======================

The Price of Oranges

by Nancy Kress

======================

Copyright (c)1992 Pulphouse Publishing Corporation

First appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in April 1989

Fictionwise Contemporary

Science Fiction

–––––––––––

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the purchaser. If you did not purchase this ebook directly from Fictionwise.com then you are in violation of copyright law and are subject to severe fines.

Please visit www.fictionwise.com to purchase a legal copy. Fictionwise.com

offers a reward for information leading to the conviction of copyright violators of Fictionwise ebooks.

–––––––––––

“I’m worried about my granddaughter,” Harry Kramer said, passing half of his sandwich to Manny Feldman. Manny took it eagerly. The sandwich was huge, thick slices of beef and horseradish between fresh slabs of crusty bread. Pigeons watched the park bench hopefully.

“Jackie. The granddaughter who writes books,” Manny said. Harry watched to see that Manny ate. You couldn’t trust Manny to eat enough; he stayed too skinny. At least in Harry’s opinion. Manny, Jackie — the world, Harry sometimes thought, had all grown too skinny when he somehow hadn’t been looking. Skimpy. Stretched feeling. Harry nodded to see horseradish spurt in a satisfying stream down Manny’s scraggly beard.

“Jackie. Yes,” Harry said.

“So what’s wrong with her? She’s sick?” Manny eyed Harry’s strudel, cherry with real yeast bread. Harry passed it to him. “Harry, the whole thing?

I couldn’t.”

“Take it, take it, I don’t want it. You should eat. No, she’s not sick.

She’s miserable.” When Manny, his mouth full of strudel, didn’t answer, Harry put a hand on Manny’s arm. “Miserable.”

Manny swallowed hastily. “How do you know? You saw her this week?”

“No. Next Tuesday. She’s bringing me a book by a friend of hers. I know from this.” He drew a magazine from an inner pocket of his coat. The coat was thick tweed, almost new, with wooden buttons. On the cover of the glossy magazine a woman smiled contemptuously. A woman with hollow, starved-looking cheeks who obviously didn’t get enough to eat either.

“That’s not a book,” Manny pointed out.

“So she writes stories, too. Listen to this, just listen. ‘I stood in my backyard, surrounded by the false bright toxin-fed green, and realized that the earth was dead. What else could it be, since we humans swarmed upon it like maggots on carrion, growing our hectic gleaming molds, leaving our slime trails across the senseless surface?’ Does that sound like a happy woman?”

“Hoo boy,” Manny said. “It’s all like that. ‘Don’t read my things, Popsy,’ she says. ‘You’re not in the audience for my things.’ Then she smiles without ever once showing her teeth.” Harry flung both arms wide. “Who else should be in the audience but her own grandfather?”

Manny swallowed the last of the strudel. Pigeons fluttered angrily.

“She never shows her teeth when she smiles? Never?”

“Never.”

“Hoo boy,” Manny said. “Did you want all of that orange?”

“No, I brought it for you, to take home. But did you finish that whole half a sandwich already?”

“I thought I’d take it home,” Manny said humbly. He showed Harry the tip of the sandwich, wrapped in the thick brown butcher paper, protruding from the pocket of his old coat.

Harry nodded approvingly. “Good, good. Take the orange, too. I brought it for you.”

Manny took the orange. Three teenagers carrying huge shrieking radios sauntered past. Manny started to put his hands over his ears, received a look of dangerous contempt from the teenager with green hair, and put his hands on his lap. The kid tossed an empty beer bottle onto the pavement before their feet. It shattered. Harry scowled fiercely but Manny stared straight ahead.

When the cacophony had passed, Manny said, “Thank you for the orange. Fruit, it costs so much this time of year.”

Harry still scowled. “Not in 1937.”

“Don’t start that again, Harry.”

Harry said sadly, “Why won’t you ever believe me? Could I afford to bring all this food if I got it at 1989 prices? Could I afford this coat? Have you seen buttons like this in 1989, on a new coat? Have you seen sandwiches wrapped in that kind of paper since we were young? Have you? Why won’t you believe me?”

Manny slowly peeled his orange. The rind was pale, and the orange had seeds. “Harry. Don’t start.”

“But why won’t you just come to my room and see?”

Manny sectioned the orange. “Your room. A cheap furnished room in a Social Security hotel. Why should I go? I know what will be there. What will be there is the same thing in my room. A bed, a chair, a table, a hot plate, some cans of food. Better I should meet you here in the park, get at least a little fresh air.” He looked at Harry meekly, the orange clutched in one hand.

“Don’t misunderstand. It’s not from a lack of friendship I say this. You’re good to me, you’re the best friend I have. You bring me things from a great deli, you talk to me, you share with me the family I don’t have. It’s enough, Harry. It’s more than enough. I don’t need to see where you live like I live.”

Harry gave it up. There were moods, times, when it was just impossible to budge Manny. He dug in, and in he stayed. “Eat your orange.”

“It’s a good orange. So tell me more about Jackie.”

“Jackie.” Harry shook his head. Two kids on bikes tore along the path.

One of them swerved towards Manny and snatched the orange from his hand. “Aw riggghhhtttt!”

Harry scowled after the child. It had been a girl. Manny just wiped the orange juice off his fingers onto the knee of his pants. “Is everything she writes so depressing?”

“Everything,” Harry said. “Listen to this one.” He drew out another magazine, smaller, bound in rough paper with a stylized line drawing of a woman’s private parts on the cover. On the cover! Harry held the magazine with one palm spread wide over the drawing, which made it difficult to keep the pages open while he read. “She looked at her mother in the only way possible: with contempt, contempt for all the betrayals and compromises that had been her mother’s life, for the sad soft lines of defeat around her mother’s mouth, for the bright artificial dress too young for her wasted years, for even the leather handbag, Gucci of course, filled with blood money for having sold her life to a man who had long ceased to want it.”

“Hoo boy,” Manny said. “About a mother she wrote that?”

“About everybody. All the time.”

“And where is Barbara?”

