The Learners: A Novel (No Series)

by Kidd, Chip

  “Here, Sketch,” I said, removing a manila envelope from my knapsack. “It’s not much. I only found out yesterday it was your birthday. Sorry.” I slid it across the table.

  “Hey. Hey, you didn’t need to do that.”

  “Wait’ll you see it.” I laughed, all nerves. “Then you’ll really think so.” Please like it. Oh, please.

  He opened the flap and gently slid out the drawing I’d been up till three trying to make into something worthy of him. And failing miserably, of course. “Heh. Would ya look at that. Your shading’s getting better.”

  Originally I was going to try do Little Nemo meeting Krinkle Karl in Slumberland, but there wasn’t time. So instead I’d drawn a hyper-detailed Baby Laveen, brushes in one hand and palette in the other, bowing regally before the feet of an otherwise unseen master, towering above him. The caption read

  A SKETCH IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS. HERE’S THE FIRST TWO: BIRTHDAY. HAPPY.

  Sketch whistled. “That’s darn good.”

  “No it’s not, really. But at least it’s proof that I’m practicing, right? Every night, really.”

  “Say, that is pretty good, Hap,” said Tip, trying to pull Billy’s attention from the Yankees game on the TV under the cash register, “maybe we could use it on—”

  “Hot-cha!” Dick Stankey burst through the door. Sketch’s face lit up. He slipped the drawing back into the envelope and bolted up from the table.

  “Stankey! You bastard!” I’d never seen him so glad to see anyone. Tip must have called and invited him. They hugged, as if they hadn’t seen each other in months. “What’ll it be, piss or vinegar?”

  “Hah! What the heck—a Manhattan. With a lot of cherries!”

  “Billy,” Tip called, “make it so. And another for me.”

  With Dick’s drink plopped in front of him, talk turned to his family, the weather, and the Yankees’ playoff prospects—everything but what was begging, finally, to be discussed. We all strenuously avoided it.

  Except Tip. Well into his second martini, he decided to acknowledge the elephant in the room. “So, Stanker, what’s the skinny on the new skinny?”

  Silence.

  Tip, Jesus. Not here, not now.

  Stankey rebounded with strained ebullience. “What, Lenny? Oh, he’s just a big noise.” A snort. “And talk about dumb—he has to pull out his dork just to count to eleven. Eh, Sketch?” Yucks all around, but there was no hiding it: the faint yet unmistakable odor of desperation wafting off his pasted-on smile. He would not concede to it, not tonight. Change of subject. “Hey Sketch, remember Krinkle in the old days, with Lars?”

  And it popped, unbidden, into my mind:

  memory.

  Stop. Stop it. I will not think of it.

  “Heh, oh yeah.” Sketch chuckled. “He was a quick study, that’s for sure.”

  study of memory.

  This was happening more and more in the last two days, ever since I received Himillsy’s letter—pieces of the Yale psych ad, inserting themselves into my thoughts, into conversation, triggered by any related phrases. It was as if Tip’s word-association game had taken over my mind.

  “I sure learned a lot from him.”

  memory and learning.

  Enough. I will put an end to this, now.

  “Sketch,” I said, “tell me something about Lars. What was he like to work with?”

  “Heh. Lars.” He lit up his pipe, thought a moment.

  “The thing about Lars was, he could look inside you, and it was like he was trying to find something. And then he would. And then he wanted to mine it and refine it and use it. And the thing was, you really wanted him to. Because God knows you couldn’t.”

  “Yeah, he was the goods,” said Dick, crunching his maraschino cherries. “Remember that time he ran that joke ad on April Fool’s Day about the all-you-can-eat chips contest? We sold tons! And no prize money! That was a pisser!” He snorted, shook his head. Then, “Holy buckets! Look at the time. Hey gang, gotta run. Happy returns, Sketch. What am I owe ya?”

  “Eh, your dough’s no good here,” he grinned, “you big sissy.”

  They hugged again, and Stankey was off.

