Changing the Past

by Thomas Berger

  She flounced to the closet. “Don’t worry about it. I know Doyle. He’ll put us on the cuff if I ask him pretty please.”

  It was true that she was on good terms with the fat middle-aged proprietor: Doyle chucked her familiarly under the chin on their entrance, and before they had finished their club sandwiches, came to their booth, bent ponderously over, and whispered into her ear, continuing to ignore Kellog. She responded with a low-pitched giggle and, when Doyle wheezingly straightened up, a wink.

  After the fat man had waddled away, Jack, warmed by the food and sugared coffee, said, “I guess he’s a pretty good friend of yours?”

  “I used to wait tables, here,” said she. “I’ve got to keep an in with Doyle: I might be back any time.” She swallowed some coffee and pouted. “I might have made a mistake with Forrester. But I got panicky, you know. I’m not going to spell it out, but it looked like I had a good reason to get married at the time. And then only a couple hours after we went and tied the knot, the reason went away. I think you know what I mean. What I’m wondering now is if I could get an annulment? It’s only been a couple weeks, and I don’t see what he gets from it: I’m just somebody around to watch him create. He could get a window dummy for that.”

  John was overcome by an intense feeling that elevated him to another level of being. “Oh yes!” he cried. “You must get it annulled. You don’t want to get stuck in this situation, a fantastic girl like you? He’s old and selfish, and he’s probably a phony as a writer, if he can’t get anywhere with his book. Mark my words,” he added, as though he were seasoned in the ways of life, “it won’t get better; it can only get worse.”

  She gave him a wink. “I’ll think about it.”

  He was besotted with her, adored the way she drank coffee, her white teeth at the lip of the thick beige beanery-mug, could have watched her masticate food all day. She had gone into the home bathroom to comb her hair and use mascara and lipstick, not to dress for the outside world: she had done that with him in the room, deftly and not immodestly, pulling the slacks on, the waistband going high up under the big sweatshirt, over which she drew a still larger felted jacket in the colors of the school, green and gold, and with an athletic letter, S, over the left breast. She had completed the ensemble with a baseball cap, a pair of fuzzy white mittens, and penny loafers. John felt drab in an ancient plaid jacket that had once belonged to his father.

  He now made a rash, indeed a demented offer. “Look, if I can help in any way…Do you need money?”

  “You got some?”

  “I can get some.”

  Her smile had never looked so glorious. “You mean, rob a bank?”

  “I’ve got sources,” he said, though he could not have named one if challenged: he was at college by means of a combination of scholarships and the earnings from summer and part-time jobs.

  She lifted her mug. “It would sure be nice if…” She drank some coffee and never finished the sentence, but it was clear to John that he had been given his mission.

  “What amount do you estimate will be needed?”

  Her blue eyes widened. “Gosh, I don’t have the foggiest.” She pressed a paper napkin against her lips and then stared at the red oval there imprinted. “I’ve got to talk to Doyle about something. If you don’t mind—I told you I might come back to work here.”

  “Sure,” John said, though he was disappointed.

  “You better go on. I’ll be a while. See you in class next week.” She gave him one more gorgeous smile and slid to an exit from the booth.

  John said, “Just hang on. I’ll think of something.” But she was already out of earshot. He had forgotten to thank her for the sandwich and coffee.

  The woman behind the cash register smiled wryly when he explained that the check was supposed to be taken care of by the proprietor.

  “That’s a new one. Mr. Doyle’s now giving food away?”

  John looked down towards the end of the bar, where when last seen his recent companion, the love of his life, had joined Doyle. Neither was there now, nor anywhere else in view.

  “You see,” John said, “I was with Mrs. Forrester, who comes in here all the time and is a friend of Mr. Doyle’s. Our orders were on the house.”

  The cashier stopped smiling. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, sonny boy, but you’ve got to pay the check.”

  John told her what he had had. “I didn’t get a check. Isn’t that proof of what I’m saying?”

