by Alice Adams
His presence became a tease to Holly; he was constantly tantalizing, simply being there. And once he had gone, his absence, especially in bed, was horrible.
So fixated was she on Sebastian (“A true addiction,” she had said more than once to Mary. “So that now I’m in withdrawal”) that she had not thought much about herself. A slight, fair girl when they married, when Sebastian found her so pretty, cute, Holly as a neglected wife had felt herself grow heavier. She thought she sagged all over.
And in that neglected phase, to make her feel even uglier, some ugly physical things began to go wrong with her. Pain, colitis. It was all very neurotic, probably (Sebastian said she was being neurotic. “Slavic,” he called her behavior). But still her symptoms had to be checked out. (Mary insisted that she go to someone.) And so she went to Jonathan Green, who took everything she said very seriously, listening with his great dark sympathetic eyes. Jonathan, who seemed to like her and not think that she was crazy, even having heard and seen all the worst of her. Her rejected body.
Now anticipating Jonathan as a lover (well, of course she was, of course that was what she was doing), Holly thought that if Jonathan loved her, or even just liked her a lot, it would mean she was all right. An okay person. Even, once more, possibly, cute.
“It’s great, the house is getting to look a lot more like you. Less Sebastian.” Mary, arrived for a drink, had been looking around.
“Well, that’s what I had in mind. He always wanted everything so bare. But you know, this is really a little sick. I’m doing it all for Jonathan Green. And that’s crazy, that’s as bad as doing everything for Sebastian.”
“Not quite. Jonathan is a much nicer person.”
“We hope.” Holly had begun to see herself as chasing a rainbow named Jonathan Green, and all from an idea of Mary’s that could easily be wrong (“I think Jonathan Green is interested in you”). She was in a sort of frenzy, she recognized that.
Mary now said, “As a matter of fact I will have another glass of wine. What the hell, I’m getting so fat it hardly matters.”
“Oh Mary, you’re not.” Mary, a tall, dark, strong woman looked more or less the same to Holly, always. However, looking now more closely, she saw that Mary had indeed put on a few pounds. And she thought, Oh dear, I’ve been so upset, so self-absorbed that I haven’t really looked at Mary.
However, over their second drinks Mary seemed okay, her old self. “Actually, you and Jonathan could get married right in this house,” she said. “And I’ll take pictures and send them along to Sebastian, that’ll really thrill him. And I’ll make the cake and the wedding food, and Mark will give you away, and I’ll be friend of honor.”
“Mary, come on, that’s not even funny.”
“Yes, it is. And after the wedding we’ll all live very happily ever after. Take trips together, all that nerdy middle-aged stuff. Cruises, when we get really old. How would you feel about having children with Jonathan?”
“Mary, cut it out!” But Holly was laughing too, and actually, she was also thinking, why not? She could marry again, if her lawyer ever pulled himself together and had papers served on Sebastian, as he was supposed to be doing. And she could have children. Why not with Jonathan Green? So handy, his being a doctor.
“Maybe you’re right, I need a doctor around the house,” she said to Mary.
“Well, I think Jonathan should be really grateful that we’ve got his life all worked out for him,” said Mary finally.
Five more days, still, until the famous date. And Holly found that instead of talking to Sebastian in her head, or to Mary, she was having very long, silent, and extremely interesting (to her) conversations with Jonathan Green.
“So typical, his leaving me with this stupid name,” Holly in her mind told Jonathan. “Holly Jones, of all the plain-Jane names. Whereas Sebastian Jones has a lot of style, don’t you think? I should have kept my old name, but is Jewerelsky really any better? I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t matter, after all.”
And she told him, “I think I’m sort of like a convalescent person. Getting better from something serious. I do okay and then I have a kind of relapse. Isn’t that what people do when they’re getting well?” She liked the medical analogy, something Jonathan would appreciate, she thought.
