Listening to Billie

by Alice Adams

  Smith was almost surprised to see her, standing there where she was supposed to be, the bus having come and gone somewhat ahead of schedule. A thin dark-haired young woman in dusty jeans and a clean, unironed yellow cotton shirt. Beautiful, really, with a nervous, elegant walk, in spite of those clothes.

  She got into the car and leaned to kiss him, in the brushing way that they had kissed for years, parting or greeting each other. Smith noticed that despite the jeans she looked very clean: scrubbed and tired, eager-looking, young. The sight of her made him tired.

  She said, “I’m sorry, really. I do know that was childish, running away. But it just came to me—I sort of had to. And I did think a lot. Smith, how much money do I have?”

  “Money?” He fussed at starting up the car. And although it was Daria, his wife, who had asked this, Smith automatically resisted; in his world large sums of money were vaguely referred to, never explicitly named. “A bundle” was the phrase his people (the Money People) currently used, which could mean anything at all.

  Daria had a lot of money in her own name, a big bundle, but why should she want to know just how much?

  And he was quite right to resist.

  “Let’s stop here,” she said as they reached the small meadow just past the forest of Norway pines.

  They stopped, parked, and she told him that she wanted to get a job, in Boston, or probably Cambridge, maybe just a volunteer job, but with people she liked: “You know, my kind. Do-gooders, bleeding hearts, some do-good organization.” She said that hurriedly, breathily. And then she said that she wanted to give away all her money.

  Smith was forced—partly from sheer fatigue in the face of so much energy—to take her seriously, although many of his instincts were outraged. She—Daria was outrageous. But still she was a person, with rights. Smith believes in justice. And the money was indeed her own. He gave it to her.

  Daria had, in her own name, about a million dollars.

  Her eyes grew wide as he named the sum—warm yellow eyes; so much money to give away. And her voice was high, quite childlike. “But, Smith, that’s wonderful, how wonderful of you, to make so much money. I can’t wait to give it all—”

  Smith then said NO, so firmly that she listened. He said, “It would be much better for you to keep the money and distribute the income every year. Look, suppose you give one of your favorites—United Farm Workers?—say, five hundred grand. They’d have to invest it—choose a counselor, someone, pay for advice. My point is I really think I’m better at that than their person would be. You know I’m great at making money. Let me handle the money for you.”

  Daria was convinced, although it would have been more fun to give away huge sums than the income from huge sums. However, she could admit to herself that this was a little infantile, grandstandish. Smith sounded right.

  He further explained about I.R.S. rulings on contributions, et cetera; it all made sense.

  In a curious way, Daria and Smith became business partners, of a somewhat original sort.

  Daria said to Smith, “We’d better get on to the house, don’t you think? Josephine—dinner—”

  Smith was experiencing strange physical sensations: a dizziness amounting to nausea. Was this a heart attack? Or madness? He managed to start the car, to drive over the remaining mile or so of the narrow white road, to the orchard, to the house, without letting Daria know that anything was wrong. Whatever it was, it gradually passed.

  At dinner, Josephine, in her old flounced and flowery dress, talked almost incessantly, as she did when she was nervous. She said, in part, “I don’t know why, it must be loss of recent memory, but lately I’ve thought so much of Franz, the summer we spent up here, when you were a baby, Eliza. He was my second husband, who died in the civil war in Spain,” she explained to Smith, who probably knew this already. And then to Eliza: “Your Harry looks remarkably like Franz. The same deep face lines.”

  Having been told in a general way of Daria’s plans, Eliza suddenly thought, Catherine will leave Dylan in Boston with Daria. This sentence or prophecy flashed across her mind, and she further thought, Daria has always wanted to have Dylan; she will take an apartment for the two of them, and send Dylan to Shady Hill or some other good school there, in Cambridge or in Boston. A “good school” will be the excuse between her and Catherine for Catherine’s leaving him there. The real reason being that Daria wants him more, and it will probably be better for him with Daria.

  “Do you realize that Daria and I were married just fifteen years ago tomorrow?”

  This sentence was spoken quietly by Smith to Eliza. Daria had gone to bed, and Harry and Josephine were inside, talking. Like dancers, these two strange couples had momentarily shifted partners. Eliza and Smith were walking along the beach, alone, in the cooling night.

  Smith’s words seemed to explode within her head, and she was ricocheted back to that moment when she and Smith were sitting on the porch, and Smith was saying—what?—and she was imagining Billie. She saw the lake as it was then, and now: the heavy waning moon and its glittering path.

  Then she looked out to the beach where she had meant to walk, where now, on the cold coarse damp sand, she walked with Smith.

  He was saying something even more startling, though still in his rather proper, quiet voice: “Why didn’t you stop us, Eliza? You must have seen something. Christ, if only I could have married someone like you.”

  “But Smith—” She had begun to say: You’re crazy, or—we don’t even like each other. And had realized that neither of these things was true, or was no longer true.

  “You must think I sound nuts,” he said, with a tiny laugh.

  “No, but I always thought you thought I was.”

