i waited for you, and now you're here
I finished reading this about a week or so ago, but I have yet to fully grasp or come to terms with it, or my reactions to it, because it absolutely just drained me. Emotionally. Physically. Mentally. Just, killed me.
So, instead of trying to put together coherant thoughts and sentences (that would be too hard for me, especially after just watching Grey's Anatomy - Six Days [by the way, does anyone have the Travis song that played at the end? Love Will Come Through] - I'm still a little out of it over the Alex and Addie scene. Ohmygoodness. But that is a story for another time. *le sigh*) I've decided to put here, my favourite parts, or the best parts, or the parts that made me laugh or cry or smile or flail or sigh or gasp or all of those things.
Basically, go read this book if you haven't already.
Also, don't click on the cut if you don't want to know what happens, here be spoilers. Seriously, some of this is like, the tenth last page. Don't click. You've been warned.
Or, click, read the first six, then stop. Then go buy the book. You won't regret it.
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
CLARE: I hate being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he's okay. It's hard to be the one who stays.
I keep myself busy. Time goes faster that way.
I go to sleep alone, I wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I'm tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that's been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by absence?
Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?
HENRY: And Clare, always Clare. Clare in the morning, sleepy and crumple-faced. Clare with her arms plunging into the papermaking vat, pulling up the mold and shaking it so, and so, to meld the fibers. Clare reading, with her hair hanging over the back of the chair, massaging balm into her cracked red hands before bed. Clare's low voice is in my ear often.
I hate to be where she is not, when she is not. And yet, I am always going, and she cannot follow.
(Henry is 36, Clare is 12)
"Is your wife a time traveler too?"
"Nope. Thank God."
"Why 'thank God'? I think that would be fun. You could go places together."
"One time traveler is enough. It's dangerous, Clare."
"Does she worry about you?"
"Yes," I say softly. "She does." I wonder what Clare is doing now, in 1999. Maybe she's still asleep. Maybe she won't know I'm gone.
"Do you love her?"
"Very much," I whisper. We lie silently side by side, watching the swaying trees, the birds, the sky. I hear a muffled sniffing noise and glancing at Clare I am astonished to see that tears are streaming across her face toward her ears. I sit up and lean over her. "What's wrong, Clare?" She just shakes her head back and forth and presses her lips together. I smooth her hair, and pull her into a sitting position, wrap my arms around her. She's a child, And then again she isn't. "What's wrong?"
It comes out so quietly that I have to ask her to repeat it: "It's just that I thought maybe you were married to me."
(Clare is 17)
A few nights later, I am sitting by Grandma's bed, reading Mrs. Dalloway to her. It's evening. I look up; Grandma seems to be asleep. I stop reading, and close the book. Her eyes open.
"Hello," I say.
"Do you ever miss him?" she asks me.
"Every day. Every minute."
"Every minute," she says. "Yes. It's that way, isn't it?"
(Clare is 20)
"Don't marry him, Clare."
"He hasn't asked me yet."
"You know what I mean."
I sit very still, looking at my hands quietly clasped in my lap. I'm cold and furious. I look up. Gomez regards me anxiously.
"I love him. He's my life. I've been waiting for him, my whole life, and now, he's here." I don't know how to explain. "With Henry, I can see everything laid out, like a map, past and future, everything at once, like an angel...." I shake my head. I can't put it into words. "I can reach out and touch time...he loves me. We're married because...we're part of each other...." I falter. "It's happened already. All at once."
(Clare is 20, Henry is 28)
My father begins: "To family."
"To Nell and Etta, who are like family, who work so hard and make our home and have so many talents," my mother says, breathless and soft.
"To peace and justice," says Dulcie.
"To family," sars Etta.
"To beginnings," says Mark, toasting Sharon.
"To chance," she replies.
It's my turn. I look at Henry. "To happiness. To here and now."
Henry gravely replies, "To world enough and time," and my heart skips and I wonder how he knows, but then I realize that Marvell's one of his favorite poets and he's not referring to anything but the future.
(Clare is 21, Henry is 28)
We laugh, and laugh, and nothing can ever be sad, no one can be lost, or dead, or far away: right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment.
(Clare is 22, Henry is 30)
He must be able to hear my heart beating, I think. It's come to this, I think.
