The History of Now

by Daniel Klein

  The job has not, in fact, pulled Herb out of debt, but it has substantially increased his library. And because Herb discovered he could attract repeat students if he changed his menu of films each term, he is constantly viewing and reviewing movies in search of philosophical hooks.

  * * *

  Beatrice is in Florida with her husband on an extended vacation. At her last visit before departing, she told Franny she was in terrible need of a break, but that she would keep in touch by mail. Franny, of course, was relieved even as she understood that the break her mother needed was from her daughter, or rather from the stain Franny’s little catastrophe had spilled upon her. Austen Riggs’s cachet notwithstanding, real Cos-groves did not do mental breakdowns. After her mother left, Franny’s first impulse was to hope Herb Blitzstein would fill in Beatrice’s spot at Visiting Hour. This, her first conscious wish in months, was granted.

  Franny is already in the upstairs recreation room, seated in front of the TV, when Herb arrives for his fourth consecutive Thursday. At the other end of the room, a half-dozen other residents are playing cards or Scrabble. Another young man is playing table soccer against himself, cursing and cheering in rapid succession. Thankfully, none of Franny’s comrades in turmoil has ever exhibited any interest in the videos Herb brings with him. Dr. Werner, for reasons unstated, allows Herb to stay beyond his allotted single hour of visiting time.

  As usual, Herb kisses the top of Franny’s head by way of a greeting, then immediately steps over to the VCR to insert the day’s offering. Watching his stumbling gait, his oversized head bent forward, its kinky ponytail swishing against his neck, Franny wonders if her former self would have found him attractive. Lately, this cryptic entity—her former self—figures as a reference point in Franny’s imagination. Although she senses she will never be the same again, Franny feels the need to stay on good terms with who she was. This is not merely to provide her with psychic continuity, it is to claim selfhood itself; if she is going to be a viable person again, she needs to start somewhere. She doubts that her former self would have found Herb attractive in the least.

  “Groundhog Day,” Herb says, starting the film. He sits down beside Franny, opens his spiral notebook, and takes a ballpoint pen from his pants pocket.

  While the credits run, Franny scans the open page of Herb’s notebook. He has written, “Cause & Effect” at the top. Then, in parentheses, “see Hume on billiard balls.” The rest of the page is occupied by either a goofy, Rube Goldbergesque doodle or a recondite diagram whose circles and arrows distill the very essence of causality, Franny cannot be sure which. Even though she and Herb have barely said a word to one another about the films they have viewed thus far—It’s a Wonderful Life and Back to the Future—Franny had no trouble figuring out their common denominator: How changing a single event can change all the events that follow afterward. It strikes her as a whimsical notion at best, and at worst, repulsively sentimental. Her former self was always suspicious of It’s a Wonderful Life for that very reason: It gave small acts of kindness way too much credit for big, happy effects. Franny always gravitated toward the no-good-deed-goes-unpunished school of thought.

  She certainly likes Bill Murray’s sarcastic, pock marked face a hell of a lot more than Jimmy Stewart’s. Even as a child, viewing It’s a Wonderful Life from the Phoenix’s projection booth during the movie house’s annual New Year’s Eve showing, she detected a lode of superiority just beneath the surface of Stewart’s average-American-guy face. She did not much like his signature bumbles and stutters either; not only were they self-indulgent, but Franny was sure any decent man who could not stop himself from stammering would be more embarrassed than bemused.

  Murray, on the other hand, carries an expression of perpetually amused irony on his mug, and it appears to be indiscriminate: no subject is too grand to fit inside the quotation marks of his arched eyebrows. Franny can relate. Now watching Murray as Phil Connors, Pittsburgh weatherman, as he delivers a weather report on the local TV channel, she is intrigued by the self-mockery that bubbles beneath his smugness. She wonders if Herb’s philosophical point has more to do with irony than cause and effect. She hopes so. She remembers he once gave a class assignment about irony.

