Listening to Billie

by Alice Adams

  Her fashionable shoes are low, small-heeled, but new and tight. Having made it across the street, a miracle, Daria slows down a little, although continuing to walk rapidly: a beautiful dark American (half Greek, but that is hard to tell), a fragile girl who looks as though she knows where she is going—who does not dare to turn around.

  And then suddenly before her is a huge rounded gray stone shape, recognizable as the Pantheon. They have been there, she and Smith; they have “done” it, put money in and listened from earphones to recorded history. But what Daria remembers is the cool, the dizzying rise of space up to the dome. Mainly the cool—and so she goes inside.

  For the first time, it occurs to her that having done what she was in effect told to do, what she meant to do, she has no money. The imperative did not allow for holding back a few hundred lire, calculating cab costs. Daria is thinking of this as she watches the door, and sees other people coming in. They are tourists, like herself, or the native poor and reverent; no lost foreign woman is among them.

  Daria is perfectly aware that she is supposed to be at the Casina Valadier to meet Smith Worthington in exactly twenty minutes; however, it does not seem urgent, in that ancient and soaring roundness, that cool gray.

  In a certain predictable way, Smith will not mind either her lateness or her being out of money. Women are late, and they spend a lot of money, and they are shy about “fucking.” All she has to do is to arrive, although late, a little breathless, with a powdered nose and smoothed hair, and no visible perspiration. A story about a jewelry shop on the Piazza Navona. A lovely cameo ring, on order. It is only the truth that would enrage him: “I was watching some cats, mangy hungry ones. I saw this woman, and I gave her—Well, what could I give her, cold spaghetti?”

  The small restaurant, its terrace overlooking most of Rome, is very French: elegant and terribly expensive, even by inflated Roman standards. And excellent French food.

  Smith is having his second perfect martini; Daria, just arrived, a vermouth cassis.

  Her eyes are sad and gray, and Smith is remembering a magazine article he once read that contained a quiz for people who suppose themselves happily married: What color are your wife’s eyes? This was among the questions. And he had thought, Of course, Daria’s eyes are brown. But the next time he looked at her, examiningly, her eyes were a yellowy green, cat’s eyes. And the next time gray, as now. In another article, another magazine somewhere, it said that people with variably colored eyes are especially prone to mental illness. He himself thinks, or at this moment he decides, that it is simply a question of light; the too bright light at noon in this white, white room has grayed Daria’s eyes. Besides, she looks tired, almost drained. Traveling is sometimes hard on women.

  To divert her, and to cheer them both, he says, “Well, I talked to New York this morning, and the market has really gone crazy this week. I mean, it’s terrific. Guess how much money we made—just take a guess …”

  “Try. In one week. Just guess.”

  “Six million?” Raised gray eyes.

  He laughs. “You’re funny, you really are. Well, okay, not quite that much. But would you believe—three hundred grand?”

  “Three hundred grand?” She has managed to make the phrase sound foreign, even crazy.

  He translates for them both. Three hundred thousand dollars, in one week.

  “Oh.” She sounds disappointed.

  Rather wildly, he says, “And you’ll never guess who Al is sure will run in ’68.” He says a name.

  Startlingly, Daria says, “But didn’t he lose to Kennedy in 1960, and make that terrible speech about not kicking him around any more?”

  Her bursts of accuracy sink Smith’s heart. Why is he most frightened when she is most reasonable? But he chooses to answer as though they were having a reasonable conversation. “You’re absolutely right, of course,” he says. “But really in politics it’s anyone’s guess.”

  However Daria has already lost interest in this exchange, and in a dull gray voice has begun to say, “I’m sorry I was so late, but I found this really lovely store, a window full of cameos, on the Piazza Navona, and I ordered—”

  Later they go back to their hotel, above the Spanish Steps, back to their room with the wonderful view of Rome, and Smith fucks her twice. Two times.

  In the suburb of some city, probably Naples, going to or perhaps away from the airport, their hired car breaks down. Smith and the driver go off somewhere to see about it, and Daria, perfectly safely, is left outside the small plaster wall, terribly painted blue, that surrounds a tiny geranium-decked house, also blue. It is a confrontation; Daria is confronted and challenged by that house. Who lives inside, and what is it like to live there?

