Listening to Billie

by Alice Adams

  Knowing more or less what was meant, Eliza still asked, “How do you mean?”

  “Well, he’s obviously a prime suicide candidate. As Daria would be the first to know. The third husband in your group to go that way. Just the suggestion could be very strong, with him.”

  Faintly: “Of course I’ve thought of that,” Eliza said.

  Then, perhaps fortunately, a cat began to yowl, and then another cat. Kathleen frowned, more concerned than annoyed. “Jesus, poor things. I’m spaying the female tomorrow.”

  “Suppose she’s already pregnant?” Eliza asked unthinkingly.

  “So? You’ve got something against abortions for cats?”

  At this they both could laugh. And, for the moment, they forgot about Smith, and his potential for self-destruction.

  A little later, Kathleen asked, “Did you hear about Miriam and Lawry?” From the glee in her voice, Eliza understood that the news would not be good.

  “No.”

  “Well, I read in some Hollywood column they broke up. He’s got some new Hawaiian chick. Christ, he really likes them dark.”

  “But what happened to Miriam?”

  “Shit, how would I know? She’s probably a hooker in Vegas by now.”

  “Kathleen! That’s horrible—how can you?”

  “Look, Eliza, I know a lot of women to worry about. I can’t add one more black hooker to my list. And you’re really nutty about black women. Why don’t you try living with one? See how you like it.”

  “I don’t much want to live with anyone. But you could really be wrong about Miriam. She could have found someone else, too. Guys were always following her around.”

  “Oh, who gives a shit about Miriam, anyway. I never think about her. Lawry either. All that’s dead.”

  But for Eliza all that past was continuously present. She could see Miriam in a stiff white lab coat that camouflaged her awkwardly top-heavy body, crossing the street to the hospital. She could see Gilbert Branner, stroking his hair, not speaking to Miriam, not ever. She said to Kathleen, “I really cared about Miriam.”

  “You care too much, about everyone. I think basically you and Daria are a lot alike.”

  Kathleen was often correct, but did she have to give out so much truth? Eliza pondered this, feeling both bruised and cowardly. And sad about lost Miriam.

  She decided that she had been there with Kathleen for too long, perhaps heard too much, and so she got up to go.

  But at that moment Lena and Angie were heard coming in the front door, and then walking back to the kitchen. “We left him in the park with Carol—she’s got Tony there,” they explained; and Angie said to Eliza, “You’re not going? Stay and have some more coffee—we’ve hardly seen you.”

  Oh, they like me, Eliza thought, quite pleased and a little surprised. She accepted more coffee, and they all smiled warmly at each other. Except Kathleen, who was spewing smoke, then stopping to cough.

  “I read a poem of yours in the Nation a couple of months ago,” Lena said. “I really liked it.”

  This was so unexpected (these women had time for reading poetry?) and so genuinely nice that Eliza was more or less thrown off balance, and she said what she had been holding submerged in her mind all morning—what she had not meant to say. “A funny thing happened to me today,” she said. “A couple of months ago, I saw a copy of that new magazine, the Gotham, in my dentist’s office [she noted that she had felt it necessary to explain that she did not buy it] and I saw some poetry in it, so I sent them a new one, long, about five stanzas, and they’re buying it! For five hundred dollars.”

  “Oh, really? How terrific—that’s really great—five hundred—wow—terrific,” said Lena and Angie.

  “Some fancy dentist you must go to” was all that Kathleen said. But Eliza told herself that Kathleen only sounded so gruff, so cross; Kathleen was really a warm and kindly person; she had always said this to herself, about Kathleen.

  “I was really pleased,” Eliza admitted. “I know it’s a silly magazine, and all that. Still.”

  “I think it’s wonderful,” said Angie.

  Soon after that, Eliza left; she went home on a series of buses, having been scrupulously directed by Kathleen.

  The next day she still felt high, warmed by that pleasant success, and also warmed by what seemed a friendly visit with Kathleen. Meeting those nice feminist women.

  More or less in that spirit, she telephoned Kathleen, meaning to thank her, to say what a nice time she had had.

