Time and Again

by Jack Finney

  A cargo ship heading for the sea was not so much approaching as simply swelling in size, and Julia sat staring at it. When finally it passed, quite close, its steel sides rising up past us forever, Julia shrank close to me, her eyes blinking apprehensively. "Will it tip?" she whispered. "Could it fall?" I told her it was impossible, but as we both stared up at the black clifflike side of the big ship sliding past us, its propellers mumbling, I knew what she felt. It seemed unlikely that anything this big and high out of the water could float, and I wondered what Julia would have said if the new Queen Elizabeth had incredibly steamed by.

  And then a plane passed, a four-engined propeller plane not too high, maybe ten thousand feet, drilling away up against the gray sky. I was pleased, glad to show off what is probably the symbol of this particular century. I said, "Julia, look"—she'd heard the sound but didn't know where to look till I pointed upward. "That's a plane, an airplane." I waited, a little smugly I suppose, for her to be astounded. But she stared up at it for a dozen seconds, smiling slightly, interested and pleased to see it, but not surprised. Then she nodded at me. "I've read of them, in Jules Verne. Of course you'd have them by now. I should love to ride on one. Are there many?" She'd already turned back to what really astounded her: the windowed cliffs of Manhattan.

  "Quite a few." I was laughing at myself; it served me right.

  There were no immigrants in Battery Park as we stepped off the boat. When we crossed the little park and reached the street, Julia stopped suddenly, a hand rising to her chest. At first I thought she'd been overwhelmed by the immediacy of the towering buildings and the narrow streets of cabs, private cars, and pedestrians, and by the sound, which was the normal traffic roar plus the ear-numbing chatter of jackhammers. But she wasn't looking at cars or buildings but at the people, the ordinary people walking past us. I looked at her closely, and understood that it wasn't the way they were dressed that had stopped her. I remembered the sudden awe that had come over me once at seeing the actually living, visibly breathing people of 1882, because now I felt certain I saw the same dizzying wonderment in Julia's face. On Liberty Island she'd been so conscious of her own appearance that the boat passengers getting off had scarcely seemed real. But now, as with me once, there they were passing before her, unnoticing—and they were alive, moving, talking!—the people of more than a lifetime after hers. When she turned to look at me her face was pale again, and she could only shake her head, wordless and frightened.

  We walked a short block up Broadway, past what's left of Bowling Green, and I said, "Do you know where you are?"

  The question startled her as though asked in a foreign city she'd never before seen. Trying to guess, she looked up and down the street, then turned to me, still half frightened by all she saw, but smiling, too. "No."

  "Lower Broadway."

  "No! It isn't!" Again she looked up and down the street, and now the smile was gone. "Oh, Si, there's nothing I know; nothing! I—"

  I said, "Hold it," took her arm, and we walked quickly uptown, two more short blocks. And then Julia slowed, a hand rising to her mouth in shock, staring ahead and across the street. We walked on fifty yards, stopped at the curb, and Julia and I stood staring across the street at tiny little Trinity Church lost at the bottom of a glass-and-stone canyon. Then her chin rose as she slowly lifted her gaze—up, up, and up at the towers that completely dwarfed the highest place on her Manhattan Island.

  Finally she turned to me. "I don't like it, Si. I don't like seeing Trinity like this!" Then once more she looked across the street and up to the distant sky above the great buildings. And now when she turned back to me she was smiling again. "But I'd like to go up in one of those buildings." Still smiling, she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, making a mock shudder. "Broadway; at least it's noisy as ever." Again she glanced up and down the busy street. "How strange not to see a single horse." Suddenly she noticed. "Si! Everything's going one way!"

  We got a cab at the corner, and I explained one-way streets as we drove east toward Nassau Street. Julia was looking appreciatively around at the interior of the cab, and I lowered my voice so the driver wouldn't hear. "This is an automobile."

