Almost Perfect

by Alice Adams

  Walking for a moment alone with Justine, Stella says to her, half facetiously, “How can you leave California? It’s so incredibly beautiful here.”

  And again Justine answers her seriously. “But that’s almost a reason I have to, don’t you see?”

  Stella does see.

  “I’m so fucking tired of California. It’s too fucking beautiful,” says Richard, on the long drive home, exactly as though he had heard Stella’s conversation with Justine.

  “We could go somewhere else.”

  “Haven’t we had this conversation a few times before?”

  “How about Santa Fe?” she asks him. “We could go to the opera. I have some really nice friends there.”

  “Or we could go to Venice. I know. Or Germany. Now that you’re such a big rich successful lady.” His laugh is unpleasant, but then he (surprisingly) smiles, and he says, “Okay. Let’s go to the opera in Santa Fe. At least we’ve never done that before.”

  21

  Santa Fe

  This house, toward which Stella and Richard and their hosts, Stella’s friends the Fiegenbaums, have driven for miles out into the scrubby canyon country, out from Santa Fe—the house seems all windows, multiple plate glass just now ablaze with late-afternoon sunlight. A desert garden, an effusion of exotic cactus with spiky, wild-colored flowers, surrounds the house and spreads off at one side in the direction of some scrim-fenced tennis courts and an enormous oblong swimming pool.

  I won’t like these people but Richard will, is what Stella is thinking, as the four of them approach the house. And we’ll all drink too much and maybe miss the opera, she thinks. And then she reverses to tell herself, Christ, Richard is right: I really am negative, a killjoy, a spoilsport. I haven’t even seen these people, and already they’re making me late to the opera.

  The front door, high-gloss black with bright brass trimmings, then opens—and there is Richard’s perfect woman, his type, the paradigmatic blonde. Tall, with long legs and visible breasts, in a pink silk T-shirt, white pants. Long fluffy fair hair and oversized eyes, slightly wild, blue. Stella looks over at Richard for one instant, to see him beginning his warm killer-sexy smile. Stella has never felt so small, so dark. So Mexican.

  But what the woman says is, to Stella, “Stella Blake! I can’t tell you how glad I am, I’m such a fan, I’ve been dying to meet you. This is so great!”

  “That’s so nice, that’s kind of you,” Stella stumbles, glancing again at Richard, somewhat fearfully. His smile has gone blank, pale blue-gray eyes slate, opaque.

  “Well, I’ve read everything you’ve written; those last pieces in The Gotham, so wonderful—”

  “I hate to interrupt this love feast, but couldn’t we all be introduced?” The husband, whose name they have been told is Gregory—does not like to be called Greg—is small, barrel-chested, with a heavy, jutting jaw. “I’m Gregory,” he says, “and the blonde is Irene. Ma femme.”

  Tracy Fiegenbaum, also tall and blond and very thin (too thin for Richard, Stella has half-consciously thought), laughs uncomfortably and says, “Oh—I should have—Stella and Richard, Irene and Gregory.”

  “Richard Fallon,” Richard says, just emphasizing his own last name, as in a manly way he shakes hands with Gregory (Baker, Banker? somehow the last name was lost).

  “You’re here for the opera?” Gregory too is very deep-voiced. (How odd men are together, Stella notes, sensing immediate Gregory-Richard bonds.)

  “Mostly to see Jerry and Tracy, here.” Richard gracefully backs up to stand next to (very close to) Tracy, who looks surprised and then smiles, going faintly pink.

  In a gradual way, then, those six somewhat uneasily linked people begin to move toward the pool, rather than into the house. Stella has hoped for the house; it might be cooler there, and also she is curious: how could any two people fill so much space? But they walk along a path among marvelous gaudy flowers, to an area of white gravel, white wrought iron—lacy-looking, nice—beside the very long black pool. They all arrange themselves across the furniture.

  “Anyone care to swim?” Puckering her forehead, sure that no one will swim, blond Irene still asks, adding, “I’m sure it’s warm enough.”