“Reno again. Another divorce.” How many had that been? After two, did anybody count? Harry didn’t count. He imagined Barbara’s life as a large roulette wheel like the ones on TV, little silver men bouncing in and out of red and black pockets. Why didn’t she get dizzy?

Manny said slowly, “I always thought there was a lot of love in her.”

“A lot of that she’s got,” Harry said dryly. “Not Barbara — Jackie. A lot of … I don’t know. Sweetness. Under the way she is.”

“The way she is,” Harry said gloomily. “Prickly. A cactus. But you’re right, Manny, I know what you mean. She just needs someone to soften her up.

Love her back, maybe. Although I love her.”

The two old men looked at each other. Manny said, “Harry…”

“I know, I know. I’m only a grandfather, my love doesn’t count, I’m just there. Like air. ‘You’re wonderful, Popsy,’ she says, and still no teeth when she smiles. But you know, Manny — you are right!” Harry jumped up from the bench. “You are! What she needs is a young man to love her!”

Manny looked alarmed. “I didn’t say — “

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before!”

“Harry — “

“And her stories, too! Full of ugly murders, ugly places, unhappy endings. What she needs is something to show her that writing could be about sweetness, too.”

Manny was staring at him hard. Harry felt a rush of affection. That Manny should have the answer! Skinny wonderful Manny!

Manny said slowly, “Jackie said to me, ‘I write about reality.’ That’s what she said, Harry.”

“So there’s no sweetness in reality? Put sweetness in her life, her writing will go sweet. She needs this, Manny. A really nice fellow!”

Two men in jogging suits ran past. One of their Reeboks came down on a shard of beer bottle. “Every fucking time!” he screamed, bending over to inspect his shoe. “Fucking park!”

“Well, what do you expect?” the other drawled, looking at Manny and Harry. “Although you’d think that if we could clean up Lake Erie…”

“Fucking derelicts!” the other snarled. They jogged away.

“Of course,” Harry said, “it might not be easy to find the sort of guy to convince Jackie.”

“Harry, I think you should maybe think — “

“Not here,” Harry said suddenly. “Not here. There. In 1937.”

“Harry…”

“Yeah,” Harry said, nodding several times. Excitement filled him like light, like electricity. What an idea! “It was different then.”

Manny said nothing. When he stood up, the sleeve of his coat exposed the number tattooed on his wrist. He said quietly, “It was no paradise in 1937

either, Harry.”

Harry seized Manny’s hand. “I’m going to do it, Manny. Find someone for her there. Bring him here.”

Manny sighed. “Tomorrow at the chess club, Harry? At one o’clock? It’s Tuesday.”

“I’ll tell you then how I’m coming with this.”

“Fine, Harry. Fine. All my wishes go with you. You know that.”

Harry stood up too, still holding Manny’s hand. A middle-aged man staggered to the bench and slumped onto it. The smell of whiskey rose from him in waves. He eyed Manny and Harry with scorn. “Fucking fags.”

“Good night, Harry.”

“Manny — if you’d only come … money goes so much farther there…”

“Tomorrow at one. At the chess club.”

Harry watched his friend walk away. Manny’s foot dragged a little; the knee must be bothering him again. Harry wished Manny would see a doctor. Maybe a doctor would know why Manny stayed so skinny.

Harry walked back to his hotel. In the lobby, old men slumped in upholstery thin from wear, burned from cigarettes, shiny in the seat from long sitting. Sitting and sitting, Harry thought — life measured by the seat of the pants. And now it was getting dark. No one would go out from here until the next daylight. Harry shook his head.

The elevator wasn’t working again. He climbed the stairs to the third floor. Halfway there, he stopped, felt in his pocket, counted five quarters, six dimes, two nickels, and eight pennies. He returned to the lobby. “Could I have two dollar bills for this change, please? Maybe old bills?”

The clerk looked at him suspiciously. “Your rent paid up?”

“Certainly,” Harry said. The woman grudgingly gave him the money.

“Thank you. You look very lovely today, Mrs. Raduski.” Mrs. Raduski snorted.

In his room, Harry looked for his hat. He finally found it under his bed — how had it gotten under his bed? He dusted it off and put it on. It had cost him $3.25. He opened the closet door, parted the clothes hanging from their metal pole — like Moses parting the sea, he always thought, a Moses come again — and stepped to the back of the closet, remembering with his body rather than his mind the sharp little twist to the right just past the far gray sleeve of his good wool suit.

He stepped out into the bare corner of a warehouse. Cobwebs brushed his hat; he had stepped a little too far right. Harry crossed the empty concrete space to where the lumber stacks started, and threaded his way through them.

The lumber, too, was covered with cobwebs; not much building going on. On his way out the warehouse door, Harry passed the night watchman coming on duty.

“Quiet all day, Harry?”

“As a church, Rudy,” Harry said. Rudy laughed. He laughed a lot. He was also indisposed to question very much. The first time he had seen Harry coming out of the warehouse in a bemused daze, he must have assumed that Harry had been hired to work there. Peering at Rudy’s round, vacant face, Harry realized that he must hold this job because he was someone’s uncle, someone’s cousin, someone’s something. Harry had felt a small glow of approval; families should take care of their own. He had told Rudy that he had lost his key and asked him for another.

Outside it was late afternoon. Harry began walking. Eventually there were people walking past him, beside him, across the street from him.

Everybody wore hats. The women wore bits of velvet or wool with dotted veils across their noses and long, graceful dresses in small prints. The men wore fedoras with suits as baggy as Harry’s. When he reached the park there were children, girls in long black tights and hard shoes, boys in buttoned shirts.

Everyone looked like it was Sunday morning.

Pushcarts and shops lined the sidewalks. Harry bought a pair of socks, thick gray wool, for 89 cents. When the man took his dollar, Harry held his breath: each first time made a little pip in his stomach. But no one ever looked at the dates of old bills. He bought two oranges for five cents each, and then, thinking of Manny, bought a third. At a candystore he bought G-8 AND

HIS BATTLE ACES for fifteen cents. At The Collector’s Cozy in the other time they would gladly give him thirty dollars for it. Finally, he bought a cherry Coke for a nickel and headed toward the park.

