Changing the Past (16 page)

“Anyone else, before I get my two cents in?” Forrester asked. He was ignoring the blonde's hand, to Kellog the most conspicuous signal that had been made. “I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the obvious.” Ross put up his hand, but Forrester cried, “Too late now, sir!” He assumed a wide smirk and cried, “Structure!” He strolled to and fro. “Situation established, then conflict enters to threaten the status quo, and finally the resolution creates a new situation. In this story we just have these guys cowering in a foxhole. They are the same people at the end as they were on page one. Therefore nothing has happened. The story makes no point.” He lowered his head and plucked up another sheaf of papers from the desktop. “Now here we have another piece of work from the prolific Miss Daphne Kleemeyer.”

“Excuse me,” said Kellog from the back row, redundantly raising and waving his hand. “Do I get to answer?”

Forrester raised his head very slowly. “Answer what?”

“These attacks?”

Forrester sighed. “These aren't
attacks
, Mr. Kellog. This is constructive criticism, to get which is presumably why you begged to be allowed to join this class in midstream, which ordinarily I wouldn't permit.”

John made no response to the outrageous lie, but he said with spirit, “The
point
is the deadly boredom of war. Yes, the situation stays the same, because the war is not over. The characters are all soldiers of the same age, so naturally they'd be a lot like one another. However, I did try to a certain extent to give them different voices. I admit I wasn't being too original in the case of ‘Brooklyn.' I guess I wrote that without thinking. As for rough language, I don't know how to deal with it except as I did. I just don't have the experience as a writer as yet to think up ways to make it seem dirty when it actually isn't.”

“This is not the debating team, Mr. Kellog,” acerbly said Mr. Forrester. He picked up the Kleemeyer manuscript and began to read from it. He managed to finish the story just as the period ended, but any discussion would have to be postponed for the next class.

Still smarting, John decided to quit the writing course and return to Spanish. He waited outside the classroom door for Forrester to get free of the many students who clustered around him to claim manuscripts he had read and marked and leave others for his future consideration. One of these persons was the blonde, and another was Miss Kleemeyer, who now came out into the corridor, holding a burden of books as though it were a baby.

“Hi! I just wanted to say I really liked your story.”

Having no physical interest in her, he would probably not even have recognized her as a fellow member of the class had she not distinguished herself by being the only voice with anything positive to say about the story.

“Thanks. I liked yours too.” It was fortunate he could so much as remember it was hers that Forrester had just read: preoccupied as he had been with his injuries, he had not heard a word of it.

Staring earnestly through her glasses, Daphne Kleemeyer said, “Once in a while somebody says something useful, but mostly the criticism is worthless, just sounding off by people who think they're impressing Forrester.”

“He seems like a jerk to me,” said John.

She hesitated. “Actually, he's got some talent himself, but he's been writing at the same novel for years and just can't Finish it. Frustration makes him peevish. If you've got a minute and want to talk more about him, we ought to go somewhere else, because he'll be coming out here in a moment.”

“All right,” Kellog said. She was, after all, his favorite reader; he owed her something, and perhaps he was being over-hasty in wanting to leave the class.

They went to the cafeteria in the basement of the Student Union building, where she had a mug of tea and he sipped from a tall glass filled with a ton of ice and a tot of Coke yet costing a nickel all the same.

“My name's John Kellog.”

Daphne reached across the table and shook his hand, like a man. Her hand was delicate of bone. She brought it back to grasp the little tab of the teabag, which she removed to the tabletop, where it immediately exuded a good deal of brown liquid into the folded paper napkin she quickly brought into play. She asked him to use her first name.

“You really liked my story?”

“I did indeed,” she said. “But are you professional enough at this point to accept the fact that a lot of what Forrester said about it was right?”

He did not welcome this turn, but she had proved her good will and was entitled to courteous treatment. “I know I have a long way to go.”