  Somewhat self-consciously they both laughed at that as, seemingly an echo, a loon called from somewhere out in the rocky islands.

  Partly to change their mood, and also because for years she had wanted to know (for five years, since her birthday in Ixtapanejo), Eliza asked, “Who were you talking to in Washington—all those calls, during—those years?”

  “Oh, no one, a girl. A reporter. She looked a little like you.” This curious last an afterthought.

  Later he said, “Daria doesn’t want a divorce, although she doesn’t not want one, but I think we should. I like to have things clear; you know how I am.”

  I do? Eliza asked, “Shouldn’t you tell her that?” This conversation with Smith was beginning to sound as crazy as their first, when he talked about appropriate places to live.

  With the most terrible sadness, he said, “It’s too late, isn’t it? I made all the wrong choices too early.”

  Not entirely sure what he meant (political or sexual choices—possibly both?), Eliza did what she had vaguely thought of doing, fifteen years back: she stopped walking and she grasped Smith’s arm; she leaned upward, on tiptoe, and most gently kissed his mouth, finding it as smooth and soft as she had imagined.

  She said, “I really like you, Smith.”

  With one hand he pressed her shoulder, saying nothing.

  The next day no one mentioned a wedding anniversary.

  A few days later, Josephine and Smith and Daria decided to go to the beach—the Atlantic coast, a few hours away. Harry and Eliza stayed at home. To Josephine, Harry said, “I can’t bear to leave this house, and we have to get back to California in a couple of days.”

  Having made love lengthily the night before, and quickly again in the morning (whatever was wrong suddenly, miraculously healed), they were warm and comfortable and friendly with each other. I like Harry more than anyone, Eliza thought for the hundredth time.

  It was a lovely day for them; they spent most of it on the beach, near the edge of the water, the dark blue lake beneath a brilliant deep blue sky; an early fall sky, although the day was warm.

  And, in a desultory way, as they did and had always done on beaches, Eliza and Harry were making a movie, talking about it; perhaps they would make it together.

  “Well,
there’s always the stewardess,” Harry said.

  The stewardess movie was one that they had half drunkenly—or sometimes when they were high—invented over the years: the girl with a man in every port, in Rome and Athens and Paris and Amsterdam. They had cast and recast it many times, and it was at least fairly funny every time.

  But now Eliza had a new idea. “What about Daria?” she asked.

  “Daria?”

  “I think she’s a kind of heroine.”

  “Maybe.” Harry frowned, not really listening to this idea.

  “And you could have beautiful shots of Daria and Reed in Amsterdam.”

  “Really? Did that happen?”

  “Yes, I think so. He told me, and then I began to think, Once they were there at the same time. In any case, it’s where they met.”

  Harry took this in, or tried to. “The poor bastard,” he finally said. “But how fantastic they must have looked together.”

  “Yes, exactly.” And behind her eyes Eliza was seeing just that scene: Daria and Reed in Amsterdam, on a terrace that overlooked a dark canal. Lights dancing in the water.

  A small wind had come up, just enough to deepen the ripples in the lake, to ruffle the birch leaves in the clumps of trees on the drying lawn. And with a curious premonition of loss Eliza turned to look at the house: the long low-lying structure so settled onto its land, among the dark familiar trees. The long porch, old wicker chairs and suspended swing.

  After this winter here, Eliza thought (she knew) that Josephine would decide that, finally, it was time to sell the place. And Smith would agree; he would advise her sensibly. Daria will say that she doesn’t want to own the house—as I will, Eliza thought.

  For a moment against those thoughts she closed her eyes, and in the dark space behind her vision she saw, or suddenly felt, an urgency of words, a kaleidoscope that stopped to form a pattern. Words, her own work. But stronger, somehow enlarged.

  When she opened her eyes and turned to Harry, she was smiling, almost breathless from an excitement in her chest. But she only said, “I’ll be glad to get back.”

  “Me, too. It’s time for me to do some work.” And then he said, “Shall we make a bargain? Both work our heads off this fall and if it goes well, if I can feel a hit coming, we’ll go to Mexico. Ixtapanejo in January?”

  “Well, okay, if mine goes well, too.” But she was not thinking about Ixtapanejo, or, really, about Harry.

  Rather solemnly they shook hands, before they kissed.

  And then Eliza said, “How odd: I’ve just remembered—today’s my birthday.”

  “Well.”

  Well.

  A Note About the Author

  Alice Adams was born in Virginia and graduated from Radcliffe College. She was the recipient of an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She lived in San Francisco until her death in 1999.

  Books by Alice Adams

  Careless Love

  Families and Survivors

  Listening to Billie

  Beautiful Girl (stories)

  Rich Rewards

  To See You Again (stories)

  Superior Women

  Return Trips (stories)

  After You’ve Gone (stories)

  Caroline’s Daughters

  Mexico: Some Travels and Travelers There

  Almost Perfect

  A Southern Exposure

  Medicine Men

  The Last Lovely City (stories)

  After the War

  The Stories of Alice Adams