  But as Groundhog Day rolls past the third morning that Phil Connors again awakes to the very same day, February 2nd, Franny has no doubt they are back in familiar territory: life’s little options that can alter fate. She is disappointed. She had hoped Herb was going to move on from that bit of hokum. She feels a cloud of fatigue settle over her; her eyes flutter shut.

  Franny dozes so often her nervous system compensates by keeping her sleep shallow, consciousness always hovering nearby. In this soupy state, her mind blends half-heard dialogue with loopy dreams. Her current dream has her wandering aimlessly in the Phoenix’s sub-basement when she hears Bill Murray say, “What would you do if every day was the same, and nothing you did ever mattered?” A beat, and another voice replies, “That about sums it up for me.”

  Franny’s eyes snap open. Next to her, Herb is scribbling madly in his notebook.

  “That about sums it up for me,” Franny says softly.

  “Fabulous line, huh?” Herb says.

  “I mean it,” Franny says. “Nothing I do matters really.”

  Herb hits the ‘Pause’ button and turns to her. “I kind of figured it was like that for you,” he says. “Feels like shit, I bet.”

  “Actually, it doesn’t feel like anything,” Franny answers.

  “So maybe it feels like meta-shit.”

  “Meta-shit?”

  “You know, shit of a higher order. The shit that precedes the real stuff. You can’t feel it yet, but you know it’s just waiting to sop you one.”

  Franny cannot really grasp what Herb has said, but his words swerve around in her mind tantalizingly. The hint of a smile creeps onto her lips. Herb smiles back and starts Groundhog Day going again. Franny watches to the end when Murray/Connors finally decides to take a crack at doing this same day—for the umpteenth time—with grace instead of bitterness, and as a result he gets the girl.

  “Corny,” Franny says.

  “Hey, corny has its compensations,” Herb replies, standing and ambling to the VCR to remove the video cassette. He pulls on his pea jacket and walks over to plant a goodbye kiss on top of Franny’s head.

  “What did Hume say about billiard balls?” Franny asks. She had not planned the question, and she does not realize the reason she asks it is to keep Herb with her a few moments longer.

  Herb grins. He pulls his long frame up straight in professorial mode, but Franny catches something Bill Murray-ish in his demeanor, as if he is doing a stand-up comedian’s impression of a stuffy professor.

  “Hume said you can see Ball A strike Ball B, and then you can see Ball B roll away, but what you can’t see is the how of it,” Herb says. “You don’t actually see the force Ball A passes on to Ball B, but you’d be crazy not to decide that is what’s going on. So the idea of cause and effect is really just the way our minds make sense of the world. It certainly beats living in a world where you can’t make head nor tail out of what’s going to happen next.”

  “What is going to happen next?” Franny asks softly. Again, her not-quite-conscious intention is to delay Herb’s departure, but hearing her own words, Franny is suddenly overcome with a pang of angst. What is going to happen next?

  Herb hunkers down in front of Franny. He takes one of her hands in both of his. “Better times, Franny,” he whispers. “Just keep your eye on Ball A.”

  * * *

  Wendell is lying on his back on the floor of the Phoenix watching a man named Livio repaint the ceiling. Livio, a fifth generation restoration artist, was imported from Rome by the theater’s new owners. His English is limited, but this does not keep him from giving Wendell a running commentary on his work, replete with anecdotes about other restorations he has done over the past thirty years all over Europe. Between Livio’s musical accent and the f
act that he, too, is lying on his back but on a scaffold some forty feet above the floor, Wendell understands little of Livio’s narrative. Nonetheless he enjoys the connection it establishes between them. Livio obviously takes great pride in his work and is thrilled to have an audience for what usually must be a solitary occupation. Wendell, for his part, admires any man who is dedicated to his craft and proud of his skills, but above all, Wendell is spellbound by the gradual transformation of the Phoenix’s vaulted ceiling. It feels magical, like time travel.

