Families and Survivors

by Alice Adams

  They give up.

  They begin to talk between themselves, as though Allison were not there, or as they might have done if she only spoke and understood some foreign language. Korean. Vietnamese.

  “There seemed no point—”

  “No, why add—”

  “I suppose I should talk—”

  “I suppose.”

  They return to the beginning of the beautifully kept grounds.

  Feeling better and wanting to help them—her helpless visitors stranded there in the front seat—Allison with an effort presents a memory, a gift. “Once at Squaw Valley Douglas told me that if you skied out over the headwall, at Siberia, you would fly, fly for the rest of your life. I thought he was kidding but he wasn’t, and he was angry that I wouldn’t try it. But Douglas is very handsome, isn’t he? The best-looking one of us.”

  She has not helped at all. Parting from her, their faces are anguished, so that Allison is seized with a wrenching, helpless pity for them both—for them all, whoever they are.

  …

  They go away and Allison finds Mary. “It was okay,” she says, “but where we went for lunch was really lousy, although everyone seems to go there.”

  “Yes,” says her friend.

  “I think they wanted to tell me something about Douglas, but I saw absolutely no point in letting them do that. Why add?”

  “Yes.”

  Thirteen / 1970 (1971)

  In an enormous raftered house on outer Broadway in San Francisco, Louisa and John Jeffreys are celebrating the early hours of New Year’s Eve with the people who live in that house, with Maude and some of her friends.

  The house, a Victorian mansion, has been scheduled for destruction. It was bought by an extremely successful Italian builder, who is a distant cousin of the mayor’s. Here, in an elegant neighborhood, on a block with a stupendous view of the Bay and Marin County, the builder will put yet another high-rise, apartments for which he can charge exalted rents. The kids are allowed to rent the house from month to month, for what comes to around fifty dollars a month apiece; there are quite a few of them. (It is not, strictly speaking, a commune—just friends living in the same house.) This arrangement came about because one of the kids is the son of a lawyer who is close to the mayor, and who is also a friend of the builder’s. It makes everyone, including the mayor, feel pleasantly tolerant; they are being nice to hippies.

  The young people do not seem to be made nervous by the imminent destruction of their house. They feel that by then they may want to move on, anyway. Also they do not think in terms of a distant future (reasonably enough, for their generation).

  The great rooms with distant dusky ceilings and narrow mullioned windows are somewhat overwhelming, resistant to change. But the kids have done their best. A shawl draped here, another there—posters, driftwood sculpture. And for their party they have made a great effort at tidying up.

  So many young people. Thirty or so. It is not at all clear to Louisa and John which of them live there, which ones are guests for the evening. It is even less clear what the relationships within the group might be.

  A few of them are recognized as old friends. Jennifer Magowan is there, and Allison—skinny frightened Allison, out from Napa on a pass; she sits in a corner drinking wine, pouring wine down her throat—she can’t last long. Jennifer is with Stephen Harrington, the son of Kate, Louisa’s friend. Stephen has Kate’s dark red hair, which he wears very long, and her long sexy eyes. And a full beard.

  And others, unknown—some introduced, some not:

  A small blond girl in a long dress that must be her idea of a forties costume: calf-length, sequined. Thirties? It is not really a look that Louisa or John can remember. But the girl reminds Louisa dimly of someone from a long time ago; she seems vaguely Southern, and finally it comes to her. She nudges John. “Do you remember Snubby MacDonald?” “No—” “John, you were in love with her, before Kate!” “Well, sort of. Blond?” “You don’t even remember! I remember everything that ever happened.” (She does.)

  Two girls in bright red loosely crocheted dresses, clearly made by one of them; they both have black curly hair and big noses. Sisters.

  A tall somewhat frail-looking boy named Jonathan. (Louisa stares at him, not knowing why, and then she understands that he looks a little like Maude—a boy Maude.)

  A dark sturdy bearded boy.

  (Few of them have names; none have last names.)

