Portable Childhoods Page 11

  “And you’re Mrs.—?” he asks, looking down at his typewritten list.

  “Dr. McCullough,” I say coolly, and give him an even stare. “Mr. Chambers is out of town. He asked me to take his place.”

  After a moment’s hesitation he nods, and writes my name on a white card, pinning it to my lapel like a corsage.

  Ballroom A is a sea of gray suits, crew cuts, bow-ties, and heavy black-rimmed glasses. Almost everyone is male, as I expected, and almost everyone is smoking, which surprises me. Over in one corner is a knot of women in bright cocktail dresses, each with a lacquered football helmet of hair. Barbie’s cultural foremothers.

  I accept a canapé from a passing waiter and ease my way to the corner. Which one is Dr. Clarke? I stand a few feet back, scanning name-tags. Mrs. Niels Bohr. Mrs. Richard Feynman. Mrs. Ernest Lawrence. I am impressed by the company I’m in, and dismayed that none of the women has a name of her own. I smile an empty cocktail party smile as I move away from the wives and scan the room. Gray suits with a sprinkling of blue, but all male. Did I arrive too early?

  I am looking for a safe corner, one with a large, sheltering potted palm, when I hear a blustery male voice say, “So, Dr. Clarke. Trying the H.G. Wells route, are you? Waste of the taxpayer’s money, all that science fiction stuff, don’t you think?”

  A woman’s voice answers. “Not at all. Perhaps I can change your mind at Monday’s session.” I can’t see her yet, but her voice is smooth and rich, with a bit of a lilt or a brogue—one of those vocal clues that says “I’m not an American.” I stand rooted to the carpet, so awestruck I’m unable to move.

  “Jimmy, will you see if there’s more champagne about?” I hear her ask. I see a motion in the sea of gray and astonish myself by flagging a waiter and taking two slender flutes from his tray. I step forward in the direction of her voice. “Here you go,” I say, trying to keep my hand from shaking. “I’ve got an extra.”

  “How very resourceful of you,” she laughs. I am surprised that she is a few inches shorter than me. I’d forgotten she’d be about my age. She takes the glass and offers me her other hand. “Sara Clarke,” she says.

  “Carol McCullough.” I touch her palm. The room seems suddenly bright and the voices around me fade into a murmur. I think for a moment that I’m dematerializing back to 2006, but nothing so dramatic happens. I’m just so stunned that I forget to breathe while I look at her.

  Since I was ten years old, no matter where we lived, I have had a picture of Sara Baxter Clarke over my desk. I cut it out of that old physics magazine. It is grainy, black and white, the only photo of her I’ve ever found. In it, she’s who I always wanted to be—competent, serious, every inch a scientist. She wears a white lab coat and a pair of rim-less glasses, her hair pulled back from her face. A bald man in an identical lab coat is showing her a piece of equipment. Neither of them is smiling.

  I know every inch of that picture by heart. But I didn’t know that her hair was a coppery red, or that her eyes were such a deep, clear green. And until this moment, it had never occurred to me that she could laugh.

  The slender blond man standing next to her interrupts my reverie. “I’m Jim Kennedy, Sara’s assistant.”

  Jim Kennedy. Her fiancé. I feel like the characters in my favorite novel are all coming to life, one by one.

  “You’re not a wife, are you?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “Post-doc. I’ve only been at Cal a month.”

  He smiles. “We’re neighbors, then. What’s your field?”

  I take a deep breath. “Tempokinetics. I’m a great admirer of Dr. Clarke’s work.” The blustery man scowls at me and leaves in search of other prey.

  “Really?” Dr. Clarke turns, raising one eyebrow in surprise. “Well, then we should have a chat. Are you—?” She stops in mid-sentence and swears almost inaudibly. “Damn. It’s Dr. Wilkins and I must be pleasant. He’s quite a muckety-muck at the NSF, and I need the funding.” She takes a long swallow of champagne, draining the crystal flute. “Jimmy, why don’t you get Dr. McCullough another drink and see if you can persuade her to join us for supper.”

  I start to make a polite protest, but Jimmy takes my elbow and steers me through the crowd to an unoccupied sofa. Half an hour later we are deep in a discussion of quantum field theory when Dr. Clarke appears and says, “Let’s make a discreet exit, shall we? I’m famished.”

