Almost Perfect

by Alice Adams

  “Did you get the idea she wanted to get away from us?” asks Richard, once Tracy has hurried out to her car.

  “A little. Maybe.”

  “I can’t think why, such happy, attractive guests.” His irony, so familiar, is still so wounding, and scary.

  The drive to Taos is through canyon country: vast vistas of sand and eroded clay, weird rock formations, deformed gray cactus. Emptiness. Space. A huge river gorge. It is a nightmare landscape, the earth after nuclear disaster. And at the same time it is beautiful. Very beautiful. Unreal. As unreal as death.

  As the end of love.

  Somewhere, in some town, they stop for lunch. A pleasant small restaurant. They order margaritas. On the small banquette, in the room full of white wrought-iron furniture, they sit side by side behind their green glass table with its woven blue straw mats. Stella sips at her drink and thinks of Mexico, of the good margaritas there. Although actually this one is excellent. She begins to cry, small quiet tears falling down her face.

  “Well, I guess we should order lunch,” Richard tells her. “What do you feel like?”

  “Oh. Anything.”

  After lunch, for no reason that Stella can later remember, they go into several stores in the town.

  Where Richard buys things.

  In a shop full of stamped tinware he buys belts and picture frames and some large tin trays, three or four of each, all charged and sent to himself in San Francisco.

  Feeling herself to be withdrawn, not entering into this sport that Richard enjoys, this shopping, feeling that she is indeed a spoilsport, a killjoy, Stella fingers a belt; it was all right from a distance, mildly pretty, but on close inspection it is shoddily made, not pretty.

  “Buy it!” Richard encourages. “You won’t find it in San Francisco.”

  “I don’t really want it,” Stella tells him; she did not mean to have said this, it simply surfaced: the truth.

  He gives her a steely look.

  In another store, an art store, they find some posters by an artist whose work they saw in a gallery in Santa Fe, with the Fiegenbaums. Mostly landscapes, large skies and clouds, and small adobe houses. All in pastels. Very nice, and undistinguished.

  “I have lots of time. Sit down if you’d like, and I’ll show you,” instructs the storekeeper, a tiny, wizened, very dark woman, laden with turquoise jewelry, earrings, necklaces, belt; she looks like an overdressed doll, a grandmother Indian doll, with shining, emphatic eyes. A little like Stella’s own grandmother, Stella thinks, except that Serena was poor, not jeweled.

  Richard and Stella sit down on the camp stools indicated, and the doll-woman opens a portfolio and begins to leaf through. At almost every poster Richard stops her. “I’ll take one of those. A dozen. Eight of that one.” And so on, until he must have bought a couple of hundred posters.

  Watching him as he sits there, noting the look in his eyes, which is both greedy and frightened (someone might find him out), Stella also observes his increased weight. He dresses so well, in such beautiful clothes, and generally manages to sit or stand in positions that make his paunch unobtrusive—and naked, it simply does not matter. But his posture there on the camp stool, which must be very uncomfortable for such a large man, shows his girth. He looks heavy.

  And quite crazy.

  And for the first time Stella thinks, He is having some sort of breakdown. He is going mad. How can I leave a man who is going mad?

  Their motel in Taos is large and extremely plain, a sort of barn construction. And the upstairs room to which Stella and Richard are shown is barnlike, oversized and bare, with raw pine beams and unstained pine-slab walls. Unadorned. Two beds, both medium wide.

  Stella sprawls across one of those beds. This is not a position in which she usually works, but there is no desk or table, and she has chosen to stay in the room and work, or try to work, while Richard goes off to a museum.

  She is writing about Serena, the vendor of flowers, in Oaxaca. Serena, whose feet were as brown and gnarled as roots, toes swollen and bent from a lifetime of walking barefoot over harsh rocks and pavements, of exposure to cold and broken glass and thorns in the flower market.

  Stella is thinking about Serena; as she writes, she is seeing Serena’s feet and her terrible clenched hands; she is not really thinking of Richard. Of whether or not they will continue to live together. Of whether or not he is truly crazy. Mad.