  Sketch excused himself to the men’s. I turned to Tip. Something I’d been wanting to know for a while now: “Does Sketch have any family? What’s that story?”

  His face darkened. “Oh, I guess he didn’t tell you yet. It’s so sad,” he sighed. “He’s been a widower for almost twenty years now. His dear sweet Mairley died in childbirth. He lost them both.”

  “Oh my God. He never said a word of it.”

  “He doesn’t advertise it.” Tip didn’t seem to recognize the pun. “He waited a good two years before he told me.” A cheer from the TV. Score one for the Yanks. “But I’ll never forget it, when he told me, the way he said it.” He took his eyes away from mine. I saw the threat of actual tears. “He said…‘I became one sock.’ ”

  The next morning Mimi called another Krinkle strategy meeting. And I formed a little strategy of my own. After I heard her office door close, I took my coffee mug and went downstairs, past Miss Preech, and into the pantry. I poured a cup, then stealthily opened the rear exit on the other side and mounted the service stairway to the second floor. Once the coast was clear, I tiptoed down the hallway to Mimi’s office and planted my back to the wall to see what I could hear. As luck would have it, the milk-glass transom above the doorjamb was cracked open a good six inches and I could just make out their conversation.

  “—we need to convince this Lenny that we’re on his side,” said Nicky, “that we want to sell to the widest possible audience.”

  And bang, it flashed, again:

  Factory Workers

  City Employees

  Laborers

  Barbers

  Businessmen

  Clerks

  Professional People

  Telephone Workers

  Construction Workers

  Salespeople

  White-collar Workers

  Others

  Stop thinking about it. Stop it. Forget it.

  Mimi: “I know…” a pause, “I want you to start thinking about Krinkle Karl as someone adults could look up to. Maybe even ask for advice. Yes! That’s it—like Monsignor Sheen. Or J. Edgar Hoover. Of course!”

  “Great idea, Mummy.” Every time Nicky referred to Mimi this way, I never failed to think: Goodness, that’s not very nice. Yes, the resemblance to Boris Karloff is undeniable, but she IS your mother.

  “Thank you, Nicky. Poopy, what do you think?”

  Poopy? Who the hell was Poopy?

  Preston: “For two cents I’d tell ’em all to go pound sand!”

  Mimi sniffed. “Poop, that’s not going to help the cause.”

  “If I may,” said Tip, “this all points to what I’ve been saying all along: Ads don’t sell products, stores sell products. Right?”

  Nicky, irritated: “Oh, not this again.”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s true. All an ad can do is give you a need for something…

  Persons needed

  “…to plant the seed of inquiry, the quest for knowledge…”

  for a study

  “…about something you didn’t realize you needed in the first place. Or something you forgot.”

  of memory

  I couldn’t escape it: anything I heard, read, or saw held a connection to it. Himillsy, why did you send it to me, why?

  There are no further obligations.

  Forget it. Let it go.

  Except.

  Oh come ON, you ding-a-ling.

  Unless I’m not supposed to let it go at all. Is that it, Hims, just the opposite, because you…did you?

  I’ve been doing brain exercises, remember?

  Nicky: “Look, I have a lunch. We’ll continue this later. Sketch, get working on some new ideas, please, thanks.” Meeting adjourned. I bolted up the steps and back to my desk.

  And dialed for an outside line. I still had the number,
thumbtacked to the edge of my pencil tray. Please still be in town, please…

  “Hello?”

  Thank God. “Levin.”

  “Oh, hi. Didn’t think I’d hear from you so soon.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. Listen, I just have a quick question, I hope that’s all right.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m sorry if it’s painful. It’s sort of important, to me.”

  “…Okay.”

  “Did Himillsy say anything about, well, something she did at Yale, maybe a few weeks ago? About…a study she might have participated in? With the psych department. Does that ring a bell?”

  “Hmm. Let me think.”

  I waited.

  “I, come to think of it,” he said, slowly, “she joked one afternoon that she was going in to the Yale psych department for some tests. I assumed it was a gag, or an art thing, but…” Then, he continued, with just a hint of suspicion, “How did you know that?”