  Like conspirators, we slip out a side door and down a flight of service stairs. The Powell Street cable car takes us over Nob Hill into North Beach, the Italian section of town. We walk up Columbus to one of my favorite restaurants—the New Pisa—where I discover that nothing much has changed in fifty years except the prices.

  The waiter brings a carafe of red wine and a trio of squat drinking glasses and we eat family style—bowls of pasta with red sauce and steaming loaves of crusty garlic bread. I am speechless as Sara Baxter Clarke talks about her work, blithely answering questions I have wanted to ask my whole life. She is brilliant, fascinating. And beautiful. My food disappears without me noticing a single mouthful.

  Over coffee and spumoni she insists, for the third time, that I call her Sara, and asks me about my own studies. I have to catch myself a few times, biting back citations from Stephen Hawking and other works that won’t be published for decades. It is such an engrossing, exhilarating conversation, I can’t bring myself to shift it to Chambers’s agenda. We leave when we notice the restaurant has no other customers.

  “How about a nightcap?” she suggests when we reach the sidewalk.

  “Not for me,” Jimmy begs off. “I’ve got an 8:30 symposium tomorrow morning. But why don’t you two go on ahead. The Paper Doll is just around the corner.”

  Sara gives him an odd, cold look and shakes her head. “Not funny, James,” she says, and glances over at me. I shrug noncommittally. It seems they have a private joke I’m not in on.

  “Just a thought,” he says, then kisses her on the cheek and leaves. Sara and I walk down to Vesuvio’s, one of the bars where Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, and Ginsberg spawned the Beat Generation. Make that will spawn. I think we’re a few months too early.

  Sara orders another carafe of raw red wine. I feel shy around her, intimidated, I guess. I’ve dreamed of meeting her for so long, and I want her to like me. As we begin to talk, we discover how similar, and lonely, our childhoods were. We were raised as only children. We both begged for chemistry sets we never got. We were expected to know how to iron, not know about ions. Midway through her second glass of wine, Sara sighs.

  “Oh, bugger it all. Nothing’s really changed, you know. It’s still just snickers and snubs. I’m tired of fighting for a seat in the old boys’ club. Monday’s paper represents five years of hard work, and there aren’t a handful of people at this entire conference who’ve had the decency to treat me as anything but a joke.” She squeezes her napkin into a tighter and tighter wad, and a tear trickles down her cheek. “How do you stand it, Carol?”

  How can I tell her? I’ve stood it because of you. You’re my hero. I’ve always asked myself what Sara Baxter Clarke would do, and steeled myself to push through. But now she’s not a hero. She’s real, this woman across the table from me. This Sara’s not the invincible, ever-practical scientist I always thought she was. She’s as young and as vulnerable as I am.

  I want to ease her pain the way that she, as my imaginary mentor, has always eased mine. I reach over and put my hand over hers; she stiffens, but she doesn’t pull away. Her hand is soft under mine, and I think of touching her hair, gently brushing the red tendrils off the back of her neck, kissing the salty tears on her cheek.

  Maybe I’ve always had a crush on Sara Baxter Clarke. But I can’t be falling in love with her. She’s straight. She’s fifty years older than I am. And in the back of my mind, the chilling voice of reality reminds me that she’ll also be dead in two days. I can’t reconcile that with the vibrant woman sitting in this smoky North Beach bar. I don’t want to. I drink two more glasses
of wine and hope that will silence the voice long enough for me to enjoy these few moments.

  We are still talking, our fingertips brushing on the scarred wooden tabletop, when the bartender announces last call. “Oh, bloody hell,” she says. “I’ve been having such a lovely time I’ve gone and missed the last ferry. I hope I have enough for the cab fare. My Chevy’s over in the car park at Berkeley.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I hear myself say. “I’ve got a room at the hotel. Come back with me and catch the ferry in the morning.” It’s the wine talking. I don’t know what I’ll do if she says yes. I want her to say yes so much.

  “No, I couldn’t impose. I’ll simply—” she protests, and then stops. “Oh, yes, then. Thank you. It’s very generous.”

