by Jack Finney
“What were they like? Those occasional moments.”
She thought about it, then smiled in surprise at her answer. “Interesting. Life can be a little dull at times, of course; anyone’s can. And I have to admit, it was interesting to be—what would you say?—spliced right into someone else’s mind and feelings. Someone all excited and pleased with practically everything she saw. It’s fascinating to know, really know, Nick, how things seem through someone else’s mind.” She stood sipping from her glass, and looking—was I right about this? I wasn’t sure—a little sad, and I had the sudden odd feeling that maybe something had gone out of her life. Absently sipping her drink, she stood staring at nothing, then her eyes focused on me, glaring angrily. “And she thought you were the bee’s knees!” She swung away, stooping to yank open the oven door and jab at whatever was in there.
After a little of that she stood up, said she was sorry, and I smiled, said that was okay, and—well, we got through Tuesday.
Every other Wednesday Jan played bridge downstairs with Myrtle Platt and a couple of Myrtle’s friends, and Al and I always helped with the dishes so she could get away early: Al by getting rid of scraps I tossed him while scraping plates for Jan to wash. She changed clothes then, went on downstairs, and I wandered the house a little, looking for something to read. A Blackhawk film catalog had come that day, and I sat down on the window seat—there was still some daylight—and marked a couple things I’d like sometime; for Christmas, maybe: the 1920 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with Nita Naldi, my second-favorite-sounding silent-movie name—Lya de Putti being first—and maybe The Social Secretary, with Norma Talmadge and Erich von Stroheim.
I put the catalog down and for a few moments sat looking at Marion’s wall. Marion Marsh lived here, I read once more, June 14, 1926, the back of the chesterfield cutting off the rest. Then I stood up, walked out to the kitchen and the phone, and dialed my dad’s area code and number; it was about eight o’clock here, ten in Chicago. He answered right away, and we talked; every once in a while one or the other of us phoned, particularly when a letter was a bit overdue. He’d run into an old friend of mine in the Loop, Eddie Krueger, who’d been at our house a lot when I was in high school and when I’d come home during vacations from college, my mother still alive. “And,” he said, “the weather’s been lousy, but that’s to be expected.”
“Yeah. Something I wanted to ask you, Dad. Just idle curiosity, but I’ve been wondering about it.”
“Shoot.”
“Well. The Twenties. I’ve been wondering—”
“The what?”
“The Twenties; the Nineteen-Twenties.”
“Oh, yeah; what about them?”
“Were they really as great as we’re always reading? Were they actually all that different from now? Were the people different?”
There was a long pause. I was opening my mouth to speak again, not sure we were still connected, when my father answered. “Well, I’ve given that some thought myself. You have to make allowances for the fact that at least part of the Twenties were my twenties, too. I was young, carefree, and you tend to look back at your own youth through rose-colored glasses. And in general, we tend to remember what was good in the past and forget what was bad. We’re propagandized about the Twenties, too; they’ve been glamorized. Allowing for all that, Nick, really considering those things and allowing for them—the answer is hell, yes. Ah, Nick, they were great. Such a different time, everything was different then. It was just a grand and glorious time to be alive and young in.”
“Well, why? How?”
Again there was a pause. “I won’t really be able to tell you that; things were so damn different. The times, the look of things, the country itself; hell, in the very way drugstores used to smell. And my God, yes, the people were different. We were dumber. Not nearly as smart as you. It never entered my head at twenty-one years of age to question the way things were. Any more than you’d question whether the sun should rise, or whether it ought to snow in winter. But it seems to me we were nicer. More tolerant; I don’t remember the hatred there is now. We were more easygoing, more interested in things—we were livelier, damn it! We knew how to have fun! I think we knew what life was for. I can’t really explain it, Nick. It was just a better time. I feel I was lucky to have been young in the Twenties. And I feel sorry for young people today. It’s all so goddamn grim.”
We talked a little more; I wondered what he’d say if I told him about Marion, but of course I didn’t. When Jan came upstairs I was asleep; they’d played an extra rubber, she said at breakfast, and it turned out to be a long one.