“Oh, excuse me,” said a young man who bumped into Harry on the sidewalk. “I’m so sorry!” Harry looked at him hard: but, no. Too young. Jackie was twenty-eight.

Some children ran past, making for the movie theater. Spencer Tracy in CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS. Harry sat down on a green-painted wooden bench under a pair of magnificent Dutch elms. On the bench lay a newsmagazine. Harry glanced at it to see when in September this was: the 28th. The cover pictured a young blond Nazi soldier standing at stiff salute. Harry thought again of Manny, frowned, and turned the magazine cover down.

For the next hour, people walked past. Harry studied them carefully.

When it got too dark to see, he walked back to the warehouse, on the way buying an apple kuchen at a bakery with a curtain behind the counter looped back to reveal a man in his shirt sleeves eating a plate of stew at a table bathed in soft yellow lamplight. The kuchen cost thirty-two cents.

At the warehouse, Harry let himself in with his key, slipped past Rudy nodding over Paris Nights, and walked to his cobwebby corner. He emerged from his third-floor closet into his room. Beyond the window, sirens wailed and wailed and would not stop.

“So how’s it going?” Manny asked. He dripped kuchen crumbs on the chessboard; Harry brushed them away. Manny had him down a knight.

“It’s going to take some time to find somebody that’s right,” Harry said. “I’d like to have someone by next Tuesday when I meet Jackie for dinner, but I don’t know. It’s not easy. There are requirements. He has to be young enough to be attractive, but old enough to understand Jackie. He has to be sweet-natured enough to do her some good, but strong enough not to panic at jumping over fifty-two years. Somebody educated. An educated man — he might be more curious than upset by my closet. Don’t you think?”

“Better watch your queen,” Manny said, moving his rook. “So how are you going to find him?”

“It takes time,” Harry said. “I’m working on it.” Manny shook his head.

“You have to get somebody here, you have to convince him he is here, you have to keep him from turning right around and running back in time through your shirts … I don’t know, Harry. I don’t know. I’ve been thinking. This thing is not simple. What if you did something wrong? Took somebody important out of 1937?”

“I won’t pick anybody important.”

“What if you made a mistake and brought your own grandfather? And something happened to him here?”

“My grandfather was already dead in 1937.”

“What if you brought me? I’m already here.”

“You didn’t live here in 1937.”

“What if you brought you?”

“I didn’t live here either.”

“What if you…”

“Manny,” Harry said, ‘I’m not bringing somebody important. I’m not bringing somebody we know. I’m not bringing somebody for permanent. I’m just bringing a nice guy for Jackie to meet, go dancing, see a different kind of nature. A different view of what’s possible. An innocence. I’m sure there are fellows here that would do it, but I don’t know any, and I don’t know how to bring any to her. From there I know. Is this so complicated? Is this so unpredictable?”

“Yes,” Manny said. He had on his stubborn look again. How could somebody so skimpy look so stubborn? Harry sighed and moved his lone knight.

“I brought you some whole socks.”

“Thank you. That knight, it’s not going to help you much.”

“Lectures. That’s what there was there that there isn’t here. Everybody went to lectures. No TV, movies cost money, they went to free lectures.”

“I remember,” Manny said. “I was a young man myself. Harry, this thing is not simple.”

“Yes, it is,” Harry said stubbornly.

“1937 was not simple.”

“It will work, Manny.”

“Check,” Manny said.

That evening, Harry went back. This time it was the afternoon of September 16. On newsstands The New York Times announced that President Roosevelt and John L. Lewis had talked pleasantly at the White House.

Cigarettes cost thirteen cents a pack. Women wore cotton stockings and clunky, high-heeled shoes. Schrafft’s best chocolates were sixty cents a pound. Small boys addressed Harry as “sir.”

He attended six lectures in two days. A Madame Trefania lectured on theosophy to a hall full of badly dressed women with thin, pursed lips. A union organizer roused an audience to a pitch that made Harry leave after the first thirty minutes. A skinny, nervous missionary showed slides of religious outposts in China. An archaeologist back from a Mexican dig gave a dry, impatient talk about temples to an audience of three people. A New Deal Democrat spoke passionately about aiding the poor, but afterwards addressed all the women present as “Sister.” Finally, just when Harry was starting to feel discouraged, he found it.

A museum offered a series of lectures on “Science of Today — and Tomorrow.” Harry heard a slim young man with a reddish beard speak with idealistic passion about travel to the moon, the planets, the stars. It seemed to Harry that compared to stars, 1989 might seem reasonably close. The young man had warm hazel eyes and a sense of humor. When he spoke about life in a spaceship, he mentioned in passing that women would be freed from much domestic drudgery they now endured. Throughout the lecture, he smoked, lighting cigarettes with a masculine squinting of eyes and cupping of hands.

He said that imagination was the human quality that would most help people adjust to the future. His shoes were polished.

But most of all, Harry thought, he had a glow. A fine golden Boy Scout glow that made Harry think of old covers for the Saturday Evening Post.

Which here cost five cents.

After the lecture, Harry stayed in his chair in the front row, outwaiting even the girl with bright red lipstick who lingered around the lecturer, this Robert Gernshon. From time to time, Gernshon glanced over at Harry with quizzical interest. Finally the girl, red lips pouting, sashayed out of the hall.

“Hello,” Harry said. “I’m Harry Kramer. I enjoyed your talk. I have something to show you that you would be very interested in.”

The hazel eyes turned wary. “Oh, no, no,” Harry said. “Something scientific. Here, look at this.” He handed Gernshon a filtered Vantage Light.

“How long it is,” Gernshon said. “What’s this made of?”

“The filter? It’s made of … a new filter material. Tastes milder and cuts down on the nicotine. Much better for you. Look at this.” He gave Gernshon a styrofoam cup from MacDonald’s. “It’s made of a new material, too.