  22

  Germany

  So great, the greatest thing that ever happened. The luckiest chance: Richard is going to Germany. To an international food conference in Cologne. Cologne, Germany. Where she is. Eva. Eva, who laughed that slow deep laugh of hers as she told him, “Well, my darling handsome Richard, this is indeed great luck. My grandparents live in Cologne, they always keep a beautiful house there, and they retire to the country. Cologne is marvelous. And in October—perfect.”

  Perfect. Cologne. The rivers. Germany. Eva.

  And all this came about because of that craphead bubble party he put on. Webster Wines. God, before he even met Eva. (Or Stella either, come to think of it.) His bubble days of innocence. (Before Andrew Bacci.) But that dumb party is what got him invited to this conference. International, on food and wine.

  Clothes. Surely he has enough?

  He makes lists, coordinating blazers and slacks, sweaters and shirts and ties. Shoes and socks. A couple of suits. Scarves. He draws small pictures of some favorite outfits, imagining himself wearing them there. With Eva.

  He may need some new things, after all.

  But he doesn’t really have the right luggage for this stuff. Doesn’t even know who carries the very best luggage in town.

  “Oddly enough, Magnin’s does,” Andrew tells him. “Still. And have you thought about a passport, old man? I mean, you’ve got some time, but those things can take a while.”

  Jesus! A passport; he hadn’t thought of that at all. No one said. Jesus, they just assumed he would have one, like everyone else, everyone who goes to Europe all the time. “Oh sure,” Richard says to Andrew, and he gets off the phone as quickly as he can. (First telling Andrew yes, to come over a little after five.) He rushes out to his car, dashes for the Federal Building. The passport office.

  “Your expired passport, please?” A heavy black woman, wearing what looks to be layers and layers of clothes, all colors and fabrics, says this to Richard just as, breathless, he arrives at her counter in the crowded office.

  Expired passport? For Christ’s sake, he doesn’t have a passport; if he did he wouldn’t be here. For Christ’s sake. This is his first trip abroad (you fucking bitch!); is that some kind of a crime? “I don’t have an expired passport,” he says to the woman. “Is that some kind of a crime?”

  “No, sir, but in that case you belong in the other line. You really do.” In rap time: is she putting him on?

  “You segregate the first-timers, is that it?” Yes, I said segregate, you fat black mother.

  “That line. Right there. Sir.” She glares; she probably has a gun stashed somewhere in the folds of all those clothes. Christ, she even has a mustache, a heavy black one, just visible but he can see it clearly. He stares at her upper lip before moving over to the other line. The back of the other line.

  Leaving the Federal Building, directionless, Richard fast and skillfully drives over the city, heading nowhere. Observing, and thinking of Eva, of Germany—and in another part of his angry mind he thinks still of that fat black snotty dykey bitch in the passport office. He nevertheless sees everything, and his inner eye records: a pack of tiny black-haired Chinese children, in some sort of school uniform, probably Catholic, all holding hands and jabbering to each other. A small, very shabby white Victorian house, its intricate eaves and cornices so sadly gray and dingy, and the house itself all alone there, pitifully sagging in its yard of rangy bright weeds and orphan flowers. A hideous cheapo apartment building, all glass and pink tile—in which some low-rent couples who got married just to fuck will be entirely miserable,
no money, for several years, until it’s trashed into a slum.

  He sees late-afternoon sunlight on the gray bay waves, all those dirty depths, descending down to mud and sludge, dead fish and human bodies. And sunlight on the bright hard flat side of an unpainted billboard, just flat white, and sunlight, which in its way is a hell of an advertisement for something. For nothing? Maybe. He looks back to the bay, sure that he never before saw just that shade of gray. Well, of course he didn’t; there never was today before. (Would Stella laugh if he said that? She never has, but he is always in secret afraid that she will. Laugh. The over-educated bookish bitch. And most of her friends are too.) Gray, in which there is blue and green, and yellow and purple too, when you really look at it.

  Christ, it’s time to go meet Andrew!

  “You would not believe what they’re hiring in government offices these days,” says Richard to Stella that night. “I got this big black woman at the passport office. Christ, she really hated me on sight. ‘Get outta here, blond honkie!’ I could hear the words in her head. ‘Outta here!’ ” He laughs; he is feeling very tired but good, very good. For the moment.

