Listening to Billie

by Alice Adams

  Idly, Catherine asked, “What about that guy you were sort of seeing? The gorgeous little blond one.”

  Trying to match her diffidence, “I sort of stopped seeing him,” Eliza said. And for an instant she wildly wanted to ask Catherine: How do you feel about sexual jealousy? Is it really okay, among you kids, for people to screw anyone at all? Do you tell each other about it?

  But she couldn’t ask Catherine this and, recognizing her own inhibition, Eliza thought, God, I’m as rigid in my way as Josephine is.

  “The pill?” Catherine was asking.

  “Darling, I’m sorry. My mind went somewhere else. You were saying about the pill?” Catherine had started taking the pill a couple of years ago, mainly (or ostensibly) for irregularities in her periods.

  “Well,” Catherine said earnestly, “it never did seem right to me, when I thought about it. The idea of interfering, I didn’t like it.”

  “Mm.” Eliza absently agreed.

  “I don’t really like any pills. I must be sort of like you. I’ve heard you say, ‘I have to be practically dying before I’ll take an aspirin.’ ”

  Catherine with her unaccented California voice had perfectly imitated Eliza’s still most-New England accents, of which she herself was usually not aware. This was a thing that Catherine had not done before (at least in Eliza’s hearing: the possibilities were frightening). But it was as funny as it was alarming.

  Eliza was still laughing, amusement having triumphed, when she understood that Catherine had continued, in a logical way: Catherine had not been taking the pill, and this summer she met this really neat guy (she even said, “really beautiful”) although he had moved on to Hawaii. Had she just now said that she was pregnant? Not exactly: what she said was “And so I’ll have the baby in April—isn’t that neat?”

  Eliza, who had been consciously ready for sexual activity, and half-consciously braced for possible pregnancy, for abortion, now understood with dizzying suddenness that a baby, Catherine’s baby, was more than she could contemplate, or sanely imagine.

  “Catherine, good God, you’re out of your mind,” she said weakly, hearing the Bostonian echoes of her own voice (and hearing also Josephine).

  “Well, Mom, it’s not all that bad. I know your generation is hung up on abortions” (as Eliza thought, We are?) “and of course I think if you want one you should get it. But if it’s you, someone growing inside you, and you really like the father and all, then it’s really icky.”

  “Catherine, you don’t understand.”

  Sweet Catherine continued with the platitudes of her generation as, silently and uncontrollably, Eliza did with those of hers. Or so she later supposed. For the moment, she imagined that blood was rushing around, behind her ears; she couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t hear what Catherine was saying, or her own unspoken answers.

  Earlier, they had been drinking mugs of soup, their favorite lemon-chicken-yoghurt. Eliza now looked down at the pallid swirls of liquid, at the earthenware handle that she still was grasping, and that, with an effort, she did not crash down to the floor.

  As Catherine continued to talk about a farm near Mendocino. Cows. A small vegetarian restaurant.

  Christ.

  • • •

  “Well,” said Kathleen, over the phone, having listened to Eliza’s recital (about Catherine; Eliza had not mentioned Reed), “Catherine has never been exactly an intellectual, would you say? What did you think she’d grow up to do?”

  “Oh, I guess get married. Have a lot of children. That’s always been in the cards. But, Kathleen, that’s what’s so terrible; I’m behaving like Josephine. I’m reacting in ways that I don’t believe in.”

  “Well, I’ve met a lot worse people than your mother. She’s really terrific—you never can see that. You should have met mine; she could fill in for Phyllis Diller.”

  While Kathleen went on about her mother, since whose death she had substituted rage for mourning, Eliza thought of what she herself had just said about reacting in ways that she did not believe in, against her principles. And, speaking of Catherine, she saw that she had been half-consciously talking about Reed, and once more she cursed him for so persisting in her mind.

  “I don’t much like the idea of abortions either,” continued Kathleen. “God help me if I ever have to perform them; in fact, with my mother’s help I’m sure He would strike me dead, like He was supposed to do when I left the Church.”