Very cheap. Disposable.”

Gernshon fingered the cup. “Who are you?” he said quietly.

“A scientist. I’m interested in the science of tomorrow, too. Like you.

I’d like to invite you to see my laboratory, which is in my home.”

“In your home?”

“Yes. In a small way. just dabbling, you know.” Harry could feel himself getting rattled; the young hazel eyes stared at him so steadily.

Jackie, he thought. Dead earths. Maggots and carrion. Contempt for mothers.

What would Gernshon say? When would Gernshon say anything?

“Thank you,” Gernshon finally said. “When would be convenient?”

“Now?” Harry said. He tried to remember what time of day it was now.

All he could picture was lecture halls.

Gernshon came. It was nine-thirty in the evening of Friday, September 17. Harry walked Gernshon through the streets, trying to talk animatedly, trying to distract. He said that he himself was very interested in travel to the stars. He said it had always been his dream to stand on another planet and take in great gulps of completely unpolluted air. He said his great heroes were those biologists who made that twisty model of DNA. He said science had been his life. Gernshon walked more and more silently.

“Of course,” Harry said hastily, “like most scientists, I’m mostly familiar with my own field. You know how it is.”

“What is your field, Dr. Kramer?” Gernshon asked quietly.

“Electricity,” Harry said, and hit him on the back of the head with a solid brass candlestick from the pocket of his coat. The candlestick had cost him three dollars at a pawn shop.

They had walked past the stores and pushcarts to a point where the locked business offices and warehouses began. There were no passersby, no muggers, no street dealers, no Guardian Angels, no punk gangs. Only him, hitting an unarmed man with a candlestick. He was no better than the punks.

But what else could he do? What else could he do? Nothing but hit him softly, so softly that Gernshon was struggling again almost before Harry got his hands and feet tied, well before he got on the blindfold and gag. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he kept saying to Gernshon. Gernshon did not look as if the apology made any difference. Harry dragged him into the warehouse.

Rudy was asleep over Spicy Stories. Breathing very hard, Harry pulled the young man — not more than 150 pounds, it was good Harry had looked for slim — to the far corner, through the gate, and into his closet.

“Listen,” he said urgently to Gernshon after removing the gag. “Listen.

I can call the Medicare Emergency Hotline. If your head feels broken. Are you feeling faint? Do you think you maybe might go into shock?”

Gernshon lay on Harry’s rug, glaring at him, saying nothing.

“Listen, I know this is maybe a little startling to you. But I’m not a pervert, not a cop, not anything but a grandfather with a problem. My granddaughter. I need your help to solve it, but I won’t take much of your time. You’re now somewhere besides where you gave your lecture. A pretty long ways away. But you don’t have to stay here long, I promise. Just two weeks, tops, and I’ll send you back. I promise, on my mother’s grave. And I’ll make it worth your while. I promise.”

“Untie me.”

“Yes. Of course. Right away. Only you have to not attack me, because I’m the only one who can get you back from here.” He had a sudden inspiration.

“I’m like a foreign consul. You’ve maybe traveled abroad?”

Gernshon looked around the dingy room. “Untie me.”

“I will. In two minutes. Five, tops. I just want to explain a little first.”

“Where am I?”

“1989.”

Gernshon said nothing. Harry explained brokenly, talking as fast as he could, saying he could move from 1989 to September, 1937 when he wanted to, but he could take Gernshon back too, no problem. He said he made the trip often, it was perfectly safe. He pointed out how much farther a small Social Security check, no pension, could go at 1937 prices. He mentioned Manny’s strudel. Only lightly did he touch on the problem of Jackie, figuring there would be a better time to share domestic difficulties, and his closet he didn’t mention at all. it was hard to keep his eyes averted from the closet door. He did mention how bitter people could be in 1989, how lost, how weary from expecting so much that nothing was a delight, nothing a sweet surprise.

He was just working up to a tirade on innocence when Gernshon said again, in a different tone, “Untie me.”

“Of course,” Harry said quickly, “I don’t expect you to believe me. Why should you think you’re in 1989? Go, see for yourself. Look at that light, it’s still early morning. just be careful out there, is all.” He untied Gernshon and stood with his eyes squeezed shut, waiting.

When nothing hit him, Harry opened his eyes. Gernshon was at the door.

“Wait!” Harry cried. “You’ll need more money!” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, carefully saved for this, and all the change he had.

Gernshon examined the coins carefully, then looked up at Harry. He said nothing. He opened the door and Harry, still trembling, sat down in his chair to wait.

Gernshon came back three hours later, pale and sweating. “My God!”

“I know just what you mean,” Harry said. “A zoo out there. Have a drink.”

Gernshon took the mixture Harry had ready in his toothbrush glass and gulped it down. He caught sight of the bottle, which Harry had left on the dresser: Seagram’s V.O., with the cluttered, tiny-print label. He threw the glass across the room and covered his face with his hands.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said apologetically. “But then it cost only $3.37

the fifth.”

Gernshon didn’t move.

“I’m really sorry,” Harry said. He raised both hands, palms up, and dropped them helplessly. “Would you … would you maybe like an orange?”

Gernshon recovered faster than Harry had dared hope. Within an hour he was sitting in Harry’s worn chair, asking questions about the space shuttle; within two hours taking notes; within three become again the intelligent and captivating young man of the lecture hall. Harry, answering as much as he could as patiently as he could, was impressed by the boy’s resilience. It couldn’t have been easy. What if he, Harry, suddenly had to skip fifty-two more years? What if he found himself in 2041? Harry shuddered.

“Do you know that a movie now costs six dollars?”

Gernshon blinked. “We were talking about the moon landing.”

“Not any more, we’re not. I want to ask you some questions, Robert.

Do you think the earth is dead, with people sliming all over it like on carrion? Is this a thought that crosses your mind?”

“I … no.” Harry nodded.

“Good, good. Do you look at your mother with contempt?”

