Changing the Past

by Thomas Berger

  He now activated Line 3 and spoke into the little mouthpiece that curved around from the earphone. “Jonathan Kellog. Good morning, Harriet. How may I help you?”

  “Oh, Doctor…” Harriet wept awhile in a muffled way that seemed authentic. After years of experience, the phonies, the jokers, making too much of their bogus distress, could usually be recognized for what they were and terminated. But it sounded as though Harriet was genuine.

  “Now, Harriet,” said he in the deeper-pitched, more deliberate voice he had developed for radio use, “nobody’s listening but me, and you know I’m sympathetic…. Harriet?”

  “Yes, Doctor.” She cleared her throat. “Okay, my daughter always was a fine, moral girl, a fine student. We couldn’t of been closer all the while she was growing up. Doctor, we never even argued about anything!”

  “What’s wrong now?”

  “Two years ago she married out of our faith. Well, I didn’t like that exactly but didn’t make any trouble about it even when the wedding was held in this other place of worship, you see, with everything so different than how I was brought up, and my daughter too. Next I’m told the children have to be brought up in this other religion. Well, I didn’t like that much, either, but what could I—”

  Time being always of the essence of radio, as was maintaining the listeners’ interest, Kellog interrupted here. “So these things that hurt you continued to accumulate?”

  “Yes they did, Doctor, on and on, but not a word of complaint came from me.”

  “What was the straw that broke the camel’s back?”

  “Now she wants me to—” Harriet’s voice broke before she could complete the incredulous expression—“convert!” She wept again.

  “Harriet,” Kellog asked. “Tell me this: you’re a devoutly religious person?”

  After a moment she replied, in a low voice, “Not exactly.”

  “You make some observance at major holidays?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “But you still want to call yourself a member of the faith into which you were born. It’s the way most people are. But zealots find it hard to understand, especially those who have themselves recently converted, and all the more so when they’re young. You’ll just have to talk turkey to your daughter. Put the case to her as you’ve put it to me: you’ve never criticized her for what she did. Now it’s her turn to be fair. Maybe relations between the two of you will be strained for a while. But eventually, I’m sure, she’ll see you’re right. What does your husband think?”

  “He passed away nine years ago.”

  “Standing up for what’s right can be a lonely thing, but in the end it’s always worth it.”

  “He’d turn over in his grave if I ever became a dirty Catholic!” cried Harriet.

  The program as aired was broadcast from tape played seven seconds after the recording of the live conversation: sufficient time in which to delete indecencies and other unacceptable expressions such as Harriet’s. So far as the listeners knew now, the current colloquy ended with Kellog’s homily on the inevitable success of moral courage, in delivering which he was by no means being hypocritical. One of his strengths as a broadcaster in a cynical era was that he actually believed in most of what he told those who applied for his advice. He personally embraced no organized faith but generally approved of all religions that did not call for the destruction of nonbelievers. With obvious exceptions—to spare pain, to save lives—he disapproved of mendacity and celebrated the telling of literal truth, encouraged the exercise of forgiveness, urged people to be kind and generous and try at least, hard as it was, to rise above envy and to resist the spiteful impulses to which all human beings are sometimes given. To the young he advocated respect for elders, but ever counseled the latter to be receptive to the energy and yea-saying of youth. As to sex he could be either blue-nosed or permissive, according to the caller. If a mother was in anguish over the possibility that her college-aged daughter intended to sleep with the boy invited as weekend house-guest, Kellog disparaged her fears, reminding her of prevailing mores, pointing out that the girl would do better at home than in a motel or, worse, the rear of a van. But if it was rather the daughter who phoned him, he would take the avuncular opposition: “Put yourself in her place. Even if she accepts the fact you sleep with him somewhere else, that’s quite different from having it go on under her own roof. There are all sorts of rights. As you say, if you’re old enough to vote, you’re old enough to choose to go to bed with someone: that’s your right. But your mother has a right to say what goes on in her home.”

  There was no scientific means of gauging how often his counsel was taken. He regularly received many letters of thanks, and often a caller with a new problem praised the successful solution Kellog had provided for the previous one. Much less frequent were complaints, and though all, except those made by obvious cranks, were politely acknowledged, if only by a form letter, none was allowed to reach the air and so vitiate the public’s trust in Dr. Jonathan Kellog, who had no such degree whether in medicine or philosophy. His only formal education in psychology consisted of a basic introductory course, taken decades earlier and in an accelerated summer semester at that. He had been lucky to sneak through with a C, in a season of record temperatures, pitchers of cold beer on humid evenings, and a girlfriend who with a naked tan torso wore a brassiere of white skin: but for a long time that display and a restricted bit of fondling were all the sex he got, though he and she were in love and inseparable. Which was normal enough for that place and time, even though contemporaneously, in other places and milieus, people of the same age were screwing lustily.

