The History of Now

by Daniel Klein

  Franny nods. They are on Route 7 approaching the Grandville town line. She can see Grandville High in the distance, the building lit up and the parking lot full. She tries to remember what sport is played in March. Still basketball? Volleyball?

  “Does Stephanie Cyzinski still come?” Franny asks.

  “Yup. She skipped for a while, but now she’s back every night.”

  Climbing the foothill at the base of Wright Mountain, Herb’s car sputters and backfires. He yanks it into first gear and pulls as far to the right as he can so the cars behind him can pass.

  “The Little Engine That Couldn’t,” Herb says.

  Franny looks at him. Whenever she asks herself what she feels about Herb, she comes up empty. God knows, she does not find him particularly exciting and she certainly does not find him sexy, although the truth is her libido seems to be sunk in the same deep sleep as most of her other feelings. She certainly feels gratitude toward him, but what else? Brotherhood? Dependency?

  Nakota’s much maligned spire appears at the crest of the hill and Franny shrinks back in her seat. One emotion has undeniably awakened inside her, and awakened with a vengeance: her guilt about Lila. She is now convinced she never gave enough to her daughter—enough time, enough understanding, enough love. Grudgingly, Franny has allowed this feeling to become Topic A in her thrice-weekly sessions with Werner, and inevitably the good doctor turns it around to Franny’s experiences with her own mother. Was Franny unconsciously duplicating her mother’s attitudes toward her with her own daughter? A repetition compulsion, perhaps? Blah, blah, and more blah.

  Only once did Werner raise a question that resonated for Franny and that was when he asked about Lila’s father, Jean-Marc. Just saying his name out loud elicited more bitterness in Franny than she thought she had left inside her. And despite the glint of ‘gotcha’ in Dr. Werner’s eyes, she dug into that bitterness to try to find what it was made of.

  It was not hard to recall how dazzled she had been by Jean-Marc Fournier when he arrived on the Ithaca College campus in the spring term of her junior year, a last-minute substitute for the Advanced Design instructor who had suddenly landed a production job in New York. Jean-Marc was Parisian, forty, long-haired, and slender. As a younger man, he had studied pantomime with Marcel Marceau. His specialties were opera sets and young women. Franny had been fully aware of his reputation as a womanizer when she took up with him, but the affair was so consuming, her connection to him and his wondrous world so intense, so unlike anything she had ever experienced with men her own age, that she did not doubt for a moment the affair was unique for Jean-Marc as well. She was terribly wrong about that, of course. By the time Franny realized she was pregnant, Jean-Marc had moved on to another young drama student.

  “Did you consider terminating the pregnancy?” Werner had asked.

  “No.”

  “You don’t believe in abortion?”

  “It just wasn’t an option for me.”

  “Because you were in love with him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because you thought abortion was bad?”

  “What the hell does that mean, Doctor?”

  “You sound angry.”

  “And you sound like a recorded message.”

  “Is it possible that some of the resentment you felt—you feel—for this man was unintentionally transferred to his child?”

  Well, fuck yes, Doctor—Anything’s possible. But what does any of this ancient history have to do with who I am now? Where the hell does it get me?

  “I have no idea,” Franny answered the psychiatrist.

  They are cruising down Main Street in Grandville. Franny is struck anew by the lived-in authenticity of her hometown as compared to the period piece stage set that is downtown Stockbridge. It occurs to her that Austen Riggs, an institution dedicated to self-consciousness, is perfectly matched with its locale.

  “Wow! Great turnout tonight,” Herb says, pointing through the windshield.

  Franny sees a good ten or twelve people in front of the town hall. More than half are holding up pickets that say, ‘Support our Troops—Bring them home!’ or ‘Be patriotic! Stop the war!’ or ‘Peace now!’ The death count—782 American soldiers and 2,300 Iraqis—is displayed in red chalk on a large wood-framed blackboard that is illuminated by a floodlight hung from a poplar tree. Virtually every protestor is splattered with mud thrown from the wheels of passing motorists. One of their number, an older man sporting a Russian fur hat, a red, white, and blue scarf around his neck, its long end thrown debonairly over his shoulder, is standing in the street, facing the others. He is waving his arms, conductor-like. Herb rolls down his window. The group is singing “Donna Nobis Pacem” in a round.

