The Best of Nancy Kress

  “My closet. Manny, if you’d only come see, for a dollar you could get—”

  “—then he could just come back any time he wants. So how?”

  A sudden noise startled them both. Someone was coming through the stacks. “Librarians!” Manny hissed. Both of them frantically swept the sandwiches, beer (fifteen cents), and strudel into shopping bags. Manny, panicking, threw in the wool gloves. Harry swept the table free of crumbs. When the intruder rounded the nearest bookshelf, Harry was bent over Making Paper Flowers and Manny over Porcelain of the Yung Cheng Dynasty. It was Robert Gernshon.

  The young man dropped into a chair. His face was ashen. In one hand he clutched a sheaf of paper, the handwriting on the last one trailing off into shaky squiggles.

  After a moment of silence, Manny said diplomatically, “So where are you coming from, Robert?”

  “Where’s Jackie?” Harry demanded.

  “Jackie?” Gernshon said. His voice was thick; Harry realized with a sudden shock that he had been crying. “I haven’t seen her for a few days.”

  “A few days?” Harry said.

  “No. I’ve been…I’ve been…”

  Manny sat up straighter. He looked intently at Gernshon over Porcelain of the Yung Cheng Dynasty and then put the book down. He moved to the chair next to Gernshon’s and gently took the papers from his hand. Gernshon leaned over the table and buried his head in his arms.

  “I’m so awfully sorry, I’m being such a baby…” His shoulders trembled. Manny separated the papers and spread them out on the library table. Among the hand-copied notes were two slim books, one bound between black covers and the other a pamphlet. A Memoir of Auschwitz. Countdown to Hiroshima.

  For a long moment nobody spoke. Then Harry said, to no one in particular, “I thought he was going to science museums.”

  Manny laid his arm, almost casually, across Gernshon’s shoulders. “So now you’ll know not to be at either place. More people should have only known.” Harry didn’t recognize the expression on his friend’s face, nor the voice with which Manny said to Harry, “You’re right. He has to go back.”

  “But Jackie…”

  “Can do without this sweetness,” Manny said harshly. “So what’s so terrible in her life anyway that she needs so much help? Is she dying? Is she poor? Is she ugly? Is anyone knocking on her door in the middle of the night? Let Jackie find her own sweetness. She’ll survive.”

  Harry made a helpless gesture. Manny’s stubborn face, carved wood under the harsh fluorescent light, did not change. “Even him… Manny, the things he knows now—”

  “You should have thought of that earlier.”

  Gernshon looked up. “Don’t, I—I’m sorry. It’s just coming across it, I never thought human beings—”

  “No,” Manny said. “But they can. You been here, every day, at the library, reading it all?”

  “Yes. That and museums. I saw you two come in earlier. I’ve been reading, I wanted to know—”

  “So now you know,” Manny said in that same surprisingly casual, tough voice. “You’ll survive, too.”

  Harry said, “Does Jackie know what’s going on? Why you’ve been doing all this…learning?”

  “No.”

  “And you—what will you do with what you now know?”

  Harry held his breath. What if Gernshon just refused to go back? Gernshon said slowly, “At first, I wanted to not return. At all. How can I watch it, World War II and the camps—I have relatives in Poland. And then later the bomb and Korea and the gulags and Vietnam and Cambodia and the terrorists and AIDS—”

  “Didn’t miss anything,” Harry muttered.

  “And not be able to do anything, not be able to even hope, knowing that everything to come is already set into history—how could I watch all that without any hope that it isn’t really as bad as it seems to be at the moment?”

  “It all depends what you look at,” Manny said, but Gernshon didn’t seem to hear him.

  “But neither can I stay, there’s Susan and we’re hoping for a baby…I need to think.”

  “No, you don’t,” Harry said. “You need to go back. This is all my mistake. I’m sorry. You need to go back, Gernshon.”

  “Lebanon,” Gernshon said. “D.D.T. The Cultural Revolution. Nicaragua. Deforestation. Iran—”

  “Penicillin,” Manny said suddenly. His beard quivered. “Civil rights. Mahatma Gandhi. Polio vaccines. Washing machines.” Harry stared at him, shocked. Could Manny once have worked in a hand laundry?