“Of course not. Harry -“

“No, it’s my turn. Do you think a woman who marries a man, and maybe the marriage doesn’t work out perfect, whose does, but they raise at least one healthy child — say a daughter — that that woman’s life has been a defeat and a failure?”

“No. I — “

“What would you think if you saw a drawing of a woman’s private parts on the cover of a magazine?”

Gernshon blushed. He looked as if the blush annoyed him, but also as if he couldn’t help it.

“Better and better,” Harry said. “Now, think careful on this next one

— take your time — no hurry. Does reality seem to you to have sweetness in it as well as ugliness? Take your time.”

Gernshon peered at him. Harry realized they had talked right through lunch. “But not all the time in the world, Robert.”

“Yes,” Gernshon said. “I think reality has more sweetness than ugliness. And more strangeness than anything else. Very much more.” He looked suddenly dazed. “I’m sorry, I just — all this has happened so — “

“Put your head between your knees,” Harry suggested. “There — better now? Good. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Manny sat in the park, on their late-afternoon bench. When he saw them coming, his face settled into long sorrowful ridges. “Harry. Where have you been for two days? I was worried, I went to your hotel — “

“Manny,” Harry said, “this is Robert.”

“So I see,” Manny said. He didn’t hold out his hand.

“Him,” Harry said.

“Harry. Oh, Harry.”

“How do you do, sir,” Gernshon said. He held out his hand. “I’m afraid I didn’t get your full name. I’m Robert Gernshon.”

Manny looked at him — at the outstretched hand, the baggy suit with wide tie, the deferential smile, the golden Balden-Powell glow. Manny’s lips mouthed a silent word: sir?

“I have a lot to tell you,” Harry said. ‘You can tell all of us, then,”

Manny said. “Here comes Jackie now.”

Harry looked up. Across the park a woman in jeans strode purposefully toward them. “Manny! It’s only Monday!”

“I called her to come,” Manny said. “You’ve been gone from your room two days, Harry, nobody at your hotel could say where — “

“But Manny,” Harry said, while Gernshon looked, frowning, from one to the other and Jackie spotted them and waved.

She had lost more weight, Harry saw. Only two weeks, yet her cheeks had hollowed out and new, tiny lines touched her eyes. Skinny lines. They filled him with sadness. Jackie wore a blue T-shirt that said LIFE IS A BITCH — THEN

YOU DIE. She carried a magazine and a small can of mace disguised as hair spray.

“Popsy! You’re here! Manny said — “

“Manny was wrong,” Harry said. “Jackie, sweetheart, you look — it’s good to see you. Jackie, I’d like you to meet somebody, darling. This is Robert. My friend. My friend Robert. Jackie Snyder.”

“Hi,” Jackie said. She gave Harry a hug, and then Manny one. Harry saw Gernshon gazing at her very tight jeans.

“Robert’s a … a scientist,” Harry said. It was the wrong thing to say; Harry knew the moment he said it that it was the wrong thing. Science —

all science — was, for some reason not completely clear to him, a touchy subject with Jackie. She tossed her long hair back from her eyes. “Oh, yeah?

Not chemical, I hope?”

“I’m not actually a scientist,” Gernshon said winningly. “Just a dabbler. I popularize new scientific concepts, write about them to make them intelligible.”

“Like what?” Jackie said.

Gernshon opened his mouth, closed it again. A boy suddenly flashed past on a skateboard, holding a boom box. Metallica blasted the air. Overhead, a jet droned. Gernshon smiled weakly. “It’s hard to explain.”

“I’m capable of understanding,” Jackie said coldly. “Women can

understand science, you know.”

“Jackie, sweetheart,” Harry said, “what have you got there? Is that your new book?”

“No,” Jackie said, “this is the one I said I’d bring you, by my friend.

It’s brilliant. It’s about a man whose business partner betrays him by selling out to organized crime and framing the man. In jail he meets a guy who has founded his own religion, the House of Divine Despair, and when they both get out they start a new business, Suicide Incorporated, that helps people kill themselves for a fee. The whole thing is just a brilliant denunciation of contemporary America.”

Gernshon made a small sound.

“It’s a comedy,” Jackie added.

“It sounds … it sounds a little depressing,” Gernshon said.

Jackie looked at him. Very distinctly, she said, “It’s reality.”

Harry saw Gernshon glance around the park. A man nodded on a bench, his hands slack on his knees. Newspapers and MacDonald’s wrappers stirred fitfully in the dirt. A trash container had been knocked over. From beside a scrawny tree, enclosed shoulder-height by black wrought iron, a child watched them with old eyes.

“I brought you something else, too, Popsy,” Jackie said. Harry hoped that Gernshon noticed how much gentler her voice was when she spoke to her grandfather. “A scarf. See, it’s llama wool. Very warm.”

Gernshon said, “My mother has a scarf like that. No, I guess hers is some kind of fur.”

Jackie’s face changed. “What kind?”

“I — I’m not sure.”

“Not an endangered species, I hope.”

“No. Not that. I’m sure not … that.”

Jackie stared at him a moment longer. The child who had been watching strolled toward them. Harry saw Gernshon look at the boy with relief. About eleven years old, he wore a perfectly tailored suit and Italian shoes. Manny shifted to put himself between the boy and Gernshon. “Jackie, darling, it’s so good to see you…”

The boy brushed by Gernshon on the other side. He never looked up, and his voice stayed boyish and low, almost a whisper. “Crack….”

“Step on one and you break your mother’s back,” Gernshon said brightly.

He smiled at Harry, a special conspiratorial smile to suggest that children, at least, didn’t change in fifty years. The boy’s head jerked up to look at Gernshon.

“You talking about my mama?”

Jackie groaned. “No,” she said to the kid. “He doesn’t mean anything.

Beat it.”

“I don’t forget,” the boy said. He backed away slowly.

Gernshon said, frowning, “I’m sorry. I’m not sure exactly what all that was, but I’m sorry.”

“Are you for real?” Jackie said angrily. “What the fucking hell was

all that? Don’t you realize this park is the only place Manny and my grandfather can get some fresh air?”