  Louisa and John have spent Christmas in Mexico—Oaxaca—they are both splendidly tanned: John with his very white hair, Louisa with her dark hair fashionably streaked blond. They have not seen Maude for a month or so. And they see that something extraordinary has happened in that month: Maude has turned beautiful. From being a pale, somewhat sickly, too tall and too thin girl, she has become a beautiful young woman. Still tall and thin, still delicate, her frailness now is controlled—is lovely. Her skin shines. Her long face is witty and intelligent—is happy. Even (incongruous on her thin body) her full loose breasts look proud. Feeling that the unattractive old phrase “flatchested” was made especially for herself, Louisa sees an irony in this; and then it comes to her that, of course, Maude’s breasts are a gift from her grandmother, horrible fat Mrs. Wasserman.

  Looking at her lovely daughter, Louisa is amazed; she would not dare to take credit for Maude. And she wonders: Is Maude now beautiful for good, or is this simply a moment in her life?

  Although of course they were invited, Louisa and John are actually spectators at the party. They stand together, apart from the rest, in a tentative position near the door. They talk to each other. They are glad to be there, they smile in an appreciative way, but they do not have a lot to say to most of “the children.”

  The connection between Jennifer and Kate’s boy Stephen is at least superficially clear: they are lovers, they live together. Jennifer looks at him in an amused, protective way; his look at her is mildly irritated and very sexual. His sexy look reminds Louisa strongly of his mother—of sexy young Kate, years back, on the dance floor of the decorated high school gymnasium (the Tin Can). Louisa remembers how John looked at Kate, back then, and now she looks jealously at him, as though all that had just happened. She is still powerfully attracted to John, and she thinks that later—in fact soon—they will go home and smoke grass, and make love.

  So far, this evening, there are no drugs in evidence in the room. For various reasons this particular group of kids uses very little drugs.

  Maude has come over to where Louisa and John are standing. Close up she is even prettier. She is wearing a long gauzy flowered dress, all shades of pink, that is very becoming to her own delicacy. And that is what her mother chooses to say. “What a pretty dress. It’s really perfect for you.”

  “Thanks. I like it a lot. Jennifer made it for me, for Christmas.”

  “Really? She made it? But that’s terrific.”

  But then, as often with Maude or with others of her age, Louisa has begun to feel that she overdoes what she is saying, that her style is over emphatic. They say so little, these children. They so steadfastly refuse effusion.

  And Maude’s voice is so soft and delicate, so gentle. She visibly and audibly tries to be nice to her mother. “You look great, too,” she says. “Are you going on to another party?”

  Does this mean are you leaving soon? Louisa imagines this (of course) and then reminds herself that Maude is never so crude.

  Soon afterward John and Louisa do leave, and they begin the long drive toward the hills of Berkeley, where they have recently bought a house.

  At times (as even “happily married” women will) Louisa has a lonely sense that she and John don’t talk. How she yearns for more conversation, for in fact the sort of conversation that she often has with Kate. Can one have personal conversations only with women? And she thinks then of a succession of men who wouldn’t talk with her (Michael talked at). Instead of talking (perhaps) she works, alone, and she and John make love.

  In oth
er moods she romanticizes their relationship, and she tells herself that their lengthy frame of reference makes talk unnecessary—simply to be together is to communicate.

  (Perhaps both are true?)

  However, tonight they are talking—a lot.

  “You know one thing that’s marvelous?” Louisa now says. “Those fat girls in the awful crocheted dresses. In our day they’d have been hiding in corners. ‘Wallflowers.’ But they looked perfectly pleased with themselves.”

  “Did they? I didn’t notice.”

  “Darling, they were right there.” She laughs. “They’d never have made it into the Sub-Deb Club.”

  “That blonde was sort of dreadful.”

  “I thought she was real cute.”

  “You’re teasing.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Odd that she was with such a faggy boy.”

  “Which boy?”

  “Poor Allison doesn’t look much better. God, she’s so thin.”