"Clare?"
"Yes?"
"You know that I love you. Will you marry me?"
"Yes...Henry. But you know, really...I already have."
(Clare is 34, Henry is 41)
Outside it is still a golden afternoon. Inside we are cold, and we cling together for warmth. Alba, in her bed, sleeps, and dreams of ice cream, dreams the small contented dreams of three, while another Alba, somewhere in the future, dreams of wrapping her arms around her father, and wakes up to find...what?
(Henry is 43, Clare is 13)
I know the end, now. It goes like this:
I will be sitting in the Meadow, in the early morning, in autumn. It will be overcast, and chilly, and I will be wearing a black wool overcoat and boots and gloves. It will be a date not on the List. Clare will be asleep, in her warm twin bed. She will be thirteen years old.
In the distance, a shot will crack across the dry cold air. It is deer-hunting season. Somewhere out there, men in bright orange garments will be sitting, waiting, shooting. Later they will drink beer, and eat the sandwiches their wives have packed for them.
The wind will pick up, will ripple through the orchard, stripping the useless leaves from the apple trees. The back door of Meadowlark House will slam, and two tiny figures in fluorescent orange will emerge, carrying matchstick rifles. They will walk toward me, into the Meadow, Philip and Mark. They will not see me, because I will be huddled in the high grass, a dark, unmoving spot in a field of beige and dead green. About twenty yards from me Philip and Mark will turn off the path towards the woods.
They will stop and listen. They will hear it before I do: a rustling, thrashing, something moving through the grass, something large and clumsy, a flash of white, a tail perhaps? and it will come toward me, toward the clearing, and Mark will raise his rifle, aim carefully, squeeze the trigger, and:
There will be a shot, and then a scream, a human scream. And then a pause. And then: "Clare! Clare!" And then nothing.
I will sit for a moment, not thinking, not breathing. Philip will be running, and then I will be running, and Mark, and we will converge on the place:
But there will be nothing. Blood on the earth, shiny and thick. Bent dead grass. We will stare at each other without recognition, over the empty dirt.
In her bed, Clare will hear the scream. She will hear someone calling her name, and she will sit up, her heart jumping in her ribcage. She will run downstairs, out the door, into the Meadow in her nightgown. When she sees the three of us she will stop, confused. Behind the backs of her father and brother I will put my finger to my lips. As Philip walks to her I will turn away, will stand in the shelter of the orchard and watch her shivering in her father's embrace, while Mark stands by, impatient and perplexed, his fifteen-year-old's stubble gracing his chin and he will look at me, as though he is trying to remember.
And Clare will look at me, and I will wave to her, and she will walk back to her house with her dad, and she will wave back, slender, her nightgown blowing around her like an angel's, and she will get smaller and smaller, will recede into the distance and disappear into the house, and I will stand over a small trampled bloody patch of soil and I will know somewhere out there I am dying.
(Henry is 43)
"Help me!" I yell. No one comes. I curl into a ball in front of the door, bring my knees to my chin, wrap my hands around my feet. No one comes, and then, at last, I am gone.
(Clare is 35, Henry is 43)
CLARE:
"Clare," he says.
"Henry."
"It's time...." He stops.
"What?"
"It's...I'm...."
"My God." I sit down on the divan, facing Henry. "But-don’t. Just-stay." I squeeze his hands tightly.
"It has already happened. Here, let me sit next to you."
We lie back on the cold cloth. I am shivering in my thin dress. In the house people are laughing and dancing, Henry puts his arm around me, warming me.
"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 champage 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.
HENRY:
and Clare leans over me, crying, and Alba whispers, "Daddy...."
"Love you...."
"Henry-"
"Always...."
"Oh God oh God-"
"World enough...."
"No!"
"And time...."
"Henry!"
I hate to think of you waiting. I know you have been waiting for me all your life, always uncertain of how long this patch of waiting would be. Ten minutes, ten days. A month. What an uncertain husband I have been, Clare, like a sailor, Odysseus alone and buffeted by tall waves, sometimes wily and sometimes just a plaything of the gods. Please, Clare. When I am dead. Stop waiting and be free...I have given you a life of suspended animation. I don't mean to say you have done nothing. You have created beauty, and meaning, in your art, and Alba, who is so amazing, and for me: for me you have been everything.