  “Okay,” the cashier said. “If you want to do it the hard way.” She lifted the handpiece of the telephone at her elbow. “I’ll call the police and you can tell them your story.”

  “Wait a minute,” someone said in a female voice behind John. Daphne Kleemeyer stepped up beside him and gave the cashier a check and a dollar bill. “Put it with mine.”

  The woman at the cash register shook her head and asked John, “You went through all of that for fifty cents?”

  Daphne got her change and pursued John out of the restaurant. “Thanks,” said he. “There was a misunderstanding. It would have been worked out but meanwhile it was an embarrassing moment. I’ll pay you back tomorrow.”

  “No hurry,” said she. “What puzzles me is how you’d happen to be here without bringing money, or was your pocket picked?”

  Apparently then she had heard only the very end of his remarks to the cashier and not the prior explanation. “Turned out I forgot to bring my wallet along.” He smiled falsely. “No harm done.”

  “I decided not to go to see Raimu, since you were busy,” said she. “I stayed home and read Thomas Mann. I’m on the second volume of Joseph and His Brothers: Young Joseph. But the heat in the dorm is so high, my throat got terribly parched, so I came here for a Coke and some ice cream.”

  What a bore she was. If she expected a full explanation of his own presence, she would be disappointed. “Well, thanks again,” said he, when they had emerged from the restaurant. “I’ll give you the money tomorrow, if you want to come into the library after one.” He turned away but neglected to walk fast enough to make it clear that he was leaving her.

  She kept pace with him. “Hey, you know who I saw in there? I went to the ladies’ room, and there was Cissy, big as life, going out the back door with that big lard Doyle who owns the greasy spoon.”

  “Cissy?”

  “Who married Forrester. Remember I told you the other day? The blonde in our class.”

  The odd thing about this was that not until Jack heard her name for the first time did it occur to him that he had not previously known it.

  “Do you suppose,” Daphne asked, “she’s carrying on with Doyle, of all people? Already?“

  “She works there,” said John.

  “She does?”

  He looked at Daphne under the last streetlamp in the business district, before they entered the tree-lined, now leafless lane that was a shortcut to the campus, and asked, “You wouldn’t know how I could make some money quickly?”

  Her pale face was framed within a knitted cap of green wool. Her breath steaming, she asked, “How much money?”

  “Maybe a hundred dollars.” In those days, this to him was the first figure that came to mind as being impressive.

  “The quickest way to get that much,” said Daphne, “would be to borrow it from me. I’ve got a savings account right here in town. I’ll get the cash and bring it to the library tomorrow at one.”

  He walked her home. “Goodnight, then,” said she in front of her dormitory, and took his hand and shook it.

  Next day, more prompt than he, she was waiting for him at the big central desk where the books were checked out.

  “Thanks,” he said, taking the envelope she extended, and, to ease his conscience, “Do you have a rich father?”

  She snorted. “Nope. I worked for it. But I can earn more. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m not taking it as a gift,” he said for pride’s sake. “I’ll get it back as soon as I can.”

&
nbsp; “Sure.” She smirked and heel-and-toed out of the building in a funny, mannered stride he had not seen before. At least she had not tried to use the loan as leverage in arranging a date.

  Now that he had the money, he could not find Cissy. He could scarcely phone her at home on the subject of providing the necessary funds for her departure from said residence. He had no idea of which other courses were on her schedule or which routes to frequent in hopes of encountering her as a pedestrian between classes. And he had very little free time, what with his own four courses and the library job.

  When Wednesday came, and Cissy appeared at the writing class, it was, appropriately but damnably enough, in the company of her husband. The two-hour session was endless on this day, what with the reading of a long story which John was far too preoccupied to hear and would surely not have liked anyway, for it seemed to be a “sensitive” childhood reminiscence and was by a fat-faced girl who had sat in the back and looked inscrutable when his own story was under discussion, followed by Forrester’s effusive and probably defiant praise, sensing as the teacher did, correctly, that it would be attacked by its writer’s classmates.