  The wooden doorstep is worn down, the lintel crooked. Crisp red curtains flutter at the window. (What do they mean?) In the yard is an empty clothesline, a broken wheelbarrow. Is the house, then, abandoned, or are its people simply out shopping, to return momentarily? Are they the recent victims of calamity, some accident, all now gathered around a bed in some nearby hospital?

  What does that house mean?

  When Smith and the driver come back to the car, bringing a mechanic who fixes it in five minutes, Daria is weeping in the back seat, at the failure of her imagination.

  In Paris, Daria gives away—“loses” is the explanation for Smith; she is tired of inventing jewelry that will never arrive—lovely new francs amounting to about nine hundred dollars, Smith says. Nine thousand—ninety? It is hard to be sure.

  And again the money is given to an old woman, ragged and poor. “Has it occurred to you that in some way you are placating your mother, Josephine?” one of Daria’s eventual psychiatrists will ask. No, Daria will want to say; how could a poor woman remind me of strong and successful Josephine? It’s just that old women look poorer than anyone; it’s just that I am a woman. The ragged old women remind me of myself. But she will not say this. Why bother?

  An international conference having to do with money is going on at the Amstel, in Amsterdam; that is why Daria and Smith are there. It is their final expensive hotel. In the corridors and the elevators are those worried and highly specialized men, pale and serious and sexless, dark, heavy with inside information. Daria finds them frightening, and she dislikes that massive gray hotel, a fortress, piled up on the banks of the wide canal.

  She escapes to walk alone beside other, smaller canals. This is all right. Smith is extremely busy, and the city is quite safe.

  It is early fall; in that cool northern seaport city, the leaves have begun to turn pale yellow. Arched stone bridges, cobbled sidewalks beside the narrow dark brick houses with long windows of gleaming glass. Storefronts displaying pewter and porcelain, wooden dolls, bread and cheese. In those streets nothing is dangerous but the veering bicycles, and those at least make no noise, no fumes. Walking, stopping to look and to breathe the fresh cool air that smells of leaves and of fall, Daria experiences a lightening of her spirits, and of her senses; it is like an experience of love. She feels safe and inconspicuous, beautifully alone.

  Fat blond babies who look more Dutch than anyone smile up from comfortable prams; there seem to be no poor people. Some shabby students, yes, and even funny-looking American kids, boys with long hair (hippies, a word that Daria has not yet heard), but all animatedly talking. Not worrying to her.

  No sad old women.

  She likes Amsterdam; “love” is a word that Daria does not use when she can help it. She likes it better than anywhere she has ever been—except, possibly, Maine, that house. But Maine is too exciting, really disturbing, the thrilling dark wind-torn lake, sharp mountains and violent rotting smells of apples. Amsterdam is human-sealed, is peaceful.

  And what a handsome couple they are, there in Amsterdam, she and Smith in the huge Amstel dining room. As though she were somewhere else in the room—were, perhaps, that small dark-blond man in the corner—Daria can see them, see herself and Smith. They are the lovely young couple at the important w
indow table overlooking the terrace and the broad canal. Her cloudy winged hair, yellow eyes, her gray baroque pearls; his thick dark hair, white brow and wide brown eyes. She can see them clearly.

  Daria is in a mood or perhaps a seizure of clairvoyance: she has described exactly what that young blond man in the corner, whose name is Reed Ashford, has seen, what he is seeing. She has seen his view of herself and Smith. He, Reed, has met Smith that afternoon; he would like to meet Smith’s wife, and later on he will. He thinks she is lovely, the wife; she is rather like a woman in San Francisco (he lives there) with whom, at that time, he is much involved. A troubled young married woman, terribly in love with him. Daria is not so much like her as she is the same type, a dark cloudy wispy woman. His type.