So, instead of trying to put together coherant thoughts and sentences (that would be too hard for me, especially after just watching Grey's Anatomy - Six Days [by the way, does anyone have the Travis song that played at the end? Love Will Come Through] - I'm still a little out of it over the Alex and Addie scene. Ohmygoodness. But that is a story for another time. *le sigh*) I've decided to put here, my favourite parts, or the best parts, or the parts that made me laugh or cry or smile or flail or sigh or gasp or all of those things.
Basically, go read this book if you haven't already.
Also, don't click on the cut if you don't want to know what happens, here be spoilers. Seriously, some of this is like, the tenth last page. Don't click. You've been warned.
Or, click, read the first six, then stop. Then go buy the book. You won't regret it.
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
CLARE: I hate being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he's okay. It's hard to be the one who stays.
I keep myself busy. Time goes faster that way.
I go to sleep alone, I wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I'm tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that's been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by absence?
Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?
HENRY: And Clare, always Clare. Clare in the morning, sleepy and crumple-faced. Clare with her arms plunging into the papermaking vat, pulling up the mold and shaking it so, and so, to meld the fibers. Clare reading, with her hair hanging over the back of the chair, massaging balm into her cracked red hands before bed. Clare's low voice is in my ear often.
I hate to be where she is not, when she is not. And yet, I am always going, and she cannot follow.
(Henry is 36, Clare is 12)
"Is your wife a time traveler too?"
"Nope. Thank God."
"Why 'thank God'? I think that would be fun. You could go places together."
"One time traveler is enough. It's dangerous, Clare."
"Does she worry about you?"
"Yes," I say softly. "She does." I wonder what Clare is doing now, in 1999. Maybe she's still asleep. Maybe she won't know I'm gone.
"Do you love her?"
"Very much," I whisper. We lie silently side by side, watching the swaying trees, the birds, the sky. I hear a muffled sniffing noise and glancing at Clare I am astonished to see that tears are streaming across her face toward her ears. I sit up and lean over her. "What's wrong, Clare?" She just shakes her head back and forth and presses her lips together. I smooth her hair, and pull her into a sitting position, wrap my arms around her. She's a child, And then again she isn't. "What's wrong?"
It comes out so quietly that I have to ask her to repeat it: "It's just that I thought maybe you were married to me."
(Clare is 17)
A few nights later, I am sitting by Grandma's bed, reading Mrs. Dalloway to her. It's evening. I look up; Grandma seems to be asleep. I stop reading, and close the book. Her eyes open.
"Hello," I say.
"Do you ever miss him?" she asks me.
"Every day. Every minute."
"Every minute," she says. "Yes. It's that way, isn't it?"
(Clare is 20)
"Don't marry him, Clare."
"He hasn't asked me yet."
"You know what I mean."
I sit very still, looking at my hands quietly clasped in my lap. I'm cold and furious. I look up. Gomez regards me anxiously.
"I love him. He's my life. I've been waiting for him, my whole life, and now, he's here." I don't know how to explain. "With Henry, I can see everything laid out, like a map, past and future, everything at once, like an angel...." I shake my head. I can't put it into words. "I can reach out and touch time...he loves me. We're married because...we're part of each other...." I falter. "It's happened already. All at once."
(Clare is 20, Henry is 28)
My father begins: "To family."
"To Nell and Etta, who are like family, who work so hard and make our home and have so many talents," my mother says, breathless and soft.
"To peace and justice," says Dulcie.
"To family," sars Etta.
"To beginnings," says Mark, toasting Sharon.
"To chance," she replies.
It's my turn. I look at Henry. "To happiness. To here and now."
Henry gravely replies, "To world enough and time," and my heart skips and I wonder how he knows, but then I realize that Marvell's one of his favorite poets and he's not referring to anything but the future.
(Clare is 21, Henry is 28)
We laugh, and laugh, and nothing can ever be sad, no one can be lost, or dead, or far away: right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment.
(Clare is 22, Henry is 30)
He must be able to hear my heart beating, I think. It's come to this, I think.
"Clare?"
"Yes?"
"You know that I love you. Will you marry me?"
