by Jack Finney
I described my invention, sketching it on the back of an envelope, and naturally Cus didn’t think the zipper would work; I had to admit to myself that it did sound ridiculous, even to me. Cus didn’t think the name would catch on either, but he agreed to handle it for me and took my drawing for the patent search and application. It would cost money, he reminded me, but I didn’t care; visionary though I might be, I had faith in the zipper.
It was odd, what happened then. We’d never been friends; this was just a guy I’d happened to go to school with, and I hadn’t seen him for quite a while in either world. But when I stood up, there in his office, time to say goodbye, I suddenly didn’t want to lose Custer. Here in this world, of course, I remembered everything about all my previous life in it. So did Custer, naturally. But unlike Custer, I also recalled life in another alternate world—about which the Custer Huppfelt of this world knew nothing. I still had my memory of that world, so this meeting with Custer was almost like being in another country and suddenly running into someone from your old hometown. At home you’d just nod in passing, but in another country you have dinner together. And now I was more pleased than I’d have thought possible at running into Custer Huppfelt. He played bridge, I remembered, and so did his girl, he said when I asked, so I invited them over for a game that evening; practically insisted, in fact.
Tess was pleased when I told her. We were having dinner, and I said, “You know what we’re going to do this evening?” She said, “Of course,” and I said, “No; I’ve invited some people to play bridge.”
When the doorbell rang a little after eight, she hurried in from the kitchen where she’d been fixing some refreshments for later. I was sitting at the card table, set up in the middle of the living room; I’d just finished checking the two bridge decks for missing cards and concealed jokers. Waiting, I sat practicing the shuffle in which you bend the deck like an arc in one hand so that the cards flutter up into the other. Tess opened the door, and I heard Custer’s voice in the building hallway. Then they all walked into the apartment, I saw them, and the muscles of my hands lost their strength, the cards shooting toward the ceiling in a black-white-and-red spray, because the politely smiling girl standing in my living room with Custer was Hetty.
They turned at the sound and sight of the flying cards, and Custer smiled complacently; he thought I’d let them go purposely, a little joke in tribute to his girl, and he said something mildly humorous which I answered but didn’t hear. No senses were working coherently, and certainly my brain wasn’t. I was able to press the soles of my shoes against the carpet under the bridge table, causing my body to rise into a gorillalike posture of semi-erectness, staring at Hetty like Quasimodo as played by Lon Chaney. But there was no possible mistake.
There in a pink linen dress, with shoes, purse, and hat to match, blond as ever, small as ever, and thinner by a dozen pounds, stood my wife, and I panicked. Did she know me? Would she shriek in outrage at finding me living here with Tessie? I watched myself walk toward them, a diseased smile on my face. Custer introduced us to Hetty, and when she spoke she put out her hand, and I took it—the hand, I realized, that had stroked my cheek, smoothed my hair, mended my clothes, cooked my meals, tickled me, and once slapped my face. And as I acknowledged our introduction, speaking in tongues, I looked into Hetty’s eyes and saw that she didn’t know me from Calvin Coolidge.
I couldn’t help it: “We’ve met before, haven’t we?” I said.
Hetty frowned consideringly, then shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Where?”
I shrugged a shoulder, smiling, as though I couldn’t remember, but I answered. My voice loud in the apartment, hearing every syllable, I said silently, When we were married! Remember the time you hid all my clothes? And that time in the bathtub . . . I stopped then because no one was listening.
I know I dealt cards, shuffled, wrote down scores, played hands, sat as dummy. I poured drinks in the kitchen and carried them in. I smiled, answered when spoken to, and even originated a few stupid remarks of my own. But through every instant I was tense with guilt. I could not get rid of the feeling that at any moment Hetty would suddenly look at Tess, then at me, her eyes narrowing in realization that Tess and I were living here in blatant sin, and that she’d burst into tears, violence, or hysterics, or all three. Irrational though I knew the feeling to be, it still seemed incredible that Hetty and I should be sitting here at this table, elbows nearly touching as we sat holding our cards, knees occasionally brushing as we leaned forward to play them, and that—in this world—she’d never even set eyes on me until tonight.