  He married the same girl, when just out of college with a B.S. in business and no prospects to speak of, given his lackluster university, less than average grades, and a suddenly stagnant economy. His wife at the same time took her degree in Fine arts, having majored in music, specifically the pipe organ, an impractical instrument examples of which were to be found in the college chapel and again in the suburban church where they were married and to which his wife belonged, but was not the sort of thing that could be played at home—and that fact was what Kellog saw as uniquely instrumental in the breakup of the marriage that came within three years. Though otherwise a housewife to whom no exception could be taken, whose windows sparkled and whose pastry was so light a fork could hardly hold it down, June insisted on keeping up with her music, which meant she played the Episcopal organ at Sunday and holiday services and practiced midweek. Kellog was himself not a churchgoer and for him the organ was most naturally used in a ballpark or as it had slowly risen into view on the stages of the grander movie theaters of his childhood, but he thought it an excellent hobby for June, especially when he was on the road as a salesman of wholesale hardware. They were waiting to have children as soon as he did better, and buy a house as well. Meanwhile June was alone a lot in the little apartment with outmoded appliances. She spent ever more time at the church, even when Kellog was in town.

  When he finally confronted her with his suspicions, she admitted immediately that she was having an affair with the choirmaster, and felt no guilt about it, having been for some time aware, from a scrawled name and phone number on a matchbook cover found in one of her husband’s shirts when she was about to launder it, that he took care of his own needs when on the road. Though her confession of course ended the marriage for him—June had been a virgin when he married her—he patiently tried to explain, if only for the principle of the thing, the difference between his fooling with a girl from a distant bar and her committing adultery with some sissy in a house of worship, but she self-righteously rejected the argument.

  Kellog did not remarry until he was in his mid-thirties. He had done well as a salesman and been hired away, at a substantial raise, by a competitor company and then, at a younger age than most, was elevated to a lower executive position. He would surely have continued to rise had he not at this point begun an impolitic affair with the daughter of the presi
dent of the firm. At twenty she was legally still a minor in those days. Karen was a college dropout who drank heavily and drove her red convertible at dangerous speeds, her long black hair in the wind. Kellog had never known a girl of this breed and he was immediately entranced. Certainly taking up with her did not advance his career, not even when they returned from having run away, on an impulse of Karen’s, to be married. Her father fired him instantly and arranged for a quick Mexican divorce.

  Kellog decided he had had enough of wholesale hardware and went into retail sales in television and stereos, doing quite well in several branches of a large metropolitan chain. Eventually he took a position of importance in its advertising department, specializing in the commercials broadcast on the radio, a medium which, despite what might seem, to the layman, the absolute rule of TV, had done even better throughout the years in its mercantile function. Kellog had the knack for what appealed to the potential buyer by way of words—unlike television commercials, those on radio had to do the job with nothing but language. At least that was true of those that he demanded from the ad agency, whose people, when he started out, were addicted to the use of music, first in the form of ear-catching jingles, and then as background to the copy being read aloud.

  But it was his theory that there was a danger in the employment of jingles: true, they stayed in the memory, but did they sell the product? He could recall several such ditties, melodious, clever, cute, but could not have said, without effort, which products they spoke for. Others, the lyrics of which consisted of little more than the repetition of the product’s name, still might not induce a consumer to make the appropriate purchase. Again he went by personal taste. For example, on seeing a loaf of bread labeled “Buckminster,” he felt a slight distaste owing to the radio jingle in which “Buck, Buckminster Bread” was repeated again and again to the tune of “Over the Waves.” Being himself of the nature never to purchase a product of which any connotations were unpleasant, he was unmoved by the theory of some professionals in the field to the effect that fixing an identification in the consciousness of the potential customer, and not charming him, was the foremost aim of advertising.

  Kellog eschewed the employment of anything irritating, loud, vulgar, or incantatory, and constructed radio ads to be read in a level tone by a male voice that would seem to belong to a reasonable human being, for example, “If you’re like me, and not somebody with years of training in electronics, going into an enormous store to look through hundreds of television sets to find the best one for your particular needs is not a great way of spending time on the weekend. Not to mention the job of sorting through stereo components! That’s why I go to the nearest Harrigan’s, where all the salesmen are experts in electronics—and also the nicest, most considerate people you’ll find anywhere. They’ll be just as nice if you want to just look as if you buy out the place…. Well, that’s one of the reasons I go to the nearest Harrigan’s—and there is a Harrigan’s near you, wherever you live. I’m not even going to talk about prices. I want you to do that yourself, after a visit to Harrigan’s.”

  The Harrigan management had to be persuaded to replace their long-running commercials—always introduced with blaring Sousa marches, which gave way to a man shouting with lunatic intensity, and ended with an adult actress simulating a child’s voice to ask, “Daddy, can we go to Harrigan’s today?” But sales throughout their branches had declined slightly during the past year, and whether that had anything to do with their radio advertisements or rather owed to new competition from another chain lately established in the region could not be said, for the Harrigan people were too reactionary, and tightfisted, to pay for demographic studies. Eventually it was agreed that Kellog’s sort of commercials be given a limited try.