  She has spoken mostly to Stella, who is thinking that in fact she would have loved to swim, if only there weren’t all that business about bathing suits. She does not like to think of herself in a suit that belonged to perfect Irene.

  “Honey, for Christ’s sake, we all want a drink. It’s drink time, not body-dunking time. That bloody pool,” he tells his guests. “Costs its weight in uranium, or truffles, maybe. Don’t know why we put in the damn thing.”

  “You can’t beat a custom pool, though,” says Richard, instantly a pool expert. “And that black, that was really a smart move.”

  What Stella likes best, so far, about Santa Fe is the sky, the giant wafting clouds, now tinged with pale gold from the slowly setting sun. In the two days that they have been here, she has observed the most amazing cloud shifts and changes, from fleecy sheep clouds to thunderheads, in minutes. Yesterday in the afternoon there was a terrific thunderstorm, reminding her of New England thunderstorms, with her grandparents, in the summer, which she managed not to say: Richard much dislikes these reminders. (“He’s very threatened by New England,” she once remarked to Justine, but they could not work out why, and they laughed a lot instead; it did sound silly, once you got away from Richard and his aura of scariness.) And after the thunderstorm yesterday, a perfect clarity, a lovely cool clear evening. Today, though, is still hot at sunset: perhaps it will storm later? For some reason the notion is ominous, although generally Stella likes rain, and thunderstorms. And their opera seats are sheltered.

  The morning was cool and breezy, clouds moved swiftly across the sky, and along Canyon Road the poplar leaves rustled, as merchants hovered nervously about their wares and scanned the sky, as though eager tourists might be coming from up there. Stella and Richard had been heading for—or, rather, looking for—a store that San Francisco friends had said was “marvelous.” But it had a name they could not remember. Something about an owl, they both thought.

  “On the other hand,” Stella pointed out, “do we really want to find a store that Margot recommended? Her taste is so precious, so predictable. You used to say that every time.”

  “Yes, but she really knows Santa Fe; she’s been here a lot. Andrew told me.”

  They both ignored the slight illogic of this; in fact Richard much dislikes “logic,” seeming to feel that it is some female trick. Unlike most men, he believes that women, and especially Stella, are highly, punitively rational, whereas he, with his instinctive grasp of everything, is right, and not only right but more in tune, more a part of the world, the universe.

  Unfortunately a new idea along those lines, rational lines, occurred to Stella at just that moment. “We do take advice from odd people, have you noticed? Remember the restaurant in Capitola that that dopey girlfriend of Cats’s told us to go to? and the hotel in Mendocino? It’s as though we think almost anyone knows more than we do.”

  Richard scowled—though beautifully. This is precisely the sort of speculation he most dislikes—and Stella knows how he dislikes it, but still, sometimes, she finds herself going on and on in that vein. Speculating. Rationally.

  “Write an article about it,” said Richard. “Tell it to The Gotham.”

  “Oh, that must be the store.” Stella was grateful at that moment for a hanging sign that swayed in the stiffening breeze, announcing The Unstuffed Owl.

  “My God, pure Margot,” Stella whispered, as they entered.

  Antiques: tiny fruitwood tables crowded with amethyst paperweights and filigreed silver frames; carved mahogany tables; heavily framed oil portraits on the walls, the canvas dark and cracked.

  The owner, though, looked purely Sante Fe: a plumpish blond woman in a starched ruffled blouse, a denim skirt, and the requisite silver conch belt (hers somewhat larger and heavier than most, Stella and
no doubt Richard also noted). A woman of unidentifiable age, and little manifest charm or attractiveness—whom Richard, ever quixotic, decided to win.

  “I can certainly see that you haven’t limited your travels to the Southwest,” he began.

  “Oh no. Actually, England. And New England. Sometimes France.” She beamed, showing large tobacco-stained teeth.