  “I never saw her before, did I?”

  “No, but she doesn’t. When I remember her parents, Grace and Alex, all those years ago—of all people to have a crazy child. And there was something about her brother going over a headwall on purpose.”

  “The terrible familiar stories.”

  “Yes.”

  They have reached the Bay Bridge. Lights. Streaming cars above the black water. Not the bridge for suicides, but grim enough, at night, on the lower ramp. The night is unseasonably clear for California; this is usually a season of lashing dark rains, enveloping a persecuted city. Tonight is not only clear but freakishly warm, almost a Southern night—both Louisa and John think but do not say this; they shy off what might be sentimental. But the strange weather has excited them, has created in both of them a certain heightened mood.

  Of the weather Louisa only remarks, “There’s going to be one of those extraordinary false springs. I can tell. With that bright unreal grass breaking out everywhere. Under the trees in parks.”

  “Did that happen last year?”

  “Yes, but later on, I think.”

  They laugh, although nothing is expecially funny. They laugh as though already high.

  “How beautiful Maude is,” Louisa says at last; it is what she has been wanting to say all along.

  “Yes, very.” John says this seriously—he knows how seriously Louisa takes her daughter.

  “When I think how I used to worry, God! I thought she had to be some sort of cripple.”

  “You mean, like you?”

  She understands him, and she is filled with pleasure. Which she must deny. “Well, I used to be sort of crippled,” she says.

  “Sort of crippled—that suggests an interesting way of walking, I must say.”

  They laugh again, very affectionate with each other.

  They have passed the U.C. campus, and begun the winding climb into the hills, the narrow eucalyptus-lined streets, that smell of lemon.

  “But which boy was Maude with?” Louisa asks, as though John would know.

  He laughs at her. “Darling, you’re so conventional. Does she have to be with anyone?”

  She frowns, never good at being teased. “You know what I mean.”

  “You mean, which one is she screwing.” (This is not a word that John ordinarily uses; does he mean to suggest disapproval? This is possible.) “Maybe all of them, maybe everyone in the room. Girls, too.”

  “You and your dirty-old-man fantasies.”

  But she is right; he is a little turned on by what he is saying. He goes on, “Maybe right now, since we’re gone, they’re all having an orgy with each other.”

  For several reasons, some of which she does not recognize, Louisa does not like this at all. Partly, she is jealous: much easier to imagine John at an orgy than herself, John with a lot of young girls. (With Maude?) She does not stop herself from saying, “In that case perhaps you should go back?”

  He hears what is in her voice, and says, “I’d much rather go home with you.” He is a nice man, as well as being Southern.

  Louisa feels a melting within herself, and a disbelief: he does then love her?

  The house that Louisa and John have finally bought is an older house (fifty years, which is old for California), Spanish style, with long arched windows that overlook the Bay, a red mansard roof. They spent a year or so looking at lots and talking to architects, until it came to both of them, simultaneously, that they didn’t want to build a house; they wanted one that was already there, settled into the land. They spent more time looking at houses. Maybecks and imitation Maybecks, until on an October afternoon they saw this one, surrounded by bright Japanese maples, and they recognized it as their own.

  Now they go inside and settle on the broad gray velvet sofa, Louisa in her long white wool dress (it is always hard for her to decide what to wear, visiting “the children”; she chose an old favorite), John in his habitual gray flannels and tweed.

  Lights have been left on in their dining room and kitchen; here they turn nothing on. Through the long Moorish windows they can see the lights all over the hills of San Francisco, the lights of both bridges, and the few stray lights from boats about the Bay. A view so glamorous that they are still not used to it, as neither of them is really used to California (but who could live in the South, they say to each other), even though Louisa has been in California for what is now most of her life.

  The house could be read as an expression of Louisa’s (and John’s) attitude toward money and “things,” which could be summarized as: Well, we have it, why not? Nothing ostentatious, but everything very “good.” Good Oriental rugs and linen draperies, brown quilted leather on matching armchairs. The huge gray velvet sofa.