  "I know!" She lowered her voice, too. "I remembered your drawing of Madison Square; I recognized them the moment we saw them. I like auto mobiles. This is fun!" She felt the cushion appreciatively. "I wish Aunt Ada could see them. Look!" She pointed suddenly; she'd been glancing around her, and now she'd noticed a tiny red sedan behind us. "How cunning! And the driver is a woman! How I should like one, too!" The cab was slowing for the traffic light at Nassau Street; it was turning from green to red, and Julia understood it at sight. "How clever. Now, why in the world didn't we think of that? But of course they are electric-lighted, aren't they, behind the colored glass?"

  We got out where Nassau Street meets Park Row, the cab waiting at the curb. I pointed down Park Row toward Broadway. "That's where the Astor Hotel stood, Julia. They built a new one uptown at Forty-fourth Street, and now it's gone, too." I pointed again, at a building I don't think I'd ever seen before either. "And that's where the post office was." Each time I pointed Julia looked obediently, understanding my words and nodding; but I don't think it was really possible for her to understand that that was really where the Astor had been, and this was where the post office had stood.

  But then she exclaimed, a sudden little "Oh!" of surprised delight, as she suddenly noticed City Hall and the Court House, both looking exactly as we'd last seen them, and realized that the park across the street was City Hall Park. It, too, was unchanged as far as I could tell; if there were small changes, as there must have been, they weren't noticeable to either of us. Julia stood looking across the street at it, smiling genuinely but tremulously; for just a moment there was the shine of tears in her eyes, then they were gone in the pleasure of what she saw. Very quietly she said, "I'm glad, Si, so glad it hasn't been changed. How good to see it."

  Oriented for the first time now, Julia suddenly understood where we were, and looked quickly up at me for confirmation. I nodded, she turned, and—I gestured to the cabby, who followed us along the curb—we walked along Park Row, along the side of what had once been the Times Building, still here though greatly changed. And then we stopped at the site of the building we'd seen burn to the ground. A building as old, now, as the World Building had been then stood in its place. It was equally nondescript, and incredibly very much like it; it looked as though it had probably been built immediately after the fire.

  We stood looking at it blankly. In my mind I could easily see the great lashing tongues of orange flame crackling out the window tops of the old World Building; I could still smell the black smoke, still hear the hurricane roar of a fire that was now gone from all human memory, surely, except mine and the girl's beside me, and I wondered what Ida Small's life had been like. I walked forward and placed the flat of my hand against the building wall, and then so did Julia. For a moment we stood with our palms pressed to the actuality of the stone that stood here now, feeling it draw the warmth from our hands, and it should have been real. But Julia looked at me and shook her head, and I nodded. I said, "I know; it's not real for me, either." I put my hand back into my overcoat pocket, and Julia slid hers into her muff.

  She walked back to the curb, where our cab was waiting, then turned to the old building and pointed. "That must be about where the OBSERVER sign hung." She glanced at the cabby who was pretending not to listen, then stepped closer to me, lowering her voice. "Si, can you believe that we crawled along that sign only two days ago?" She pointed at the old Times Building. "And there is the very window we climbed through into Mr. J. Walter Thompson's office."

  I nodded, smiling at the difficulty of even imagining these things. I said, "His advertising agency still exists. I think it's the largest in the world now, or close to it."

  "Oh?" she said brightly, as though at good news from an old friend. "I'm pleased to hear it; he was a very nice man."

  We drove on
then, block after block, Julia's head constantly turning. It was nearly all completely strange to her, a brand-new place except that she could see the big yellow street signs. And again and again I heard her murmur, "Gone ... gone ... gone ..."