  Oops. Think. “She’d…talked to me about maybe doing something like that. That day we had lunch.”

  “Huh. Well, I would say it’s a strong possibility.” There was something new in his voice. Irritation.

  “Look, I’ve got to run.” As in Don’t call me again.

  “Yes, of course. Thanks so much.”

  Click.

  As I started to sketch out the headline for a “white” sale for Sparklebrite toothpaste, I looked over at the stack of Register pages, neatly folded. And I asked myself: When I designed that ad, what was I doing, on behalf of the client?

  I was trying to start a conversation.

  And maybe the problem was…I hadn’t finished it. I’d abandoned it. Tip was right: Most of the ads we did posed strictly rhetorical questions. We never really knew the extent to which any of them reached anybody. Lenny Plupp didn’t understand that. But my psych ad required an actual, physical response. Maybe that’s what Himillsy was trying to say: Wasn’t I somehow morally obligated to see it through? How could I demand this of the general public and not myself? Doesn’t this go to the very heart of what advertising is? What it can do?

  The answer: Answer it.

  Well, finally. It took you long enough to figure that one out, Einstein.

  There was no way I was going to be free from this until I went through with it. Until I…

  …filled it out.

  I want to take

  …clipped it.

  part in this study

  …mailed it.

  of memory and learning.

  For the next three days, every time the phone rang, it held the promise of

  PUBLIC

  ANNOUNCEMENT

  and then broke it: “Mr. Spear, please.”

  Until it kept it: “Hello? I’m calling from Yale University.”

  Finally. The next day, at the appointed hour, I looked at the address to the laboratory I’d written on the back of a Pepe’s Pizza receipt, and then at the building marked Linsley-Chittenden Hall. A neo-Gothic pile of coffin-size blocks. Laboratory? No.

  A cathedral.

  Okay, so here I am, Himillsy. To test my memory. Is that what you wanted? Is this really necessary?

  Because, you must know by now: You already test my memory.

  Every single day.

  CONTENT, THE KEY INGREDIENT.

  We’ll get back to our regularly scheduled program in just a moment, but first I’d like to take a few seconds of your time to introduce myself. Perhaps you know me from one of my many appearances in print, radio, movies, television, heck—even human beings! My name is Content. You’re probably familiar with my more recognizable partner, Form, while I remain something of a mystery. So I thought I’d take out a few of these paid “spots” to help clarify what I am and what I can do—for your clients, your business, even for yourself! There are so many answers.

  But before we get to those, let me recap a bit and remind you that all media—especially, for our purposes, Graphic Design—can be divided into Form and Content. However, the real revelation is that so can I, Content itself, be divided—into what I Say and what I Mean. For example, on this page, what you’re seeing is a series of abstract symbols (letters) connected in specific ways (Form), but what you’re perceiving is the message that I’m using them to tell you (Content). But get this: That message can then be further processed in any number of ways to fully understand it. And your brain performs all sorts of tricks to achieve this.

  You probably hear me as a voice in your head this second. Isn’t that amazing? But here’s the big question: What am I really telling you? And no, what I Say and what I Mean are not always the same thing—heck, rarely—as we’ll see later.

  Well. We’re just getting started, and that’s about all the time I have for now. I’ll be checking in again soon, though, in another of my various incarnations.

  Now, back to our show…

  1 This must be listed first, for legal reasons, but is by no means the most important piece of information. I used 9-point Trade Gothic Condensed, a classic sans-serif typeface used primarily in tabloid newspaper headlines that can easily withstand this kind of reduction and still look important, especially in all capital letters.

  2 All caps again, but this time in a classic 12-point Bodoni medium weight, which commands center of attention—it is designed to be the first thing you see. After they finally saw the ad, it took some convincing for Yale to accept that this is the reason people would respond, as opposed to any sense of “civic duty” to further the cause of “science.” It is offset by two .5-point lines, or “rules,” for emphasis.