Then Tess was dummy while I played the hand, and she went out to the kitchen to bring in a tray of coffee, cups and saucers, and a plate of little frosted cakes she’d gone out and bought right after dinner. Tessie returned, set the tray on the coffee table, then came over to stand behind me, looking at my cards, watching me play the last few tricks. Unexpectedly, I won the final trick, just making the contract and giving us game and rubber. And by way of congratulation Tess leaned down, gave me a quick kiss on the back of the neck, and I leaped straight out of the chair in a convulsion of guilt.
Landing on my feet, I shot a look at Hetty. But she was merely gathering up the cards, smiling fondly at our touching display of domestic concord, and at last I was able to realize the truth: this was Hetty, all right, sitting there in her pink dress, yet she did not know. She knew nothing at all of our life in another alternate world, and I had a sudden rush of wild release. I felt like a kid who suddenly discovers he is miraculously invisible, free to commit any mischief he chooses, and I turned and in apparent response to her kiss on my neck, I grabbed Tess and gave her a big noisy parody of a kiss.
I turned back and found myself grinning at Hetty, I didn’t know why; then I realized it was a grin of triumph. This was fun, kissing Tessie right out here in the open, knowing it would never occur to Hetty to object, and I did it again. Custer had stood up to stretch; now he grinned. He didn’t know the reason for this sudden new game, but he didn’t object to joining in. He leaned down, gave Hetty a vigorous kiss, then looked over at me with a smiling look of okay-now-it’s-your-turn. I hooked Tessie to me with an arm around her waist, sliding my other arm under her shoulders, and bent her back so far she shrieked. Then I gave her a long, squirming, five- or six-second kiss, heaved us both upright, staggering a little, and looked over at Hetty again. She was getting up quickly from the table, trying to dodge away, but Custer caught her wrist, pulling her to him, and gave her a nine- or ten-second kiss, Hetty struggling to escape—though not trying too hard, it began to seem to me.
The seconds flowed past, and my grin congealed, my neck flushing; Custer was overdoing this, damn it! My hand almost moved out to break them up; I didn’t like the way this bastard was kissing my wife! Instantly I got hold of myself, astonished at feeling like that. Then it no longer surprised me; after all, I had been married to Hetty, even if no one else, including Hetty, knew it. To cover my sudden movement I swung toward Tessie again, but she was ready this time, fending me off, giving me a quick peck on the cheek, ending the game.
She began serving the coffee and cake then, but as Custer sat down at the card table again he glanced at Hetty, who was saying something to Tessie and didn’t see him. Custer looked at her for a moment, then with a quick lewd grin he turned and winked at me, and the message—Wait till I get her later!—was clear. I didn’t respond; I just sat stirring my coffee into a whirlpool; some of the cream began turning to butter. Hetty passed the little cakes then. We sat eating them and sipping our coffee, while I thought about Custer getting Hetty later. I said, “Cus, remember the time in fourth grade”—he started to smile reminiscently—“when you ate the worms?”
He shook his head rapidly, frowning, dismissing the subject, saying, “Good coffee, good coffee, very good coffee!” to Tess.
“Sure you do, Cus!” I said genially. “You had a dime bet with Alf Dillon. And won it!” I said, turning proudly to Hetty. �
��You should have seen him; ate three great big fat angleworms one after another, rolling his eyes and saying how good they w—”
“Ben, for heaven sakes, stop that!” Tessie said, and she glanced dubiously at Custer, a faint hint of disgust in her eyes. “I don’t believe it!”
I sprang to old Custer’s defense. “It’s true! He was the hero of the fourth grade. To the boys anyway. Some of the girls seemed to feel it was revolting—”
“That’s enough!” Tess said, putting a hand over her mouth. “What’s the matter with you, Ben?” Hetty was glancing at Custer in puzzled distaste, and Custer was concentrating on stirring his coffee, glowering at it, trying to think of something to say to stop me.
I nudged him in the ribs with my elbow. “Squeamish, aren’t they?” I chuckled companionably. “They should have seen you the time you got in the horse-manure battle with Eddie Gottlieb!”
“Ben!”