  The critics included John’s creditor Daphne Kleemeyer, whom he had managed to evade throughout the weekend by obsessively staying in his single room and pretending not to be therein when, at Sunday noontime, someone pounded on his door and shoutingly informed him he had a call on the hallway phone.

  “What’s wrong with fake feeling is that it reflects on and degenerates genuine emotion,” she was saying now. “The narrator of this story wants us to believe she loves staying with her aunt and uncle while her mother and father go to the fancy-dress ball but what I for one would like to hear is her resentment and envy, which is really what all human beings feel when they’re left behind when other people are going out to enjoy themselves. This is especially true of children.”

  Forrester was annoyed. “Oh, come now, Miss Kleemeyer. Now who’s being sentimental?”

  John had to endure an entire hour of this before the period came to an end and, while Forrester was occupied with the students who converged on him, Cissy could be approached.

  John spoke in a discreet voice, for people were moving nearby. Luckily Daphne had something to ask of Forrester and had gone up there.

  “I had a wonderful time the other night,” said he, and not waiting for a response, whispered, “I’ve got some money for you.”

  She winced and said, “Huh?”

  “I’ve got a hundred dollars for you.”

  Her smile was radiant. “Hey,” she said, “that’s all right!”

  “It might not be enough, but I’ll see what else I can dig up.”

  “No,” she said, touching his forearm. “That’s fine. Come over tonight if you want. He’s going to the city for some writers’ get-together.”

  “Give me your notebook,” said John.

  “Why?” But she relinquished it, and deftly, while looking elsewhere to delude any possible observers, he slipped the envelope full of money between the pages.

  But the point of this maneuver was nullified when she proceeded to remove the envelope from concealment and poke her forefinger within it.

  “Gosh,” she cried, “you’re as good as your word!” She might have said more had he not seen Daphne, the business with Forrester now concluded, staring their way. So he interrupted Cissy with a clearing of the throat.

  “Tonight. I can’t wait.” Clutching his books, he headed doggedly towards the door, but Daphne had a shorter route there than his and caught him.

  She waved a manuscript. “Take a look at his comments!” It was the story Forrester had read aloud at the previous class. He had now returned it with marginal criticisms in red pencil.

  John’s fears that Daphne would see her money being transferred to Cissy were groundless. Daphne was a monomaniac about her writing. He could in fact use that obsession to distract her from her plans for a personal connection with him. He took the manuscript and scanned the red-penciled commentary.

  “He likes this.“ He read the underlined sentence adjacent to Forrester’s “Well done!”: “Having toiled in the toilet, Tillie made her toilette.” “Well done” seemed an inappropriate remark, but at least it was positive, whereas the other notes on this page were disapproving, e.g., “Poor imagery!…Anthropomorphism…Doesn’t work.” John didn’t really have the energy to connect these with their textual referents and then console Daphne with particularity. He settled for the catch-all: “Hell, what does he know? If he was such a great authority he would write a book.”

  “Think so?” Daphne asked, softly bumping against him as they walked along the hallway. “It galls me to read such superficial responses to things I labored over for days. Mind you, I’m no Flaubert, but I really do take enormous pains with my sentences.”

  Professing to be late for a dental appointment, John made his escape.

  Cissy had not specified a time at which he should appear, but he assumed seven, the hour at which he had come on the previous week, would be satisfactory, and was in the street outside the apartment at six-thirty, clutching the dozen roses purchased with most of his week’s pay from the library. At the echo of the seventh chime from the campanile, he mounted the staircase and climbed to her door, as if ascending an enchanted mountain.

  While knocking, he had the awful premonition that, as on his first visit, Forrester would again be the one who opened the door. But it was Cissy who answered. She was nicely dressed in skirt and blouse and even high-heeled shoes, and wearing more makeup than in class as well as more jewelry. She irradiated a rich scent.