  I don't know what the cabdriver was thinking; he was looking at us in his mirror every few seconds now. But when he caught my eye and started to speak, I gave him the hardest glare I had in stock. I don't really like New York cabdrivers. They've been overly publicized, have become arrogant, and I wasn't interested in anything cute this guy was about to say. Julia knew, too, that now he was listening to everything we said, and sometimes when we stopped for a light, people in cars and trucks beside us glanced in at our clothes, then looked at our faces. And of course it had happened even more when we'd walked or stood in the street. Actually I don't think anyone gave us much thought; they'd suppose we were on our way to a rehearsal of some kind, probably for a television commercial. But Julia was very aware of their looks, and when the cabdriver gave us still another inspection in his mirror, she leaned close to me and murmured, "Will we be at your house soon, Si?" and I nodded yes, and told the driver to speed it up.

  I made one detour, though. At Third Avenue and Twenty-third Street, I told the driver to head west, and when he started to remind me, wise-guy style, of my original directions, I said, "West on Twenty-third!" and he turned.

  We drove around Madison Square then, and heading south on Broadway, driving past the west side of the square, Julia grabbed my arm suddenly just as I'd thought she might. "Si!" she whispered. "It's gone! Really gone!"

  "What is?"

  "The arm! The Statue of Liberty's arm!" The cabdriver was losing his mind with frustration. "It would be, of course," Julia murmured, "but... now I know that it really happened. And that the entire Statue is in the harbor." Her arm was under mine, and she squeezed my arm tight to her side. "It's scary," she said, and made herself smile at me.

  As we waited for the light at Twenty-third Street, Julia sat looking forward through the windshield, no longer caring about the cabby. "The Fifth Avenue Hotel," she said, pointing. "Gone." She looked back over her shoulder through the trees of the square. "All the hotels are gone. Delmonico's, too." At Twenty-second Street, waiting for the light, to turn east, Julia pointed again. "The Abbey Park Theater; gone. And the Ladies' Mile, Si?"

  I nodded. "Gone. All gone."

  The light changed, we turned east, and I said, "That's Lexington Avenue just ahead; we can turn south there for one block to Gramercy Park. Your house is still there. Do you want to see it?"

  "Oh, no!" She shook her head violently. "I couldn't stand that, Si."

  Julia was pleased with the elevator in my building, though not with the middle-aged woman holding a poodle under her arm who kept staring at Julia and her clothes all the way up to my floor. I kept a key wedged between the molding of the front doorframe and the wall of the building hallway, where they separated a little about a yard above the floor. With a folded slip of paper, I worked it out now, unlocked my door, and gestured Julia in. She stepped inside, I flicked the wall switch, and—it was almost as much a novelty to me now as to Julia—the living-room chandelier came on.

  She grinned like a kid, glancing from chandelier to wall switch and back at least three times. She looked at me questioningly then, I nodded, and—taking the toggle of the switch carefully between thumb and forefinger—she clicked it, the chandelier went off, and Julia stood staring up at it. "How wonderful," she murmured. "Such fine clear light any time you wish it. As easily as this," and she flicked the switch once more.

  "I prefer gaslight,'' I said, but that was so unbelievable she didn't bother answering it. Without taking her eyes from the chandelier, she moved the switch again, and the light went off. I got money from under the paper lining a dresser drawer, and when I went downstairs to pay off the cab, Julia stood, still staring at the chandelier, fascinated, delighted, clicking the light switch on and off, over and again.

  I helped Julia take off her coat, and hung it, with her hat and muff, in the closet, Julia's hand rising to push at her hair, and there was a moment or so of awkwardness and constraint between us. I think it was the act of removing coat and hat when she was alone with me in my apartment, something Julia would feel wasn't right, at least in any ordinary circumstance. She covered it by examining my davenport and few sticks of furnished-apartment furniture, a real enough interest actually, since the look of them was new for her. She asked a question or two, then walked to the windows, where I joined her, and she stared down at Lexington Avenue for a few moments, marveling once again at being here.

  I remember most of the day in a series of pictures: Julia at the refrigerator while I hunted for things to make up a breakfast, marveling at its coldness, at its astonishing ability to actually create ice, at its freezing compartment, at the light that came on when you opened the door; her astonishment at instant coffee, her pleasure at its fragrance, and her wrinkled-nose disappointment at its taste; her surprise and pleasure in the frozen orange juice I magically took from the freezer compartment, stirred up in a pitcher, and poured over ice cubes.

