The Jack Finney Reader

by Jack Finney

  Fred dropped in one evening when Liz and I were doing the supper dishes. On invitation, he poured himself some coffee from the pot on the stove, sat down at the kitchen table, and for a few minutes made small talk. Then, in the same casual way he'd been talking about the weather, he said, Looks as though I might be losing my job soon.

  We swung around and stared at him, Liz's hands motionless in the dishwater and me holding a towel and the top of the roaster.

  You're kidding, I said. Why, you've been with that same company over fifteen years!

  Fred smiled a little. Closer to twenty, and maybe that's the trouble — I've been there too long. Long enough to come up through the whole accounting department to treasurer. I might be better off now if I had a smaller job. Because looks as though we're going to merge with United Tool — or be absorbed, is more like it. We're one of the biggest of the small companies in the industry, but we're still small. United is one of the largest, and if they take us over — he shrugged and picked up his coffee cup — well, they've already got a treasurer, and they don't need two. There'll be no place for me.

  Liz snapped her hands at the wrists, shaking the suds off; she's mad when she does that. And your company's just going to stand by and let that happen to you?

  What else can they do? They don't own United, you know.

  And United doesn't own them. Not yet. She yanked out a chair, sat down facing him, and leaned toward him angrily. They can just refuse the offer, that's all, unless they take you along with the deal.

  Fred smiled tolerantly at me, then said, Things aren't done that way, Liz. There's too much at stake. If the merger goes through, and it will, I might as well face it now. I'll be out looking for a job.

  Standing there, drying the roaster lid, I said uncomfortably, Well, you won't have any trouble getting one, Fred, with all your experience. Probably an even better job.

  He grinned and said, There speaks a young man.

  Fred was a lot older than Liz and me, though we'd been good friends ever since his wife died two years earlier. We'd known both the Gutmanns before that, but only in a polite, nod-to-the-neighbors sort of way. We lived next door in a small tract of new houses across the bay from San Francisco; but I'd never been in their house, and only Mrs. Gutmann had been in ours — to borrow some sugar or something. But when she died — suddenly, after being sick only a month — Liz was a tremendous help to Fred in a thousand practical little ways. She saw that he got meals and that he ate them. She helped with funeral arrangements and put up Mrs. Gutmann's two out-of-town sisters in our spare bedroom. And she made Fred eat breakfast and supper at our house for several weeks after he started to work again. I helped, too, in various ways. Between us, we got Fred through a bad time, and we'd been friends ever since.

  Now he said, You're what? Still in your twenties. Liz not even twenty-five yet. But I'm forty-six years old, Dan. He sat looking at me the way people do when they make that kind of announcement; hardly anyone ever thinks he looks his age.

  I made the proper response, and so did Liz; but while I sort of mumbled, Liz laid it on without a second's hesitation. You're not! I don't believe it! And Fred looked pleased.

  I believed it, though, puttering around in the kitchen there, putting away some dishes I'd dried. Fred was a middle-aged thirty or forty pounds overweight and obviously had been for years. He was quite bald, and the three-inch band of hair wrapped around the back of his head from one temple to the other was as much gray as brown. His face wasn't wrinkled, except for two or three lines across his forehead; but he had a plump double chin and wore bifocals. Sitting there in an ancient brown button-down-the-front sweater, Fred pulled out a tobacco pouch and a stubby little pipe, and I knew that if I'd had to guess his age, I might have said fifty.

  You may not realize it, he was saying, but it's tough getting a job after you're forty — damn near impossible, as a matter of fact. I know; I've seen them apply at our place. And we won't hire them. Over forty, most places don't want you. And in some places, they've dropped the limit to thirty-five.

