I Love Galesburg in the Springtime

by Jack Finney

  In the morning Charley's wife and daughter were back again, the house alive and happy once more. In the days, then weeks, then months that followed, he thought of his balloon packed away in the garage, and of using it again. But he never did and presently he realized that, alone no longer, he wasn't going to; that he'd had what he wanted from it and needed no more. And that, in fact, his flight in the balloon could not ever really be repeated. He thought of showing the balloon to his wife and of telling her what had happened. But he realized that he wasn't sure he knew what had happened; that what had happened was very little a matter of fact and almost entirely a matter of emotion for which he had no words.

  He didn't see Mrs. Lanidas again for six months. Then he was at a P.T.A. meeting, and, the meeting over, the parents standing in the corridor chatting, Charley stood beside his wife who was talking to someone. He'd spoken politely to a number of people whom he saw nowhere else but here. His wife had introduced him to still others. Now he stood absently waiting, wanting to go home and have a drink. When his wife touched his arm, saying, "Charley, I want you to meet"—he turned with an automatic smile as she finished —"Mrs. Lanidas, from our street."

  For a moment Charley stood looking at her knowing that, factually speaking, this was Mrs. Lanidas. Yet it wasn't at all. This was no laughing girl in a black leotard, sailing through the sky and the night as the wind rippled her hair. This was a mother of small children with the first lines in her face, all dressed up in a hat, good dress, dark coat, and wearing a girdle. Charley nodded pleasantly. "Oh, yes," he said politely, "I've met Mrs. Lanidas."

  At the absurdity of this, she smiled, and for a moment— eyes warm, almost mischievous—she was a girl once more. Speaking to both of them, but her hand rising to touch Charley's sleeve, she said, "Not Mrs. Lanidas. Call me Josephine."

  Out in the dark schoolyard as they got into their car, Charley's wife said, "Now, why did she say that? I'm almost certain her name isn't Josephine. I think it's Edna."

  But Charley didn't answer. Sliding under the steering wheel he simply shrugged, smiling a little, and, half under his breath, he continued his whistling of an old, old tune.

  THE COIN COLLECTOR

  THE COIN COLLECTOR

  "… will let me know the number of the pattern," my wife was saying, following me down the hall toward our bedroom, "and I can knit it myself if I get the blocking done."

  I think she said blocking anyway, whatever that means. And I nodded, unbuttoning my shirt as I walked. It had been hot out today and I was eager to get out of my office clothes. I began thinking about a dark-green eight-thousand-dollar sports car I'd seen during noon hour in that big showroom on Park Avenue.

  "… kind of a ribbed pattern with a matching freggel-heggis," my wife seemed to be saying as I stopped at my dresser. I tossed my shirt on the bed and turned to the mirror, arching my chest.

  "… middy collar, batten-barton sleeves with sixteen rows of smeddlycup balderdashes. …" Pretty good chest and shoulders I thought, staring in the mirror; I'm twenty-six years old, kind of thin-faced, not bad-looking, not good-looking.

  "…dropped hem, doppelganger waist, maroon-green, and a sort of frimble-framble daisystitch. … Probably want two or three thousand bucks down on a car like that, I thought; the payments'd be more than the rent on this whole apartment. I began emptying the change out of my pants pockets glancing at each of the coins. When I was a kid there used to be an ad in a boys' magazine: "Coin collecting can be PROFITABLE and FUN too! Why don't you start TODAY?" It explained that a 1913 Liberty-head nickel —"and many others!"—was worth thousands and I guess I'm still looking for one.

  "So what do you think?" Marion was saying. "You think they'd go well together?"

  "Sure, they'd look fine." I nodded at her reflection in my dresser mirror. She stood leaning in the bedroom doorway, arms folded, staring at the back of my head. I brought a dime up to my eyes for a closer look; it was minted in 1958 and had a profile of Woodrow Wilson, and I turned to Marion. "Hey, look," I said, "here's a new kind of dime —Woodrow Wilson." But she wouldn't look at my hand. She just stood there with her arms folded, glaring at me, and I said, "Now what? What have I done wrong now?" Marion wouldn't answer, and I walked to my closet and began looking for some wash pants. After a moment I said coaxingly, "Come on, Sweetfeet, what'd I do wrong?"