  So here we are. At 2:00 a.m. the hotel lobby is plush and utterly empty. We ride up in the elevator in a sleepy silence that becomes awkward as soon as we are alone in the room. I nervously gather my new clothes off the only bed and gesture to her to sit down. I pull a t-shirt out of its crinkly cellophane wrapper. “Here,” I hand it to her. “It’s not elegant, but it’ll have to do as a nightgown.”

  She looks at the t-shirt in her lap, and at the dungarees and black sneakers in my arms, an odd expression on her face. Then she sighs, a deep, achey-sounding sigh. It’s the oddest reaction to a t-shirt I’ve ever heard.

  “The Paper Doll would have been all right, wouldn’t it?” she asks softly.

  Puzzled, I stop crinkling the other cellophane wrapper and lean against the dresser. “I guess so. I’ve never been there.” She looks worried, so I keep talking. “But there are a lot of places I haven’t been. I’m new in town. Just got here. Don’t know anybody yet, haven’t really gotten around. What kind of place is it?”

  She freezes for a moment, then says, almost in a whisper, “It’s a bar for women.”

  “Oh,” I nod. “Well, that’s okay.” Why would Jimmy suggest a gay bar? It’s an odd thing to tell your fiancée. Did he guess about me somehow? Or maybe he just thought we’d be safer there late at night, since—

  My musings—and any other rational thoughts—come to a dead stop when Sara Baxter Clarke stands up, cups my face in both her hands and kisses me gently on the lips. She pulls away, just a few inches, and looks at me.

  I can’t believe this is happening. “Aren’t you—isn’t Jimmy—?”

  “He’s my dearest chum, and my partner in the lab. But romantically? No. Protective camouflage. For both of us,” she answers, stroking my face.

  I don’t know what to do. Every dream I’ve ever had is coming true tonight. But how can I kiss her? How can I begin something I know is doomed? She must see the indecision in my face, because she looks scared, and starts to take a step backward. And I can’t let her go. Not yet. I put my hand on the back of her neck and pull her into a second, longer kiss.

  We move to the bed after a few minutes. I feel shy, not wanting to make a wrong move. But she kisses my face, my neck, and pulls me down onto her. We begin slowly, cautiously undressing each other. I fumble at the unfamiliar garter belts and stockings, and she smiles, undoing the rubber clasps for me. Her slender body is pale and freckled, her breasts small with dusty pink nipples.

  Her fingers gently stroke my arms, my thighs. When I hesitantly put my mouth on her breast, she moans, deep in her throat, and laces her fingers through my hair. After a minute her hands ease my head down her body. The hair between her legs is ginger, the ends dark and wet. I taste the salty musk of her when I part her lips with my tongue. She moans again, almost a growl. When she comes it is a single, fierce explosion.

  We finally fall into an exhausted sleep, spooned around each other, both t-shirts still crumpled on the floor.

  Saturday, February 18, 1956. 7:00 a.m.

  Light comes through a crack in the curtains. I’m alone in a strange bed. I’m sure last night was a dream, but then I hear the shower come on in the bathroom. Sara emerges a few minutes later, toweling her hair. She smiles and leans over me—warm and wet and smelling of soap.

  “I have to go,” she whispers, and kisses me.

  I want to ask if I’ll see her again, want to pull her down next to me and hold her for hours. But I just stroke her hair and say nothing.

  She sits on the edge of the bed. “I’ve got an eleven o’clock lab, and there’s another dreadful cocktail thing at Stanford this evening. I’d give it a miss, but Shockley’s going to be there, and he’s front runner for the next Nobel, so I have to make an appearance. Meet me after?”

  “Yes,” I say, breathing again. “Where?”

  “Why don’t you take the train down. I’ll pick you up at the Palo Alto station at half-past seven and we can drive to the coast for dinner. Wear those nice black trousers. If it’s not too dreary, we’ll walk on the beach.”

  She picks up her wrinkled suit from the floor where it landed last night, and gets dressed. “Half past seven, then?” she says, and kisses my cheek. The door clicks shut and she’s gone.

  I lie tangled in the sheets, and curl up into the pillow like a contented cat. I am almost asleep again when an image intrudes—a crumpled Chevy on the rocks below Devil’s Slide. It’s like a fragment of a nightmare, not quite real in the morning light. But which dream is real now?

