Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  And Emily.

  I stand rooted to the asphalt, uncertain. But there is no longer room for uncertainty. Still, even as my feet carry me forward, I do not know which of the two houses I will enter.

  1989

  THE PRICE OF ORANGES

  Nancy Kress returns to our pages with a powerful tale that gently combines an often bitter reality with a touch of humor and a breath of hope. The author’s most recent novel, An Alien Light, has just been released by Avon Books in paperback. Ms. Kress is currently working on a novel that is mostly set in Rochester, New York.

  “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. Stretch-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 1988 prices? Could I afford this coat? Have you seen buttons like this in 1988, 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 linen 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 since 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 towards 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 news-magazine. 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 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 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 de
ad 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 archeologist 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.