  Daria and Smith are having a surprisingly rational political discussion. Since Smith is a Republican and she disagrees with him, he has defined her as a Democrat, although Daria is not at all sure that she is that. What are you, if you dislike anything that is happening? She will have to ask Josephine, who will say, with a dismissing sort of laugh, “You must be an anarchist, my darling. A sort of Basque.” But now, reasonably, Daria is saying, “When you say fiscal responsibility, it seems to me that you really mean rich people keeping their money.” She clasps her long thin white fingers on the cleared table before her.

  Across from her, Smith shudders very slightly. It has just flashed through his mind that he hates her hands; they remind him of white spiders, or something. He is afraid of her hands—but that is ridiculous. He loves Daria, his beautiful wife, her beautiful jeweled hands.

  But Daria has seen, or felt, that hate-fear flash. She puts her hands in her lap, out of sight, and she stops listening to him.

  Smith is saying, pleasantly, as he reaches for his pipe, “Well, of course, in a way you’re right. I’ve worked hard for my money, our money, and I would certainly prefer to keep it. But suppose I didn’t, suppose I gave it all away to charities tomorrow, do you really imagine that would improve the world?”

  “—what?”

  Daria has just had another view into Smith’s mind, or perhaps it is a vision of a later Smith: this Smith of the future is a man with a terribly sick wife (who must be herself, Daria?), so sick that she cannot be touched, assuredly not fucked, but Smith is gentle and sadly faithful to her; he loves his sick wife, he loves being the husband of a sick wife. And she has to do nothing, nothing at all; it is an absolution.

  “—very glad to meet you,” the dark-blond young man is saying, now standing beside their table.

  Daria smiles, and gives him one of her hands, which he takes as though it were something familiar to him, and he smiles, narrowing dark blue eyes, flashing white teeth—as Daria thinks of the lake in Maine: dangerous.

  “Join us for a brandy?” Smith is saying affably; this man must be someone he likes, rich and successful, fiscally responsible.

  “Delighted to, but I think not brandy. I’ve become addicted to the local lemonade,” says Reed.

  “What a wonderful idea,” Daria says, in an unusually spontaneous way, so that they both smile gently in her direction; she is for the moment an indulged and pretty child.

  They all have lemonade, and they talk about how much they like it here in Amsterdam.

  Daria observes that this man, this Reed Ashford, actually has two faces: a flashing, dangerous, hard face, and another that is mild and passive, almost sweet. And she has a curious urge to tell this young man about her sister, about Eliza, of whom she is so proud. She projects a conversation in which she tells him about Eliza, her poetry in all those magazines. (“I doubt if Reed subscribes to the New Republic, or the Partisan Review,” Smith would say. “No, but I’ve heavd of them, I even see them from time to time,” would certainly be Reed’s response. How she knows him!)

  But at the moment that Daria is about to talk about Eliza, Reed looks dangerous again, although he is quite small—a small and perfect man—and so she does not.

  He seems to like to talk about himself, this Reed, which could not be said of either Smith or Daria; they are rather charmed by his ingenuously confessional manner. Also, to them his background is exotic: Hollywood, his mother was a sometime movie star. Sally Ashford. Oh, yes, they remember her. Of course, he looks exactly like her, the lovely hollow cheeks and wide slant eyes.

  “I can’t imagine an unhealthier atmosphere for a kid,” Reed says, looking very young. “As a result, I was crazy about the awful prep school they finally shipped me off to.”

  But he does not tell them the name of the school; after all, it wasn’t Groton, not a famous place. And so they do not discover what is an extraordinary, quite sinister coincidence: Reed Ashford was the boy whom Evan Quarles fell fatally in love with.

  (Told of this much later, Eliza’s friend Harry Argent says, “Well, it’s really not so amazing. You American Eastern prep school types all seem to find each other eventually, especially if you’re anywhere near the same age.” “Reed is five years younger than I am.” “So? It’s really a question of class.” Harry sounds very Berlin as he says this, with harsh “r”s and flat vowels. He goes on, “But don’t worry, I’d never use this plot for a film.”)