  Franny never asked Herb if he told the others she was coming tonight, but as she and Herb walk across Melville Street toward them, she realizes that not only did he tell them, they all must have discussed how to behave around her and come to the decision to act as if nothing was out of the ordinary. They nod and smile, but keep singing, segueing smoothly from “Donna Nobis” to “Give Peace a Chance.” Franny stands slightly behind the group under a tree. She feels a little dizzy.

  Suddenly, Stephanie Cyzinski breaks away from the others. She just cannot do it the way they planned any longer. She comes running towards Franny, her arms spread wide. “God, it’s good to see you!” Stephanie says, hugging her.

  Franny stiffens in the girl’s arms. She has not hugged or been hugged for so long it feels unnatural—not oppressive, simply confounding, as if it is a ritual of an alien clan. Stephanie lets go, backs away. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I get excited.”

  “Please don’t be sorry,” Franny says. “I’m just out of it, I guess.”

  “I’m sorry,” Stephanie says again.

  “How have you been, Stephanie?” Franny asks. This, too—asking somebody other than a group therapy member how she is today—feels arcane to Franny. Yet she finds herself unaccountably eager to hear the young woman’s reply.

  “I’m okay,” Stephanie says. She senses that Franny is asking the question in a more personal way than people usually do and adds, “Now, at least. I went through something kind of weird. Not awful, just strange. But I’m good now.”

  “I’m glad it worked out,” Franny says. This little exchange, banal in the extreme by the standards of everyday discourse, feels more charged with humanity than any conversation Franny has had in the past three months.

  Running a changing light signal, a milk truck comes barreling across the intersection of Main and Melville, and every one of its eight wheels flings a good shovelful of muck in the group’s direction, one sailing so high it passes over the heads of the others and smacks Franny square in the chest. The singing halts. In spite of themselves, the singers turn and stare apprehensively at Franny.

  “Baptized!” Franny cheers. Her smile comes from the same place whence smiles once came before her breakdown.

  Franny is introduced around to the new ‘vigil-istas’: Tiffany’s friend, Gloria, the two New York old timers, Gary and Tony (it is Gary who is the group’s self-appointed music director, and yes, there is no doubt the pair is gay), and three members of Marta’s Unitarian Universalist congregation, all middle-aged and thrilled to be out of their homes at dinner-time. Franny sings along in the next set, a medley of “Masters of War,” “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” and “Imagine.” At one point in this last number, Tony takes a solo turn in which he mimics the stammers and inappropriate smiles of the Commander in Chief. Everyone roars. For a moment, Franny wonders if the vigil has lost its purpose: Everyone is having too much fun for it to be about death and injustice. But then she sees that Tiffany and Gloria, the mothers of beloved children who will soon be shipped off to battlefields, are laughing too. Franny had a drama professor in college who said the basic difference between tragedy and comedy is that the tragic hero is racked with despair while the comic hero cannot help but believe that salvation is right around t
he corner, and while he fumbles his way to that corner, he has a few laughs. When the next eight-wheeler brakes for a red light at the intersection, all the protestors scurry off the curb into the gutter. Some raise their signs, but most need both hands to shield their faces as the truck lurches off the mark and rumbles towards them, pitching mud as she goes. It is a game, its object to see who can take the biggest, juiciest hit of muck. One of the Unitarians wins this round.

  At seven-thirty, they start breaking down their setup—removing the floodlight from the tree, stashing it and the blackboard and pickets into the back of Gary and Tony’s pickup truck. Only now does Tiffany speak to Franny. “Thanks for the job,” she says.

  It takes Franny a moment to realize Tiffany is talking about filling in on Sundays at Write Now. “It’s good for Wendell too,” Franny says.

  “I suppose . . . I mean, now that you’re better, you won’t be needing me anymore.”

