The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells

by Andrew Sean Greer

  NOVEMBER 15, 1985

  IT HAPPENED AFTER MY 1985 APPOINTMENT WITH DR. CERLETTI.

  “You see that there are really no effects,” he said, pleasantly, adjusting his half-rimmed glasses, “except a recharging of the spirit.”

  Again the nurse smiled down at me in her blue eye shadow and permed hairdo, and again the late-century noises of New York made themselves known from outside: the honks and shouts and boom-box beats of my life. Surely some traveler from another era would come here and find it all as quaint and backward as I had found my other worlds. As strange as I now found my own.

  I said no, no effects at all. In fact, I added, I might miss our little meetings. Who else got to be struck by lightning, not twice, but twenty-five times? I saw his brow crease in concern and I left quickly.

  Back in my apartment, I went through my record collection looking for something to calm my mind. Dylan, and Pink Floyd, and Blondie, and Velvet Underground until at last I found it. I started the turntable, lifted the lever that picked the needle up, and placed it in the groove.

  C’mon and hear! C’mon and hear! Alexander’s Ragtime Band . . .

  That night, I went to sleep, as always, thinking about the life I would return to. Young Leo awaiting me in that world. Nathan in another. I smiled at the strangeness of it all. Was this the woman I dreamed of becoming?

  I closed my eyes and watched as a little will-o’-the-wisp in blue ascended, winking, dividing into two and four and eight, a web began to form, a net, to haul me out of my world and back to 1918 . . .

  But I did not awaken in 1918.

  Part Two

  NOVEMBER

  TO

  DECEMBER

  DECEMBER 4, 1985

  HELLO, GRETA. IT’S NATHAN.

  Began the voice on the answering machine.

  Three weeks had passed since my night with Leo, and I had suffered a strange glitch before finding that message in 1985. How clearly I could picture Nathan: sitting in his red armchair, in his brown sweater, smelling of pipe smoke, stroking his beard before getting up the nerve to call me. It was nice to hear your voice the other day, I’m glad you’re doing well. I’d love to meet for lunch but I’m afraid I have to do battle with Washington. Off to war! I’ll give you a call when I get back. It’s nice to be in touch again. Bye now.

  I stood there in my hallway, staring at the device with its blinking light. Another Greta had been tampering with my life while I was away. It was no more, of course, than I had done with each of theirs. How I longed for things to be back the way they were.

  Let me back up to that first morning when I realized something had gone wrong.

  I HAD AWAKENED, three weeks before, to find something amiss. The day before had been Dr. Cerletti, peering down at me in 1985. The next: “Good morning, darling, how are you feeling?” Nathan again. Smiling, beside me again. My arm heavy in its cast, 1941 instead of 1918.

  “I’m in the wrong . . . ,” I began, but of course could not say the rest.

  He frowned and asked, “What’s wrong? Is it the procedure?”

  Let’s go away. My father has a farm up north. She had gone there with Leo, and Cerletti’s jar sat unused.

  What would happen if one of us missed a procedure? Well, here was the answer: That door would close. Our journey was like a subway line in a circle, and if one of us missed a procedure—if one station was under repair—well, the train just zipped on by. That Greta had stepped out. And so we, the other two, could only switch places until she returned. I could not explain to Nathan that the Gretas were out of sync, out of sequence: three beads misstrung on a strand.

  “Nothing, darling, I’m fine. Sounds like Fee is up.”

  “SHE SKIPPED CERLETTI,” I told Ruth the next day, when I awakened once more in 1985. “I can only go here and to nineteen forty-one until she’s back.”

  “Tell me about your son.”

  My travels were an endless source of fascination to my aunt. And so I told her about Fee and how he licked his finger and would dip it in the sugar bowl when we weren’t looking, leaving little divots, the Invisibility Powder that Uncle X had given him, which he still tried to use on himself, though it was long spent. “And Nathan must look funny without his beard,” she said, laughing. But I have a sense, though she never asked, that, like any of us, she was really looking for clues about herself. I tactfully avoided the topic, and went on about Mrs. Green striding around the house like the housemaid in a gothic tale.