I shrugged. “Just reminiscing,” I said, and turned to smile at Hetty in fond memory of childhood’s golden days. “You should have seen him,” I said. “What a mess!” Custer was gulping his coffee, hot as it was, his wrist raised so he could look at his watch over the rim of his cup. Shoving his chair back, he clapped his napkin onto the table, saying it was late, that they had to rush; and despite my urgings to have some more little cakes, they were out the door, it seemed to me, in just no time at all. As I stood in the doorway calling a genuinely genial good-night, I had a pretty good idea, from the last look I’d had of her face, that Hetty would bid Custer good-night at her door with nothing more than a firm and rather quick handclasp.
That night, for the first time since our second honeymoon, Tessie was cool to me: I’d been rude to a guest, she said, and she was disappointed in me. But—women are intuitive—she lay well over on her side of the bed, not speaking, and I knew that wasn’t all that was bothering her, whether she understood why or not. What the hell, I said to her silently, there’s nothing to be concerned about; it’s just that, in another world, I am married to Hetty. But that didn’t help Tessie and it didn’t help me; lying there in darkness, I had to wonder what it all meant, trying not to think about it.
But in the morning I knew, and my world turned to ashes. I tried to hang onto it; walking out of the building I spoke to my beloved bird friends, but today they ignored me, none of them replying but Fred, who answered with a coarsely phrased two-word command, the essential meaning of which was Shove off, which I did.
Boarding the bus, starting to climb the narrow little winding staircase, I was stopped by the conductor coming down. “No room!” he said, and I sat inside by myself, listening to them singing, “Yes, We Have No Bananas!” topside, and wondering who was conducting. At Forty-second Street I got off and walked along toward my office under a bright and sunny sky, the only man—as once before, far in the past—upon whom it was raining. Before I reached the office it started to snow, with a little sleet.
At my desk—it had been a long time since I’d done this—I pulled a sheet of paper toward me, working it around the hole in my desk, stared at it for a moment, then printed, in ornate Neo-Gothic, using a variety of colored felt pens, What Is Love? Then I stood at my XX-1190 giant duplicating machine, moodily watching the sheets slide into the receiving tray: What Is Love? . . . WHAT Is Love? . . . What IS Love? . . . What is LOVE? . . . Then out came a sheet, in the same Neo-Gothic, saying, Whatever It is, You’ve Still Got It For Hetty, and I knew it was true.
It was stupid! I made faces, pounded my head with both fists, stamped my feet, and staggered around my office, bent double at the waist, clutching my stomach with both arms, violently shaking my head, saying, “No, no, no! I’m not, I’m not, I’m not! I’m in love with Tessie!”
I didn’t want to be in love with Hetty! I liked it here! With great big marvelous old Tessie, and everything going okay! But none of that mattered. What the hell is love? I didn’t know, but I knew I had to see Hetty again, and I ran to the desk, snatched up a phone, and dialed old Cus at his office.
They couldn’t make it again for bridge that night, he said. As it happened, they couldn’t make it the next night either. Or the night after that, or all of next week, and as a matter of fact, for one reason or another, they were pretty well tied up till late next fall. But then—old Cus liked bridge—when I started in on December he remembered he could break a date they had with friends this very next Friday, so we played bridge again.
Hetty wore a plain black dress that seemed to fit extremely well; Tess looked it over pretty thoroughly several times, then began looking at me. Hetty and Custer seemed in a good mood. Once when Hetty and I were partners and Tess was dealing, Hetty laid one hand on the table top, and Custer reached over and put his hand on hers. She smiled at him rather tenderly, and I said conversationally, “Cus, you still break out in that awful-looking rash you used to get?” He shrugged slightly and, still smiling at Hetty, said he didn’t remember breaking out in any rash. When I assured him he did, and in order to help his memory described how it always appeared on his hands first, then rapidly spread everywhere, and how the gym teacher wouldn’t let him use the showers, Tess cut me short, and Custer shrugged vaguely and said that in any case he didn’t have rashes any more, if he ever did. He smiled at Hetty, she gave his hand a final squeeze, and they picked up their cards, Custer glancing at his watch.