  Kathleen listened, but so silently, with such an almost audible stiffness, that Eliza, to herself, sounded ridiculous, banal—a silly woman mouthing politenesses. She could hear Kathleen emitting smoke, and her cough.

  “Well,” Kathleen said at last. “It must have been quite a day for you. Slumming in your grey suede pants and bragging about slick magazines. You may not know it, Mrs. Quarles, but to some people five hundred dollars is a hell of a lot of money. Welfare checks don’t come to anything like that.”

  Thrown off base—a generally pacific person being attacked by a practiced fighter—Eliza felt her mind actually reel, and she answered foolishly. “Those are very cheap pants. I got them in Rome for twenty-five dollars.”

  “Rome!” Kathleen shrieked the syllable. “Rome, yes, on one of your frequent trips abroad. Maybe you can get a job as a foreign correspondent for the Gotham”

  “Kathleen—really—”

  “Really, you come over here and condescend to some very nice women, with your unimportant five-hundred-dollar checks.”

  “Kathleen, five hundred dollars is very important to me. I need it, and I know it’s a lot of money.” But as she said this, Eliza’s voice broke, and she felt as guilty as though what she was saying were not true. Her hands were trembling, and she managed to say, “Kathleen, I hate this conversation, I’ll call you later.” She hung up, just before she began to cry.

  Unfair. Kathleen’s attack was totally unfair (wasn’t it?); unfair, unkind and unprovoked.

  But Eliza was unable to dismiss those charges against herself, and in her mind she continued to defend herself against them.

  She had worn expensive-looking clothes: but the other choices were not good either—a skirt seemed wrong, and dirty Levis really condescending.

  (Kathleen, I was not condescending to your friends; I liked them, a lot.)

  Maybe mentioning the Gotham and the poem was wrong, but I did it out of good feeling, Eliza said to herself (to Kathleen). Sharing good news with new friends.

  And I do need the money, Kathleen. It’s true that I know some rich people—Smith, and Harry, and even Josephine has some money—but I support myself; I’ve never asked any of them for help. Although it is true that I could.

  And then, not really aware that she had turned around, Eliza began in her mind to attack Kathleen.

  What really bugged you was that your friends liked me; you can’t stand that. You’ve always put down anyone I liked—Miriam, and Harry, and even silly Peggy Kennerlie, who isn’t worth not liking. Lena and Angie said they liked my poems and you hated that, and that’s what’s really wrong. You don’t like it that I have any success. You’d be great if I were bleeding to death; you’d run right over with bandages. But you can’t stand for anything good to happen to me. You’re a foul-weather friend, Kathleen.

  But, although what she was thinking may have been perfectly accurate, the weight of it—the obsessiveness—made Eliza almost sick. Why couldn’t she simply let it go? Kathleen was a very hostile person; and their lives had outgrown each other.

  Reason, unhappily, did not work as efficaciously as it should, and all those arguments, those unspoken but incredibly loud accusations and counteraccusations, continued for some time in Eliza’s head, sometimes keeping her awake at night—until gradually, at last, they sounded like the dying echoes of shouts, in a hollow corridor.

  Many months later, when Eliza’s poem did, in fact, appear, her phone rang one day and an unfamiliar voice said, “Hi, t
his is Angie. I met you with Kathleen.”

  “Oh, of course, how are you?”

  “Oh, fine. I just wanted to tell you that I was in the library the other day and there was the Gotham, with your poem—and it’s so good, I really liked it.”

  Eliza was extremely pleased, both for good and for somewhat suspicious reasons—the latter, of course, having to do with Kathleen. They talked for a few minutes; Angie said that she was at work. “This week I’m a Kelly Girl. Jesus.” They made some vague plans for getting together for coffee, or something.

  Then, shyly awkward, Angie said, “I guess you haven’t heard much from Kathleen.”

  “Uh—not really. No.”

  “Well, it got sort of bad, and so she moved out. This guy I know moved in—well, to be with me. I really like him, and he got along well with Jared, and Lena. And it was interesting, the idea of a man in a feminist group. He’s a writer, I guess that’s part of why he digs it. But everything worked except with Kathleen. She hated him; she was cross all the time, and cursing at us all.”