  Well, it's absolutely idiotic, Liz said. She was furious. You aren't old or even close. Why should it matter what —

  Fred held up a hand to shut her off. He had his pipe in his mouth and had fished some big wooden matches out of his sweater pocket. He snapped one alight with his thumbnail, sucked the flame into his pipe, then shook out the match, saying, It shouldn't. It doesn't make sense. I've got twenty years' valuable experience and maybe a good twenty-five more years to use it in. Physically, I'm in the very prime of my life, and I'm not kidding myself; it's true. Just the same, that's how things are, and maybe I better figure out what to do before the ax actually falls. I'd like your ideas on it, Dan. That's why I stopped by. Fred folded his forearms on the table and looked up at me. This was what was bothering him; this was the question he'd come to ask. Do you think I'd be justified in lying about my age when I start hunting a job?

  I never got a chance to answer or even think about it. Liz's chair scraped back, and she jumped up, screaming, Justified? Justified! Knuckles on the table top, she leaned down to stare at Fred. They throw you out of one place after twenty years and won't hire you anywhere else because of some stupid, moronic, senseless, arbitrary age requirement, probably thought up by a bunch of idiots a lot older than you are — she stopped to suck in a breath — and you want to know if it's okay to tell a little white lie about it! Sometimes I think men are insane. You're crazy. All of you. She turned to glare at me, then swung back to Fred. What are you supposed to do? Starve to death with a sweet smile of resignation on your face?

  Fred sat puffing his pipe. He nodded thoughtfully and said, Course there's my Social Security number. It's a low one. I've had it from the start, back in thirty-five. Some company accountant might guess my age from that.

  Take a new name! Liz's fists were on her hips now. Start a new Social Security account. Tell 'em you just moved down from Canada or something.

  He smiled and said No need to be that drastic. Then he nodded and, with an air of slow, careful, and final decision, said, Yep, you're right. I'm forced into lying. What do you think, Dan?

  What could I say? How can you lie? Your age is written all over you! Anyway, I didn't have any better advice, so I just looked thoughtful, nodding a little.

  Fred took that for agreement. Just what I've been thinking, he said. Matter of fact, I've already started dieting. I've lost eight pounds. I looked at him closely and saw it was true; he was a little thinner — not that it mattered. I'll lose another fifteen or so in the next month or six weeks, Fred said, and smiled reminiscently. For years, I weighed within a pound or two of a hundred and fifty. Wasn't till I was in my thirties that I began putting it on. Now I'm going to get back to a hundred and fifty again.

  He sat nodding to himself, smiling a little, smoking his pipe, and I felt so sorry for him I had to turn away. Only two years before, he'd had everything he wanted, except children; he was happily married, had a nice home, a good job, and was content. Now he was well on his way to losing everything, and I wondered what this kind of complete personal disaster would do to him when he finally had to face the truth.

  We didn't see Fred for a month; he seemed to be avoiding us, and I wondered if he had guessed the hopeless truth and was embarrassed. Occasionally, eating breakfast in the kitchen, Liz or I would catch a glimpse of him going to work, and at night we'd see lights across the way. But it was over four weeks before he dropped in again and we saw him up close — and later that night, Liz told me she felt sick about the foolish encouragement we'd given Fred Gutmann.

  He appeared in our kitchen doorway, just as we were finishing supper, and stood beaming at us, he was so ridiculously proud of himself. He had been avoiding us; he wanted to surprise us, he said. Well, he did that, all right. For years, Fred had weighed around one eighty or a little more, and he was only average height and not large-boned; he'd just missed being fat. Now he was down to a hundred and forty-five pounds. He was
so thin he'd had to buy all new clothes, he said proudly; even shoes, because his feet were actually thinner; and even neckties, because the old ones were wrinkled in the wrong places now.

  Leaning against the doorjamb, ankles jauntily crossed, hands in his pants pockets to hold his coat open and reveal the new washboard flatness of his shirt front, Fred happily refused Liz's invitation to have dessert with us. He didn't eat desserts any more, he said, grinning at us in his foolish young man's narrow-legged pants and snug coat, and I suppose he was as thin and flat bellied as he'd been at twenty. But, oh, my lord, his face!