  “We travel quite a lot too …”

  Stella at that point began to disengage from them, and from that conversation, and to wander, though much impeded by sheer clutter, through other rooms, to which she paid minimal attention. More of the same, everywhere. She had recently been asked by The Gotham to do some travel pieces, with emphasis on women travelling alone. (“But mostly I don’t travel alone.” “Try it, you might like it.” They both laughed, she and the editor.) It might not be a bad idea, Stella thought, as ostensibly she examined a grandfather clock (are there grandmother clocks? she wondered). She could take a few trips alone, let Richard fend for himself occasionally—but at that thought the familiar net of anxieties in which he kept her bound descended again, and she thought, Oh, if I go on a trip he might do … anything.

  Just at that moment she heard the voice of Richard, who was saying, “Stella has a contract with The Gotham; they want to see everything she writes. Stella Blake, maybe you’ve read her?”

  “No, actually we don’t, I don’t subscribe to The Gotham yet. But I’ll certainly …”

  And as Stella came back into the room (no choice: she saw no other way to exit from the store, much as she would have liked to), she heard the woman say, “My, your husband is certainly proud of you,” beaming, with all those dirty teeth.

  Furiously embarrassed, Stella would have liked to set her straight, to deny both assumptions: they are not married, Richard is not proud of her. Instead she smiled and touched Richard’s arm, reminded him that they were due back at the Fiegenbaums’.

  “I’ll certainly look for your name!” called out the woman from behind them, as Richard flashed her his warm-wonderful smile and called back, “See you again!” then muttered to Stella, “Christ, she really gets the ugly-teeth prize, did you notice?”

  She would not get angry, Stella decided; it never worked. Anger was only estranging, and always in the long run it made her look worse. And so, linking her arm into Richard’s arm (why? such an out-of-character gesture, that), she began, “Darling, I know you meant really well, but you embarrassed me …”

  “Why should it? I don’t see that at all.”

  “Well, you know I’m shy, and I just didn’t see the point. I mean, such a big deal …” She was floundering, she knew she was, not saying what she meant.

  “You’re the one making a big deal. Shy. Shit, that’s your problem.”

  His sentences never quite connected, Stella not for the first time thought; or it seemed to her that (maybe) Richard’s responses did not quite make sense. Or am I the one not making sense? This too was a familiar question.

  The air that had been cool and lively a scant half hour before, as they searched for the store, was heavy then, and hot, and still. And the other tourists looked heavier, and slow. As Stella felt herself to be: dowdy, shamed, small, and powerless.

  Now, in the dying, blazing sunlight, beside the long black oval of the pool, Richard is telling a joke. “This is guaranteed to offend almost everyone,” he announces, pale blue-gray eyes wide and barely moving, but taking in (Stella can see this) group reactions. Checking his hold on everyone there.

  And he must sense some lapse, or some degree less than the welcoming, full attention he generally commands, for his voice rises aggressively as he continues. “This happened in the days of Jesus Christ. The living Christ, out riding around on his donkey.”

  This is Richard’s currently favorite joke, one that Stella has heard approximately twenty times in the past four or five months (Richard sticks to jokes for quite a while). But he also told it that morning to the Fiegenbaums, who laughed appreciatively enough, although Stella sensed that Jerry too had heard it before and that Tracy was not especially fond of jokes. Is it possible that he has forgotten already, forgotten that he told the joke this morning? or does he remember but simply not care, not think it’s important that three people out of an audience of five have heard it before? Stella does not understand Richard, she decides for the thousandth time.

  It is, unhappily, the beautiful Irene whose attention is flickering off—who is looking, in fact, at Stella, with a questioning semi-smile. Can she be going to interrupt Richard, wanting to ask Stella something? This possibility is suddenly terrifying; Stella must prevent it, and so she does: she turns dismissively away from Irene, giving all her own full attention to Richard and his joke, not hearing the words but admiring, adoring, as always, his most incredibly beautiful face, the bones and planes of his forehead, his strong nose, flat cheeks and deeply cleft chin.

  “Let you who is without sin cast the first stone,” says Richard, with faintly leering emphasis.

  What Stella attempted did not work: Irene has leaned forward to whisper, “I’d give anything to know what you’re working on now.”

  “Not much at the moment.” Not looking at Irene, Stella has expelled these words on a single breath, a very soft one.

