by Alice Adams
But the room itself was very good. Roger was always pleased to see it again, to see how his work had held up. He felt that he had made just enough but not too much of the spectacular view, the green lawn that dropped down abruptly in a sheer, rocky cliff to the brilliant bay. And out across the choppy water, beyond Alcatraz and Angel Island, lay San Francisco itself, the bleached-out, pastel city, a Mediterranean backdrop. No, none of that splendor forced itself into the room; it was simply there, as the very large, heavy-boned room was there, a space so elegantly impressive that it took people all unawares, or so Roger had often been told.
An hour or so later, coming upon Julia in a passageway, he said to her, “Well.” And then, “I’ve been looking for you all over,” he lied. “About ready to go?”
“Oh sure. Any time.”
She was almost too agreeable, Roger felt, as though she had no views or feelings of her own, which he sensed was not so. But a yielding woman, he decided. All give. He himself preferred a little more abrasion. Candida was a pretty feisty number, at least half the time, fussy about small things like just which motel for the afternoon. And he sighed again for beautiful Candida, who had said quite clearly that she didn’t want to see him anymore. “It’s getting too heavy,” she told him. “And I don’t want any part of anyone’s divorce.” All that was said through tears, lots of tears, but he knew that she meant it. No divorce, that was one of the rules.
As Roger and Julia crossed the bridge on their way back to the city, an exceptional sunset was in progress out across the bay, beyond the Farallones. Intense, wild, brilliant colors, now just on the verge of fading. Roger saw that Julia was looking out that way, toward the sunset, and he gave her points for saying nothing about it, simply turning back to him with a small smile.
And then she said, “Those parties. Really, such a waste. I always wonder why I go. But at least the house is so great. I always love just seeing it.”
Grinning, Roger told her, “That’s very nice for me to hear.”
“Oh? Oh, of course, Barb told me you were the architect. I really like it,” she emphasized. “It’s an amazing combination, elegant and splendid and at the same time extremely subtle, if you see what I mean. I probably didn’t say it very well.”
“Extremely well, as a matter of fact. It’s about the best thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Oh. Well.” Shyly she ducked her head down.
“But you did seem to like some of the party,” Roger said a little later—still a long way from Twin Peaks (of all eccentric places to live). “You found some people you knew?”
Julia’s laugh had a quick, nervous sound. “People to argue with, mostly. I seem to be getting a reputation as a real pot-head.”
“Pothead?” It was not a word Roger used, and it took him a couple of minutes to take it in. “Oh. Grass. But, uh, why pick on you?”
“I signed a petition about decriminalizing marijuana, which incidentally I really believe should be done. I mean, God! the things they do to those kids they find with a little dope. Whereas L.B.J.—Well, anyway, I got in trouble down at Stanford over the whole thing. Fortunately a kindly dean, a woman, took care of me. But now I guess a lot of people think I’m constantly stoned.”
He laughed. “Well, are you?”
“Hardly. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I turned on.”
However, as Roger glanced over he saw that she did remember. She was smiling to herself in a pleased, secret way—and looked very pretty as she did so, with those eyes.
Almost at Julia’s door it occurred to Roger that it would have been nice to feed her, in some way. If not dinner at least a hamburger somewhere. And so he said, “I know I should have thought of this earlier, but is there a Zim’s somewhere around? We could pick up a hamburger or something?”
Pausing, seeming to give this somewhat deeper thought than it deserved, Julia asked, “Do you like spaghetti? I could, uh, pull together some carbonara. Salad. There’s some wine.”
“Well, really, I don’t want you to do all that.” (But he did; it sounded terrific.)
“I’d like to. But how do you feel about garlic? That’s a prime ingredient.”
“I’m crazy about it.”
In her narrow, unremodeled thirties kitchen, everything old and stained and creaking, in very little time Julia produced one of the nicest meals Roger ever had, he thought. Rich with butter and oil and Parmesan. Thick bacon, and indeed a lot of garlic. And a nice light crisp green salad. The burgundy was not too good, but what the hell, it was nice of her to go to all that trouble. Really nice.