She did not tell Jonathan about the form of those relapses: the crying. Hours, sometimes whole days, it seemed, of tears. Unable to stop, she found it impossible too to phone for help, not even to Mary. Holly hated those tears, she hated crying. It was like some loathsome disease, incapacitating, shameful.
She wondered if she would ever be able to make love to another man without weeping for Sebastian. Sometimes she thought that she could not, and she despaired.
Preparing for Jonathan, their date, she tried not to think of tears, of crying. She concentrated on household tasks, her house.
“In summer it’s really wonderful,” she told Jonathan Green, in her mind. “All the flowers outside in bloom, the breezes, the cool. And it’s great having so much space.” But what was this, an advertisement for her house? Did she want him to come and live there?
In the two days immediately preceding the date, Holly changed her mind several dozen times on the two crucial issues of what to serve for dinner, and what to wear.
“Make something really simple, obviously,” Mary counseled. “A good make-ahead stew, I could give you a new recipe I’ve been doing. And have lots of flowers all over. You might as well wear something pretty, maybe one of those long silk numbers?”
Good advice, but it still left considerable latitude for obsessive thought, which Holly gave it. Which stew? What kind of flowers? And which long silk dress, the blue or the black?
And Holly knew, intelligent, streetwise Holly knew all along that she was making (dangerously) too much of this. Much too much. She was asking for trouble, begging for it, she knew that she was.
She almost began to hope that Jonathan would have to break the date, or forget it.
Jonathan not only did not forget, he arrived quite promptly at seven. Hearing his car, a new Porsche, then observing his approach as he walked up the path to her house and came across the porch, Holly half-consciously made two notes: one, he looks nervous, his shoulders are tight. And, two, why is he wearing that pink sweater? She herself was wearing the long black silk, much too dressed up but too late now to change.
At her door they shook hands, both said how nice to see each other, as though it were accidental. And in a quick agitated way Jonathan took in her house.
“What a nice big place,” he said, with what looked like a tiny shiver, as Holly thought, He doesn’t like it. Well, neither do I, actually.
Seated, he accepted a glass of Perrier.
“A nice big house,” he repeated, once they were settled with drinks.
He is wearing that sweater to make himself look younger, was what Holly was thinking. At a certain point Sebastian had begun to wear a lot of pink.
“Where are you living now?” Holly asked Jonathan.
“Well, it’s a little complicated. I’m still in what was the family house. My wife, the children, school …” He said all this at some length, managing curiously to omit saying where he lived.
Jonathan was fairly handsome, better-looking than Holly had previously observed. However, she reminded herself, I was so hung up on the beauty of Sebastian that I didn’t notice any male attractiveness, only his. I only saw Sebastian.
Jonathan’s eyes were large and very dark. Very unlike Sebastian’s narrow, gold-brown eyes.
“Does it feel better when a divorce is sort of finalized?” Holly attempted, thinking that divorce or separation was actually what they most had in common, at that time.
Rather defensively Jonathan told her, “Mine’s nowhere near final. In fact, we’re still in the very early stages. Thrashing things out. Kicking the ball around.” He grinned, as though to assure her of the non-seriousness of his divorce.
His face was better in its serious phase,
Holly decided. The grin was too much just that, a grin. So many large healthy white teeth that you missed his eyes, by far his best feature.
It was impossible now to imagine the long easy fluid talk that Holly had silently enjoyed with him, all those conversations in her head. Whatever had they talked about? She could no longer remember, even.
“How about dinner?” she asked. “It’s not too early? It’s all sort of ready, won’t take a minute.”
Jonathan looked at his watch and they both saw: 7:30. “Fine by me,” he said.
Mercifully alone in her kitchen, Holly faced or tried to face the fact of this awkward evening. She was pleased at the degree to which she could accept its semi-failure. Not her fault, and it meant nothing, really. Just two people shy with each other, in an unaccustomed situation. Jonathan as a doctor, her doctor, was of course considerably more assured. Good at his work, always knowing what to say.
