by Alice Adams
“I wonder why really we came to Maine.” Julian had not meant to say this, and he prevents himself from adding: If you don’t want to swim or even go for walks. He does say, “I don’t think you much like it here.”
“I don’t like the inside of my head, that’s the problem. As you know.”
“Well yes, I do know.”
Karen’s toenails, which she has begun to wipe clean with a washcloth, then dry tenderly with a linen towel—all that will immobilize her for almost another hour, Julian knows. Which suddenly fills him with the most impossible impatience. He asks her, “You don’t mind if I go for a walk?”
“Darling, of course not.” This has come out deep-Southern, an accent that Karen for reasons of her own affects occasionally. Since her one visit down there: a canceled concert, in Atlanta.
“Sometimes I think you only like it in New York, or Boston.” Again, Julian has spoken without quite meaning to. Without weighing words, that is.
Karen giggles, a nondepressed sound. “Well, indeed I do. I just might decide to live in one of those cities. Sometimes.”
Julian walks along the beach, squeaking the fine white sand with his California running shoes. Tall and bent, walking slowly, he is considering yet again his wife of almost twenty-five years. And two things occur to him: one, Karen is not as depressed as she sometimes has been (and will be again, if his prediction for her old age holds true). And, two, it is possible, at least possible, that he, Julian, the husband-lover-custodian—that he is not doing her any good, in any role.
None of these thoughts is exactly new. God knows they are not, but Julian knows that he has resisted the latter perception, that of his own uselessness, partly out of what could be labeled misplaced professional pride.
Also, in the bright, very clean Maine air every thought has greater clarity. His whole mind seems to have been exposed to new light.
Concentrating mostly on the sand, along with his meditations, Julian now looks up to see a phone booth incongruously lodged against some sand dunes, sharply tilted but with a look of functioning.
His watch informs him that it is ten-twenty. In San Francisco three hours earlier. He could just catch Lila at breakfast, before her first patient.
He was right. The phone works.
“What a lovely surprise,” Lila tells him, her voice warm, a little hoarse, and infinitely familiar. And startled: she would not have expected to hear from him at all.
Julian laughs, mostly from the sheer pleasure of being in contact with her. “Funniest thing,” he tells her. “I was walking along the beach with my heavy thoughts and there before me was a functioning phone booth. Like a signal.”
“Oh. Well, how good.” Lila pauses, then asks, “Well, how’s Maine?”
“Maine is beautiful. So clean. Even the water tastes terrific.” He adds, “Karen hates it, I think. I wonder if I brought her here for some kind of punishment.”
“I doubt that.” Supportive Lila.
He asks, “What’s going on with you?”
She seems to hesitate, then laughs a little. “An odd thing, actually. Garrett’s new wife, the Phylly, came to see me more or less disguised as a patient.”
“Well. What’re you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to have a talk with Garrett. I guess I’ll have to. She’s in bad shape.
“Darling Julian, I have to go. How wonderful that you called.”
“Lila, I love you. Seriously.”
She laughs. “Me too. Seriously.”
And Julian emerges from the leaning phone booth, out into the pure bright sunshine, the slowly warming day.
A week or so later, having just come in from her studio after a very long day of patients, Lila sighs, and shivers. Her small house feels chilled, slightly damp, as though the blanketing fog that all day has lain so heavily over the city had penetrated her house, seeping through window cracks and under doors. She can almost imagine her house to be filled with fog.
Going over to light the fire, she is aware of an unpleasant anticipation, of not looking forward to the next hour or so. Garrett Lewisohn is coming by after work to have a “brief chat” (they both have used this phrase) about Phyllis. The Phylly.
Living here, Garrett always disliked this house. It was not at all a part of what he believed he had married, in Lila: a woman out of Atherton, a woman of substance. A woman far more like Lila’s mother, actually—formidable, austere Henrietta—than like Lila herself. Henrietta had died before Garrett’s entrance into Lila’s life; still, he saw the house. It is almost too perfect that he should now have an Atherton house of his own—a house that is driving his young wife mad.