  Livio is daubing ochre highlights on the woolly mane of the North Wind, the blustering Greek god head in the ceiling’s north-most corner. The first flecks of orangey paint strike Wendell as garish, even though he knows this is his impression whenever Livio attacks a new portion of the fresco. It is an illusion produced by the contrast of fresh wet paint with the muted tones of the faded original. Livio, who spent an entire four-week vacation watching the masters of his art restore the Sistine Chapel, once told Wendell that civilian gawkers always had this same complaint, comparing the artisans to billboard painters.

  Wendell’s arms are folded tightly across his chest as insulation against the cold. As many times as Wendell has camped on the Phoenix’s frigid floor this winter, he never brings his overcoat with him from the shop. This is because Livio always works in a sleeveless undershirt; never mind that it is twenty degrees warmer up there, wearing an overcoat would feel to Wendell like a breach of companionship. Binx, on the other hand, has given up on the trips to the Phoenix; whatever curiosity he might have about his former second home is eclipsed by the warm draft from Write Now’s heating vent.

  Watching Livio work, Wendell’s mind again drifts to thoughts of his father. Wendell can feel Emile’s pleasure in the renewal of the ceiling and the proscenium arch. Emile, like his own father before him, rejoiced as much in the theater itself as in any production mounted on its stage. “It’s a palace of dreams,” Emile used to say. “The dreams come and go, but the palace outlives them all.” Wendell crooks his left arm above his eyes and looks at his watch. He has already been lying here for almost fifteen minutes. Although his customers are trained to take their newspapers and cigarettes themselves and leave their payment on the counter, they also come to chat with him. Wendell rolls over onto his belly and scrambles to his feet.

  “I’m off!” he yells up to Livio.

  As always, Livio calls back a goodbye in Italian that sounds something like, ‘A dope, huh?’

  A piercing wind is coursing down Melville Street as Wendell steps outside the Phoenix. Icicles suspended from the rain gutters of the fire station crack and fall, slicing perpendicularly into the snow to form a row of crystal pickets. Shivering, Wendell scurries back to the shop, but as he comes alongside the front window, he stops. Inside, Esther is leaning across the counter, apparently in conversation with the retarded man who wears the book-filled backpack. Wendell takes a step backward so he can spy on them unseen. The wind is too shrill and his ears too cold for him to hear a word that passes between them.

  In the past few weeks, the retarded man has not entered Write Now, although Wendell has seen him walk by a few times, his big face floating moonlike past the window. In that same period, Esther’s lunchtime visits have become briefer, their conversations crisper, their kisses more perfunctory, if at all. Wendell knows she is waiting for him to change things between them, to declare a new program, but he cannot get himself to focus on their situation. Whenever he tries, he is pulled away by the specter of selfishness, as if any happiness he added to his own life would automatically be subtracted from Franny’s. Wendell’s sole self-indulgence these days are his stolen minutes watching Livio work.

  Wendell sees that Esther is writing in the shop account book as the retarded man speaks. The man is probably unaware of the fact that she is barely paying attention to his slow-coming words as she adds up bills.

  A fresh gust of frigid air slams against Wendell’s neck and back. He decides there is no reason for him to remain outside: The retarded man has had his due; if he has a problem with Wendell returning to his own shop, Wendell is not going to feel guilty about that. Wendell goes to the door, but as he is about to reach for the handle he sees that Esther is weeping, tears sliding down her cheeks, some dropping onto the open page of the account book. Again, Wendell abruptly withdraws, this time backing blindly off the curb into ankle-deep slush. He remains there until the man departs.

  “What was that all about?” Wendell says when he comes inside.

  Esther is wiping her face with a Kleenex. She shakes her head and says, “The world makes me dizzy.”

  Wendell, his feet wet and cold, his nose running, is annoyed by her response. In general, there is an inverse proportion between the frequency of their kisses and his annoyance with her metaphysical non sequiturs. He remains on the customer side of the counter. Esther turns back several pages in the account book, then spins it around so it is right side up in front of Wendell. Esther’s penmanship is small and neat.

  “Born: August, 1972, Washington, D.C. William Alan Forester III, son of WAF II, librarian (archivist?) at Smithsonian Inst. Mother deceased. One sib: Monroe F., four years younger—lives in Sarasota. (Find on Yahoo?) This letter is for his brother.”