  Franny studies Tiffany’s face for signs of embarrassment, even mere uneasiness, but she sees neither. It is clear Tiffany’s only concern is her once-a-week job and its income, not Franny’s breakdown and her apparent recovery. Franny’s old self would have been revolted by Tiffany’s selfishness, but in the moment Franny sees Tiffany’s priorities as no more and no less than what they need to be. “Nothing’s going to change,” Franny tells Tiffany, touching her shoulder.

  “We’d better get back,” Herb whispers in Franny’s ear. Her curfew is eight o’clock.

  “Okay,” Franny says, but she does not move. For the first time, she is allowing herself to look up Melville Street. Write Now is closed, a bundle of unsold newspapers in front of its door. The Phoenix appears closed too, two dumpsters parked in front, both jammed to the brim. The marquee, however, is illuminated, black letters declaring INTERMEZZO. Apparently Babs Dowd’s idea of wit had not changed. Franny feels mild amusement, nothing more. No anger, no contempt, no jealousy. And so it is that with a serene sense of certainty, Franny decides on the spot that she has finally and completely returned to strength and reason. “Let’s just drop by my house first,” she says to Herb.

  “I don’t think it’s on the agenda this time, Fran,” he answers.

  “Oh, come on!”

  “Really, I think this is supposed to be an incremental thing, you know?”

  “Jesus, Herb, I can handle it. Stop treating me like some kind of nut case, would you?”

  “I thought you were some kind of nut case,” Herb replies, laughing. It is obvious he has already given in to Franny, just as it would be obvious to any casual passerby that Herbert Blitzstein is very much in love with her.

  Franny can hear voices and laughter coming from her house the moment she steps out of the car. As she starts toward the front door ahead of Herb, she tries to identify the voices; Wendell’s seems easy enough to pick out and she thinks she hears Lila’s too—although isn’t this a work night for her? Mounting the front porch stairs, Franny realizes the cheery voices are not coming from her house, but from the one it is attached to, and she wonders why her father never mentioned it had been rented again. She is reaching for the knob of her front door when another round of laughter erupts in the neighbor’s house and this time there is no doubt that she hears her father’s laugh. She swings her legs over the low divide that cuts the porch in equal halves and steps to the neighbor’s front window. Inside, she sees a table that runs most of the length of what, in her house, is the living room. A family is eating dinner there: Her father, Esther, Esther’s children, Kaela and Johnny, and a black woman about Franny’s age.

  Herb is just behind Franny when she abruptly backs away from the window. Although he cannot see that the blood has drained from Franny’s face, he senses her unsteadiness and reflexively grasps her around the waist. He braces her trembling body against his own all the way back to the car. Neither of them speak the entire ride back to Austen Riggs.

  Of the people eating dinner at that table—it was Emmanuelle’s turn to cook and she had again made her fabulous pot roast—only Kaela spotted Franny through the window. Kaela only glimpsed her for a moment, a fraction of which she doubted her eyes, thinking the face she saw must be a distorted reflection of someone—her mother?—inside the room. But in the remaining fraction, Kaela saw Franny’s face turn from a look of wonder to one of utter desolation before it vanished from view. That look of desolation frightened the child, and the size of her fright was so overwhelming she decided not to tell anyone what she had seen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Michael Dowd’s instincts have always served him well. God knows, his success in the stock market is more a result of hunches than of calculations. He has a seer’s sense of the fluctuations of supply and demand, a gift that permits him to move far faster than his peers who need to construct and consult elaborate charts on their computers before making a buy. His talent is not limited to stock picks either: He pretty much chose his wife on instinct, virtually making the decision to spend the rest of his life with her on the day he met her at a Young Democrats convention in Boston when he was a senior at Harvard. The same went for the town he chose to live in after the events of 9/11 persuaded him to leave Manhattan. And despite the fact that most people think it was Babs who made the decision to purchase, renovate, and manage the Phoenix Theater, it is Michael who instantly saw what a rare opportunity it was: He could turn a nice profit for himself and his friends and give his wife her heart’s fondest desire in one sweet deal.

