FIRST DATE, ONE
Saturday, October 26, 1991 (Henry is 28, Clare is 20)
CLARE: The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble. I sign the Visitors' Log: Clare
Abshire, 11:15 10-26-91 Special Collections. I have never been in the Newberry Library before, and now that I've gotten
past the dark, foreboding entrance I am excited. I have a sort of Christmas-morning sense of the library as a big box full of
beautiful books. The elevator is dimly lit, almost silent. I stop on the third floor and fill out an application for a Reader's
Card, then I go upstairs to Special Collections. My boot heels rap the wooden floor. The room is quiet and crowded, full of
solid, heavy tables piled with books and surrounded by readers. Chicago autumn morning light shines through the tall
windows. I approach the desk and collect a stack of call slips. I'm writing a paper for an art history class. My research
topic is the Kelmscott Press Chaucer. I look up the book itself and fill out a call slip for it. But I also want to read about
papermaking at Kelmscott. The catalog is confusing. I go back to the desk to ask for help. As I explain to the woman what
I am trying to find, she glances over my shoulder at someone passing behind me. "Perhaps Mr. DeTamble can help you,"
she says. I turn, prepared to start explaining again, and find myself face to face with Henry.
I am speechless. Here is Henry, calm, clothed, younger than I have ever seen him. Henry is working at the Newberry
Library, standing in front of me, in the present. Here and now. I am jubilant. Henry is looking at me patiently, uncertain but
polite.
"Is there something I can help you with?" he asks.
"Henry!" I can barely refrain from throwing my arms around him. It is obvious that he has never seen me before in his
life.
"Have we met? I'm sorry, I don't..." Henry is glancing around us, worrying that readers, co-workers are noticing us,
searching his memory and realizing that some future self of his has met this radiantly happy girl standing in front of him.
The last time I saw him he was sucking my toes in the Meadow.
I try to explain. "I'm Clare Abshire. I knew you when I was a little girl.,." I'm at a loss because I am in love with a man
who is standing before me with no memories of me at all. Everything is in the future for him. I want to laugh at the
weirdness of the whole thing. I'm flooded with years of knowledge of Henry, while he's looking at me perplexed and
fearful. Henry wearing my dad's old fishing trousers, patiently quizzing me on multiplication tables, French verbs, all the
state capitals; Henry laughing at some peculiar lunch my seven-year-old self has brought to the Meadow; Henry wearing
a tuxedo, undoing the studs of his shirt with shaking hands on my eighteenth birthday. Here! Now! "Come and have
coffee with me, or dinner or something..." Surely he has to say yes, this Henry who loves me in the past and the future
must love me now in some bat-squeak echo of other time. To my immense relief he does say yes. We plan to meet