  “Or,” Manny said, more quietly, “Hitler. Auschwitz. Hoovervilles. The Dust Bowl. What you look at, Robert.”

  “I don’t know,” Gernshon said. “I need to think. There’s so much…and then there’s that girl.”

  Harry stiffened. “Jackie?”

  “No, no. Someone she and I met a few days ago, at a coffee shop. She just walked in. I couldn’t believe it. I looked at her and just went into shock—and maybe she did too, for all I know. The girl looked exactly like me. And she felt like—I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. She felt like me. I said hello but I didn’t tell her my name; I didn’t dare.” His voice fell to a whisper. “I think she’s my granddaughter.”

  “Hoo boy,” Manny said.

  Gernshon stood. He made a move to gather up his papers and booklets, stopped, left them there. Harry stood, too, so abruptly that Gernshon shot him a sudden, hard look across the library table. “Going to hit me again, Harry? Going to kill me?”

  “Us?” Manny said. “Us, Robert?” His tone was gentle.

  “In a way, you already have. I’m not who I was, certainly.”

  Manny shrugged. “So be somebody better.”

  “Damn it, I don’t think you understand—”

  “I don’t think you do, Reuven, boychik. This is the way it is. That’s all. Whatever you had back there, you have still. Tell me, in all that reading, did you find anything about yourself, anything personal? Are you in the history books, in the library papers?”

  “The Office of Public Documents takes two weeks to do a search for birth and death certificates,” Gernshon said, a little sulkily.

  “So you lost nothing, because you really know nothing,” Manny said. “Only history. History is cheap. Everybody gets some. You can have all the history you want. It’s what you make of it that costs.”

  Gernshon didn’t nod agreement. He looked a long time at Manny, and something moved behind the unhappy hazel eyes, something that made Harry finally let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. It suddenly seemed that Gernshon was the one that was old. And he was—with the fifty-two years he’d gained since last week, he was older than Harry had been in the 1937 of Captains Courageous and the wide-brimmed fedoras and clean city parks. But that was the good time, the one that Gernshon was going back to, the one Harry himself could choose, if it weren’t for Jackie and Manny…still, he couldn’t watch as Gernshon walked out of the book stacks, parting the musty air as heavily as if it were water.

  Gernshon paused. Over his shoulder he said, “I’ll go back. Tonight. I will.”

  After he had left, Harry said, “This is my fault.”

  “Yes,” Manny agreed.

  “Will you come to my room when he goes? To…to help?”

  “Yes, Harry.”

  Somehow, that only made it worse.

  Gernshon agreed to a blindfold. Harry led him through the closet, the warehouse, the street. Neither of them seemed very good at this; they stumbled into each other, hesitated, tripped over nothing. In the warehouse Gernshon nearly walked into a pile of lumber, and in the sharp jerk Harry gave Gernshon’s arm to deflect him, something twisted and gave way in Harry’s back. He waited, bent over, behind a corner of a building while Gernshon removed his blindfold, blinked in the morning light, and walked slowly away.

  Despite his back, Harry found that he couldn’t return right away. Why not? He just couldn’t. He waited until Gernshon had a large head start and then hobbled towards the park.
A carousel turned, playing bright organ music: September 24. Two children he had never noticed before stood just beyond the carousel, watching it with hungry, hopeless eyes. Flowers grew in immaculate flower beds. A black man walked by, his eyes fixed on the sidewalk, his head bent. Two small girls jumping rope were watched by a smiling woman in a blue-and-white uniform. On the sidewalk, just beyond the carousel, someone had chalked a swastika. The black man shuffled over it. A Lincoln Zephyr V-12 drove by, $1090. There was no way it would fit through a closet.

  When Harry returned, Manny was curled up on the white chenille bedspread that Harry had bought for $3.28, fast asleep.