  “It sounds,” she said, “like you miss both worlds.”

  And so back and forth I went—the Wednesday procedure sending me the next morning to 1941, the Thursday procedure returning me to 1985—making a meal for my husband and son, making a path through that other lonely life, each time awakening and wondering when she would come back, when we would all return to the pattern. I did not know I would miss it so much. I did not expect I would be so envious of her life.

  I HAVE READ the diary Greta left of that time spent apart from us. I have seen the train tickets, the baggage receipts between the pages. And this is how I picture it, that time she spent with Leo, whom she loved:

  They took a train to Boston, the wartime signs advising against unnecessary travel still posted everywhere, then at Boston waited four hours for another train, during which they wandered into the snowy city and bought him a cheap gold ring at a pawnshop, to forestall questions later on. When they arrived at last at the station, they disembarked to a gravel yard and small shed that contained only a woodstove for the railroad workers, who stared at them begrudgingly. He blew on her cold hands and smiled until, at last, a sleigh came into view pulled by an old gray horse, like a vision from a Russian novel. Across the snow they went, bundled together, sipping coffee, feeling for each other’s hands hidden in the furs and coats and gloves. The sky was gray as flannel, the trees passed in an endless etching. There were no animals. There were no houses, or people.

  It was a little stone house with nothing but a stove, a fireplace, and a bed piled with cushions to make it a sofa. The house merged into a long stone wall, made from rocks farmers had been cursing for centuries, and across which could be seen another little house, with a shuttered window, in which gaped the white head of a sheepdog, staring down the road away from them. “What is he looking for?” she wondered aloud, and the driver broke his silence to answer: “His master. He cares for no one else.” And then he nodded and shut them into the house. By the door was a sack of provisions he must have left earlier in the day; Leo went to it immediately and brought out a sausage he began to munch merrily. They could hear the horse stamping in the snow. She watched the quiet scene of winter. As soon as she turned around, Leo was kissing her.

  She wrote in her diary that they lived, for that small period of time, in a lovers’ paradise. There was nothing to do but build a fire, and stoke the stove and cook on it, and fold the little table down from the wall, and fill the soft down bed. Above the bed, one long window let in the blue meager light of winter, and as her young man lay sleeping, Greta could prop herself on her elbow and look out at the sheepdog, itself looking down the road.

  “I like your eyes,” he said once in a foolish moment. “I like the lines around them.”

  She laughed. “I’m not sure that’s the best thing to say.”

  “Why not? I do love them.”

  “They’re just a sign of how old I am.”

  “Well, what about the signs of how young I am? Don’t tell me you don’t love them,” he said, smiling mischievously and drawing her to him.

  They talked nonsense, and she allowed him to speak of impossible things, because something about their isolation, and the snow, and the fire meant even impossible things could be mentioned. For instance, moving to Brooklyn together, to a house, with the kind of dog he liked. He said this lying on the floor before the fire, staring at the beams of the ceiling. “And a garden for you, with a path through it, and a little stage at the end for our friends to sing when they’re drunk.”
There was no wine, but there was clear moonshine, and he was sipping it; she could not, because it gave her a headache. “We’ll have an Italian charwoman and she’ll steal from us! But we’ll love her,” he said, still staring up. She looked at his smooth face, his small lean body wrapped in a blanket, tipped in two worn black socks. “Electric light, an electric stove, and a nanny for . . . well, a charwoman at first.” She looked out the window at the dog, and she could feel his glance on her naked back. Perhaps he had said a word too many.