  I talked fast, almost chattering, complimenting Fred on the weight he'd lost, trying to keep what I felt from showing. Because now, if anything, poor Fred Gutmann looked years older. The nearly forty pounds he'd lost hadn't conveniently disappeared from his waistline only. The layers of fat that had plumped out his cheeks and neck, more and more every year, were suddenly gone, and his cheeks were gaunt.

  To top it off, both literally and figuratively, he was bald as ever, of course, and as gray or grayer, and the bifocal glasses didn't hide the fact that the pouches under those smiling eyes sagged deeper than before.

  Liz suddenly pushed back her chair and busied herself carrying dishes to the sink, keeping her back to Fred. I sneaked a look at her and saw that she was close to tears.

  Then Fred spoke again, and she swung around, frightened. I'm going into the hospital tomorrow morning, he said. Liz and I had the same thought: He'd gone too far with his dieting. Oh, nothing serious, he said quickly. Just didn't want you worrying about where I was. He told us what he was going to do, and suddenly I understood what I should never have forgotten — that we weren't the only ones with any sense in our heads. Fred was no fool and never had been, and everything Liz and I knew, he knew as well and understood a lot better.

  Fred lifted his hands shoulder high, the middle and forefingers opening into V's. He raised the two V's to the sides of his face, touching them to the spaces between the ears and the corners of the eyes. His fingertips found exactly the right spots; then his arms rose half an inch — and a little miracle took place: the skin stretched flat to the cheeks, the chin-line taut, the pouches under the eyes smoothed flat. He spoke very quickly. I'm embarrassed to even say it, but I'm going through with it, just the same. There's more to a successful lie than just opening your mouth. Tomorrow morning, I'm having my face lifted. He turned and disappeared through the door, and though I ran to the window and yelled after him, he wouldn't say where he was going or even turn around; he didn't want visitors.

  The day he came out of the hospital, he stood in the kitchen, grinning at us. The change was even greater than he'd demonstrated, and now it was permanent. We just stared. Fred's cheeks were so flat and lean they were almost hungry-looking. His clean-cut jaw and slim neck formed a sharp, taut right angle. The skin under his eyes was smoother than mine, and there were no wrinkles at all except for the few in his forehead.

  Liz and I must have looked at him for minutes. Before, the lopping off of years had been successful up to the neck; now it reached to his eyebrows. Above, almost incongruously, was the bald grayness of middle age; but I knew Fred was aware of that, too.

  Curiously, I said, What happened at work?

  Nobody knew. They thought I'd been home with flu, and a couple people said I looked rested. The fact is, Dan, people don't pay as much attention to us as we sometimes think. They know it's me and that however I look must be the way I've always looked. It would never enter anyone's head that I'd have my face lifted.

  Thursday, we saw the rest of the change. Fred phoned and asked us over for a drink. But it took me twenty minutes, sitting on the patio back of Fred's house, to figure out why he looked different again. Actually, it was Liz who understood first. She'd been sipping her drink, sneaking puzzled little looks at Fred. He sat facing us, glass in hand, one leg over the arm of his wood-and-canvas chair. He was wearing gray flannel slacks, black loafers, and an almost skin-tight jersey-knit white shirt.

  Suddenly Liz said, You've dyed your hair!

  Fred grinned. All my life I'd thought you could always tell dyed hair; but you couldn't tell this, even close up, and I asked Fred why.

  Because hardly anyone has hair entirely the same shade, he said. Even black hair will have some dark brown in it, and under direct sunlight, especially right after washing, you may see flecks of red. A dye job that's all one shade is a dead giveaway. But look at this. He turned his head in profile. It's not just brown, but yellow brown, even blond, here and there. And did you notice the occasional single white hair? Each one was coated in advance, so it wouldn't take the dye. How's that for the clincher? He smiled, shrugging a little, and said, This kind of job takes a long time and costs plenty. And I'll have to repeat it every month, with touch-ups in between. But I'll do it. He stood up abruptly and walked into the house.