  Until last night, part of what had made Sara Baxter Clarke so compelling was her enigmatic death. Like Amelia Earhart or James Dean, she had been a brilliant star that ended so abruptly she became legendary. Larger than life. But I can still feel where her lips brushed my cheek. Now she’s very much life-size, and despite Chambers’s warnings, I will do anything to keep her that way.

  Saturday, February 18, 1956. 7:20 p.m.

  The platform at the Palo Alto train station is cold and windy. I’m glad I’m wearing a sweater, but it makes my suit jacket uncomfortably tight across my shoulders. I’ve finished the newspaper and am reading the train schedule when Sara comes up behind me.

  “Hullo there,” she says. She’s wearing a nubby beige dress under a dark wool coat and looks quite elegant.

  “Hi.” I reach to give her a hug, but she steps back.

  “Have you gone mad?” she says, scowling. She crosses her arms over her chest. “What on earth were you thinking?”

  “Sorry.” I’m not sure what I’ve done. “It’s nice to see you,” I say hesitantly.

  “Yes, well, me too. But you can’t just—oh, you know,” she says, waving her hand.

  I don’t, so I shrug. She gives me an annoyed look, then turns and opens the car door. I stand on the pavement for a minute, bewildered, then get in.

  Her Chevy feels huge compared to the Toyota I drive at home, and there are no seatbelts. We drive in uncomfortable silence all through Palo Alto and onto the winding, two-lane road that leads to the coast. Our second date isn’t going well.

  After about ten minutes, I can’t stand it any more. “I’m sorry about the hug. I guess it’s still a big deal here, huh?”

  She turns her head slightly, still keeping her eyes on the road. “Here?” she asks. “What utopia are you from, then?”

  I spent the day wandering the city in a kind of haze, alternately giddy in love and worrying about this moment. How can I tell her where—when—I’m from? And how much should I tell her about why? I count to three, and then count again before I answer. “From the future.”

  “Very funny,” she says. I can hear in her voice that she’s hurt. She stares straight ahead again.

  “Sara, I’m serious. Your work on time travel isn’t just theory. I’m a post-doc at Cal. In 2006. The head of the Physics department, Dr. Chambers, sent me back here to talk to you. He says he worked with you and Jimmy, back before he won the Nobel Prize.”

  She doesn’t say anything for a minute, then pulls over onto a wide place at the side of the road. She switches off the engine and turns toward me.

  “Ray Chambers? The Nobel Prize? Jimmy says he can barely do his own lab work.” She shakes her head, then lights a cigarette, flicking the match ou
t the window into the darkness. “Ray set you up for this, didn’t he? To get back at Jimmy for last term’s grade? Well, it’s a terrible joke,” she says, turning away, “and you are one of the cruelest people I have ever met.”

  “Sara, it’s not a joke. Please believe me.” I reach across the seat to take her hand, but she jerks it away.

  I take a deep breath, trying deperately to think of something that will convince her. “Look, I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out. In September, Modern Physics is going to publish an article about you and your work. When I was ten years old—in 1985—I read it sitting on the back porch of my father’s quarters at Fort Ord. That article inspired me to go into science. I read about you, and I knew when I grew up I wanted to travel through time.”

  She stubs out her cigarette. “Go on.”

  So I tell her all about my academic career, and my “assignment” from Chambers. She listens without interrupting me. I can’t see her expression in the darkened car.

  After I finish, she says nothing, then sighs. “This is rather a lot to digest, you know. But I can’t very well believe in my work without giving your story some credence, can I?” She lights another cigarette, then asks the question I’ve been dreading. “So if you’ve come all this way to offer me an enormous sum for my paper, does that mean something happened to it—or to me?” I still can’t see her face, but her voice is shaking.

  I can’t do it. I can’t tell her. I grope for a convincing lie. “There was a fire. A lot of papers were lost. Yours is the one they want.”

  “I’m not a faculty member at your Cal, am I?”

  “No.”

  She takes a long drag on her cigarette, then asks, so softly I can barely hear her, “Am I—?” She lets her question trail off and is silent for a minute, then sighs again. “No, I won’t ask. I think I prefer to bumble about like other mortals. You’re a dangerous woman, Carol McCullough. I’m afraid you can tell me too many things I have no right to know.” She reaches for the ignition key, then stops. “There is one thing I must know, though. Was last night as carefully planned as everything else?”