And Holly herself could be fairly animated, talkative, although it felt like rather a long time since she had been so.
Steak-and-kidney pie. A favorite of Sebastian’s, and received enthusiastically by Jonathan, at first. “What a great crust!”
But Holly next noticed that he was picking out pieces of steak, avoiding the kidney. She supposed that she should have asked, but still she would not have expected that sort of squeamishness from a doctor. On the other hand, why not? Maybe doctors are more squeamish, really, than other people are? And with considerably more reason, so much exposure to visceral ugliness.
“This house can get awfully cold in the winter, though,” Holly found herself babbling (obviously they would do well not to talk about the food). “Drafts everywhere. Damp.”
“It feels very comfortable.” Courteous Jonathan. And then, conversationally, “In your settlement, you get the house?”
“Uh?”
“The house. It’s yours now?”
“Well, not exactly. I mean, I’m not sure yet. My lawyer—”
“Oh. Lawyers.” Jonathan’s mouth curled.
Are they really so much worse than doctors? Holly did not ask this.
Jonathan chose not to have dessert. “Got to stay in shape.” He grinned, and then, “Help you with the dishes?”
“Oh, no. Just go on in the living room. I’ll bring coffee. Decaf?”
“Please.”
Holly brought in the coffee, which was unaccountably cool. They sat sipping at it as Holly thought again, Well, so much for that. How silly I was. And whenever will he go?
Instead of going, though, Jonathan Green moved closer to her, on the sofa where they sat. Very gently he put one arm around her, and then still very gently he began to kiss her. Their mouths were open, but not in an urgent way. Just kissing, hungrily (at least Holly kissed hungrily, she had not kissed anyone for so long), but the hunger seemed for more kissing. No question of anything further.
At some point Jonathan murmured near her ear, half laughing, “High school.”
“Yes.” And Holly thought, This is perfect, this is what I really wanted. All this tender kissing, this is what I’ve missed. Much more than sex. To his ear she whispered, “Jonathan, I really like you.”
It went on and on, this gentle semi-greedy kissing, along with mild back-stroking caresses. Touching Jonathan’s shoulders, which were broad, strong-feeling, Holly was intensely aware of maleness, such very male shoulders. Another quality she had missed.
After what could have been an hour of this occupation (impossible to tell about the time), Jonathan, still gentle, began to start to disentangle himself. He still clung to her—or was it that he allowed her to cling? No way to remember that, later on.
At last they stood kissing at the door. Good night.
“I must see you very soon” was what Jonathan said. “I’ll call you.”
And Holly went off happily to bed, leaving the dishes and thinking, How nice, that was just right. How nice Jonathan is, after all. I was right about him, sort of.
But the next day, on waking, Holly’s first thought was that Jonathan would not call. She knew this as surely as she had always known, in her bones, that eventually Sebastian would leave her.
Her bedroom that morning was fiercely cold. Sharp winds blew through as outdoors, beyond the shuddering French windows, rain dripped from everything, from heavy rhododendron leaves, from ferns and winter weeds.
If Jonathan had stayed over, had slept there with her, there would now be another warm body in her bed. Sometimes Holly had thought that was what she most missed of Sebastian, simple bodily warmth. On the other hand, perhaps it was just as well that Jonathan had not stayed; he would not like this awakening to cold drafts, probably.
I hate this house, Holly thought as she forced herself up and out of bed. Off to do last night’s dishes, to make her small breakfast.
“It was, well, sort of nice” was how Holly described the evening to Mary, who of course called to see how things had gone. “No big deal, in fact he’s not the easiest guy in the world to talk to. But at the end it was, well, nice. Affectionate.”
“Well, that’s nice. I don’t see why you’re so sure you won’t hear from him.”
“I just am.” For one thing, it’s after noon, he must have been up for hours by now, he could have called. Holly did not say this, although it was much in her mind.