  Eliza laughed. She said, “That’s absolutely great about med school.” Kathleen’s mother had left her some money; she was applying to medical schools.

  “Well, it will be if I get in.”

  “I know I’m being unfair,” Eliza said. “Of course the idea of persuading anyone to have an abortion is monstrous.”

  “It sure is.”

  Their conversation was more nearly a joined monologue than a dialogue. Or sometimes they were simply Kathleen’s monologues. It was always Kathleen who called, and Eliza who continued to wonder why she did.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” said Kathleen, in the tone of one not caring who believed her, “but guess who’s suddenly a star? and rich as all hell.”

  “A star?”

  “Lawry, that’s who. He finally cut a record, and it’s this fabulous success. If you read Rolling Stone—or anything—you’d know.”

  “Well, I guess that’s nice.”

  “Nice, Christ, it’s a fucking crime against taste. He plays the guitar about as well as I do ballet routines. Nice—Jesus. Anyway, did I tell you Miriam had quit?”

  “No, where is she?”

  “How in hell should I know?”

  Eliza got off the phone as soon after that as she could. She dialed Miriam’s number, but no one answered.

  During all that warm and lovely fall, the nights continued to be as cold, as fogbound and wind-lashed as at the height of summer. One night, when she was unable to stand anything that was happening, anything in her mind, Eliza did what she had thought of almost daily, and had not done before: she telephoned to Reed in Stinson Beach.

  How can one tell when a phone is ringing in an empty house? Eliza could; the insistent tinny sound echoed through those small sea-smelling drafty rooms, where she had never been. He was not there.

  That night she slept badly, to be awakened at what seemed a raw, ungodly, early hour: her doorbell. It would have to be Reed, whom she had somehow summoned?

  It was not Reed. It was two panting, cross men from Air Express, who had brought her a large and curiously crated box. “All the way up them stairs. Lucky we didn’t drop the flithering thing, or break our necks.”

  This came from the older, heavier man of the two, at whose word “flithering,” which she liked very much, Eliza looked up and smiled. He smiled back, a raunchy pirate’s grin, and he handed her something to sign. Should she ask him in? What would he make of that? And why not, really? But of course she did not.

  Uncrating the box required all Eliza’s meager supply of tools; she worked at it until her kitchen was littered with split slats and twisted nails and excelsior, at which some visiting cats sniffed interestedly: another nice present for them.

  What it turned out to be was the most ornately and intricately carved small bench (it could be called a footstool) that Eliza had ever seen, or could imagine. To which was attached an envelope with her name, in Harry’s familiar bold crazy hand. Inside was a round-trip ticket to Portland, Maine, and a tiny note: “Shouldn’t one of these cures work? Love, H.”

  Harry was somewhere in Texas, shooting.

  A week or so later, Eliza and Josephine were in Maine, sitting on those old wicker chairs, on the long porch of that house. September, and Eliza thought how totally unlike a California fall this was. September and sometimes October around San Francisco were hot and yellow, a blur of tawny fading hills, smooth Bay water and golden haze above a pastel city. Whereas in Maine everything was sharpened: colors, shapes of mountains, the very air, which was brilliantly blue and cool.
The lake, a deeper blue, was whipped into waves, white-capped with foam, as high as waves in some small foreign sea. Birch leaves fluttered yellow, in clumps near the beach, on the dark green lawn. Behind the house, in the orchard and then the woods, were wildflowers of the most intense purple, most vivid pink or gold. And violent crimson leaves.

  Eliza, who had been looking out at the lake, the islands and mountains beyond, now looked down at her hands, which were in even worse shape than usual: nails broken and stained, fingers also stained, and blistered. She had been unable to resist several hours of work on Harry’s present; blessing him, she had labored with Jasco and steel wool, sandpaper and most of her muscles.