"Yes...Henry. But you know, really...I already have."
(Clare is 34, Henry is 41)
Outside it is still a golden afternoon. Inside we are cold, and we cling together for warmth. Alba, in her bed, sleeps, and dreams of ice cream, dreams the small contented dreams of three, while another Alba, somewhere in the future, dreams of wrapping her arms around her father, and wakes up to find...what?
(Henry is 43, Clare is 13)
I know the end, now. It goes like this:
I will be sitting in the Meadow, in the early morning, in autumn. It will be overcast, and chilly, and I will be wearing a black wool overcoat and boots and gloves. It will be a date not on the List. Clare will be asleep, in her warm twin bed. She will be thirteen years old.
In the distance, a shot will crack across the dry cold air. It is deer-hunting season. Somewhere out there, men in bright orange garments will be sitting, waiting, shooting. Later they will drink beer, and eat the sandwiches their wives have packed for them.
The wind will pick up, will ripple through the orchard, stripping the useless leaves from the apple trees. The back door of Meadowlark House will slam, and two tiny figures in fluorescent orange will emerge, carrying matchstick rifles. They will walk toward me, into the Meadow, Philip and Mark. They will not see me, because I will be huddled in the high grass, a dark, unmoving spot in a field of beige and dead green. About twenty yards from me Philip and Mark will turn off the path towards the woods.
They will stop and listen. They will hear it before I do: a rustling, thrashing, something moving through the grass, something large and clumsy, a flash of white, a tail perhaps? and it will come toward me, toward the clearing, and Mark will raise his rifle, aim carefully, squeeze the trigger, and:
There will be a shot, and then a scream, a human scream. And then a pause. And then: "Clare! Clare!" And then nothing.
I will sit for a moment, not thinking, not breathing. Philip will be running, and then I will be running, and Mark, and we will converge on the place:
But there will be nothing. Blood on the earth, shiny and thick. Bent dead grass. We will stare at each other without recognition, over the empty dirt.
In her bed, Clare will hear the scream. She will hear someone calling her name, and she will sit up, her heart jumping in her ribcage. She will run downstairs, out the door, into the Meadow in her nightgown. When she sees the three of us she will stop, confused. Behind the backs of her father and brother I will put my finger to my lips. As Philip walks to her I will turn away, will stand in the shelter of the orchard and watch her shivering in her father's embrace, while Mark stands by, impatient and perplexed, his fifteen-year-old's stubble gracing his chin and he will look at me, as though he is trying to remember.
And Clare will look at me, and I will wave to her, and she will walk back to her house with her dad, and she will wave back, slender, her nightgown blowing around her like an angel's, and she will get smaller and smaller, will recede into the distance and disappear into the house, and I will stand over a small trampled bloody patch of soil and I will know somewhere out there I am dying.
(Henry is 43)
"Help me!" I yell. No one comes. I curl into a ball in front of the door, bring my knees to my chin, wrap my hands around my feet. No one comes, and then, at last, I am gone.
(Clare is 35, Henry is 43)
CLARE:
"Clare," he says.
"Henry."
"It's time...." He stops.
"What?"
"It's...I'm...."
"My God." I sit down on the divan, facing Henry. "But-don’t. Just-stay." I squeeze his hands tightly.
"It has already happened. Here, let me sit next to you."
We lie back on the cold cloth. I am shivering in my thin dress. In the house people are laughing and dancing, Henry puts his arm around me, warming me.
"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 champage 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.
HENRY:
and Clare leans over me, crying, and Alba whispers, "Daddy...."
"Love you...."
"Henry-"
"Always...."
"Oh God oh God-"
"World enough...."
"No!"
"And time...."
"Henry!"
I hate to think of you waiting. I know you have been waiting for me all your life, always uncertain of how long this patch of waiting would be. Ten minutes, ten days. A month. What an uncertain husband I have been, Clare, like a sailor, Odysseus alone and buffeted by tall waves, sometimes wily and sometimes just a plaything of the gods. Please, Clare. When I am dead. Stop waiting and be free...I have given you a life of suspended animation. I don't mean to say you have done nothing. You have created beauty, and meaning, in your art, and Alba, who is so amazing, and for me: for me you have been everything.