Julia was a generous woman. Too generous for her own good, probably.
…
Her living room, to which they adjourned for coffee after dinner, was somewhat better: more narrow Victoriana, but some nice exposed wood (Julia’s handiwork). Shabby-comfortable furniture, worn-down corduroy, old leather—and plants, really too many plants. A philodendron so huge, climbing in a corner of the room, that it looked tropical, dangerous. And lots of ferns.
During dinner, they had talked mostly about each other’s marriages. Julia had been married twice—a small surprise, that: Roger would have put her age at less than thirty. “Marriage doesn’t seem to be something I’m very good at,” she said, in the slightly harsh, very wry style he later came to recognize as hers.
And Roger admitted, “I was a lot at fault in my marriage, God knows. It takes two to be wrong, don’t you think?” He still saw no point, though, in specific admissions (Candida, a couple of her predecessors).
Now the conversation seemed to lag a little, possibly from the sobering effects of coffee. Actually, Roger would as soon have gone home just then, but to leave right after dinner would have seemed impolite, if not downright ungrateful for the meal.
Which one of them was it, then, who suggested that it might be fun, or “interesting,” to smoke a joint? It could have been either, or both. In any case, from somewhere, some jar or secret drawer, Julia brought out a couple of thin, misshapen cigarettes. And lit them. And instructed. “Don’t puff out. Hold in as much as you can.”
“It tastes funny,” Roger told her a few minutes later, with a little laugh.
And moments or maybe half an hour after that he said, “Did you know that your philodendron could crawl? It’s starting across the ceiling?”
This seemed very, very funny to them both. They laughed back and forth, contagiously, leaning toward each other and then starting up again. Until quite naturally they began to kiss, meeting somewhere halfway on the sofa.
Soon, or perhaps hours later, they were naked. Lights all out. They were making love, and for Roger the experience of Julia’s body, then and always (quickly forgiven for voluptuousness), was like walking through rooms, a series, endless rooms, one after another. Walking, walking into explosions of light.
“I love you—”
“You’re—”
“Beautiful, wonderful—”
“No, you—”
Those are the things they began to say to each other, Roger and Julia, that first night. As soon as they could talk.
The next morning, in Julia’s cramped and lightless (but now magical) bedroom, Roger woke early. He had an appointment, he had to go home, shower and change.
He touched sleeping Julia, who woke and reached toward him, sleepily. Roger began to kiss her, soon found himself making love to her. Again.
Afterwards they both laughed, staring at each other. In disbelief. In the growing pale pre-dawn. “I’ll see you tonight,” Roger told her. “I’ll call you.”
“I’ll be down at Stanford, and it’s sort of hard to get me there. Just come over. Whenever.”
…
All day, all through his appointments, driving about the city and during his few solitary hours at the drawing board, in a wondering way Roger thought, Good God, what have I fallen into? And he answered himself, Into love. This Julia is something else. Marvelous. Much more than I deserve.
He should bring he
r something. That was another thing in Roger’s mind all day, some terrific present for Julia. Or at least he could call her and say he wanted to take her out to dinner. He couldn’t have her cooking all the time. However, she had said it was hard to call her down there at Stanford.
He settled on some wine, a Napa cabernet that he knew to be reliable, if not superior. And a bunch of flowers, white narcissus that smelled of spring. Sweet. Aphrodisiac.
That night, within minutes of their collision at Julia’s door, their ravenous kissing, they were in bed.
Somewhat later, Julia, in her pale-blue rather dowdy robe (that Roger found incredibly endearing, in a way that something more stylish never could have been)—Julia brought in glasses of wine, and one joint, which they shared. And then, after more wild and incredible love, she made dinner. A great stew that she had put together that morning, before driving down to Stanford.