“That's true of everybody,” said she. “But generalities are pretty useless when applied to writing, where it's particulars that matter. As for your story, I listened to your remarks and I think I know what you're trying to accomplish, and you certainly did succeed in part, but Forrester
was
right in saying it lacked structure. You shouldn't automatically reject what others say just because they are sometimes wrong—which I think you tend to do.”

John was both irritated and flattered. He did not like to be criticized by a girl, but he was gratified to be the focus of her attention all the same. Changing the subject was his move to claim the initiative. “Who's Blondie? Forrester ignored her.”

“She's his wife now,” Daphne answered. “She was his mistress first term, but he knocked her up (if you'll pardon the language) and would have lost his job through the moral-turpitude clause, so they got married during winter vacation just ended.”

The Kellog of those days was shocked. “God, how much older is he?”

Daphne nodded with her firm chin. “She's twenty and he just turned forty-two.”

John chewed a piece of cracked ice as his sense of normality reeled. He had not himself known a female carnally. That a girl of twenty would copulate voluntarily with an old man was not acceptable to his reason.

Slush in his mouth, he asked, “Why?”

“Well, he
is
a published writer.”

At the next meeting of the writing class, Daphne was awaiting his arrival. “Here,” she said, gesturing, “sit right here.” She indicated the chair to her left.

“Doesn't that belong to somebody?”

She shook her head, her dark hair moving and calling attention to how short it was: now that he thought about it, she looked rather like a flapper of bygone times. He had seen pictures of his aunt with such a haircut, but he did not find it especially feminine. “Ross used to sit here, but I told him to take off.”

Though annoyed, John stayed, setting a precedent with Daphne.

She leaned close and whispered, “Remember, today's the discussion of my story. Since you liked it, I hope you'll make your opinion known.”

When Forrester asked for comments on the Kleemeyer story, Jack raised his hand. He had not listened to a word of it when it was being read, but expected, as the newest member of the class, not to be called on first. By listening carefully to the remarks of his predecessors, he could surely learn enough to fake a comment of his own. For example, if Backlin attacked the characterization, he could defend it in a general way.

The trouble was, neither Backlin nor anyone else competed with him for the teacher's attention. His was the only hand aloft.

“Good for you, Mr. Kellog,” Forrester commended him. “To accept the challenge singlehandedly that so many others have run away from. Now at long last we'll perhaps have an interpretation of Miss Kleemeyer's work, which I don't mind telling you baffled everyone else, including your humble servant, last term.”

There was no escape. John had to measure up. “What I thought was especially successful was the characterization.”

People laughed. By the sound of it, most of the class. Forrester snorted and asked him to give some examples.

“I liked them all,” said John. “I thought all the characters were well drawn.”

More laughter, this time with a derisive aftertone.

“Oh,” Forrester said, his mustache quivering, “Name just one of the characters that you admire so much.”

John looked at Daphne, sending the unspoken complaint: see what you got me into? Now, if it had been Blondie, he might have been capable of some superhuman effort…

It was at this point that the miraculous event occurred. The blonde herself, Mrs. Forrester, suddenly and unexpectedly, came to his defense. “Oh, come on,” she said with righteous emotion, “don't give him a hard time. At least he's
trying
. He shouldn't be laughed at, just because nobody else knows what she's trying to do. Maybe she's doing something no one ever did before, and we just can't recognize it. Maybe it is a lot of different characters. Maybe he's got something.” She turned and spoke in Daphne's direction. “This has been said before, but you know,
you
might help. I still can't see what harm it would do if you provided some interpretation of your own writing.”

Daphne agitated her hair with a negative movement. “And I've said before that my work has to stand on its own. If it doesn't mean anything to others, so be it. To explain it would be to announce its failure, in my opinion.”

