【时间旅行者的妻子】20

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I roll over onto my back and Henry props¹ his head on his hand and looks down at me. Our faces are about six inches apart. It’s so strange to be talking, almost like we always did, but the physical proximity² makes it hard for me to concentrate.

　“Did I tell you things?” he asks.

　“Sometimes. When you felt like it, or had to.”

　“Like what?”

　“See? You do want to know. But I’m not telling.”

　Henry laughs. “Serves me right. Hey, I’m hungry. Let’s go get breakfast.”

　Outside it’s chilly³. Cars and cyclists cruise along Dearborn while couples stroll down the sidewalks and there we are with them, in the morning sunlight, hand in hand, finally together for anyone to see. I feel a tiny pang⁴ of regret, as though I’ve lost a secret, and then a rush of exaltation: now everything begins.

　

A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING

　Sunday, June 16, 1968

　

HENRY: The first time was magical. How could I have known what it meant? It was my fifth birthday, and we went to the Field Museum of Natural History. I don’t think I had ever been to the Field Museum before. My parents had been telling me all week about the wonders to be seen there, the stuffed elephants in the great hall, the dinosaur⁵ skeletons, the caveman dioramas. Mom had just gotten back from Sydney, and she had brought me an immense, surpassingly blue butterfly, Papilio ulysses, mounted in a frame filled with cotton. I would hold it close to my face, so close I couldn’t see anything but that blue. It would fill me with a feeling, a feeling I later tried to duplicate with alcohol and finally found again with Clare, a feeling of unity⁶, oblivion, mindlessness in the best sense of the word. My parents described the cases and cases of butterflies, hummingbirds⁷, beetles⁸. I was so excited that I woke up before dawn. I put on my gym shoes and took my Papilio ulysses and went into the backyard and down the steps to the river in my pajamas⁹.

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