  And countless other pictures: Julia back in the living room, her third glass of iced orange juice in her hand, as she stood looking at the blank face of my television while I stood with my hand on the knob warning her of what was going to happen when I turned it. She nodded quickly, excited by what I'd promised, possibly not believing me or at least not really comprehending that I could mean it literally. Because I turned the knob, and in spite of my warning she was badly frightened, crying out and stumbling as she backed away, spilling a dollop of juice on the rug, as a distorted pattern on the screen suddenly turned itself into the moving speaking face of a woman urging Julia to try a new, improved dishwashing soap. Jules Verne hadn't prepared her for this; television was completely astonishing; she could hardly believe what she was seeing even as she stared at it. Then she babbled, asking how it worked, and she listened to my answer uncomprehendingly, alternately watching my face and sneaking looks back at the screen.

  I told her that while what she was now watching was on tape, the machine could also show you distant events while they were happening, thinking this would astonish her even more. But she asked what I meant by tape, and when I told her there was a way of preserving pictures of people in motion together with the actual sounds of their voices, that was what astonished her.

  I think the television set—and what I told her—was so bewildering that for a few moments she wasn't sure she liked it. But I slid a chair up behind her, touching the backs of her knees, she sat down slowly, and the bewilderment turned to a fascination as absorbing as a child's. With absolute open-mouthed attention to every movement and sound, daytime soap opera or commercial, she sat in rigid straight-backed motionlessness, having forgotten to even sit back. And when I showed her that you could change the picture by turning a knob, she sat turning the knob around and around at ten-second intervals, from serial to panel show to old movie to Julia Child, and I actually had to tap her shoulder to make her turn and hear what I was saying. I said, "I'm going out for half an hour. Will you be okay here?" She just nodded, her head already turning back to the screen.

  In my bedroom I changed to wash slacks, sport shirt, sweater, moccasins, and put on a short tan car coat. She glanced up as I came back into the living room to say, "Is this how men dress now?" I said that yes, it was one of the ways, and she nodded, her head already turning back to a fascinating Allstate Insurance commercial.

  I doubt if she realized how long I was gone, which was more than a half hour, closer to forty-five minutes. Because when I came in, she was sitting back in her chair but still staring at the television set: an old movie, a comedy from the forties that must have been ninety-five percent incomprehensible to her. But it moved and it talked and that was enough.

  Of the series of pictures which are my memories of a lot that happened that day, the next is even more memorable than Julia's hypnosis by televis
ion. I had to turn off the set to get her away from it; she said, "Oh, no, not yet!" as the picture shrank and the screen went dark.

  I was laughing. "Julia, there are other things to see! You can look at the television again later."

  She nodded, and stood—but reluctantly, looking back at the set—and said, "A theater in your home—six theaters! It's a miracle. How can you bear to do anything but watch it?"

  "Some people can't. But I don't think you'd be one of them. It's really no good, Julia, it's not worth watching, most of it." But of course she couldn't see that, not yet. I'd set the four or five packages I'd brought in on the davenport, and now I picked them up and began piling them into Julia's arms. "I think you'll have to put these on, Julia. You can change in my room."

  "What are they, Si? Clothes? Modern clothes?"

  "Yep." She hesitated, but I said gently, "People will stare at you otherwise, Julia," and she grimaced, and nodded. I said, "Forgive me for speaking of this, but I have to explain: I think you can keep on whatever underclothes you're wearing; though if you run into any problems, let me know." I was having trouble keeping my face straight. "There's a blouse, skirt, slip, and sweater in the packages. And shoes and stockings. Put them all on. I brought a garter belt for the stockings, which I'm sure you'll figure out. And if anything fits too badly, we'll stop at a store and replace it. Okay?"