  Listeners liked them, proof of which were the letters and phone calls to the station and, more credibly, to Harrigan’s itself, whose executives, not being in broadcasting, would not have been impressed with such evidence, but in fact overall sales did increase during the ensuing weeks, though that may well have happened because the rival chain had got some bad publicity when a man suddenly burst into one of their branches and blew out a series of TV screens with fire from an automatic shotgun. He proved to be not a disgruntled customer with a grudge against the store but rather someone with a long history of emotional problems of undisclosed origin. As these things go, not only this branch but all those in the chain suffered undeservedly: for an indeterminate time, though no human being had been scratched, their name would connote mayhem to potential customers, and people stayed away.

  Though lonely in his private life, Kellog was cautious about taking a third spouse. He saw that the next one, should there be another, must be chosen for her qualities as, in effect, a business associate rather than simply a bed partner. Meanwhile he dated only divorced or widowed women, who, having lived with men, were less importunate than the single girls who were looking, often without patience, for someone to marry, for those were the days before it became fashionable to deplore that quest.

  Kellog went through various changes of job. From Harrigan’s he went to the advertising agency with which he had done business, and next, taking a cut in salary in exchange for a field the possibilities of which were to him more promising, to the local radio station, and eventually to the flagship station of the network, in New York. Always he remained far from the microphone, back in the executive offices, where the money was made for the firm. He was proficient in this work, and who knows how far he could have gone in management had he remained there, had he not by accident found himself in a superficially related but fundamentally quite different profession.

  The most popular programs on the weekend schedule of station WKEG (days were mostly recorded Broadway show tunes, interspersed with news reports on the half hour and baseball games in the summer) was that of Dr. Paul Pomer-antz, a consulting psychologist. Dr. Pomerantz had been one of the first radio personalities to take on-the-air telephone calls from listeners with personal problems: fellow workers with whom they could not get along, children without gratitude, obnoxious in-laws, fiancés impatient for premarriage intimacies, spendthrift wives, crude husbands, and so on.

  Pomerantz was a legitimate professional, having a weekday practice from which he earned a comfortable income, and did the Sunday-evening gig (as in fact he called it) for fun, though he did receive a fee, which was increased regularly as his audience grew and attracted more commercials at higher costs to the advertisers—the normal progression of a successful show, to the greater profits of all concerned. He was a favorite of the station’s executives, for previous to his arrival Sunday evening had been a dead zone. Soon they were trying to persuade the good doctor to offer a similar show every evening of the week and had sweetened his potential earnings to the point beyond which he could not sustain a resistance.

  His agents had only just concluded the oral deal—the lawyers had not yet had time to draw up the printed contract—when Dr. Pomerantz suffered a lethal heart attack.

  The calamity occurred early on a Sunday morning. Kellog, the executive who had been most closely concerned with Pomerantz’ program, had only a few hours in which to find a replacement for the evening show. He had no success. The alternatives were either two hours of musical-comedy hits or a rebroadcast of an earlier program. The latter would be even more unsatisfactory than the former, for it had been determined that at least part of what devoted listeners responded to so favorably was the spontaneity of the show. Last week’s would surely not do, not to mention a repeat of something older. These case histories were remembered: each had evoked its share of calls and letters from persons similarly troubled. Radio listeners could be fickle and, once disappointed, might forget where the offending station could be found on the dial.

  Kellog made a desperate decision. As the concerned executive, he had listened to most of Pomerantz’ broadcasts. While it was true that the commercials were his own area of focus, after three years he was sufficiently familiar with the que
stions put to the psychologist and the responses thereto that he could trive a reasonably accurate imitation of such interchanges for the amusement of the women he dated. “Hello, Doctuh? Moy name is Estelle? From Bwooklyn?” “Yes, Estelle.” “Doctuh, oym having a lot of trouble with my daugh-tuh-rin-lor and huh mothuh ralso.” Pomerantz was himself not a local, stemming rather from the West Coast, his pronunciation standard American, his style crisp, almost cool, vaguely sympathetic but never identifiably involved. He seemed less compassionate the greater the apparent distress of the caller. His style was perfect for the job: surely it was just what was wanted by the kind of persons who were eager to reveal their problems to a stranger. However, after his own experience, and having listened to a succession of the imitators, on rival stations, of Pomerantz’ original format but with a variety of different broadcasting styles—maudlin, solipsis-tic, abusive, etc.—Kellog arrived at the belief that in this area many people would put up with anything. For all concerned, both this sort of “patients” and this kind of “doctor” were essentially performers.

  When he substituted himself for the deceased Pomerantz on that first show, Kellog of course had no intention of giving even one encore. With an entire week at his disposal, it went without saying that a permanent replacement would be on the air the following Sunday. Meanwhile it seemed advisable that Dr. Pomerantz’ death be given no gratuitous advertisement, lest the listeners see the free counsel offered by WKEG as less than godlike. Nor could an unqualified practitioner do even one program. Thus was born Dr. Jonathan Kellog—the legal department having advised that it was not against the law to call oneself, generally, “doctor,” so long as one did not seek to practice medicine or lay claim to a particular degree.

  The program on that historic Sunday evening began with a staff announcer’s mellow tones. “Good evening. Filling in for Dr. Pomerantz tonight is Dr. Jonathan Kellog. Those who would like to call Dr. Kellog with questions about personal problems are invited to do so.” He gave the telephone number. “Now, here’s Dr. Kellog.”