  So far, it had been one of their better visits, for Eliza and Josephine. Josephine had been sympathetic but sensible about Catherine; she had said, in effect, that it was not what they would choose to happen, but what could they do, besides providing some support? And they had also agreed (not surprisingly, given both their histories) that Catherine’s decision was probably better than the ones they both made at an age not much beyond hers; it was certainly better not to base a marriage on an unplanned pregnancy. They had agreed, too, that for the moment Daria might well not be told; her history of miscarriages made this delicate.

  From Daria they proceeded to Smith, about whom they were more and more able to feel in accord. “God knows how much money he’s given those people in Washington,” said Josephine, and Eliza muttered agreement.

  Most recently, Smith had started a collection of guns. “He seems to forget that I’m the crazy one,” Daria had written. “Or that those with guns are often the ones who get shot.”

  The tone of this had reassured both Josephine and Eliza; they recognized Daria’s flashes of wry black wit; when she sounded like that, she was okay, they said to each other.

  “It’s interesting,” mused Eliza. “Daria seems calmer as Smith gets more excited.”

  “Actually I hope not. I’ve seen those seesaw marriages. Jason and I were a little like that,” said Josephine. (Jason, that Greek shit.)

  “Yes, and I hope she doesn’t get too calm,” agreed Eliza, who then voiced what they both felt: “If only she could be having a child instead of my dumb brainwashed daughter.”

  “Yes, or if only Smith would let her adopt one.”

  “Yes, but of course he won’t.”

  “Of course not.”

  • • •

  That night after dinner they decided that it was cold enough for a fire; together they piled up paper, kindling, some birch logs. They lit it and sat back to watch the flames.

  “Don’t you want some music?” asked Josephine. “I miss the records you girls were always playing. They’re all still here. Who was that woman, your favorite?”

  “Billie Holiday.” But Eliza was not in a mood for hearing Billie. Consciously, she had “got over” Reed, but Billie’s voice might reach depths or crevices that she didn’t know about, and she wouldn’t risk that, not just now. “On the other hand, why not a little Brahms?” she asked, knowing Brahms to be a great love of Josephine’s.

  Later, as warm violin and piano notes filled the room’s empty spaces, Josephine said, “Do you know, I’d never really heard Brahms until I met Franz? Just the trite familiar things.”

  Eliza knew this, Josephine had said it before; but she knew, too, how passionately Josephine had cared for Franz. Her rare remarks about him arrived like presents.

  “I seem to have only minor love affairs,” Eliza now said to her mother, possibly by way of exchange. “I had a really foolish one this summer. With a dumb blond.”

  “Well, possibly that’s better for your work? To keep them minor?”

  “Possibly.” And Eliza laughed, feeling freed, at last, of something.

  Almost abruptly, before any of the familiar troubles between them could erupt—and simultaneously—Josephine and Eliza got up to go to bed. “Tired,” they both said, and they smiled and bent toward each other, brushing cheeks. Good night.

  It was a good night.

  Later, in her room, at her desk, in the apple-smelling cool September night, something amazing happened to Eliza. An entire poem arrived, whole, in her mind, so that she had only to write it down, quite quickly.

  17 / Daria, Visited

  by Catherine

  Catherine, pregnant and no longer herself a child at all, looks most strange in my gleaming white-on-white living room. She is on her way to Big Sur, in her Levis and bulky red sweat shirt, her hair long and loose, her big chunky dirty feet in sandals.

  “Catherine, don’t your feet get cold?” I can’t help asking, although with Catherine I am not generally maternal.

  “Oh, no.” She laughs in her fat and placid, tolerant way. “They’re used to it.”

  This is winter, an especially cold January, but Catherine has become a total Californian; she has lost that so identifiable accent which marks the rest of us in our family, and along with it has banished any sense of seasons. She has a Californian’s mild surprise at any change in weather; in their blood it is always summer. All year round she is sun-browned, her blond hair is bleached in streaks, her eyes are wide and blue and a little vacant. “Non-intellectual” is what both Josephine and Eliza say about Catherine; the truth is that she is not remarkably bright—“high average” probably, which to either Josephine or Eliza would be dumb. I don’t care at all about those things; how could I?