  “What did I accomplish, Manny? What?” Harry said bitterly. The day had dawned glorious and warm, unexpected Indian summer. Trees in the park showed bare branches against a bright blue sky. Manny wore an old red sweater, Harry a flannel work shirt. Harry shifted gingerly, grimacing, on his bench. Sunday strollers dropped ice cream wrappers, cigarettes, newspapers, Diet Pepsi cans, used tissues, popcorn. Pigeons quarreled and children shrieked.

  “Jackie’s going to be just as hard as ever and why not?” Harry continued. “She finally meets a nice fellow, he never calls her again. Me, I leave a young man miserable on a sidewalk. Before I leave him, I ruin his life. While I leave him, I ruin my back. After I leave him, I sit here guilty. There’s no answer, Manny.”

  Manny didn’t answer. He squinted down the curving path.

  “I don’t know, Manny. I just don’t know.”

  Manny said suddenly, “Here comes Jackie.”

  Harry looked up. He squinted, blinked, tried to jump up. His back made sharp protest. He stayed where he was, and his eyes grew wide.

  “Popsy!” Jackie cried. “I’ve been looking for you!”

  She looked radiant. All the lines were gone from around her eyes, all the sharpness from her face. Her very collar bones, Harry thought dazedly, looked softer. Happiness haloed her like light. She held the hand of a slim, red-haired woman with strong features and direct hazel eyes.

  “This is Ann,” Jackie said. “I’ve been looking for you, Popsy, because…well, because I need to tell you something.” She slid onto the bench next to Harry, on the other side from Manny, and put one arm around Harry’s shoulders. The other hand kept a close grip on Ann, who smiled encouragement. Manny stared at Ann as at a ghost.

  “You see, Popsy, for a while now I’ve been struggling with something, something really important. I know I’ve been snappy and difficult, but it hasn’t been—everybody needs somebody to love, you’ve often told me that, and I know how happy you and Grammy were all those years. And I thought there would never be anything like that for me, and certain people were making everything all so hard. But now…well, now there’s Ann. And I wanted you to know that.”

  “Happy to meet you,” Ann said. She had a low, rough voice and a sweet smile. Harry felt hurricanes, drought, sunshine.

  Jackie said, “I know this is probably a little unexpected—”

  Unexpected. “Well—” Harry said, and could say no more.

  “It’s just that it was time for me to come out of the closet.”

  Harry made a small noise. Manny managed to say, “So you live here, Ann?”

  “Oh, yes. All my life. And my family, too, since forever.”

  “Has Jackie…has Jackie met any of them yet?”

  “Not yet,” Jackie said. “It might be a little…tricky, in the case of her parents.” She smiled at Ann. “But we’ll manage.”

  “I wish,” Ann said to her, “that you could have met my grandfather. He would have been just as great as your Popsy here. He always was.”

  “Was?” Harry said faintly.

  “He died a year ago. But he was just a wonderful man. Compassionate and intelligent.”

  “What…what did he do?”

  “He taught history at the university. He was also active in lots of organizations—Amnesty International, the ACLU, things like that. During World War II he worked for the Jewish rescue leagues, getting people out of Germany.”

  Manny nodded. Harry watched Jackie’s teeth.

  “We’d like you both to come to dinner soon,” Ann said. She smiled. “I’m a good cook.”

  Manny’s eyes gleamed.

  Jackie said, “I know this must be hard for you—” but Harry saw that she didn’t really mean it. She didn’t think it was hard. For her it was so real that it was natural weather, unexpected maybe, but not strange, not out of place, not out of time. In front of the bench, sunlight striped the pavement like bars.

  Suddenly Jackie said, “Oh, Popsy, did I tell you that it was your friend Robert who introduced us? Did I tell you that already?”

  “Yes, sweetheart,” Harry said. “You did.”

  “He’s kind of a nerd, but actually all right.”

  After Jackie and Ann left, the two old men sat silent a long time. Finally Manny said diplomatically, “You want to get a snack, Harry?”

  “She’s happy, Manny.”

  “Yes. You want to get a snack, Harry?”

  “She didn’t even recognize him.”

  “No. You want to get a snack?”

  “Here, have this. I got it for you this morning.” Harry held out an orange, a deep-colored navel with flawless rind: seedless, huge, guaranteed juicy, nurtured for flavor, perfect.

