dead and living. I am past hunger, past vanity, past caring. This morning I caught sight of my face in the bathroom mirror. I am paper-skinned, gaunt, yellow, ring-eyed, hair matted. I look dead. I want nothing. Kimy sits at the foot of the bed. She says, "Clare? Alba's home from school.. .won't you let her come in, say hi?" I pretend to sleep. Alba's little hand strokes my face. Tears leak from my eyes. Alba sets something, her knapsack? her violin case? on the floor and Kimy says, "Take off your shoes, Alba," and then Alba crawls into bed with me. She wraps my arm around her, thrusts her head under my chin. I sigh and open my eyes. Alba pretends to sleep. I stare at her thick black eyelashes, her wide mouth, her pale skin; she is breathing carefully, she clutches my hip with her strong hand, she smells of pencil shavings and rosin and shampoo. I kiss the top of her head. Alba opens her eyes, and then her resemblance to Henry is almost more than I can bear. Kimy gets up and walks out of the room. Later I get up, take a shower, eat dinner sitting at the table with Kimy and Alba. I sit at Henry's desk after Alba has gone to bed, and I open the drawers, I take out the bundles of letters and papers, and I begin to read.