  And very good pictures: a small (real) Klee, two Picasso drawings, a Matisse. A large painting by James Boynton, over the mantel.

  Perhaps curiously, there is nothing of Louisa’s on display, although by now she has had several shows, is represented in several galleries. “I’d be embarrassed” is her disappointing explanation.

  There are some large framed photographs by John. (He has, in San Francisco, taken up photography. He is very good.) Victorian houses. Whales spouting, out at sea—from the Mendocino coast. Louisa, in her studio (his best).

  New Year’s Eve, in common with other major holidays, enforces memories of other New Years. Louisa remembers a dismal psychologists’ party, with Michael, and then a desperate night with (or, rather, without) Bayard. And, before either of those, a terrible party at home, in Hilton, with the Flickingers (Kate’s parents). Jack contemptuously courting Jane Flickinger. Kate off somewhere else (with John?). Jack drunk and mean, Caroline weeping in her room. Determinedly shaking all that off (and at the same time wondering what John remembers; she is still jealous of his past), Louisa says, “What a perfect way to spend New Year’s Eve, isn’t it?” She has been struck by the sentimental thought that John is her defense against her past; she feels the bravado of a second marriage.

  (But why will he never speak to her of his first marriage? Is she—Louisa—not also his friend? She thinks sometimes that Southern John would consider any reference to a dead—a suicided—wife as tasteless, but the fact of his not mentioning Lois keeps her very present to Louisa. And the similarity of names—how ominous! Louisa thinks frequently of Lois, and wonders everything about her. How beautiful was she? What did she like to do in bed? Was she bright, as well? All impossible, unimaginable questions, in terms of John. And she is reminded, of course, of King—of the presence of “Bobbie” in their “affair.” Does she somehow need Lois?)

  She asks, “Shall I get the champagne?”

  “I’ll get it.” Lightly, he has already stood up. “Are the joints on your dresser?”

  “Yes.”

  He goes out, and comes back with the wine, chilled glasses, ashtray and matches, and two neat thick joints—all ceremoniously on a silver tray. He opens the bottle deftly, a napkin held over the cork. He pours.

  They touch glasses. Sm
ile, take sips. Lean toward each other in a light warm kiss. They put down the glasses to light the joints.

  “Wow, it really tastes good.”

  Smoking grass, they tend to sound like kids. But it is an important addition to their life. They much prefer it to booze; in fact they drink a lot less, wanting to savor the high.

  Somewhat later one of them says, “I don’t feel a thing, do you?”

  An old joke between them, at which they both laugh.

  They turn to each other, and for what seems like several hours, but is actually more like numbered minutes, they make love.

  What is happening back at the house where the children live is not an orgy but an argument. What to do next: they are all (all but Allison) in various ways involved in this. Their party was planned as an early evening event, an interim before more important plans—in some cases, before obligations to parents and parents’ parties. The (faggy) son of the well-connected lawyer, however, has no such obligations, or if he does, “Well, screw them,” he unconvincingly says. He wants to go to see the Cockettes, the midnight transvestite show at the Palace Theatre, and he wants the burly son of the cop to come with him.

  “Oh, come on, it’ll broaden you.”

  As titillated as he is frightened, the boy tries to be gruff. “It sounds ridiculous. Why not just go to Finnocchio’s with the rest of the tourists and be done with it?”

  “Oh, but they’re so old.”

  A nervous laugh. “Suppose the Cockettes get busted and it’s my old man who makes the bust?”

  “Well I think that would be a real gas. Then my old man could get us off. But we won’t be all that lucky.”

  A girl squeals, “Can I come, too? Oh, the Cockettes, how neat!”

  Another group departs for a midnight show of 2001, along with several old Beatles movies: classics from their early adolescence.

  The fat red crocheted girls are with that nostalgic group.

  Allison has passed out on a small Victorian horsehair sofa—from a combination of fear and fatigue and too much wine.