“I didn’t -“

“That punk runner meant it when he said he won’t forget!”

“I don’t like your tone,” Gernshon said. “Or your language.”

“My language!” The corners of Jackie’s mouth tightened. Manny looked at Harry and put his hands over his face. The boy, twenty feet away, suddenly let out a noise like a strangled animal, so piercing all four of them spun around.

Two burly teenagers were running toward him. The child’s face crumpled; he looked suddenly much younger. He sprang away, stumbled, made the noise again, and hurled himself, all animal terror, toward the street behind the park bench.

“No!” Gernshon shouted. Harry turned towards the shout but Gernshon already wasn’t there. Harry saw the twelve-wheeler bearing down, heard Jackie’s scream, saw Gernshon’s wiry body barrel into the boy’s. The truck shrieked past, its air brakes deafening.

Gernshon and the boy rose in the street on the other side.

Car horns blared. The boy bawled, “Leggo my suit! You tore my suit!” A red light flashed and a squad car pulled up. The two burly teenagers melted away, and then the boy somehow vanished as well.

“Never find him,” the disgruntled cop told them over the clipboard on which he had written nothing. “Probably just as well.” He went away.

“Are you hurt?” Manny said. It was the first time he had spoken. His face was ashen. Harry put a hand across his shoulders.

“No,” Gernshon said. He gave Manny his sweet smile. “Just a little dirty.”

“That took guts,” Jackie said. She was staring at Gernshon with a frown between her eyebrows. “Why did you do it?”

“Pardon?”

“Why? I mean, given what that kid is, given — oh, all of it — ” she gestured around the park, a helpless little wave of her strong young hands that tore at Harry’s heart. “Why bother?”

Gernshon said gently, “What that kid is, is a kid.”

Manny looked skeptical. Harry moved to stand in front of Manny’s expression before anyone wanted to discuss it. “Listen, I’ve got a wonderful idea, you two seem to have so much to talk about, about … bothering, and …

everything. Why don’t you have dinner together, on me? My treat.”

He pulled another twenty dollar bill from his pocket. Behind him he could feel Manny start.

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Gernshon said, at the same moment that Jackie said warningly, “Popsy….”

Harry put his palms on both sides of her face. “Please. Do this for me, Jackie. Without the questions, without the female protests. Just this once.

For me.”

Jackie was silent a long moment before she grimaced, nodded, and turned with half-humorous appeal to Gernshon.

Gernshon cleared his throat. “Well, actually, it would probably be better if all four of us came. I’m embarrassed to say that prices are higher in this city than in … that is, I’m not able to … but if we went somewhere less expensive, the Automat maybe, I’m sure all four of us could eat together.”

“No, no,” Harry said. “We already ate.” Manny looked at him.

Jackie began, offended, “I certainly don’t want … just what do you think is going on here, buddy? This is just to please my grandfather. Are you afraid I might try to jump your bones?”

Harry saw Gernshon’s quick, involuntary glance at Jackie’s tight jeans.

He saw, too, that Gernshon fiercely regretted the glance the instant he had made it. He saw that Manny saw, and that Jackie saw, and that Gernshon saw that they saw.

Manny made a small noise. Jackie’s face began to turn so black that Harry was astounded when Gernshon cut her off with a dignity no one had expected.

“No, of course not,” he said quietly. “But I would prefer all of us to have dinner together for quite another reason. My wife is very dear to me, Miss Snyder, and I wouldn’t do anything that might make her feel uncomfortable. That’s probably irrational, but that’s the way it is.”

Harry stood arrested, his mouth open. Manny started to shake with what Harry thought savagely had better not be laughter. And Jackie, after staring at Gernshon a long while, broke into the most spontaneous smile Harry had seen from her in months.

“Hey,” she said softly. “That’s nice. That’s really, genuinely, fucking nice.”

The weather turned abruptly colder. Snow threatened but didn’t fall.

Each afternoon Harry and Manny took a quick walk in the park and then went inside, to the chess club or a coffee shop or the bus station or the library, where there was a table deep in the stacks on which they could eat lunch without detection. Harry brought Manny a poor boy with mayo, sixty-three cents, and a pair of imported wool gloves, one dollar on pre-season sale.

“So where are they today?” Manny asked on Saturday, removing the gloves to peek at the inside of the poor boy. He sniffed appreciatively.

“Horseradish. You remembered, Harry.”

“The museum, I think,” Harry said miserably.

“What museum?”

“How should I know? He says, ‘The museum today, Harry,’ and he’s gone by eight o’clock in the morning, no more details than that.”

Manny stopped chewing. “What museum opens at eight o’clock in the morning?”

Harry put down his sandwich, pastrami on rye, thirty-nine cents. He had lost weight the past week.

“Probably,” Manny said hastily, “they just talk. You know, like young people do, just talk….”

Harry eyed him balefully. “You mean like you and Leah did when you were young and left completely alone.”

“You better talk to him soon, Harry. No, to her.” He seemed to reconsider Jackie. “No, to him.”

“Talk isn’t going to do it,” Harry said. He looked pale and determined.

“Gernshon has to be sent back.”

“Be sent?”

“He’s married, Manny! I wanted to help Jackie, show her life can hold some sweetness, not be all struggle. What kind of sweetness is she going to find if she falls in love with a married man? You know how that goes! Jackie — ” Harry groaned. How had all this happened? He had intended only the best for Jackie. Why didn’t that count more? “He has to go back, Manny.”

“How?” Manny said practically. “You can’t hit him again, Harry. You were just lucky last time that you didn’t hurt him. You don’t want that on your conscience. And if you show him your, uh … your — “

“My closet. Manny, if you’d only come see, for a dollar you could get

— “

” — then he could just come back any time he wants. So how?”

A sudden noise startled them both. Someone was coming through the stacks. “Librarians!” Manny hissed. Both of them frantically swept the sandwiches, beer (fifteen cents), and strudel into shopping bags. Manny, panicking, threw in the wool gloves. Harry swept the table free of crumbs.