And it is perfect that Lila should be living alone in her own small, cozy, shabby house, with its drafts and creaks, and its magnificent surrounding grove of redwoods and eucalyptus. Its views of the bay and the bridge, the billowing green hills of Marin.
Lila has counted on the established fact of Garrett’s punctuality, and thus by the appointed hour she is entirely ready, at least superficially: her hair combed, face powdered (a little). She has even changed her shoes, discarding the flat-heeled comfort necessary to hours of listening for some slightly smarter pumps. Waiting, she uneasily wanders—reflecting on the annoyance of waiting for someone you don’t really want to see.
In the instant of entertaining that thought, however, there is Garrett, his car going just too fast in her drive. Brakes, a slam. Light racing footsteps, over gravel, then his knock.
On previous occasions, they have resolved the question of an appropriate gesture for a greeting; they shake hands. It was Garrett who instigated this, to Lila’s considerable relief. Under these circumstances, the brushing, social kiss so promiscuously in vogue would seem even more false than it usually does.
Garrett, in his narrow dark suit, pale shirt, and heavy striped silk tie looks elegant and tired, harassed. As usual, in a hurry. But what he first says is, “Lila, you look great. Better than ever,” which is not at all a usual remark for Garrett. “Not living with me would seem to agree with you,” he adds, with a smile.
“Can I get you a drink?”
“Perrier?”
“Calistoga okay?”
All that dealt and dispensed with, they settle in Lila’s living room, rather consciously not in their usual places (what was usual when they were together): Lila is on the edge of the leather sofa rather than in her habitual comfortable chair, and Garrett stands, having explained, “I’ve been sitting all day. Depositions.”
“Actually me too.” And looked up at Garrett, although she smiles, Lila thinks, How could we ever have married? how could I? As she has thought before.
“You do know,” Garrett next tells her, “it was not my idea. Phyllis coming to see you.”
“I really didn’t think it was.”
He frowns, looking out at the fog, fog that seems wind-propelled, pushing against the long windows.
“She is in bad shape though,” says Garrett. “As you must have seen. She cries, she really cries a lot.”
This has been said less by way of complaint, though, than in a sort of appalled sympathy, or so Lila hears it, and she is touched, Garrett not being a generally empathetic person. She tells him, “I think she’s extremely tired, for one thing. Sometimes very tired people just cry.”
“But we have, we have what I thought was a lot of help. Can you imagine the bills?” He pauses, perhaps feeling that that last was a mistake. “Well,” he concedes, “maybe not enough help.”
“Why don’t you give her three months of no dinner parties?” Lila was unable not to say this, although she had earlier resolved against any specific suggestions—or any suggestions at all.
“But,” says Garrett, with his small familiar frown, “but just now—” And then he subsides, allowing his seasonal objections to lapse (Lila knows that he is thinking of the coming fall, which is opera and large-party time, in San Francisco). “That’s not a bad idea,” he surprisingly grants.
&nb
sp; Digesting this unusual docility, in Garrett, who likes a fight to the finish, generally, Lila concludes that he must be seriously concerned about Phyllis. For which she likes him better than she often does.
“Tell me something,” Garrett asks next, with his thin-lipped, slightly sneering smile (except that now the sneer seems directed at himself, Lila feels). “Do you think I’m exceptionally selfish? Do I really never listen? I know you’re a fair-minded woman.”
Trying at first not to smile, Lila then does smile. Well, why not? But she feels that he deserves a serious answer. “You’re pretty selfish,” she tells him. “Of course most people are. And it’s true, you’re really not a very good listener.”
“That’s what I’ve been told.” The sneer has become a scowl, intensely self-mocking.
He then asks her, “Do you think you might marry again?”
“Lord no.” Lila laughs at her own vehemence. “I’m sure twice is enough. Probably some people shouldn’t marry at all.”