In her kitchen, in her old robe, Julia moved with a sort of vagueness that Roger found extremely touching. His wife had been a dynamo of organization, and so was Candida. Julia seemed not to have the proper tool for any given task, and most of her knives were dull. But what she produced was somehow really, really good. (Except for the few things she forgot about and burned.)
Maybe, someday, he would remodel her kitchen for her. Roger thought of that, he imagined Julia in the big generous kitchen that she deserved: all wood, as he saw it, lovely soft grains of wood everywhere, and everything she needed near at hand, a large open rack of all the proper kitchen tools. And Julia there in a heavy dark red silk robe.
He could not resist telling her about this fantasy, tactfully leaving out the detail of the robe.
And Julia in her turn was deeply touched. Her wide amber eyes teared. “That’s really lovely of you,” she told him. “To imagine a kitchen for me.”
“Someday I’ll make it real,” he promised.
Thus the pattern of their seeing each other was more or less established. Food and love, along with wine and joints. At Julia’s house. Every night.
At times it did occur to Roger that this arrangement was unfair to Julia; he should take her out. God, the city was full of great restaurants, famous food. However, his divorce had made him more than a little edgy over money, and also, whenever he suggested to Julia that she might prefer going out, she protested that she loved cooking for him, loved the nest they had made of her house.
Roger tried to make up for these occasional twinges of guilt toward her by presents of wine and flowers, a lot of both, which Julia loved, she thanked and thanked him. Even, more practically, he brought her some good kitchen implements, a lemon zester, a decent potato masher. A set of knives.
And gradually they did begin to go out from time to time, mostly to neighborhood restaurants that Julia knew about.
A serious problem for Roger, though, as spring became summer and all this had been going on for a couple of months, was the fact that although he still loved Julia—madly, he really adored her—sometimes he just didn’t want to drive to Twin Peaks that night. To see her. He would rather have been doing something else, even just seeing some guy from his office. Or doing nothing. Just for a change.
He managed to say a little of this to Julia. “Maybe we need a little time off from each other sometimes. You must have work, even old pals you want to see.” (It had been tacitly acknowledged, then laughingly admitted, that their two sets of friends would quite possibly not get along.) To Roger’s relief Julia quite agreed. “I should spend more time with women I know,” she told him seriously. “That’s good, your idea.” And so they began to take off a few nights from time to time. In their separate but innocent pursuits.
Those sixties years were hard on middle-aged men, though. Making this observation, Roger further thought that it was especially true in warm weather. Young girls were everywhere with dresses up to there, and the longest, thinnest legs, lightly tanned. And breasts: so many girls going braless. He saw the multiple, wonderfully various shapes of young breasts, everywhere.
Very distracting, even for a man seriously in love.
…
Julia rarely talked about her work to Roger; how could she? He didn’t know or understand the first thing about higher mathematics. However, one day at work she called him in great excitement.
“I won this prize,” she told him. “It’s really incredible. It’s not just the money, although that’s really nice. But this could lead to—oh, almost anything.”
“Baby, that’s great. Super great. Listen, we really have to celebrate.”
“Wonderful. And I might do something really out of character, like buy a new dress.”
Let me choose it, Roger for an instant thought, but of course did not say to Julia.
During that day, which was fogbound and dark, windy, cold, the start of a true San Francisco summer, Roger remarked on and wondered at his own somewhat lowered spirits, which he did not believe attributable to the weather. But he was forced to recognize that they had a lot to do with the evening ahead.
Just what did he fear, he asked himself. That Julia would buy and wear a dress that was somehow wrong, unbecoming? He could not believe himself quite so superficial, and besides he and Julia together had discussed the fact that visual taste was not her strongest suit. She had a certain cavalier indifference to objects, including clothes. This was one of the things he loved in her, wasn’t it?
The important fact about the evening was her award, Roger firmly told himself. Her voice had been so excited, warm and wonderful, true Julia. And “It could lead to almost anything,” she had said. Roger had no idea in a literal way just what she could have meant: money? prestige? further prizes? (Could he conceivably be jealous? threatened?)