  But Richard of course caught the whole exchange. “If you ladies wouldn’t mind,” he says softly, with a menacing smile. “Maybe you could tell your stories later?” And he turns back to the audience whose sympathy he assumes, two fellow men.

  Irene and Stella, thus linked, exchange a look, in which much is contained: men are crazy, aren’t they? but we mustn’t make too much of it, must we?

  “And Jesus said, ‘You know, Mom, sometimes you really piss me off,’ ” concludes Richard, his punch line.

  “A guy in our office, he gets these really good new jokes all the time,” says Jerry Fiegenbaum, with what Stella takes to be unconscious wistfulness.

  Richard, though, takes it otherwise. “Well, I can’t compete with fresh sources,” he says with his angry smile. “But maybe you haven’t heard this one. About the contest between three samurai swordsmen? the fly-slicing contest?”

  Pleasant Jerry says, “No, I don’t think I know that one.” However, he does glance at his watch. “Say, if you kids are going to make it to the opera, you’d better think about moving along.”

  “Well, these three top expert swordsmen—I suppose you girls would say swordspersons?—they got up to test their skills, and the first one …”

  Richard is crazy.

  Stella has never before thought this so simply and clearly. As such a pure statement of fact. Richard is crazy. It is not her craziness. So often he has said to her, You’re crazy, that she has come at least half to believe him. He even has a certain facial expression that signifies exactly those words: You’re crazy. An expression of fury and impatience—and fear: he is deeply afraid of madness.

  “That fry will never fruck again,” says Richard, amid laughter from the men.

  “You guys had really better move it along if you want to get to the opera,” says Jerry, again.

  Consulting his Rolex, Gregory disagrees. “I calculate precisely the time for one more drink.”

  Richard grins. “Now, there’s a man after my own—”

  “Actually the overture is what I almost like best in Figaro,” Stella murmurs, to no one.

  Richard turns on her. “Then maybe you’d rather not go? Since we might miss the fucking overture?”

  In fact, some twenty, twenty-five minutes later, as in their rented car Stella and Richard swing into the parking lot of the opera house, miles out of town, up on the crest of a very long, circular hill, the overture to Figaro is what they clearly hear, and despite herself, despite everything, including Richard, Stella is cheered, exhilarated by the music.

  Their seats, good ones that Stella ordered from San Francisco, are just under the sheltering roof. Out beyond the stage set, all that eighteenth-century scenery, they can see the dead or dying
embers of the sunset, the faint red burn line, above the black New Mexico horizon.

  Events onstage proceed, choruses and arias, stiffly costumed people move about. It is all familiar; Stella has probably seen this opera five or six times before; but tonight she is following none of it. She is only hearing the music, responding to the music, resonating to the lovely strains of Mozart.

  It is almost without forethought, and astoundingly without excitement, fear or anger, that she turns and whispers to Richard, “We have to separate. Not live together anymore. You’ll be much happier this way, and so will I. We have to.”

  Some tiny motion of a muscle in his face, a vein, a nerve, tells Stella that he has heard her. But otherwise nothing. No words.

  Even, later that night, in bed, as Stella clings to Richard’s back, as she always has, and she whispers, “You’ll be much happier without me, you’ll see …,” even then Richard says nothing at all, although of course he has heard her.

  Will I ever tell anyone about this? Stella wonders. Could I ever possibly say, We broke up while listening to The Marriage of Figaro?

  The next morning, though, seems problematic to Stella: should they, as planned, drive up to Taos and spend the night there? or should they try for tickets that would take them immediately back to San Francisco? Stella rather thinks the latter: surely some major change should be instantly apparent, to themselves as well as to the Fiegenbaums?

  She almost instantly reads from Richard, though, from his face and his every gesture, that his plan is to carry on as usual. He is his usual self, or one of those selves; he is mildly cross, a little remote, and hurried. Enclosed.

  By the time they are clean and dressed and out in the kitchen, Jerry has gone to work and Tracy is about to go off to one of her classes. “Coffee,” she points. “Eggs and fruit and stuff in the fridge. Take anything, please. And tomorrow I’ll expect you when I see you, okay?”