Around ten o’clock Thursday evening, I put down a magazine and looked over at Jan, who was knitting something that was eventually supposed to turn into a sweater for me. I sat watching her, knowing factually that what she was doing would, in fact, result in a sweater. But emotionally it’s always impossible for me to believe that twitching a pair of pointed sticks at a ball of continuous yarn will somehow turn it into a usable garment; what holds it together?
Jan knew I was looking at her, and pretended she didn’t. She was wearing a plain white blouse and a black skirt, rather severe but she looked nice, very pretty. I said, “Jan,” and she looked up, smiling brightly, needles poised. “If you’ll excuse the saying, ‘We can’t go on like this.’ ”
“I know”—she looked quickly down at her knitting.
“Well, then, if I may offer a suggestion to a lady, why don’t we skip merrily down to the bedroom, hand in hand, and fuck?”
She blushed freight-car red.
Jan and I must be the tag ends of the very last generation brought up as kids really believing there were “bad words.” A lot of our friends are only a little younger, just a couple of years or so, but it seems to have been the dividing line, and they’re able to say these words with ease. And while they’re polite, well-bred people who wouldn’t have mentioned it if we’d never said them, still it would have been noticed. I’ve managed all right; I was in the Army, and as a child I was a boy. But Jan had a hell of a time. I learned—she confessed this—that she’d practiced at home. Washing the breakfast dishes, for example, alone in the house, she’d stand there, hands in the soapy water, working up her nerve, then take a deep breath and say, “Fuck!” She could tell it sounded all wrong at first, tense and strained, just not good enough for polite society. But she persevered, working it and the several other de rigueur words into casual sentences, practicing the way you would to perfect a French accent, until at last she could drop them into sentences with butter-smooth casualness, no hint of either emphasis or de-emphasis. Finally she tried it in what my father would call “mixed company” and it came out beautifully. She sounded to the manner born, the only trouble being that she turned brick-red and stayed that way for thirty minutes.
She was blushing now, but she nodded gamely. “Let me just finish this row.”
When she came into the bedroom I was buttoning my pajama coat, scratching Al’s ribs with my toes; he was lying on our furry bedside rug in his after-dinner coma. “Better cookie him out,” Jan said.
I squatted beside him and tapped him on the shoulder. A brown eye opened slightly, and I made the umpire’s out gesture, thumb jerking over shoulder, and the eye closed. “He says he doesn’t care to go out.”
“Well, he has to. Nickie . . . I’m scared.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” I tapped Al’s shoulder again; this time he didn’t open an eye. “He claims he has as much right in here as anyone else. Says he’s a human being, too.”
“Well, tell him that people with hair on their eyelids aren’t people at all. Are you really scared?”
“Yeah; I don’t want her back either. But still—”
“I know. I know.”
“You’re not a human being at all. You’re a dog! You think we can’t tell?” I picked up Al’s limp tail—“What about this?” I flipped up a long basset ear—“How do you explain that!” I tapped his black-rubber nose. “And thi
s!” I picked up a paw. “And this: there are all kinds of clues; you can’t fool us!” I looked up at Jan, who was unzipping the side of her skirt. “But if you’d really rather not.”
“Oh, no! No. We can’t. Just go on. Forever. Without.”
Al was feebly wagging his tail, and I pointed. “That movement is final conclusive proof: you’re a dog. Come on, get your cookie.” He stood, yawning, stretching, smiled up at Jan, and followed me out and down the hall. When I came back Jan was in bed, sitting up, wearing the rigid smile of a determinedly happy corpse.
These weren’t really ideal conditions for love-making, but we went at it—slowly; tentatively; bravely. It began to go a little better, then quite a lot better, then I gave Jan an extra-special kiss, and she returned a real post-office, special-delivery, registered-letter-with-return-receipt, and things were going fine. I said, “You’re a filthy nasty girl, and I’m going to tell your mother.”
“Go ahead; she’ll never believe you.”
I kissed her long and hard, Jan returning it. Then I rose up on one elbow and snapped on the light. Jan lay staring up at me, astonished. “Jan?”
“Yes, for heaven sakes!”