When the intruder rounded the nearest bookshelf, Harry was bent over MAKING

PAPER FLOWERS and Manny over PORCELAIN OF THE YUNG CHENG DYNASTY. It was Robert Gernshon.

The young man dropped into a chair. His face was ashen. in one hand he clutched a sheaf of paper, the handwriting on the last one trailing off into shaky squiggles.

After a moment of silence, Manny said diplomatically, “So where are you coming from, Robert?”

“Where’s Jackie?” Harry demanded.

“Jackie?” Gernshon said. His voice was thick; Harry realized with a sudden shock that he had been crying. “I haven’t seen her for a few days.”

“A few days?” Harry said.

“No. I’ve been … I’ve been…”

Manny sat up straighter. He looked intently at Gernshon Over PORCELAIN

OF THE YUNG CHENG DYNASTY and then put the book down. He moved to the chair next to Gernshon’s and gently took the papers from his hand. Gernshon leaned over the table and buried his head in his arms.

“I’m so awfully sorry, I’m being such a baby…” His shoulders trembled. Manny separated the papers and spread them out on the library table.

Among the hand-copied notes were two slim books, one bound between black covers and the other a pamphlet. A MEMOIR OF AUSCHWITZ. COUNTDOWN TO

HIROSHIMA.

For a long moment nobody spoke. Then Harry said, to no one in particular, “I thought he was going to science museums.”

Manny laid his arm, almost casually, across Gernshon’s shoulders. “So now you’ll know not to be at either place. More people should have only known.” Harry didn’t recognize the expression on his friend’s face, nor the voice with which Manny said to Harry, “You’re right. He has to go back.”

“But Jackie…”

“Can do without this sweetness,” Manny said harshly. “So what’s so terrible in her life anyway that she needs so much help? Is she dying? Is she poor? Is she ugly? Is anyone knocking on her door in the middle of the night?

Let Jackie find her own sweetness. She’ll survive.”

Harry made a helpless gesture. Manny’s stubborn face, carved wood under the harsh fluorescent light, did not change. “Even him… Manny, the things he knows now — “

“You should have thought of that earlier.”

Gernshon looked up. “Don’t, I — I’m sorry. It’s just coming across it, I never thought human beings — “

“No,” Manny said. “But they can. You been here, every day, at the library, reading it all?”

“Yes. That and museums. I saw you two come in earlier. I’ve been reading, I wanted to know — “

“So now you know,” Manny said in that same surprisingly casual, tough voice. “You’ll survive, too.”

Harry said, “Does Jackie know what’s going on? Why you’ve been doing all this … learning?”

“No.”

“And you — what will you do with what you now know?”

Harry held his breath. What if Gernshon just refused to go back?

Gernshon said slowly, “At first, I wanted to not return. At all. How can I watch it, World War II and the camps — I have relatives in Poland. And then later the bomb and Korea and the gulags and Vietnam and Cambodia and the terrorists and AIDS — “

“Didn’t miss anything,” Harry muttered. “And not be able to do anything, not be able to even hope, knowing that everything to come is already set into history — how could I watch all that without any hope that it isn’t really as bad as it seems to be at the moment?”

“It all depends what you look at,” Manny said, but Gernshon didn’t seem to hear him.

“But neither can I stay, there’s Susan and we’re hoping for a baby …

I need to think.”

“No, you don’t,” Harry said. “You need to go back. This is all my mistake. I’m sorry. You need to go back, Gernshon.”

“Lebanon,” Gernshon said. “D.D.T. The Cultural Revolution. Nicaragua.

Deforestation. Iran — “

“Penicillin,” Manny said suddenly. His beard quivered. “Civil rights.

Mahatma Gandhi. Polio vaccines. Washing machines.” Harry stared at him, shocked. Could Manny once have worked in a hand laundry?

“Or,” Manny said, more quietly, “Hitler. Auschwitz. Hoovervilles. The Dust Bowl. What you look at, Robert.”

“I don’t know,” Gernshon said. “I need to think. There’s so much …

and then there’s that girl.”

Harry stiffened. “Jackie?”

“No, no. Someone she and I met a few days ago, at a coffee shop. She just walked in. I couldn’t believe it. I looked at her and just went into shock — and maybe she did too, for all I know. The girl looked exactly like me. And she felt like — I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. She felt like me. I said hello but I didn’t tell her my name; I didn’t dare.” His voice fell to a whisper. “I think she’s my granddaughter.”

“Hoo boy,” Manny said.

Gernshon stood. He made a move to gather up his papers and booklets, stopped, left them there. Harry stood, too, so abruptly that Gernshon shot him a sudden, hard look across the library table. “Going to hit me again, Harry?

Going to kill me?”

“Us?” Manny said. “Us, Robert?” His tone was gentle.

“In a way, you already have. I’m not who I was, certainly.”

Manny shrugged. “So be somebody better.”

“Damn it, I don’t think you understand — “

“I don’t think you do, Reuven, boychik. This is the way it is. That’s all. Whatever you had back there, you have still. Tell me, in all that reading, did you find anything about yourself, anything personal? Are you in the history books, in the library papers?”

“The Office of Public Documents takes two weeks to do a search for birth and death certificates,” Gernshon said, a little sulkily.

“So you lost nothing, because you really know nothing,” Manny said.

“Only history. History is cheap. Everybody gets some. You can have all the history you want. It’s what you make of it that costs.”

Gernshon didn’t nod agreement. He looked a long time at Manny, and something moved behind the unhappy hazel eyes, something that made Harry finally let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. It suddenly seemed that Gernshon was the one that was old. And he was — with the fifty-two years he’d gained since last week, he was older than Harry had been in the 1937 of CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS and the wide-brimmed fedoras and clean city parks. But that was the good time, the one that Gernshon was going back to, the one Harry himself could choose, if it weren’t for Jackie and Manny … still, he couldn’t watch as Gernshon walked out of the book stacks, parting the musty air as heavily as if it were water.