  "Oh, Al!" she wailed. "You don't listen to me; you really don't! Half the time you don't hear a word I say!"

  "Why, sure I do, honey." I was rattling the hangers, hunting for my pants. "You were talking about knitting."

  "An orange sweater, I said, Al—orange. I knew you weren't listening and asked you how an orange sweater would go with—-close your eyes." "What?"

  "No, don't turn around! And close your eyes." I closed them, and Marion said, "Now, without any peeking, because I'll see you, tell me what I'm wearing right now."

  It was ridiculous. In the last five minutes, since I'd come home from the office, I must have glanced at Marion maybe two or three times. I'd kissed her when I walked into the apartment, or I was pretty sure I had. Yet standing at my closet now, eyes closed, I couldn't for the life of me say what she was wearing. I worked at it; I could actually hear the sound of her breathing just behind me and could picture her standing there, a small girl five feet three inches tall, weighing just over a hundred pounds, twenty-four years old, nice complexion, pretty face, honey-blond hair, and wearing … wearing …

  "Well, am I wearing a dress, slacks, medieval armor, or standing here stark naked?"

  "A dress."

  "What color?"

  "Ah—dark green?"

  "Am I wearing stockings?"

  "Yes."

  "Is my hair done up, shaved off or in a pony tail?"

  "Done up."

  "O.K., you can look now."

  Of course the instant I turned around to look, I remembered. There she stood, eyes blazing, her bare foot angrily tapping the floor, and she was wearing sky-blue wash slacks and a white cotton blouse. As she swung away to walk out of the room and down the hall, her pony tail was bobbing furiously.

  Well, brother—and you, too, sister—unless the rice is still in your hair you know what came next—the hurt indignant silence. I got into slacks, short-sleeved shirt and hua-rachos, strolled into the living room, and there on the davenport sat Madame Defarge grimly studying the list, disguised as a magazine, of next day's guillotine victims. I knew whose name headed the list, and I walked straight to the kitchen, mixed up some booze in tall glasses, and found a screw driver in a kitchen drawer.

  In the living room, coldly ignored by what had once been my radiant laughing bride, I set the drinks on the coffee table, reached behind Marion's magazine, and gripped her chin between thumb and forefinger. The magazine dropped and I instantly inserted the tip of the screw driver between her front teeth, pried open her mouth, picked up a glass and tried to pour in some booze. She started to laugh, spilling some down her front, and I grinned, handing her the glass, and picked up mine. Sitting down beside her, I saluted Marion with my glass, then took a delightful sip and as it hurried to my sluggish blood stream I could feel the happy corpuscles dive in, laughing and shouting, and felt able to cope with the next item on the agenda which followed immediately.

  "You don't love me any more," said Marion.

  "Oh, yes, I do." I leaned over to kiss her neck, glancing around the room over her shoulder.

  "Oh, no, you don't. Not really."

  "Oh, yes, I do. Really. Honey, where's the book I was reading last night?"

  "There! You see! All you want to do is read all the time! You never want to go out! The honeymoon's certainly over around here, all right!"

  "No, it isn't, Sweetknees, not at all. I feel exactly the way I did the day I proposed to you; I honestly do. Was there any mail?"

  "Just some ads and a bill. You used to listen to every word I said before we were married and you always noticed what I wore and you complimented me and you sent me flowers and yo
u brought me little surprises and"—suddenly she sat bolt upright—"remember those cute little notes you used to send me! I'd find them all the time," she said sadly, staring past my shoulder, her eyes widening wistfully. "Tucked in my purse maybe"—she smiled mournfully—"or in a glove. Or they'd come to the office on post cards, even in telegrams a couple times. All the other girls used to say they were just darling." She swung to face me. "Honey, why don't you ever …

  "Help!" I said. "Help, help!"

  "What do you mean?" Marion demanded coolly, and I tried to explain.