I snapped off the light, then snapped it right back on again. “Where were you born?”
“What?”
“Where were you—”
“Kankakee, Illinois! My God!”
I reached for the light, then paused. “What was your mother’s name?”
“Sellers!”
I snapped off the light, Jan reaching for me in the darkness. My lips at her ear, I murmured, “What’s your social-security number?”
Softly she said, “481-03-2660.”
“Darling,” I said, and Jan and I finally made up for real.
• • •
Friday at the office came and finally went, three long weeks of vacation stretching ahead. We weren’t doing anything much with it, but it was still a vacation, and I came home ready to celebrate: we were going out to dinner with Fritz and Anita Kahler.
I got home, and Anita had phoned that afternoon: she was coming down with flu; we’d have to postpone going out. I didn’t want to accept it, I didn’t want to stay in for another evening, I wanted to do something to celebrate, I didn’t know what. And finally we went to a movie.
There was nothing worth seeing; I read through every movie listing in the pink section, the entertainment section of the Sunday Chronicle which we save to see what’s doing in the week ahead, and not a movie in the entire city or suburbs was worth looking at, but we went anyway. To a Western I’d never heard of, which is rare for me, at the Metro on Union Street, and it was an enormous mistake.
I bought popcorn, really celebrating, but Jan didn’t want any, and we sat watching the damn thing, a big wide-screen Technicolor job. I tried to interest myself in the scenery, at least, which was pretty spectacular. The accompanying music soared to frequent crescendos and sank to dramatic silences. Wind whistled through canyons, shots barked and pinged in dusty streets, hoofs pounded, wagon wheels creaked, and people of the Eighteen-Seventies, cleverly anticipating the idiom of today, said such things as, “Would you believe two hundred Indians?”
I sat recalling the names of minor actors and in what other pictures I’d seen them; no movie is entirely a waste of time for me. But when I glanced at Jan in the middle of the thing she was actually asleep, dozing chin on chest. I knew I shouldn’t have dragged her to this, and if she’d been awake I’d have suggested leaving. But I now had a feeble interest in how the picture turned out, and she was sleeping peacefully, so we stayed. Later when I saw she was awake, I turned to ask if she wanted to go, but she seemed to be enjoying it now, smiling faintly, mouth slightly open to listen, so we stayed till the end.
The lights came up then, the sparse, scattered audience rising, and she turned to me. “How wonderful!” she said, and I smiled at the sarcasm.
“Yeah, great.” I sat waiting for her to stand but she was staring at the empty white screen.
“That scenery!” she said, and I realized there was a note of excitement in her voice; the people moving slowly up the aisle beside us turned to stare. “The costumes!” she said, still looking at the screen. “And the color!” She swung to look at me. “Nickie, you bastard, why didn’t you tell me movies were in color! And that the screen was so big!” She leaned toward me, eyes enormous, people in the aisles openly smiling, and her voice dropped to an awed whisper. “And that they talked. Oh, Nickie, I came back for one last look at the world, and it’s lucky I did.” Her voice rose again, excited and exuberant. “Imagine! You can actually hear what they say! Oh, boy. Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, BOY!”
She blinked and glanced up at the empty screen. “Oh! Is the picture over?” She stood quickly, turning for her coat. “I’m sorry; I was asleep, I guess.” Pushing an arm into her coat sleeve as we side-stepped toward the aisle, Jan said quietly, “Terrible, wasn’t it? But you know something?” She took my arm as we turned toward the exit. “I have that same kind of glow you get sometimes when you’ve just seen a marvelous movie.”
• •
CHAPTER SIX
• •
It was doubly a sleep-late morning—not only Saturday, but the first day of vacation besides—and I did my best. Eyes still closed, I lay telling myself I was drowsy and would go right back to sleep, but behind the eyeballs, I was wide awake. Because I knew.
There was no sound in the bedroom, I realized then; no movement, no presence beside me, and my eyes snapped open, head turning to look at Jan’s empty side of the bed, the covers tossed back. Then I sat up fast, looking beyond the bed at the floor. Everywhere I looked fragments of cloth lay on the floor, their edges fuzzed with unraveled thread: Jan’s good black dress torn into dozens of fragments.