  Wendell looks up at Esther. “That’s the retarded guy? William Alan Forester?”

  Esther nods.

  “He wants you to write a letter for him?”

  Esther nods again. Her eyes have filled up again. “Franny promised to do it for him.”

  “I get it. He’s been waiting for her to come back,” Wendell says.

  “I told him I was Franny’s mother.”

  “Good idea, I suppose. He corresponds with his brother?”

  “No,” Esther says. “This is the first. He’s been thinking about writing him for a long time.”

  “How long?”

  Esther shakes her head back and forth several times before replying. “Who knows? Twenty-five years? That’s how long he’s been gone. Monroe—the brother—was three when Billy was sent away. They haven’t seen each other since.”

  “That’s when he came up here?”

  “No, first to a boarding school for children like him. In upstate New York somewhere. He was twenty when they put him in the halfway house on Hawthorne Street.” Esther takes a deep breath, then nods at the account book. “It’s all there. The story of Billy’s life. He wants his brother to know the story of his life.”

  And so Wendell reads through Billy Forester’s dictated letter that is squeezed beneath columns of payments due for candy and cigarettes and greeting cards: Billy had a friend at his school who could not talk. His name was Ronnie. Billy likes the chicken noodle soup they serve at Soup and Sandwich. He has a rash on his belly that never completely goes away. He likes his room at the halfway house. He has a picture on the wall of Monroe and himself when they were little. He sometimes has a dream at night in which he is a librarian like his father.

  “My God,” Wendell murmurs when he is finished. He, too, finds the world dizzying. He steps around the counter and gathers Esther into his arms. He holds her tightly, slowly rocking them both back and forth.

  * * *

  Stephanie lunges for a shot Bunny Saunders has dribbled off the tambour. She is able to reach the ball with the web of her racket, but it just dies there and drops to the court floor. Even after over two months of playing royal tennis, Stephanie is regularly surprised by the wood-cored ball’s inertness. It strikes her that there is something quintessentially Anglo-Saxon about the ball’s lack of response, as if it would be unseemly for it to have any real bounce to it.

  Stephanie is her old self again. More canny, perhaps, and less eager to please, but liberated by her secret knowledge that the whole Harvard delusion was nothing more than that, she revels in her recovered reality. It is even consoling to be back to her old confusion about what to do after she graduates from high school. She finds Mark Saunders’s uncritical acceptance of the roadmap ha
nded to him at birth—Andover, Harvard College, Harvard Law School—dreary. She would take confusion over that any day of the week.

  Since Mark’s revelation about his sister’s upcoming, rubber-stamp acceptance at Harvard and its royal tennis team, he has lost whatever attractiveness he once had. Stephanie honestly does not believe she resents him—or Bunny, for that matter—for their place in the non-egalitarian scheme of things. But Mark’s total lack of curiosity about life outside his little world is another matter. Now that is unseemly. It is just that kind of insular-mindedness of privileged types that has put all those poor American kids in harm’s way in Iraq. The war over there is very much on Stephanie’s mind again. Despite her resolution to keep up with the Grandville vigil group, she has only joined it two evenings since beginning her royal tennis regime. That is going to change now.

  Bunny is waiting for Stephanie to signal she is ready to receive the next serve. There is even more politesse in this game than in modern tennis. Players are forever saying, “Thank you” and “Ready now?” and “Well done.” In a sport built on deception, these starched locutions sound uncommonly passive-aggressive. Stephanie nods, Bunny serves.

  This is the first time the two young women have played one another. Both are seventeen and high school juniors (although Mark was quick to correct Stephanie for applying the term ‘junior’ to his sister; in Andover parlance, she is an ‘upper-middler’) and though Bunny is half a head taller than Stephanie, Stephanie can reach higher in a standing jump. The match was arranged by Mark, who hinted he had placed money on its outcome. He did not, of course, reveal on whom he bet or with whom. Stephanie can see him up there in the gallery next to her dad. Is Dad the one Mark placed his bet with?