  THOUGH I VISITED two worlds in those weeks, I saw only one version of the people I knew. One Nathan, tying his tie before the mirror. One Ruth, chasing the canary around the apartment. One Felix, leaving me in a taxi for a dinner with Alan. How strange—how ordinary—to flatten my worlds this way. A lunch with Felix stands out: at a German restaurant, and I was late. Felix was already seated at a stained tablecloth, chatting up the fat, happy waitress, hair braided like a glossy strudel. At other tables, men were hunkered down over their steins protectively, as if they knew that Pearl Harbor was only two weeks away, and some would be taken away for questioning. Just for being born on the wrong side. But of course they did not know. Only I knew.

  Felix complained he never saw me, so busy with Fee and with Nathan. “Felix,” I said, startling him. “Felix, I need you to tell me something right now, before we say anything else.”

  He leaned against his hand.

  “I’m not here to talk about me. It’s you I’m worried about. Do you love him?” I asked.

  “Greta!” he said, then looked at his plate. I told him I had always known about him, and that I didn’t care. It made no difference to me.

  He looked up at me. “Greta, stop it,” he whispered harshly. “I didn’t come to hear this. I came—”

  “Don’t be afraid with me. Be yourself. Please, Felix. I’ve been through too much to lose you.”

  “Stop this, Greta. You’re not talking like yourself.”

  “I know you, Felix,” I said as he put down his napkin. “I know you.” But then a group of German singers were upon us, waving their steins and swaying in unison, the waitress laughing. In their worn brown suits and battered hats, red faced and weary, the immigrants from our father’s homeland surrounded us with their welcoming song of summer, and sun, and my brother and I could only sit and smile and listen.

  Ohhh, willkommen, willkommen, willkommen Sonnenschein . . .

  AND, IN 1985, a lunch with Alan.

  We talked of autumn, and Felix, of course. We talked of my procedures, his drug schedule and taking leave from his job. How funny to see him, after another lunch where he was all business in his pressed blue suit. Here: cowboy shirt again, all in grays this time, and worn blue jeans, and veins that pulsed in his temples below the short cap of silver hair. A cane beside his chair. How handsome he must have been when he was young.

  We talked of parties long ago, and laughed about them. We talked about how he relented with his new romance, and saw him oftener than he should. He was drinking wine again. But what I remember most about that time in 1985, before I took my ride again, what I recall about that lunch with Alan was a story he told me about Felix.

  They had gone to an East Village theater, run-down and small, not so different from the one where Leo acted out The House of Mirth. “I don’t remember the show, exactly. Something about war, with puppets, that god-awful kind of thing. But there was a book at the exit where you could write your comments. Felix liked to read that kind of thing.” He was smiling out the window to where a young man in a hat walked by, something familiar about him. “And he called me over to show me what a Frenchwoman had written—I assume she was French, her name seemed French—it was so funny.” He chuckled to himself, pushing around his salad. “I understood nothing!” he said, with a French accent. “But it was a great show!”

  I laughed and looked again, but the young man was gone.

  “I should have put that on his headstone. That sums him up, don’t you think?” I nodded and grinned to share another memory with him. He pushed his shoulders back and sat up straight: “I understood nothing, but it was a great show!”

  AND SO, AFTER three weeks, a message left that afternoon:

  Hello, Greta. It’s Nathan.

  What a curious mystery it was, standing in my hall with my coat and hat and scarf, too warm in my warm apartment, staring at my answering machine and hearing Nathan’s voice. A reminder, first, of the sad state of my life here. And, second, of the presence of these other Gretas. For that other woman had taken advantage of her time in this world to call him.

  I had taken pains to try to fix my other lives. I wondered, what were her plans for mine?

  I’ll give you a call when I get back. It’s nice to be back in touch. Bye now.

  Standing there in my old hallway, hearing the voice of my old lover, who in two other worlds had become my husband. The other Greta took my photographs and answered the phone and met friends for drinks, much as I had in my deepest depression, when I did these daily tasks as if they were assigned by another. Back then, the world was alien because I had sunk beneath it. And now, it felt the same because I knew it could be otherwise.

  Eleven procedures finished, only fourteen left for me. November had turned to December and I wondered how long that 1918 Greta could keep away from that electric jar. Wondering when she would decide to lie down again, and fall asleep, and watch the lights behind her eyes join together in a tunnel from her world. When I would see those other people, in that other world, who seemed like friends from a trip I’d taken long ago.