  And perhaps since I am so curiously placed in terms of age—ten years younger than Eliza, the exact same number older than Catherine—I am able to like Catherine in a comfortable, non-intimate and thus non-demanding way; which would be impossible for her mother, or, for that matter, for her most demanding grandmother, for Josephine.

  I ask her how she feels. Politely, not out of any genuine curiosity, not yet.

  “Oh, really neat. He kicks a lot. It feels good.”

  I wouldn’t like that; it’s just as well that it didn’t happen to me, I think. “You’re sure it’s a boy?” I ask Catherine.

  “Oh, really sure. I can feel it, his being a boy.”

  “What will he look like?” I am becoming more interested.

  Catherine laughs. “Oh, just like his father, I guess. Isn’t that how it is with women in our family? What does Josephine always say about it?”

  “ ‘No generic effect’ is what she says.”

  “Well, yes, isn’t that true? Mom looks like her father, she says, and she says I look like Evan Quarles, my dad, and you—”

  I laugh. “I look like that Greek shit, my old man. But how about that boy, the father of the baby?”

  “Oh, he’s beautiful, really. The most gorgeous blue-black hair, and terrific dark brown eyes, and this fantastic body.”

  “You don’t miss him? You’re not sorry he’s in Hawaii?”

  “Oh, no, he had his thing to do. I know some other people almost as neat. We’re friends—I’ll let him know about the baby when it’s born. He might want to see him, I guess.”

  “Which island did he go to?”

  “Kauai. He says it’s really neat there. Flowers and all. Fantastic surf. He’s the greatest surfer on the coast.”

  It is during this conversation that I realize that eventually, somehow, I will be the one to get Catherine’s child. Not as my own; she would never give it to me, not stubborn Catherine (nor would Smith ever allow me to adopt a child). But I am sure that it will occur to everyone as a good idea, and in an interested way I will watch to see how this comes about.

  • • •

  Smith says, “But you’ve never wanted to go to Hawaii. I’ve suggested it.”

  “Well, now I really do.” There are many advantages to being considered a little crazy; and Smith likes having a whimsical wife, whimsy being somehow very wifely.

  Thinking about it, he says, “The Mauna Kea is supposed to be very nice. Built with Rockefeller money, wonderful food, on the big island.”

  “No, I don’t think there. Kauai, the most flowers and the
fewest people. We could lie on the beach and watch the surf, the surfers.”

  Smith is putting on weight, which gives him a vague but puzzlingly effeminate look. No time ever to exercise, he says. He sighs, in a new sad fat way, so that I feel a surge of pity for him. But I want to go to Hawaii.

  The father of Catherine’s child is unmistakable—and she is right; he is beautiful, a wide-shouldered, darkly tanned black-haired young god. Lying white and fearsome on that whitest of white beaches, we watch him every day. (Of course Smith does not know who he is.) And what he does on the water is truly godlike: he glides along the undercurl of those glistening steep and wickedly breaking waves; he glides, glides—he is astounding, the nerve and balance and grace.

  There is really no need to find out his name or speak to him; what on earth would I say? We lie there, Smith with his papers and periodicals, I with my books, our fair well-tended skins turning gently from pink to tan. With awe we watch the boy’s magnificent swift performance. And when he walks past us, out of water, we never stare. Although I am able to see at close hand the long marvelous shape of his legs.

  And so, in that way, before anyone else, I know what Catherine’s son will eventually look like, and I have some idea of what sort of boy he will be.

  18 / Women Friends

  “Catherine, darling, I need that room, the space. I can really use it. I’m sorry if you think I’m selfish. The point is you can’t live here and in Mendocino, and you certainly can’t live here with a baby. I’m too old for babies. You were the only one I could stand. Catherine, please try to understand. I’m tired of working in stray corners of the house, or in bed. I want a room for nothing but my work. A room of my own. Before you left, I was thinking about renting one. Catherine, I’m a writer, a poet, and in two years I’ll be forty. I need my own room.”