  "Look, honey," I said briskly, putting an arm companion-ably around her shoulders, "we've been married four years. Of course the honeymoon's over! What kind of imbeciles," I asked with complete reasonableness, "would we be if it weren't? I love you, sure," I assured her, shrugging a shoulder. "Of course. You bet. Always glad to see you; any wife of old A1 Pullen is a wife of mine! But after four years I walk up the stairs when I come home; I no longer run up three at a time. That's life," I said, clapping her cheerfully on the back. "Even four-alarm fires eventually die down, you know." I smiled at her fondly. "And as for cute little notes tucked in your purse—help, help!" I should have known better, I guess; there are certain things you just can't seem to explain to a woman.

  I had trouble getting to sleep that night—the davenport is much too short for me—and it was around two forty-five before I finally sank into a kind of exhausted broken-backed coma. Breakfast next morning, you can believe me, was a glum affair at the town home of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred E. Pullen, well-known, devoted couple.

  Who can say whether the events of the night before affected those which now followed? I certainly couldn't; I was too tired, dragging home from the office along Third Avenue, heading uptown from Thirty-fourth Street about five thirty the next evening. I was tired, depressed, irritated, and in no hurry at all to get home. It was hot and muggy outside and I was certain Marion would give me cold cuts for supper —and all evening long, for that matter. My tie was pulled down, my collar open, hat shoved back, coat slung over one shoulder, and trudging along the sidewalk there I got to wishing things were different.

  I didn't care how, exactly—just different. For example, how would things be right now, it occurred to me, if I'd majored in creative botany at college instead of physical ed? Or what would I be doing at this very moment if I'd gone to Siam with Tom Biehler that time? Or if I'd got the job with Enterprises, Incorporated, instead of Serv-Eez? Or if I hadn't broken off with what's-her-name, that big, black-haired girl who could sing "Japanese Sandman" through her nose?

  At Thirty-sixth Street I stopped at the corner newsstand, plunking my dime down on the counter before the man who ran it; we knew each other long since, though I don't think we've ever actually spoken. Glancing at me, he scooped up my dime, grabbed a paper from one of the stacks and folded it as he handed it to me; and I nodded my thanks, tucking it under my arm, and walked on. And that's when it happened; I glanced up at a brick building kitty-corner across the street and there on a blank side wall three or four stories up was a painted advertisement—a narrow-waisted bottle filled with a reddish-brown beverage and lying half buried in a bed of blue-white ice. Painted just over the bottle in a familiar script were the words, "DRINK COCO-COOLA."

  Do you see? It didn't say "Coca-Cola." Not quite. And staring up at that painted sign, I knew it was no sign painter's mistake. They don't make mistakes like that; not on great big outdoor signs that take a couple of men several days to paint. I knew it couldn't possibly be a rival soft drink either; the spelling and entire appearance of this ad were too close to those of Coca-Cola. No, I knew that sign was meant to read "Coco-Coola," and turning to walk on finally—well, it may strike you as insane what I felt certain I knew from just the sight of that painted sign high above a New York street.

  But within two steps that feeling was confirmed. I glanced out at the street beside me; it was rush hour and the cars streamed past, clean cars and dirty ones, old and new. But every one of them was painted a single color only, mostly black, and there wasn't a tail fin or strip of chromium in sight. These were modern, fast, good-looking cars, you understand, but utterly different in design from any I'd ever before seen. The traffic lights on Third Avenue clicked to red, the cars slowed and stopped, and now as I walked along past them I was able to read some of their names. There were a Ford, a Buick, two Wintons, a Stutz, a Cadillac, a Dort, a Kissel, an Oldsmobile, and at least four or five small Pierce-Arrows. Then, glancing down Thirty-seventh Street as I passed it, I saw a billboard advertising Picayune Cigarettes: AMERICA'S LARGEST-SELLING BRAND. And now a Third Avenue bus dragged past me, crammed with people as usual this time of day, but it was shaped a little differently and it was painted blue and white.

  I spun suddenly around on the walk, looking frantically for the Empire State Building. But it was there, all right, just where it was supposed to be, and I actually sighed with relief. It was shorter, though, by a good ten stories at least. When had all this happened? I wondered dazedly and opened my paper, but there was nothing unusual in it—till I noticed the name at the top of the page. New York Sun, it said, and I stood on the sidewalk gaping at it because the Sun hasn't been published in New York for years.

  Do you understand now? I did, finally, but of course I like to read—when I get the chance, that is—and I'm extremely well grounded in science from all the science fiction I've read. So I was certain, presently, that I knew what had happened; maybe you've figured it out too.