  3 Back to Trade Gothic, in a lighter weight and caps/lowercase. This should be the second line you see/read.

  4 The first block of what we call “body copy,” in 7-point Baskerville, a popular text face for English literature. The dots, or “bullets,” prioritize the two distinct groups of information within. Note that the amount of compensation to the solicitee is mentioned four times throughout the ad. This was their idea, not mine.

  5, 6. By grouping this list into three columns, I not only saved space, I made it easier for the eye to process. A solid paragraph with the titles offset by commas would be far more taxing.

  7, 8. The second block of body copy is set off by a headline in all-caps Baskerville (the only one). It is noticeably wider than the first block(4), both to economize space and to make it distinct.

  9, 10. Coupons, it must be said, are a burden for both the designer and the typesetter, but at least in this case it serves to “anchor” the entire composition. The border is a series of short straight lines, indicating detachment, while the “blanks” to be filled in are denoted by dots. The professor’s name and position, as it were, are italicized to impart a sense of urgency on the part of the reader. Ideally, two lines should be allocated for the address, but space limitations made this impossible.

  11 If you look closely you’ll see one dot less after the word “Week-ends.” This provides a subtle but undeniable message: weekdays and evenings are preferred.

  II.

  DURING.

  1961

  SEPTEMBER.

  “Have a seat here, please.”

  So this was Yale. The imposing facade of Linsley-Chittenden Hall gave way to the lab’s more modest entrance around the side—a small cobwebbed set of concrete stairs that led to the basement, through a dusty corridor bleached with makeshift overhead lighting, finally into a receiving area, a door marked INTERACTION LABORATORY. This room, this engine of Old Blue, was festooned with taupe lisle curtains, gray linoleum floors dotted with specks of ruby, a large dusky mirror in a wood frame on the far wall. Not the great hall I was expecting. But I felt it anyway: Ivy everywhere. This was the real thing. Science itself.

  “I’m Mr. Williams.” The man in the gray lab coat steered me to an office chair not unlike mine at work—forest green Naugahyde swirl, brushed aluminum frame, wheels.

  “Here we are.” He was thin as a pin, a lonely lock of hair combed over his ot
herwise bald head. Ichabod Crane.

  Another man, stocky and then some, thick horn-rimmed glasses, mid-forties, was led into the room, sat. Looked a bit like Sketch, actually—generous cheeks, clean-shaven, hair gray at the temples, business attire. He was introduced as Mr. Wallace. I leaned over to him, shook his fleshy hand.

  Ichabod: “Okay, you’ve both answered the ad we’ve placed in the paper and will be participating in our study of memory. Now, as of this point both of you have been paid, so let me say that the checks are yours just for showing up at the lab. No matter what happens now, the money is yours.”

  Which I hadn’t even considered at all. Who cared about the money? That’s not why I was here.

  “Before we get started, I’d like to tell you both a little about the memory project.” He cleared his throat, crossed his hands before him. He was due for a nail clipping but otherwise groomed to a paranormal degree, clinically sterile. Though clearly striving for civility, he shot us a cold, hard stare—we were amoebas in a petri dish under his microscope. I already imagined we’d be asked to memorize entire pages of text and would be found wanting. Just being back in any kind of school classroom situation was enough to bring back that old institutional anxiety.

  “Psychologists have developed several theories to explain how people learn various types of material. One theory is that people learn things correctly whenever they get punished for making a mistake.”

  Punished.

  “Like when a parent spanks a child when he does something wrong. But actually, we in the scientific community know very little about the effect of punishment on learning, because almost no documented studies have been made on human beings. For instance, we don’t know how much punishment is best for learning, and we don’t know how much difference it makes as to who’s giving the punishment—whether an adult learns best from an older or younger person and many things of this sort. So what we’re doing with this project is bringing together a number of adults, of different occupations and ages, and are asking some of them to be teachers, and some to be learners. We want to find out just what effect people will have on each other as teachers and learners, and also what effect punishment will have on learning in this situation.”