  Stella says, “You’re really getting into it, aren’t you.”

  Didn’t she even listen to his story about the big black woman, didn’t she hear what he said? “Yes, I am,” he tells her. It sounded more angry than he had meant to sound, but what the hell, she should listen when he tells a story, even if it’s only a little story.

  “I’ll see about dinner,” says Stella, getting up very quickly from the sofa, where they were sitting some distance apart.

  Finally, at dinner (not one of her best efforts: the chicken is underdone, the rice a little gluey), Stella gets out what he knows she has wanted all along to say. She takes this big gulp of wine and swallows it down (he is almost sorry for her, watching so much effort), and then she says, “You know, I really could come to Europe too. At the same time, I mean. I’ve never even been to Germany, and then we could go on to Paris, or—”

  “Christ, Stella,” he cannot help bursting out. “Are you crazy? This is business. Business! Don’t you have the least idea how busy—This is my trip, my work, don’t you get it? Jesus!”

  “Richard, I only said.”

  “But you’ve been wanting to say that ever since I first mentioned it. Well, haven’t you? All this time getting your nerve up—” Oh Christ: is she about to cry? She looks odd.

  A surprise. Stella gets to her feet, and what she says is, “Okay, Richard. But I’m tired.” She is wearing a new expression, which he already hates. “And I don’t feel like hearing a lot of shit from you. Do you think you could clear the table?”

  Well, what the hell? He clears, and for good measure he does the dishes too.

  23

  Stella and Marina

  “It was like being on a roller coaster, you know? I was scared to death, and thrilled but not really having fun, and much too scared to jump off,” says Marina Fallon, former wife of Richard, to Stella Blake.

  “Yes, it’s just like that,” says Stella, and she gives a small laugh. “My problem is that I’m still on the ride. But it may be slowing down, I think. Or else I’m getting up my nerve to jump.”

  They are seated (a somewhat wary settling down, on Stella’s part) in the most totally chaotic room that Stella has ever seen, much less entered. This is Marina’s “studio apartment,” her one room in the basement of a building on Bush Street, near Van Ness. The windows, just below street level, all are barred, which apparently does nothing at all to keep out dust, or noise; there is dust on all visible surfaces and no doubt too on all the clothes that are strewn everywhere about, the bras and panty hose, shirts and things. And from the street the rush of cars, trucks, fire engines, emergency vehicles, is constant, loud and distracting. “They call it Lower Pacific Heights,” said Marina, telling Stella how to get there. “It’s pretty goddam lower.”

  “They’ve sprung Marina; she sent me this postcard. She says she’s okay, but Jesus, she’s never been okay.”

  “Do you think you should go to see her, see how she is?”

  “Are you nuts? Why on earth would I do that? God knows what she might pull this time.” He laughs. “You might never see me again.”

  But he left the postcard (by mistake?) conspicuously out on the top of his dresser. It said, “I’m out, on Lower Pacific Heights. Is that near you? I need to see you. Or someone.” With a phone number.

  Finding the card, Stella felt no guilt at reading it (did he want her to call Marina?). And she realized that she had often, if half consciously, carried on fantasy conversations with Marina, of course concerning Richard: Has he always …? What makes him …? What do you think …?

  How, though, was she to introduce herself; as whom? Nothing worked, none of the pretended roles that she was able to imagine; not social worker, or even reporter, for who would send out a reporter to interview Marina Fallon? And she probably had an assigned social worker. And so Stella settled on a partial truth: she was a friend of Richard’s, she said; he was busy and had asked her to come by.

  But this small ruse was instantly and correctly assessed by Marina. “Oh, the new girlfriend,” she said, with a level, unsurprised look. “Claudia told me. I sort of thought you’d show up sometime.”

  “But how did Claudia …?” Stella was unable to prevent herself from asking this.

  “Richard brags about you,” said Marina. “I guess you’re his first intellectual.” She adds, “Claudia used to call me all the time.” And then she says, “You’re not exactly his usual type, are you. I guess I am, or I used to be. But Richard’s smart, he really is. I guess you know that. I think he’s some kind of a genius. It must be nice for him to be with somebody smart like him.” This last was said ingenuously, indeed musingly—as though Marina had given the matter some thought and had come to this positive conclusion.