  I made myself my dinner and ate it in front of the television. Images of the space shuttle seemed like science fiction to me now. And in my mind were two conflicting thoughts. One was that I wished to continue my travels, continue the adventure the way, it seemed, I was meant to have it. And the other, of course, was that I, too, could put a halt to things. Waking tomorrow with Nathan and telling him I was cured, that I needed no more of Dr. Cerletti. After all, any of us could stop things. Would it be so terrible, to be trapped there? Then he could stay there sleeping beside me forever. In the world where I had never lost him.

  But who would want to be in my world? Which other Greta could possibly love this place, find something or someone worth sacrificing their life for?

  I went to the answering machine but could not bring myself to press Erase.

  AND THAT NIGHT, at last, I traveled to that other world.

  DECEMBER 5, 1918

  RINGING OF BELLS ON THE STREET, NOT JUST IN MY HEAD; the sounds of a 1918 world already preparing for Christmas. The room was soft and calm, as if awaiting me, and a crack in the window let in a little cold air that turned the pages of a bedside book, one after another, at the speed a ghost might read them. Bells and salesmen and the scent of chestnuts. Italian voices. The smell of gaslight and coal-fire stoves.

  I was back.

  In the kitchen, to my surprise, I found my aunt rummaging in the icebox.

  “Good morning,” I said. “I’m back. Are you making me breakfast?”

  She was in her white kimono and looked like she needed a brandy. “It’s for me,” she said, running a hand through her unkempt hair. “I’m out of milk. So are you it looks like, and I don’t blame the maid I blame the mistress.” She turned back to the icebox.

  I put my hands in my gown pockets. Was she, in fact, the same solid Ruth I had known my whole life? Because looking at her, leaning into the icebox, I could see little differences I had not noticed before. For instance: She was noticeably thinner; she could hardly keep a bracelet on her wrist. There was a common illustration in those days of two women in war. Under the picture of a fat, smiling lady with a lorgnette, it read: “Waste Makes Waist.” And under the proud, thinner version of that woman: “War Develops the Spirit.” I had not ever thought of my aunt, with her parties and excesses, as the latter. But I suppose she, too, had felt privation during the war; instead of moderation, like most housewives, it was all feast
or famine, and her festivals were followed by weeks of Postum and porridge. Of course she had no milk. And here she was, raiding my icebox. “I’m not good with maids,” I told her. “Make me coffee. I’ve been gone a long time, but I’m back.”

  Ruth looked up and examined me, then smiled. “Are you?”

  I posed in the doorway like a poster for home defense. “I’m your niece from nineteen eighty-five.”

  Those bracelets jangled on her meager wrist as she looked me up and down. “Oh,” she sighed. “I’m so glad it’s you. A lot has happened. It’s ended.”

  “The war,” I said. “I know. I was here.” I looked around the kitchen and saw it was in disorder; Millie must have had a day or two off, and my other self had let things go.

  “Not the war,” she said, shaking her head.

  I walked over to her and knelt down. “Ruth, just tell me.”

  She blinked and said, “She ended things with Leo.”

  I tried to understand how this could be. When it was the desire to be with Leo that had kept her in this world. “But,” I began, “I thought they went away . . .”

  She took my hand and patted it. “It’s good you’re back. My own Greta is inconsolable. Do you really want coffee? All I have downstairs is champagne.”

  “WHAT HAPPENED IN the cabin?” I asked her when we got to her apartment. She said it was her last bottle of champagne, and I begged her not to open it, to save it for a better occasion, but of course she said it was so like me to think there would be some better occasion, you can’t marry such hopes, they won’t be faithful to you.

  “She couldn’t bear it,” Ruth told me, standing before the silver trelliswork of her wallpaper. New flowers sat in the green vase: lilies. “Making Leo promises she couldn’t keep.”