Into his mind there floated a newspaper photo of a Nobel Prize recipient, in bed, in Stockholm. In fact, two people in two beds, a man and his wife. And surely the woman, who was very dark and attractive, was a mathematician? However, as Roger’s memory cleared he recalled that the actual recipient of the prize was the husband, not his wife.
Ironies all around, not lost on Roger.
Instead of a dress Julia had bought a black silk shirt, heavy, rich-looking. Very tailored. Matching pants, tapered, narrow. Both perfectly fitted to her. To Roger she looked new and strange—in fact sensational. Even before their long ritual embrace in her hallway Roger cried out, “You’re so beautiful, this is your look.” He breathed into her hair, “Oh, I love you!”
Julia laughed, in a mildly chiding way. “You mean I look a lot better than usual? I guess I do. Don’t count on its being permanent, though,” and she laughed again.
All in all, it was one of their most successful evenings out, as Roger was always later to remember. Julia, happy and successful—and beautiful, she really was, in the shimmer of black silk, with her bright-red (generous, sexy) mouth. The scars were hardly visible. Judging her as objectively as he could, Roger saw what he had to recognize as style. Julia had hit on her own style; if she so chose she could go on, stylishly.
And Roger’s fantasies about their life together began to expand, there in the excellently appointed, rather trendy new restaurant. With smart-looking Julia across from him. There was really no reason for them always to see each other in such cloistered, such entirely closed-in circumstances as had been their habit, Roger thought. For a while, of course, they had simply not wanted any interference with their miraculous privacy. Their exclusive passion. However, couldn’t they now, conceivably, have both? Time for love alone and still, occasionally, other people? Possibly even develop some mutual friends, a small social circle of their own?
This did not seem the moment, though, for such a suggestion. Julia, who of course was exceptionally bright, and whose tongue could be sharp, might easily have countered, “You mean, now that I’m so well dressed we can start going out?” Which, even as a semi-joke, would be unfortunate.
Instead he told her, “This afternoon I had a fantasy about you winning the Nobel Prize. We were in bed together in S
tockholm.”
And Julia smiled, most beautifully. A successful happy woman, on the brink of her life.
Soon after that they went back to Julia’s Twin Peaks aerie, and opened champagne and smoked dope and made love. Crazily. Fantastically. For hours.
Quite possibly it was their greatest night.
Why, then, when out of the blue a few days later (or, rather, the gray; it was still very cold and dark) Candida called, and in her old teasing voice, a little plaintive, saying she missed him, wanted to see him—why did Roger say, “Well, sure,” not mentioning Julia?
Ah, fortunate, clever young Candida. Even the weather for her especial benefit seemed to break that day. The wind died down, the fog lifted, and there was a clean blue day, perfect for lunch on the docks at San Rafael, an old haunt of theirs.
Perfect for Candida’s very short yellow linen dress.
“You look like a butterfly,” Roger told her.
“Oh, you’re always so mean to me, you never take me seriously.”
Roger laughed at her, he always did. “What do you want me to say, you look like a tennis pro?”
“Oh, you’re quite horrible. I can’t think why I called you.”
That was how they had always been together, very silly indeed, and somewhat sexy. And even while admitting to himself that Candida was silly, that together they made a fatuous dialogue, at the same time Roger thought, Well, why not? Do I have to be so intense and heavy all the time? Candida makes me feel young. My Candy.
As they left the table, Candida stood beside him for a moment, almost as tall as he, her lips just grazing his ear as she whispered (an old trick of hers but still rather sexy), “I suppose now you’re going to whisk me off to some terrible motel.”
What else could he say except, “I suppose I am,” which is what he did say.
Making love to Candida (and the operative word was “to,” whereas with Julia he made love with) was a somewhat more demanding process than he had remembered. For her pleasure, certain gestures must be prolonged, prolonged—as, though her intentions were probably generous, she did rather little in return. (Unlike Julia, giving everything, every time.)