Over coffee and cake I watched Hetty give Custer a taste of her cake from the tip of her fork, and I chuckled and began reminiscing fondly again, telling her how Custer, during a week-long series of recesses in fifth grade, won the school belching contest, moving up day after day with tremendous endurance and virtuoso resource through semifinals, finals, and then winning the championship itself in a thrilling face-to-face slugfest with the big fat girl in eighth grade who never bathed. But although Tess heard me out in deathly silence, I realized that Cus and Hetty hadn’t even been listening. His hand on hers again, they sat smiling stupidly at each other, and when I finished, they became aware of the silence and looked up as though startled to see us. Suddenly Hetty giggled, and Custer grinned.
“Should we tell them?” he said. Hetty nodded excitedly, and they told us. They were engaged—since dinner that night at their favorite little restaurant. I jumped up and pumped Custer’s hand, congratulating him delightedly, chuckling, cavorting, dancing around the room, and inside me, at the thought of Hetty married to someone else, my stomach shrank till it was the size and consistency of an olive pit.
“Engaged!” Tessie said while we were getting ready for bed. “And in our house, practically. Isn’t it marvelous!”
“Yeah. Great.”
“He’s awfully nice. You must be very fond of him, the way you’re always teasing him.”
“Yeah, I’d give old Cus the hair shirt off my back.”
“And of course Hetty’s lovely, absolutely lovely, don’t you think so?”
I shrugged, and made the proper answer. “Oh, I suppose so. In a way. But of course she can’t compare with you.” Tessie smiled, pleased, and I stood buttoning my pajamas and watching her as she stepped out of her slip and began unfastening her back garters; lord, what a good-looking woman this was! And even more than that, what a hell of a nice one. It was stupid to be in love with anyone else but this buxom lass; and later, lying in bed, Tess asleep, the words of an ancient popular song wove themselves in and out of the convolutions of my brain like the reeds of a wicker basket: Who’s your little sweetheart? Who’s your turtle dove? Who’s your little sweetheart, oh, who do you love?
What, I inquired once again, is love? Whatever else it might be, it was a nuisance. Why should I be giving Hetty even a thought? I’d escaped her! And was happy with Tessie! Tessie: beautiful, intelligent, amiable, good; you name it, she had it. While Hetty—lying there in bed, I made myself remember, the little cloud appearing over my head, the pictures forming within it, sharp and clear: Hetty tapping her teeth with a pencil point; putting wet things in the garbage sack so that the bottom fell o
ut when you picked it up; looking at her tongue in the mirror; wetting her finger to pick up crumbs; watching Bob Hope; looking absolutely horrible when she came out of the shower with her hair wet and stringy. But it didn’t help.
I got up, wandered out to the living room, shrugged, and said aloud, trying to persuade myself, “What do I care if Hetty is engaged? Matter of fact, what do I care if right this moment she and Custer . . .” I stopped, wrapping both arms around my stomach, bending double, the olive pit cramping violently. Then, still bent double, I ran to the phone.
With trembling hands, I found Hetty’s name and number, and, a finger marking the place, dialed her number, then stood listening to the phone ring once . . . twice . . . four times . . . five times . . . the cramp rate increasing in proportion. The sixth ring was cut in two as she answered.
“Hello?” she said sleepily.
Holding my nose shut, pitching my voice high, I said, “I’m sorry, beautiful. Wrong number,” and hung up, feeling relieved. A moment later I slapped the heel of my hand to my forehead. “She’s home,” I said desperately, “but is Custer!?” The cramps coming like a fast pulse now, one arm clutching my middle, I found Huppfelt, Custer X in the book, and dialed. On the eighth ring he answered, sounding a little mad.
Hand pinching my nose, I said, “Hello, this is the telephone company’s new service—wishing you good-night and pleasant dreams! The charge will appear on your next phone bill.” Smiling happily, the cramps gone, I stood there chuckling, listening to him curse for a while, then hung up and walked back to the bedroom. Lying in bed, raised on one elbow, I looked at Tess asleep, breathing softly, looking lovely. Then I blew her a kiss, lay back, and composed myself for slumber. The cloud appeared instantly and lighted up. In radiant close-up, looking down at me, was Hetty’s face; she slowly winked at me, and I groaned aloud. “What’s matter?” Tessie said sleepily, and I said, “Nothing, just stomach cramps,” and lay there till dawn.