  “Enjoy,” Harry said. “It cost me ninety-two cents.”

  Afterword to “The Price of Oranges”

  This is a time-travel story that is not really about time travel. Real stories in this subgenre, like Michael Swanwick’s Bones of the Earth, tackle the paradoxes and complications inherent in the idea of going back in time. Often they feature characters who are either researchers or financial opportunists thrilled to know what the economy is going to do in the future. Or else, like Jeff in Ken Grimwood’s excellent Replay, they are trapped in the past against their will.

  Harry Kramer is not a researcher, not an opportunist, not trapped. He’s a simple man with a simple goal: to raid 1937 for whatever will make 1989 easier for two elderly men on tiny budgets. To research this story, I spent a lot of time with issues of LIFE magazine from the 1930’s. A much different world, as alien to me as is much of science fiction, and mostly unaware of the history about to come crashing down on the planet in the next decade. Sometimes ignorance is bliss—at least temporarily.

  BY FOOLS LIKE ME

  Hope creeps quietly into my bedroom without knocking, peering around the corner of the rough doorjamb. I’m awake; sleep eludes me so easily now. I know from the awful smell that she has been to the beach.

  “Come in, child, I’m not asleep.”

  “Grandma, where’s Mama and Papa?”

  “Aren’t they in the field?” The rains are late this year and water for the crops must be carried in ancient buckets from the spring in the dell.

  “Maybe. I didn’t see them. Grandma, I found something.”

  “What, child?”

  She gazes at me and bites her lip. I see that this mysterious find bothers her. Such a sensitive child, though sturdy and healthy enough, God knows how.

  “I went to the beach,” she confesses in a rush. “Don’t tell Mama! I wanted to dig you some trunter roots because you like them so much, but my shovel went clunk on something hard and I…I dug it up.”

  “Hope,” I reprimand, because the beach is full of dangerous bits of metal and plastic, washed up through the miles of dead algae on the dead water. And if a soot cloud blows in from the west, it will hit the beach first.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, clearly lying, “but, Grandma, it was a metal box and the lock was all rusted and there was something inside and I brought it here.”

  “The box?”

  “No, that was too heavy. The…just wait!”

  No one can recognize most of the bits of rusted metal and twisted plastic from before the Crash. Anything found in a broken metal box should be decayed beyond recognition. I call “Hope! Don’t touch anything slimy—” but she
is already out of earshot, running from my tiny bedroom with its narrow cot, which is just blankets and pallet on a rope frame to keep me off the hard floor. It doesn’t; the old ropes sag too much, just as the thick clay walls don’t keep out the heat. But that’s my fault. I close the window shutters only when I absolutely have to. Insects and heat are preferable to dark. But I have a door, made of precious and rotting wood, which is more than Hope or her parents have on their sleeping alcoves off the house’s only other room. I expect to die in this room.

  Hope returns, carrying a bubble of sleek white plastic that fills her bare arms. The bubble has no seams. No mold sticks to it, no sand. Carefully she lays the thing on my cot.

  Despite myself, I say, “Bring me the big knife and be very careful, it’s sharp.”

  She gets the knife, carrying it as gingerly as an offering for the altar. The plastic slits more readily than I expected. I peel it back, and we both gasp.

  I am the oldest person on Island by two decades, and I have seen much. Not of the world my father told me about, from before the Crash, but in our world now. I have buried two husbands and five children, survived three great sandstorms and two years where the rains didn’t come at all, planted and first-nursed a sacred tree, served six times at the altar. I have seen much, but I have never seen so much preserved sin in one place.

  “What…Grandma…what is that?”

  “A book, child. They’re all books.”

  “Books?” Her voice holds titillated horror. “You mean…like they made before the Crash? Like they cut down trees to make?”

  “Yes.”

  “Trees? Real trees?”

  “Yes.” I lift the top one from the white plastic bubble. Firm thick red cover, like…dear God, it’s made from the skin of some animal. My gorge rises. Hope musn’t know that. The edges of the sin are gold. My father told me about books, but not that they could look like this. I open it.