  With a kind of relief, Eliza laughed. “Well, that sounds like Kathleen,” she said.

  23 / “Watergate”

  The first hint of something wrong in Washington affected Smith with the finality of a pronouncement of malignancy: suddenly all the symptoms made sense. Everything that had made him uncomfortable and suspicious (and that he had denied) fell into place. He hardly needed to listen to the rest, the revelations of espionage and lies, bribery, threats and payoffs—of madness. And Smith felt his own illness, his spiritual malaise, to be terminal.

  Like a very old person, he began to think with a sad persistence of a time in his life when he could have made a series of choices other than those he actually made, a time when many other paths were open and possible.

  He remembered walking around Cambridge in his early teens, home on vacations from Groton, looking forward to Harvard. He even bought a green book bag from the Harvard Coop, hoping to be taken for a freshman (well, they were taking freshmen very young in those war years), hoping to be taken for anything rather than what he was: a prep-school boy on a desperately retained scholarship.

  He planned that when he got to Harvard he would row on the crew, and he would study everything: history, literature, philosophy, anthropology. (He hadn’t even heard of economics then.) And he would know (and love, and kiss!) a lot of girls, the marvelous available girls who clustered on the steps of Widener Library, in their baggy sweaters and pearls, loafers and white athletic socks. In those days his fantasies clung to small round blonds, blue-eyed, with the sort of skin that tans beautifully in the summer, on beaches at Ipswich and Duxbury.

  Smith could see himself at fifteen or so, a tall dark serious, anxious boy, staring at those small blond girls (Eliza’s type, actually) and at Widener itself, which surely contained all the knowledge in the world. Staring out at the Yard, bright with uniforms, with men in training for a virtuous war, a war already won.

  Now, approaching middle-age, and heavy and wrong, Smith moved toward a visible depression. He rarely smiled, and he held his head down, bent as though his neck were permanently burdened.

  Silent meals with Daria, who remained calm and observant, although, of course, very worried. “It’s how he looked at college during finals,” she told Eliza, on the phone. “Pale and desperate, sure he wouldn’t get his summa. Now he’s sure this country’s had it, and in some crazy way he thinks it’s all his fault.”

  “Daria, he’s obviously in a depression. Shouldn’t he see someone, or something? Really—” Eliza had just barely not said: You yourself should know.

  “He won’t see anyone. I think he had enough to do with shrinks over me.”

  Besides, Daria had certain half-formed theories of her own concerning sorrow. It should run its course, run all the way, she thought. In the meantime she was there for him (no more Reed); she remained quietly kind. Watching him, reading signs.

  At Smith’s request, the cook and maid had been let go (with large pensions); now once a week a silent and efficient man (a former hippie, now religious) came in to clean. Daria cooked and served their meals. Smith ate very little—a symptom that she understood. And, watching him, she learned something new, which was that the visual quality of food was most important to Smith: he ate what was attractive. She became an expert in the brightest and freshest vegetables and fruits, crispest salads, the whitest fish. (The ex-hippie approved of their diet.) She acquired a style of cooking that was somewhat Japanese, that was elegant and spare.

  Smith conducted some business by mail; Daria would take the meticulously typed envelopes to the post office. She believed that they had less money than before; or was this message simply part of Smith’s aura of depression? In any case, no matter: she had never known how much they had.

  Smith wore rather ragged old shapeless sweaters, which Daria didn’t know he had. And slippers, around the house. An old-young man.

  Since, during those months, they did not see anyone except Eliza, it was not surprising that Reed had vanished from their life.

  Within their several fenced-in acres, their compound, they would go for wet winter walks, not talking much (Smith always with his head down, neck bent to one side), among the guardian eucalyptus and poplars, cedars, elms.

  At night they did not make love. Sex was the first thing to go—Daria knew that, and she knew, too, that Smith had never really liked it; he only drove himself, thinking that he should.

  In the spring, instead of attempting suicide, Smith began to improve: appreciably, though not enormously.