Dressing as fast as I could go, I said, “Damn. Goddamn!” but I heard the false vehemence in my voice, and for a moment stood motionless. Then I nodded, finally admitting it to myself: I’d missed Marion. I’d missed her all week long; it wasn’t anything I could control.
I’ll say this for myself. Grabbing the first shirt I could find, a white one, buttoning only every other button; snatching a pair of tan wash pants; stepping barefoot into a pair of moccasin loafers—I had the grace not to try and blame Jan. It just took someone else, apparently, someone as wild and exuberant as Marion, to bring out what was undoubtedly not the real me at all but someone else who had a hell of a lot better time. I didn’t like it, didn’t like the implication, didn’t want to think about it; it made me sad; that was how I wanted to feel about Jan.
The house was silent in the way a house never is if anyone else is in it. But as I stood buckling my belt, I heard the lower door open, heard her footsteps coming up, and I walked out into the hall to the head of the stairs.
A blond Valkyrie was coming up them, wearing Jan’s black slacks and turtle-neck sweater. She looked up at me, smiled, and patted her hair. “Fake. And cheap. But at least it’s not mouse color. Bought it at the salon on Haight Street; Jan has a charge. Hope you don’t mind.” She stepped up beside me. “Welcome me back, Nickie.” She kissed me on the forehead, brushed past, and walked on into the living room.
“You weren’t coming back!” I followed her. “You said you weren’t coming back!”
She swung around, her face going hard. “Can that! All bets are off. They’re in color now! On a big wide screen. And they t—” She cut herself off, then grinned. “Hey, they aren’t movies, any more, are they? They don’t just move, they. . . . Hey, Nick! They’re talkies!” She turned to look at the wall over the chesterfield, then walked toward it, reading aloud. “ ‘Marion Marsh lived here, June 14, 1926.’ ” She looked over her shoulder at me to nod. “That’s the day I should have gone to Hollywood. With Nick Cheyney.” She looked back at the wall, blond head nodding in agreement with what she was saying. “I’d have had a career. A great one. As big as Joan Crawford’s.” Absorbed in her own vision, she turned away. “That’s how it was me
ant to be,” she said vehemently, nodding again. Then more quietly, “And that’s how it’s going to be.” She looked up at me. “I’m going to have my career.” Suddenly she grinned. “In color and sound.”
I walked toward the window seat, pointing at the chesterfield, and after a moment she sat down. On the window seat I leaned forward, forearms on knees, and clasped my hands. “Listen. All your life you acted on impulse, and what happened? It finally got you killed. Well, nothing’s changed. Your old picture shows up on television over half a century later, you come back to see it, and on pure impulse make a grab for me just because I look like your old flame. But all that does is cause trouble, and you find out that everything’s changed since your day anyway. You see that it has! You know it’s no use! But you get a glimpse of a lousy movie in sound and bad color, and whammo—you’re back once more to pick up your old career, not a thought in your head about how. Do you ever think, goddamn it!”
I’d reached her; I could see it. She didn’t have an answer, and for a moment or two, face sullen, she was silent. Then all she could think of was “Sez you.”
“Tell me how then.”
Again she had to hunt for a reply; then defiantly she said, “I had friends in Hollywood.”
“In 1926, Marion! They’re gone now. Dead.”
“Baloney! The people I knew weren’t stars, they were kids! Like me.” She thought for a moment. “Like the prop boy on Flaming Flappers, Hugo Dahl! He was only seventeen, third assistant prop boy or something.” She jumped up and walked quickly toward the bookshelves. I keep a few out-of-town directories I’ve stolen from hotels on the living-room shelves: a two-year-old Manhattan directory, one from Portland, Oregon, the three main Los Angeles books, another from Reno. Marion took down the one with BEVERLY HILLS on the spine, and standing at the shelves she hunted through the D’s, pages flying. Her finger moved down a column, backtracked, stopped, then she looked up at me triumphantly. “And he’s still there. He’ll help me,” she said complacently, clapping the book shut, putting it back. “He had a crush on me.”