  He was back in less than a minute, and all I could do was sit and gape. I heard Liz actually gasp. He had a full head of light-brown blondish hair, identical with his own even to the occasional white hair here and there. It was slightly wavy, and it looked thick, handsome, and absolutely real. It took weeks to make, Fred said. There's not a person in the world could tell it was a wig. Then he pointed to his eyes, and I realized that, for the first time in my life, I was seeing Fred without glasses. He said, Contact lenses; bifocal. And if you don't think that takes some getting used to, try it. But now I can wear them all day. I think I'm ready, and Monday I begin job hunting. He handed me a gray cardboard folder, saying, I may have to leave photographs or even mail some, so I've had one taken. What do you think?

  I studied the portrait. It was a head-and-shoulders, three-quarter view. Liz leaned close to look at it, too, both of us glancing up at Fred once or twice, comparing. Good, I said then. A very good likeness. Which it was. Where'd you have the photograph taken?

  In Chicago, he said, and when I frowned, he looked at me closely, making sure I was genuinely puzzled. Then he said, It was right after I got out of the Army, three months before my thirtieth birthday.

  After a moment, Liz said slowly, Well, Fred, you were — you are, I mean! — a very handsome man. And from the astonishment in her voice, Fred knew, as I did, that she meant what she said.

  He smiled and said quietly, Not Fred. Not any more. Frederick's my middle name. I sign things J. Frederick Gutmann. The J is for John, and from now on, it's Jack. And when I get a job, it'll be as Jack Goodman. Fred Gutmann's okay for a middle-aged man — he grinned at us — but I think Jack Goodman suits me better now.

  So do I, Liz said slowly and emphatically, then repeated it softly. So do I.

  I glanced at her, then looked at Fred again. The changes he'd made in his appearance had come gradually, one at a time. Each time, it was still Fred, though; looking different, but still Fred. But now, suddenly, I saw the sum of the changes all at once, saw the total effect. And there, a leg negligently and gracefully over one arm of his chair, smiling at me and my wife, sat a thin-bodied, lean-faced, youthful-eyed man, who — to the eye — was quite obviously still in his twenties. He was slimmer than I was — I don't seem to get much chance to exercise any more — his face was leaner and had fewer lines, his hair was thicker, and he was a lot handsomer than I'd ever been. I glanced at Liz once more and saw that unmistakable look of speculative admiration a woman gets in her eye when she sees a man she thinks genuinely attractive. I stood up and said I thought it was time to go home. And several times that evening, I reminded Liz — and myself — that the man next door was, after all, still only middle-aged old Fred Gutmann.

  He got the first job he applied for, the chief accountant for a big candy company on Battery Street. He applied Monday, was interviewed by several people; they phoned Tuesday to ask when he could start; and ten days later, a week before his old company announced its merger plans, Jack Goodman began his new job and life.

  Two weeks passed, and we suddenly realized we hadn't seen Jack even once. There were signs
of life at his place now and then, though not many; but he didn't drop in, and twice, when I wandered over of an evening, he wasn't there. A week or so later, I found out why.

  I work in the design department of a big paper-products company. One of our salesmen wanted me to have drinks with a prospective customer after work, and he took us to Cappa's, an expensive place over in North Beach.

  We went in, then stood just inside the doorway, the way people seem to do nowadays, helplessly waiting for someone to show up and lead them like sheep to one of the many empty booths or tables, all in perfectly plain sight. I looked around — I don't get into such places too often — and when my eyes got used to the light after the sunlight outside, I saw lean, good-looking Jack Goodman sitting in a big, leather-padded booth. He was with a lean — but not too lean, by just exactly the right amount — spectacularly good-looking girl. In fact, she was the best-looking girl I'd seen in six months; gloriously brown-blonde hair the color of new motor oil, a flawless complexion, and a figure that sort of dried out your lips. What's more, she looked likable — intelligent and nice — sitting there listening to Jack, with a smile of pleasure and interest on her sweet lips.

  I don't mean for a moment that I envied Jack, with this lovely girl. Not at all. Actually, as I told myself at the time, the very fact that he was here with her showed how essentially lonely he was — though he was concealing it well — and I felt sorry for him. Truly sorry,