  “Hi there.” She turned and walked rapidly towards the open closet, letting him deal with the door, and found a green coat with a hairy fur collar and, plunging one arm into a sleeve, had virtually donned it before John could drop the roses and get there to help. When he did, grasping the long hair of the collar, he was deliciously almost asphyxiated by the fumes of her scent.

  “Listen,” Cissy said, buttoning the coat over her exquisite bosom, “something’s come up. I have to go see my grandma, who’s in the hospital in the city.”

  “I’m really sorry,” said John. “Anything I can do?”

  “I’m getting a ride,” Cissy told him. She had not seen the flowers, and it would have been bad taste for him to point them out now.

  But he had to make some impression, even if she was understandably distracted. “I realize the money I gave you won’t go far: you’ll need a place to live and so on. I’ll get more, I promise.”

  She frowned. “We’ll talk about that next time. You take care.”

  As they were descending the stairs, John offered to wait with her till her ride showed up.

  “That wouldn’t look good,” said Cissy. “You know?”

  Momentarily he had forgotten she was married. “Sure,” he agreed. “I’ll make myself scarce. I hope your grandmother recovers soon.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right. Now, you take care.”

  Not even the main library of a large state university takes in a fortune in fines, and John had direct access only to those paid by the students who returned late books while he was on duty: the entire take of one shift in those days might not amount to a dollar. Clearly this was no source of serious money. Selling books might be a better means. On Saturday he hitchhiked to the city and found a used-book store. The man behind the littered desk had a cast in one eye and the knot of his tie was darker than the shaft. He and his shop were of a like squalor, but even so his hypothetical offer was much lower than John had expected.

  “Britannica?” the man asked, sneering with only one side of his face. “Depending on condition, maybe twenty cents per volume, but only if it’s a whole set.”

  “Costs more than a hundred now, doesn’t it?”

  “But we’re talkin’ used. Anyway, what you got in mind is selling somebody else’s property, am I right? Probably belongs to your father. You wouldn’t be so dumb as to peddle one you swiped f
rom a school, I hope. It would be stamped with the name of the place, or maybe even perforated.”

  John was obsessed with the intention of furnishing Cissy with enough money so that she could escape from her imprisonment. Though he had, to this point in life, been of an exemplary honesty (once even, as a child of eleven, having found in the street a wallet containing almost fifty dollars in cash, he went to some pains to track down its owner and return it to him), he had now, through love, become utterly amoral and might have robbed a bank if he had had the requisite armament.

  As the situation stood, when assessed with reason, his sole hope for funds in significant quantity remained Daphne Kleemeyer. Nor did he have to beg. In consequence, he knew little guilt and less responsibility.

  He had only to look lugubrious.

  “Why so melancholy?” Daphne was returning some of the many books she found time to read in addition to what was required in her courses: today they were The Bohemian Life, by Henri Murger; Xenophon’s Memorabilia; and a bilingual edition of Petrarch. John respected the great writers of the past, but considered an inordinate questing after them as probably phony.

  He sighed and stamped the books in. Daphne was not the sort ever to pay a fine.

  She leaned forward across the counter, even though he was momentarily alone at the big desk. “If you need more help of a financial nature, just say the word.”

  “Only if I thought you were some rich man’s daughter.” He placed the books in a rolling bin, which another employee would push away and lower into the stacks on a dumbwaiter.

  “I told you I’ve saved some.”

  “You have time for all the course work and all this reading too?”

  Daphne smiled. She had unusually small teeth behind her pale lips. She would never have been a beauty, God knew, but could have done more with herself than she did. “I just make efficient use of the time at my disposal. Also I don’t sleep a whole lot.” She grew sober. “I’m embarrassed at having to read some things not in their original languages, but it’s either that or go without it, sometimes. I have a fair reading knowledge of French, for example, but it would have taken me too long to read Murger in the original if I were to do it carefully. And I got a late start on Greek, so tackling a classic text at the moment would be foolhardy.”