  Marina: her hair is dark, but it is the cloudy, indeterminate darkness of a formerly blond person, and her white-shadowed skin is blond skin. Her mouth is wide and unpainted, puffy and vulnerable, opening to disclose very small, uneven teeth. Her eyes are large and empty, sky eyes, a no-color blue. Her voice is a little hoarse (she clears her throat a lot, as though it were strained) and at the same time curiously sweet, and delicate. Her clothes are all black and shabby, hanging loosely from her terribly thin body. Her bones.

  But once she must have been a tall, terrific blonde. Richard’s type.

  “When we were in high school he was mostly shy,” Marina has said. “I think he was embarrassed about, you know, his parents. He’d moved to Paterson from Jersey City. But he always had these terrific clothes. It was funny; the other boys all began to copy the way he dressed. The pastel cashmere sweaters and gabardine slacks. Dirty white bucks. If he hadn’t been so thin, such a scrawny kid, and tall, he would have looked like a movie star.”

  “What did he want to do, back then?”

  “Oh, he was always drawing stuff. Little funny drawings. Cartoons, I guess they were. He wanted to be a cartoonist. A cartoonist for The New Yorker, he used to say.”

  Suppose that somehow we had been in high school together, Stella wonders, as in her mind she sees broad brown crowded dusty corridors, tall boys in letter sweaters and jeans. The girls with curled hair and cashmere sweaters and pearls. And one tall boy, too thin and very blond, in a pale-blue sweater, his look both shy and disdainful, haughty and eager to please. A very conflicted boy, hiding desperation. Hiding.

  Would Richard have liked me then? she wonders.

  But we wouldn’t even have known each other, Stella next thinks. He wouldn’t have seen me: I was far too small and too dark for him to notice.

  She has been moved and touched, though, by this early view of Richard.

  “But his face is so beautiful,” next says Marina, dreamily. “Isn’t it. I used to look at him, so perfect, and I’d think, how could a person who looked like that be mean or bad or evil, ever? I know that’s silly, or something worse
, but that’s what I really thought.”

  “I’ve sort of thought that way too,” admits Stella.

  “He made me feel bad about myself. I’ve been finding that out, talking to all these shrinks,” says Marina. “Like he was so beautiful I had to be this ugly person. And I think while I was with him I got to be a lot uglier. I remember the two of us standing in front of the mirror in the bedroom, getting ready to go out somewhere. And Richard looking terrific, and so pleased with how he looked, but not especially pleased with me. Not really looking at me, or seeing me, even. But I think a lot of it was my fault. I don’t know.…” She trails off.

  “He’s confusing, all right.” Stella adds, “And scary. What you said about the roller coaster, it is like that.”

  “How can you be afraid of him, though?” asks Marina. “I mean, with your work and everything. I mean, you’re almost famous.”

  “I’m less afraid of him than I was. I was always mostly afraid he’d leave, rush out the door. And he actually did that a few times. Quite a few times, in fact.”

  And then Stella begins to say what she almost feels that she came there to say, and what she has so far said to no one else.

  “We were in Santa Fe a few weeks ago,” she tells Marina, “and Richard seemed so, so, uh, terrible.” She had been about to say crazy. “Wild. He kept telling the same jokes all day and buying stuff—buying just to be buying things. And making these speeches to people he didn’t even know, some about me. Anyway I told him I didn’t think we could live together anymore. That we shouldn’t. But—this is so peculiar—it’s as though I hadn’t said that. But I know he heard me. Of course he heard. We were at the opera. The Marriage of Figaro.” She laughs a little.

  “Men don’t hear—haven’t you ever noticed that?” asks Marina. Her mouth twists down. “They don’t listen. Doctors don’t listen. And Rickie doesn’t. He never did.”

  “No.” Stella considers, and then she adds, “So I don’t exactly know where we are now.” She pauses. “But it doesn’t feel so much like a roller coaster anymore.” She recognizes for the first time that this is true, that some new process has at least begun between her and Richard.