  It was a pleasant evening all around, for Daria and Smith and for Reed, in Amsterdam; and Reed was encouraged to visit them in Woodside. Telephone numbers were exchanged and noted down, time schedules given.

  12 / Stopping Smoking

  At some point in her middle thirties, Eliza, who for years had smoked a couple of packs a day, decided to stop. For every reason: health, and she disliked being addicted. Too, she saw that it was unpleasant for people who did not smoke. Harry, for example, a non-smoker, would be pleased at her not smoking.

  She realized that she could only do it by stopping cold. And so she picked a day that was not far off, a day after which she would not smoke again.

  She sat at her desk, in her pretty bedroom, not smoking but not working either; she was thinking only of cigarettes, craving one. Surely she could—only one? She tried to concentrate on the view, her prospect of sunny hills and streets, of bright water and slow ships, but she could hardly see.

  Dull terrible sentences formed in her mind, such as: My life is not worth living. And she felt this to be true, she felt she had suffered a permanent loss.

  But smoking doesn’t, really, help a person write, she told herself.

  She didn’t smoke, and she continued, for weeks and months, to feel terrible: lost, deprived.

  Sometimes, even, she cried, and then at other times she experienced a curious, unmotivated need to laugh; a hysteria that was later explained to her as being caused by an increase in oxygen.

  Worst of all for her was the hour or so before dinner. Then, as she worked around the kitchen, making food for Catherine and herself, it all came down on her, all her feeling of failure and frustration, all the loneliness of her life. Soon Catherine would leave home, and then where would she be?

  A strong part of her mind was aware that what she was going through was “withdrawal symptoms,” like junkies have, and giving it that name was of some help. Still, her symptoms and everything in her mind were real; they were as real as names.

  She got through the evenings with a lot of wine, although she had read that that was not a recommended course; still, it helped, and she treated herself to a case of good strong Italian peasant wine, from a North Beach delicatessen.

  She found, too, that walking helped immensely, and she began to spend as much of her days as she could on walks. Covering the city. She took buses to remote areas, and then in those unfamiliar neighborhoods she walked, and walked. Mission Street: the multiplicity of South American groups, and cultures, the restaurants and stores all homogenized into something vaguely “Spanish,” vaguely tawdry.

  Or Potrero Hill: great bare spaces, wide streets, industrial views of San Francisco, and of the declining harbor.

  Clement Street, with Russian, Greek or Chinese restaurants, delicatessens, used furniture, junk.
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br />   One afternoon, lured into a junk store by a display of antique earrings in the window, she found a small Victorian armchair; its ornate, deeply carved roses were all horribly varnished over. And it was probably for the sake of the horrible yellow varnish that she bought it, paid too much, and then more money for its delivery to Russian Hill. Stripping it—in fact, rescuing the wood—would take hours, and all her skill and strength.

  • • •

  But her virtue was not rewarded. After not hearing from Harry for a considerable while, this letter came:

  Well, I seem to have done it again, married a mean dark woman. This one is a Corsican, actually, and she will probably kill me. Eliza, it’s all your fault, you should have married me that first time in Mexico.

  An extremely—an outrageously depressing note. How could he? And Eliza’s despair was made worse by her feeling that she had no right to it. Of course he could; he could do anything at all, and he had warned her of his tendencies toward marriage. They were classically uncommitted.

  Now she couldn’t, wouldn’t see Harry, and she couldn’t help feeling that he had abandoned her when she needed him.

  And she thought, too, that not smoking was making her crazy.

  After a bad three months or so, she was writing again, was “cured.”

  By now, although she had run out of unemployment compensation some time ago (with considerable relief, actually), Eliza’s income had increased; those safe old investments from her dead father’s firm, plus some new Xerox urged on her by Smith, had gone up to a point at which, if she exercised great care—few clothes, no trips or expensive wines and no cigarettes—she could live on that income without a part-time job. This realization at first made her a little nervous: so much freedom, she was almost guilty about it. But then she decided that the gift of time was wonderful—was possibly deserved? Less sure of that, she was thrifty with those hours, as well as with her money. She worked hard, four or five hours a day. Producing new poems, revising old ones.