Gernshon paused. Over his shoulder he said, “I’ll go back. Tonight. I will.”

After he had left, Harry said, “This is my fault.”

“Yes,” Manny agreed.

“Will you come to my room when he goes? To … to help?”

“Yes, Harry.”

Somehow, that only made it worse.

Gernshon agreed to a blindfold. Harry led him through the closet, the warehouse, the street. Neither of them seemed very good at this; they stumbled into each other, hesitated, tripped over nothing. In the warehouse Gernshon nearly walked into a pile of lumber, and in the sharp jerk Harry gave Gernshon’s arm to deflect him, something twisted and gave way in Harry’s back.

He waited, bent over, behind a corner of a building while Gernshon removed his blindfold, blinked in the morning light, and walked slowly away.

Despite his back, Harry found that he couldn’t return right away. Why not? He just couldn’t. He waited until Gernshon had a large head start and then hobbled towards the park. A carousel turned, playing bright organ music: September 24. Two children he had never noticed before stood just beyond the carousel, watching it with hungry, hopeless eyes. Flowers grew in immaculate flower beds. A black man walked by, his eyes fixed on the sidewalk, his head bent. Two small girls jumping rope were watched by a smiling woman in a blue-and-white uniform. On the sidewalk, just beyond the carousel, someone had chalked a swastika. The black man shuffled over it. A Lincoln Zephyr V-12

drove by, $1090. There was no way it would fit through a closet.

When Harry returned, Manny was curled up on the white chenille bedspread that Harry had bought for $3.28, fast asleep.

“What did I accomplish, Manny? What?” Harry said bitterly. The day had dawned glorious and warm, unexpected Indian summer. Trees in the park showed bare branches against a bright blue sky. Manny wore an old red sweater, Harry a flannel workshirt. Harry shifted gingerly, grimacing, on his bench. Sunday strollers dropped ice cream wrappers, cigarettes, newspapers, Diet Pepsi cans, used tissues, popcorn. Pigeons quarreled and children shrieked.

“Jackie’s going to be just as hard as ever and why not?” Harry continued. “She finally meets a nice fellow, he never calls her again. Me, I leave a young man miserable on a sidewalk. Before I leave him, I ruin his life. While I leave him, I ruin my back. After I leave him, I sit here guilty. There’s no answer, Manny.”

Manny didn’t answer. He squinted down the curving path.

“I don’t know, Manny. I just don’t know.”

Manny said suddenly, “Here comes Jackie.”

Harry looked up. He squinted, blinked, tried to jump up. His back made sharp protest. He stayed where he was, and his eyes grew wide.

“Popsy!” Jackie cried. “I’ve been looking for you!”

She looked radiant. All the lines were gone from around her eyes, all the sharpness from her face. Her very collar bones, Harry thought dazedly, looked softer. Happiness haloed her like light. She held the hand of a slim, red-haired woman with strong features and direct hazel eyes.

“This is Ann,” Jackie said. “I’ve been looking for you, Popsy, because

… well, because I need to tell you something.” She slid onto the bench next to Harry, on the other side from Manny, and put one arm around Harry’s shoulders. The other hand kept a close grip on Ann, who smiled encouragement.

Manny stared at Ann as at a ghost.

“You see, Popsy, for a while now I’ve been struggling with something, something really important. I know I’ve been snappy and difficult, but it hasn’t been — everybody needs somebody to love, you’ve often told me that, and I know how happy you and Grammy were all those years. And I thought there would never be anything like that for me, and certain people were making everything all so hard. But now … well, now there’s Ann. And I wanted you to know that.”

“Happy to meet you,” Ann said. She had a low, rough voice and a sweet smile. Harry felt hurricanes, drought, sunshine.

Jackie said, “I know this is probably a little unexpected — “

Unexpected. “Well — ” Harry said, and could say no more.

“It’s just that it was time for me to come out of the closet.”

Harry made a small noise. Manny managed to say, “So you live here, Ann?”

“Oh, yes. All my life. And my family, too, since forever.”

“Has Jackie … has Jackie met any of them yet?”

“Not yet,” Jackie said. “It might be a little … tricky, in the case of her parents.” She smiled at Ann. “But we’ll manage.”

“I wish,” Ann said to her, “that you could have met my grandfather.

He would have been just as great as your Popsy here. He always was.”

“Was?” Harry said faintly.

“He died a year ago. But he was just a wonderful man. Compassionate and intelligent.”

“What … what did he do?”

“He taught history at the university. He was also active in lots of organizations — Amnesty International, the ACLU, things like that. During World War II he worked for the Jewish rescue leagues, getting people out of Germany.”

Manny nodded. Harry watched Jackie’s teeth.

“We’d like you both to come to dinner soon,” Ann said. She smiled. “I’m a good cook.”

Manny’s eyes gleamed.

Jackie said, “I know this must be hard for you — ” but Harry saw that she didn’t really mean it. She didn’t think it was hard. For her it was so real that it was natural weather, unexpected maybe, but not strange, not out of place, not out of time. In front of the bench, sunlight striped the pavement like bars.

Suddenly Jackie said, “Oh, Popsy, did I tell you that it was your friend Robert who introduced us? Did I tell you that already?”

“Yes, sweetheart,” Harry said. “You did.”

“He’s kind of a nerd, but actually all right.” After Jackie and Ann left, the two old men sat silent a long time. Finally Manny said diplomatically, “You want to get a snack, Harry?”

“She’s happy, Manny.”

“Yes. You want to get a snack, Harry?”

“She didn’t even recognize him.”

“No. You want to get a snack?”

“Here, have this. I got it for you this morning.” Harry held out an orange, a deep-colored navel with flawless rind: seedless, huge, guaranteed juicy, nurtured for flavor, perfect.

“Enjoy,” Harry said. “It cost me ninety-two cents.”

–––––––—

At www.fictionwise.com you can:

* Rate this story

* Find more stories by this author

* Get story recommendations

Table of Contents

Start