“I could be one of them.” Garrett sighs deeply. “Sometimes I think men need marriage more than women do. Am I becoming a feminist?”
“I hope so.” Lila laughs again. And then, knowing that she must, she says, “About Phyllis, though. Do you want me to give you some names? People she could see?”
Garrett stares at her, clearly not thinking about Phyllis. After a moment he says, “This may sound foolish, or impertinent, but what I would really like would be to take you to bed. Right now.”
After a moment of another sort of staring on her own part, Lila flares out at him. “That would really help Phyllis a lot. Honestly, Garrett. Even if I—”
“Don’t get mad. I’m harmless.” Garrett attempts a smile.
“No you’re not.” Lila’s face is heated, she hopes invisibly. She is indeed very angry.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “It was just a thought. You do look great. You know you could be flattered.”
“But I’m not.” Standing up, Lila goes over to her desk, where she finds a pad of paper, a pen. Quickly she writes three names, and hands the list to Garrett.
It is obvious that she wishes him to go, and Lila does not choose to pretend otherwise. She simply says, “Well, I hope something helps.”
“Christ, me too.” He extends his hand to her. “Well, Lila. Thanks.”
They shake hands, and Garrett is gone. Again.
Possibly because it is to be their last day in Maine, Karen, on that keenly bright Sunday morning seems considerably better (this is Julian’s interpretation). She seems more alert, if not genuinely happy. On their way along the trim, newly graveled pathway to breakfast, in the main lodge, she exclaims at the smells. “It’s so clean here,” she says. “Smell the sea! I think I actually may go swimming later.” And she smiles up at Julian, brilliantly, all pearl teeth and pale pink mouth, and warm blue eyes. “And what’s that other smell?” she asks him. “It’s so sharp and familiar. Nice. Oh, I know, it’s tan bark, see? all around the flowers. Like children’s playgrounds.”
At breakfast, Karen decides that she won’t after all go swimming, though. “But you go, Ju. You’ve hardly at all.”
“Do you still feel like Portland for lunch?”
“Oh sure, that could be fun. In the meantime I’ll be deciding what to wear.” That last is their version of a family joke: Karen indeed spends a lot of time deciding what to wear.
And so, an hour or so later, Julian heads out over the slatted wooden walk that protects bare feet from the heavy, rough sea grasses. To the beach. And as though he would not have a lot of time he quickly drops his towel on the sand and starts to wade out, moving strongly in the cold, most beautifully clear green water. Beginning to swim, he is instantly exhilarated, feeling power, a muscular, cellular excitement. His whole long, strong body is involved in the pull, the stretch and forward thrust of his motion through the waves. His pleasure is almost sexual in its intensity, its totality. He imagines Lila’s body all stretched in the act of swimming, or of love. In Mexico. Wherever.
He swims out in the direction of the small darkly wooded islands, which turn out to be considerably farther away than they looked to be from the shore. He would have liked to reach them, in a small way to explore; however, at the point that he judges to be about halfway there, he also decides that he has swum about half as far as he can (besides, there is the question of Karen, who is alone. Who has recently been depressed. There is always that: Karen alone). Treading water for a moment or two, reestablishing breath, Julian still looks toward those islands. “I almost swam out to some wonderful small islands,” he will say to Lila. “The story of my life.”
Back on the beach he towels himself—more pleasure, the rough sun-warmed toweling on his lively awakened skin.
Suicide: this has always been an issue, a fact of Julian’s life, long before Karen and her perilous depressions. There was an uncle, and then a college friend. And an early patient, for whom Julian “did everything,” for whom nothing helped, who escaped from Presbyterian Hospital to the Golden Gate Bridge. And with Karen it is simply there, her possible death in that way, a horrifying constant, of which he does not any longer so much think as feel.
It was of course much worse, say ten years back, when both Karen’s drinking and her depressions began to get out of hand.
But he still feels, always, horribly, that he might come back to wherever Karen is, and find her dead. Or simply gone (that has happened a couple of times). He does not think of this in a conscious way anymore. Or, not often.
