Time and Again (45 page)

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 television. 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?"

"Okay." She nodded shyly, and went into my room, and I opened the last package, a suit box, brought out the street coat I'd bought her, and laid it over the back of the davenport as a sort of final surprise for Julia. It was tan cloth, with wide lapels, a deep collar, and big mother-of-pearl buttons. All these things had been expensive but I didn't care.

Julia was gone longer than I'd thought she'd be, and doors being as thin as they are today, which Julia surely didn't realize, I could hear her little exclamations of surprise and occasional puzzlement. Then I heard her say, "Oh!" in a shocked little tone, and the next picture in my assorted memories is of Julia — following a long wait after the "Oh!" — coming hesitatingly out of the bedroom and stopping just outside the door. Her voice embarrassed, she said, "Si, you made a mistake; just look at this skirt!" and I couldn't hold it in another second, and burst out laughing. The skirt I'd bought her was tan wool, and of a really conservative knee-length. And she had it on all right. But it was tight at the waist because she'd put it on over at least two of her own ankle-length white petticoats.

"Julia, I'm sorry!" I said; she was looking indignant. "But you can't wear those petticoats; wear the slip!"

"Slip?"

"The pink petticoat I brought you."

"I am wearing it!" Her face was shiny red. "Under my petticoats, and it's much too short!"

I'd bottled the laughter up, shoved it way down inside and it was off my face completely but fighting to get out. "No, Julia," I said gravely, "the slip isn't really too short. It's the same length as the skirt; a shade shorter so it won't show." I shrugged. "It's what they wear today.
I
didn't design them."

She stood for a moment as though thinking about arguing it, while I kept my face rigid at the sight of a good fourteen inches of ruffled white petticoat hanging down below the hem of that skirt. Then she turned abruptly, and was gone for at least ten minutes.

She came out of the bedroom walking like a duck, arms rigid at her side; it took me a few seconds and steps to realize that this strange walk was because her knees were pressed tight together. "Is this… how it's supposed to look?"

She stood motionless for my inspection, and I stood staring because Julia looked great. The blouse looked fine at the collar, the chocolate-brown sweater was a snug but not too tight fit, and the skirt looked terrific. As I'd suspected, she had a fine figure, though I hadn't known her legs would be absolutely beautiful. High-heeled shoes, the clerk had reminded me, were out of style right now, but I'd insisted on buying high-heeled brown leather pumps, and now I saw that I was right. In sheer flesh-toned stockings, those high heels emphasizing her fine-boned ankles and full round calves, Julia was stunning. She was a spectacularly handsome girl in this outfit, and her long hair, gathered up in a bun at the back, seemed just right for it. My face, eyes, and grin showed what I thought, and it helped her; she smiled, too, in sudden pleasure and pride, and bent forward to look down at her skirt. Once more she caught sight of its hem, far far higher on those beautiful legs than she'd ever dreamed she'd wear. And her face flushed, she ran two steps to the davenport, snatched up the coat I'd left there, and as fast as she could move, she wrapped it around her waist, the bottom of the coat touching her shoes. "I can't!" she wailed. "Si, I simply
cannot
go out in the street like that!"

I couldn't help it; I was laughing, shaking my head as I walked over to her, and I put an arm around her shoulders, and then on impulse and without thought I kissed her. It was just a quick kiss, and she looked startled. But she smiled, and I got her to put on the coat by telling her its hem would be longer than the skirt — as it was by an inch or so. And that helped. The coat on, she looked down at herself again, and while I think she felt like running to the bedroom again, she made herself stand still. Every woman she'd seen outside, I reminded her, wore a coat just as short, and she nodded grimly, accepting it.

I walked to my room to get a felt hat from my closet, and when I came back Julia stood at the mirror which hung over the little table beside the front door, and she was tying the strings of her bonnet under her chin. This time I didn't even bother trying to hold back; it would have been useless. I laughed for a dozen seconds, unable to stop or speak, and Julia stood looking at me, not angry but baffled; and each time I'd look at her standing there frowning puzzledly in those high heels and short modern coat, wearing that ancient, flat-topped flowered hat on her head, its strings tied in a bow under her chin, the laughter got a fresh start. I didn't mean to be rude or offend Julia, and was relieved that she didn't seem angry; it was just that she'd seemed so modern suddenly that I'd stupidly thought she understood how good she looked. But of course the new outfit was utterly alien to her; she had no way of judging it. To Julia her familiar bonnet looked just fine with these strange new clothes.

But when I told her the bonnet didn't go with them, the woman she was understood instantly that it must be so, even though she couldn't perceive it, and she yanked loose the bow under her chin and snatched off the bonnet. Plenty of women went bareheaded in the street, I told her, especially with long hair like hers. She looked surprised and doubtful about that, and I said if it bothered her when we got out, we'd stop and buy her a new hat. Then I put my hands on her coat sleeves at the shoulder, and stood at arm's length looking her over, letting what I thought and felt show. "Julia, take my word for this; when we go out now, you'll be one of the best-looking women in all New York. And that's the truth." She saw that I meant it, and I watched the pleasure come into her eyes, and saw her chin lift. Then, wobbling a bit on heels an inch higher and much smaller than she was used to but managing it pretty well, she walked back into my room; there was a full-length mirror on the closet door, and I knew she was heading for that. And knew she could face going out now, and that it wouldn't take this girl long to be as pleased as she ought to at the way she looked, and I wished I'd kissed her again before she moved away from my hands at her shoulders.

Downstairs I got Julia into a cab right away, letting her get used to being out in full sight of the world a little dose at a time. Then we drove uptown on Third Avenue so that she could see the street astoundingly without El or even streetcar tracks. At Forty-second Street we turned west to pass Grand Central Station, and Julia said, and I agreed, that it was far more impressive than the little red-brick Grand Central we'd seen here last.

Up Madison Avenue, the charming quiet little street that Julia knew unrecognizable now, of course. And then to Fifty-ninth Street along the lower edge of Central Park, and once more she had the relief and pleasure of finding something familiar essentially unchanged. I hired one of the horse-drawn hacks that wait in a line beside the park on Fifty-ninth Street; I thought Julia would enjoy it. And for a while —
clip-clop, clip-clop
once more — we drove more or less aimlessly along the winding roadways while Julia marveled at the absence of any other horses, and at the swiftness and relative silence of the "auto mobiles." She liked the cars, thought they were far more handsome and much more interesting than carriages, and I realized she'd rather have taken a cab.

Along Central Park West, and I showed her the Dakota surrounded by other buildings now; then we drove back to the hack stand. I paid off the driver, and we walked on toward the corner of Fifty-ninth and Fifth. This was the corner at which I'd had my first real look, on a cold January morning, at the world of 1882, staring in fright and fierce excitement at the horse-drawn bus approaching me, then turning to look south at a narrow, quiet residential Fifth Avenue. I'd been with Kate, but I didn't want to think about that just now. I wanted Julia to see that very same stretch of Fifth Avenue in my world.

Approaching the corner, across the street from the Plaza Hotel, I said, "We're walking along beside Central Park, Julia; and that's the corner of Fifty-ninth and Fifth, so you know where you are." I'd timed this carefully, and now I raised my arm, saying, "So tell me — what street is that?" and I pointed down the length of what may just be the most spectacular dozen and a half blocks in the world.

She gasped, turned a stunned face to me, then looked back, and the magnitude of the change in what she saw, the assault on the senses of that sudden look at today's astonishing structures, was almost too much. "Fifth
Avenue?"
she said weakly, and then, astounded,
"That is Fifth Avenue!?"