  Years ago someone had to decide on a name for a new soft drink and finally picked "Coca-Cola." But certainly he considered other possible alternatives; and if the truth could be known, I'll bet one of them was "Coco-Coola." It's not a bad name—sounds cool and refreshing—and he may have come very close to deciding on it.

  And how come Ford, Buick, Chevrolet, and Oldsmobile survived while the Moon, Willys-Knight, Hupmobile, and Kissel didn't? Well, at some point or other maybe a decision was made by the men who ran the Kissel Company, for example, which might just as easily have been made another way. If it had, maybe Kissel would have survived and be a familiar sight today.

  Instead of Lucky Strikes, Camels, and Chesterfields, we might be buying chiefly Picayunes, Sweet Caporals, and Piedmonts. We might not have the Japanese beetle or the atom bomb. While the biggest newspaper in New York could be the Sun, and George Coopernagel might be President. If—what would the world be like right now, what would you or I be doing?—if only things in the past had happened just a tiny bit differently. There are thousands of possibilities, of course; there are millions and trillions. There is every conceivable kind of world, in fact; and a theory of considerable scientific standing—Einstein believed it—is that these other possible worlds actually exist—all of them, side by side and simultaneously with the one we happen to be familiar with.

  I believed it too now, naturally; I knew what had happened, all right. Walking along Third Avenue through the late afternoon on my way home from the office, I had come to one of the tiny points where two of these alternate worlds intersected somehow. And I had walked off out of one into another slightly altered, somewhat different world of "If" that was every bit as real and which existed quite as much as the one I'd just left.

  For maybe a block I walked on, stunned but with a growing curiosity and excitement—because it had occurred to me to wonder where I was going. I was walking on with a definite purpose and destination, I realized; and when a traffic light beside me clicked to green, I took the opportunity to cross La Guardia Avenue, as it was labeled now, and then continue west along Thirty-ninth Street. I was going somewhere, no doubt about that; and in the instant of wondering where I felt a chill along my spine. Because suddenly I knew.

  All the memories of my life in another world, you understand, still existed in my mind, from distant past to the present. But beginning with the moment that I had turned from the newsstand to glance up at that painted sign, another set of memories—an alternate set of memories of
my other life in this alternate world—began stirring to life underneath the first. But they were dim and faint yet, out of focus. I knew where I was going—vaguely—and I no more had to think how to get there than any other man on his way home from work. My legs simply moved in an old familiar pattern, carrying me up to the double glass doors of a big apartment building, and the doorman said, "Evening, Mr. Pullen. Hot today."

  "You said it, Charley," I answered and walked on into the lobby. Then my legs were carrying me up the stairs to the second floor, then down a corridor to an apartment door which stood open. And just as I did every night, I realized, I walked into the living room, tossing my copy of the Sun to the davenport. I was wearing a suit I'd never seen before, I noticed, but it fitted me perfectly, of course, and was a little worn.

  "Hi, I'm home," I heard my voice call out as always. And at one and the same time I knew, with complete and time-dulled familiarity—and also wondered with intense and fascinating curiosity—who in the world was going to answer; who in this world?

  An oven door slammed in the kitchen as I turned to hang up my suit coat in the hall closet as always, then footsteps sounded on the wood floor between the kitchen and the living room. And as she said, "Hi, darling," I turned to see my wife walking toward me.

  I had to admire my taste in this world. She was a big girl, tall and not quite slim; black-haired and with a very fair complexion; quite a pretty face with a single vertical frown line between her brows; and she had an absolutely gorgeous figure with long handsome legs. "Why, hel-lo," I said slowly. "What a preposterously good-looking female you are!"

  Her jaw dropped in simple astonishment, her blue eyes narrowing suspiciously. I held my arms wide then, walking toward her delightedly, and, while she accepted my embrace, she drew back to sniff my breath. She couldn't draw back very far, though, because my embrace—I simply couldn't help this—was tight and close; this fine-looking girl was a spectacular armful. "Now I know why I go to the office every day," I was saying as I nuzzled her lovely white neck, an extremely agreeable sensation. "There had to be a reason and now I know what it is. It's so I can come home to this."