“Well, in any case he’s a start,” said Mary ambiguously.
At least we didn’t actually make love, Holly also later thought. Or would that in a way have been better? Would Jonathan be more apt to call if we had? And come to think of it, why didn’t we? Does he go out with a lot of women, and only make love to one, or maybe two? Is he into safe sex, scared of AIDS?
Over the years, in waiting rooms and on planes, Holly had seen articles about men who take you to bed and then never call, no matter what they said. But she could not remember any proposed solutions. Especially not after just kissing.
Should you call him, pretending that it doesn’t matter who calls whom?
“Oh, Holly. Well, I should have called you yesterday” was available Jonathan’s instant response, the next morning (Holly had told his nurse that this was a “social” call, and was nevertheless put through right away).
“Well, I decided it didn’t matter who called whom,” Holly lied. “But I was thinking about this weekend. I sort of feel like cooking again.” (Another lie, she did not feel at all like cooking. She felt like more kissing, perhaps a long slow progress into bed.)
“Well, this weekend. Not good at all. I’m on call, beeper always going off. Such a nuisance. Seeing my kids on Sunday. But next week, first thing. I’ll call you.”
Hanging up from that conversation, on Thursday morning, Holly thought, I really cannot bear this. I cannot get through until Monday. Anxiety is the worst of all, worse even than grief. And, as she sometimes used to do, in the early days of knowing Sebastian was gone, Holly took to her bed, with a pile of magazines. Getting up from time to time to heat a can of soup, or make tea.
She cried, so that even calling Mary was out of the question.
And whether she wept for Sebastian or for Jonathan seemed hardly to matter.
On Friday her lawyer called. “You sound terrible” was his comment.
“Well yes, this cold. I can’t seem to shake it.” Not an inventive lie, but it served.
“Well, there’s a lot of flu around. Have you called your doctor?”
“No.”
“You should. Anyway, I have some news that may cheer you up.” His good news was that Sebastian, in New York, had signed papers: a quitclaim to the house, in return for assurances (elaborate, binding) of no further claims, ever, on him or his estate. No alimony. No-fault divorce.
“He must be planning to marry someone else.” Holly had only dimly thought of this before.
“Sounds like it. Well, I guess you’re in no mood for a visit. I have to be in Marin, and I thought—”
“No. Thanks.”
For Holly that Saturday represented a sor
t of nadir, given over to pain. Bad thoughts. Self-pity. Solitude.
On Sunday, Mary called, and she too commented, “You don’t sound very good.”
“I don’t feel too great.” Holly then described her conversation with Jonathan, and finished by asking, “Why am I so sure he was lying?”
“Maybe because he was,” Mary contributed (too quickly? had she seen him somewhere, with someone?). And then, possibly to change the subject, she continued, “You really sound bad. Have you considered taking your temperature?”
She told Holly about a party in Sausalito the night before, mainly colleagues of Mark’s, at which, Holly thought, she could easily have seen Jonathan Green. With whoever.
On Monday, Holly conceded that actually something physical could be wrong with her; she had chills, aches in all her joints, and an entire sense of bodily weakness. She did take her temperature, which was 102 degrees.
The fact of an actual illness with a probable diagnosis, flu, was cheering. To go back to bed would be sensible, a yielding to the superior claims of illness rather than to sheer self-indulgence.
Quite early on Monday night the phone rang, and there was Jonathan Green, right on schedule—as he had said, first thing in the week.
“Odd you should call,” Holly told him. “I have a sort of high fever, a hundred and two degrees. Flu, I guess.”
“Well, that is pretty high. More of a child-sized fever than one we see in adults. What do you have around, medicine-wise?”
Having ascertained that she had nothing in the house beyond aspirin and cough drops, Jonathan said he would be right over.
“Okay, but Jonathan, I feel really terrible. I mean, I don’t feel up to getting dressed.” No long black silk, she added to herself.