Nevertheless, he finds himself hurrying toward the wing of the hotel in which their rooms are. Up the flight of stairs to their suite, to the door. Unlocked.
Entering, he instantly knows that their rooms are empty, although still he calls out, Karen, several times, as he walks through the downstairs living room and small useless kitchen, the tiny bedroom in which he slept. He goes upstairs, hearing more silence, to the large room that was Karen’s, that looks out to the sea grass and dunes, the beach and the sea, the small islands to which he almost swam. Had she looked out (unlikely somehow that she should have), Karen could have seen him there.
He looks at the unmade bed, the big floppy pillows, and sees a note, a large white sheet of paper, displayed there. (On other occasions Karen has chosen the unmarked exit, no explanatory notes in her wake. Lila: “Do you have any idea how incredibly inconsiderate, among other things, that is?”)
This note is fairly long, for someone who dislikes and on the whole distrusts the written word.
Darling Ju, Roger called from Boston, must have just got my card. Anyway desperate for a pianist for a group in Braintree. I adore the name. Very beneath me, R. said, but he’d be too grateful, and I do owe him some. So I’m off on the Greyhound at 11. I’ll call you tonight.
Entirely missing, Julian observes, is Karen’s usual unspoken threat, the suicide blackmail. She sounds, one could almost say, lighthearted. However, it is annoying, still, on some levels. Annoying and more: Roger is or has been (probably) a love of Karen’s, at least someone on whom she had a sort of crush. Also, Julian suspects that he is alcoholic. And usually broke.
Closer to the surface, there is the aborted plan for lunching in Portland. A tour of the new art museum, and the new waterfront development, both supposed to be handsome, innovative. But that excursion, Julian in a moment decides, is precisely what he will do. Portland by himself. Why not?
But first he will call and check on planes to San Francisco for tonight. With the time difference he can probably arrange to arrive fairly early in the evening.
He will go directly to Lila.
“I do wonder what we’ll do next, don’t you?” It is Julian who has said this, to Lila, on the morning after his return from Maine. But even as Lila smiles at his phrasing, at the implication of their being watchers rather than participants, in fact protagonists, she reflects that it could have been she herself who spoke. She too wonders what will be next, for them. However, she only murmurs (somewhat
falsely), “Do we have to do anything?”
They are still in bed, Lila’s bed, in her fairly crowded bedroom (piles of books, too many clothes). Julian, still on Eastern time, Maine time, has awakened early, and Julian awake tends to be restive. Lila wishes that they could simply go back to sleep; this is surely not a moment for decisions, or plans.
This room, in the back of Lila’s small house, has views only of trees, and ferns, all at the moment dripping with fog, nothing visible but leaves and fronds and fog, as though the house itself were suspended in a forest, a California maze of redwoods, eucalyptus.
“If Karen decides to stay away this time, as I quite think she might,” now says Julian, very alert, “that will make a difference. With us. I mean, of course it will.”
“Of course,” echoes Lila.
At that, at her sleepy voice, he very gently laughs, reaching to touch her shoulder. He asks, “If I left now could you go back to sleep?”
“I doubt it.” She gives it a moment’s thought. “And I don’t really want you to go. I must not be feeling very intelligent.” (“Resistance,” some part of her mind labels what she is feeling.)
“On the other hand,” Julian persists, “Garrett’s going has not made a great deal of difference to us.”
“No.” Of course she cannot go back to sleep, and of course he has to go on talking.
“It’s odd how passive we both are,” Julian next says. “We’ve waited for them to act. For Garrett and Karen to leave us. Do you think it’s because we’re the guilty parties? Or could it be connected to what we do?”
“The way we sit around listening all day, watching people? I suppose. Maybe.”
“Or, more likely our passive characters chose that profession in the first place?”
“Julian, would you like some breakfast?”
He kisses her, soundly but somewhat hastily. “As a matter of fact, I’m quite starved. My Maine appetite, along with the time.”