  Daria first noticed that he simply looked better, a little less pale and more alert. And then she saw that he had stopped looking at, listening to news. Fewer papers, unopened magazines. She was quiet about this, only saying, once, “We’re not hearing the news tonight?” “No, it’s getting dull. He’ll resign next summer, that’s obvious.” Resign—the P.? But then she thought he was probably right.

  Spring came beautifully that year; Daria and Smith went for drives and walks through the hills around Woodside, Los Altos, Palo Alto, Portola Valley—seeing blossoms everywhere, everything in bloom. Apple trees, plum and peach and apricot, and foaming yellow mimosa.

  Desultorily, they talked about spring in New England, in their receding youth. “Remember driving out to Lexington and Concord? Yes. It comes on more violently there, don’t you think? The brooks, and willows.” And they said, “Funny, our being here in California.” Becoming friends, almost intimates.

  And having other, stranger conversations.

  Smith said, “When you felt—worst, what was it like, the feeling? can you remember?”

  Daria said, “It’s hard to explain, but it was as though whatever separated me from anyone else no longer existed. I had no skin. I was everyone, everyone I saw, and if they were poor and miserable, I was.” With a small sad laugh, she added, “I guess you could call it self-pity.”

  “No, that’s not fair.”

  “Anyway, that’s why I had to give everything away. It belonged to them, really.”

  Smith sighed, suddenly more isolated, because what she had described was so far from what he himself felt—how lonely to be unique. “You were probably right,” he murmured, indistinct, wishing at that moment that he were Daria, were almost anyone else.

  He was better, but not a great deal better.

  He spent a lot of time listening to music. Handel, Bach.

  Packages of books began to arrive at their house. Daria found them everywhere. (A new symptom was that Smith had become very messy, leaving things about, scattering ashes from his pipe.) Unwrapped, the books were bright and new, and they were all on history. Ancient, medieval. Nothing recent.

  Smith said, “If you wanted to give some money now, who do you think you’d give it to?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, there’re so many. Something called the National Council of Negro Women. I’ve always liked them; they feed children in Mississippi, other places. And CAR
E, Amnesty International.”

  Later he told her that he had sent checks to those groups—“quite a lot of money.” But how much was a lot to Smith? Five hundred? A hundred thousand? Daria had no idea.

  Smith was better.

  Thinking less of him, being less concentrated on her husband, Daria now observed herself, and she noticed that something was wrong: she was eating less, she looked pale and dull. She was (again) memorizing numbers: 310 killed in a tornado; 100 feared dead in a motor-launch crash in Bangladesh; 250 dead, 500 missing in landslides in the Peruvian Andes; 107 killed in a Pan Am crash in Bali.

  Had she “caught” Smith’s depression, and translated it into her own familiar symptoms? Made his sadness her own?

  Then it occurred to her to ask Smith for money to send to relief groups, the Committees in Aid of, the Red Cross. People coping with disasters.

  “Of course,” he said.

  (Two hundred and fifty persons drowned: another motor launch capsized in a flooded river in Bangladesh.)

  Daria thought, The P. was right about people like me. A bleeding heart is exactly what I am; possibly bleeding to death.

  (But then in August, when he resigned, she was even sorry for him.)

  In September, Josephine, who was then in her middle sixties, had a stroke.

  She was hospitalized in Portland, and then returned to her own house: not paralyzed, but weakened and depressed.

  Daria and Smith heard this via phone calls from David White, Josephine’s agent and friend. And then they talked to Josephine herself, who sounded as David described her, weakened and sad. But she was determined, nevertheless, to spend the winter there. “Really, it’s a lot less strenuous than New York these days,” she argued; and, less convincingly, “I’ll be fine.”

  Eliza was occupied with Catherine and her children. Dylan, the oldest, had been diagnosed as having a malformed heart. Eliza said, “The terrible irony of it. I feel as though that poor child were being visited with my sins. Dear God, back to that hospital. Well, prick that he is, Gilbert Branner is still the best surgeon, I guess. And don’t worry, it’s the easiest defect to correct. He’ll be fine. An ASD—I’ll explain when I see you. Christ, I am sorry about poor Josephine.”