Forrester was seething. “Remember me?” he asked the ceiling. “I believe I'm the professional in this part of the forest.” He picked up a manuscript from the stack on the desk and began to read. ‘“Whether only because the chrysanthemums were crystallizing and the daisies were lackadaisical, or because the roses arose too early, the waters waited to subside or subvert, to preside or pervert, while down in the deep dusky dell the deer dashed, his mossy bossy horns akimbo like the spread legs of a bimbo.'” Forrester raised his head and stared at Kellog. “Now, are those your idea of characters? The bimbo, or the deer? Or both?”

John loathed Daphne for getting him into this mess, and he despised himself. Her writing was pretentious twaddle. His hatred of Forrester was now long-standing—and as if these feelings were not enough, he was absolutely in love with Mrs. Forrester.

But it was here that he discovered that violent and clashing feelings may awaken, or create from scratch, a kind of eloquence.

“That's right!” He laughed recklessly. “When you've got comedy. Read humorlessly, of course it doesn't have any sense. That's what's so good about it: it separates the sheep from the goats. The joke's on the readers without a sense of humor.”

Forrester narrowed his eyes. No doubt he was considering which way to go with the least damage to his amour propre. He quickly decided. “All right, that's one of the possible interpretations—one, I might add, that was my own on seeing the very first example of Miss Kleemeyer's work last fall, but I've been reluctant to mention it because beginning writers are sometimes terribly thin-skinned about being called funny. Sometimes people are, as Hemingway says, solemn as bloody owls.”

“Golly, you know you might have hit it, you just might,” the glorious Mrs. Forrester said to John, and she along with the rest of the class turned to stare expectantly at Daphne Kleemeyer.

But John now began to lose his nerve. It was a foolish thing to say: there was not a shred of wit in Daphne, who was all intensity and no doubt now preparing to embarrass him for an egregious misrepresentation.

But when she spoke, it was to commend him for critical acumen. “How gratifying,” said she, gazing worshipfully at him, “to be understood for once! I can go it alone if I have to, but how much more comfortable it is to be heard.”

Forrester was huffy. It was beneath his dignity to insist, against all the evidence, that he had genuinely from the first assessed Daphne's work as comic, and therefore he took another tack. “All right, all right,” he said with a superior smile, “now that we've got that settled, let's consider some of the less than successful features. Mr. Styles?”

Styles was young enough still to be suffering from facial skin problems. He rarely spoke in class, and being publicly identified now caused a blush to flood his already discolored, swollen cheeks. “Uh, I don't have any criticism,” said he.

Nor did anyone else. Eventually Forrester had to supply his own. He said the piece was too long and too self-conscious; if that sort of writing was to be effective it should be brief and, of course, reveal as little as possible of its author's self-satisfaction.

Kellog's emotions were complex at this point, but he was able to understand that what Forrester said was right—as Daphne had seen the sense in the teacher's criticism of John's own story. Unfortunately she was not sufficiently large of soul to see the justice in these comments. Her white face became even paler within its frame of dark hair, and when the period was over she clasped her books to her skinny chest and marched indignantly from the room. John was greatly relieved by her prompt departure, for he wished to linger and take advantage of Forrester's distraction by talking to his wife, who remained in her seat, looking at some papers, while her husband dealt with the clustered students.

John went to her and said, to the thick strand of gold which swept, on that side, behind the pink shell of an ear, “I want to thank you for giving me moral support.”

She looked up. “It wasn't anything.”

“Oh, it was to me,” said John. He added, pathetically, “I'm new here and don't know anybody.”

Mrs. Forrester was that rare person who could look delectable when frowning. “Listen,” she said after a moment, “Brock and I just got married. We haven't had time yet to have anyone over, but I just decided to give a little party Friday night. Can you come? Bring somebody if you want.”

“Okay if I come alone? I don't really know anybody.”

“Sure,” said she. “Seven
P
.
M
., after supper. We live in an apartment over Knowland's Shoes, next to the bakery, you know?” Her giggle was a wondrous thing. “It was Brock's. I had been living at the Chi O house. Gee, I guess I'm a faculty wife now.”