Jack Finney - Time and Again

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!?"

"Yes."

For as long as a minute we both stood looking down its length, remembering what it had been. Then Julia glanced at me, managing a smile, and we walked down Fifth, passing the shining immensities, the breathtakingly handsome and the miserably ugly architectural confections along the mile or so that at least half the people in the world have seen in actuality or on film. Those great smooth-faced buildings and walls of glass are alien even to modern eyes, and I'm not sure Julia was able to apprehend them fully, they were so divorced from anything and everything she knew. It was so nearly impossible, I think, to take in and even try to comprehend, that when she looked across Fifty-first Street just ahead, suddenly narrowing her eyes to be sure she really saw it, she felt as I once had, but even more strongly — she burst into tears at sight of St. Patrick's Cathedral standing almost unchanged in this other world. Across the street from the cathedral at Rockefeller Center — which I don't think Julia ever even noticed — there are stone benches, and I led Julia to one. Then we sat while she stared over at St. Pat's; then she looked up Fifth Avenue, back at St. Patrick's for a reference point; then she looked down Fifth to the south; then once again her eyes swung back to the old cathedral for relief. It helped convince her that she was where she was, its familiarity a comfort and reassurance, and presently we walked on. Here and there Julia found familiar old names; women's stores she'd seen last on Broadway. And we'd stop while she stared at the glittering display windows, drinking it in, fascinated by the jewelry, the clothes, the furs, hats, and shoes. I said. "The Ladies' Mile, Julia," and she nodded.