  But lately Michael has been dithering. It is not that his stream of inspirations has dried up, but his trust in them is faltering. One morning last month after reading an article in the Times, he got right on the phone and bought six hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stock in CounterPoint Body Armor, Incorporated. No need to pour over CounterPoint’s books; the article stated that the new phase of the war in Iraq was ninety-percent close combat and Michael knew that CounterPoint was the Defense Department’s pet supplier of bullet-proof vests. Michael was right, but wrong: indeed, CounterPoint landed a three million-dollar defense contract, but their product turned out to be flawed: bullets could penetrate it. The Marine Corps returned the goods after some thirty-five troops discovered this defect through personal experience. CounterPoint’s stock tumbled and Michael’s mutual fund suffered a half-million dollar loss. Michael’s confidence took a hit too. Lately, he has been constructing labor-intensive charts of his own before he makes a buy, not that his results have improved significantly.

  Also, Michael’s gut decision following Daphne’s little imbroglio at Hotchkiss—to have her live at home and attend the local public high school—has turned out to be less than satisfactory. Last week when Babs probed Daphne’s backpack, she discovered two ‘joints,’ hand-rolled marijuana cigarettes, confirming one of Babs’s worst fears about public schools. (Her absolute worst fear is that Daphne will end up at one of those third-rate colleges all the graduates of Grandville High seemed to attend.) Babs blames Michael for Daphne’s ‘drug habit,’ as she calls it.

  Even now Michael is dithering. He cannot make up his mind what footwear would be best for his evening jog: his New Balance night reflectors or his L.L.Bean work boots. The advantage of the latter is obvious in mud season, especially after today’s afternoon shower. Even the extra weight of the boots could be considered a plus, aerobic-wise. But the running shoes are far more comfortable for one thing and for another they are, well, spiffier. Michael is well aware that spiffiness hardly qualifies as a consideration in most circumstances, and certainly not after dark on a desolate stretch of road. Yet how Michael looks to himself matters more to him lately, possibly because Babs is so preoccupied with her evening meetings dedicated to developing the theater’s first season that she rarely spends any time with him anymore. Somehow, eyeing himself approvingly in the hallway mirror—his crimson Harvard sweatshirt definitely gives him a boyish air—compensates for his wife’s inattention. He goes with New Balance.

  It is this Terry Cyzinski business that has
shaken Michael’s faith the most, more in other people than in himself, although it was his own naïve trust in other people that contributed to making this molehill into a mammoth mud pile. At first, Michael assured Cyzinski that his daughter must be mistaken in her presumption that the upcoming vacant woman’s spot on Harvard’s royal tennis team was already spoken for, but one call to Assistant Dean of Admissions, Rupert Crawley III, confirmed that Stephanie was right, even if Crawley insisted that there are a hundred factors that go into selecting every ‘admit,’ right up until the end. But Crawley’s oh-so-casual mention of Mark Saunders Sr.’s ‘generous support’ of Harvard’s athletic program made it abundantly clear that some factors figure significantly more than the ninety-nine others.

  Naturally, Michael wanted to know how this fuck-up had come to pass—it was Crawley himself who had told Michael just last fall about the forthcoming open position on the royal tennis team. But Michael did not challenge the assistant dean; that would have been ill-mannered. Although Michael Dowd never made any friends among the Harvard Brahmins when he was an undergraduate, he did pick up their rules of deportment. What is more, Michael’s son, Mike Jr., will be applying to Harvard in just three years’ time, so Michael certainly cannot risk antagonizing Crawley.

  Michael called back Cyzinski in his office at Grandville High and reiterated the Crawley line: No decisions would be made until all the applications were in, so Stephanie was definitely still in the running. Cyzinski was not mollified. In fact, it was already in that phone call that the guidance counselor began using inappropriate language.

  “In other words, you lied to me,” Cyzinski said.

  “I admit there was a mix-up, Terry,” Michael replied calmly. “But I’m going to do everything I can to make sure they give Stephanie a real good look.”

  “A real good look,” Cyzinski repeated mockingly.