Superior Women

by Alice Adams

  Meanwhile, the war in Europe ends, the bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, then Nagasaki, and then that war is over too, and the end of the world has quite possibly begun.

  Megan plans not to go home for Christmas, that winter of 1945. She will stay in Cambridge and work on her thesis for most of the time, and then of course she will be going down to Washington for at least a few days, for some of Lavinia’s announcement Christmas parties.

  She also spends Thanksgiving in the dorm, and very much alone, Lavinia having gone home to begin arrangements for the coming season, and even Cathy off to Somerville, with Vince. But Megan’s thesis, just begun, is going well, excitingly, and the weather is golden and lovely. She is less lonely than she might have been, in fact hardly lonely at all. She looks forward to Christmas and then more distantly to June, the receiving of Honors.

  Soon after Thanksgiving, though, when Lavinia is just back from D.C., Lavinia and Megan have what is to Megan a curious conversation. It has to do with Peg, big Peg, who of course is married now, and the mother of twin daughters. She is living in a place called Midland, Texas.

  “Poor Peglet,” Lavinia sighs. Once more, she has just come in from a late encounter with Russell Finnerty, and she is a little tipsy. Conveniently for her, Potter is spending a lot of time down in New York, being interviewed up and down Wall Street, as Lavinia in her amused, pleased way likes to put it. “Poor poor Peglet,” Lavinia repeats. “She thinks she just may be preggers again. Honestly, that Cameron must be some kind of a stallion.” Lavinia giggles sexily. “I’ve told her she absolutely can’t be, though. I can’t have a pregnant matron at my wedding.”

  Peg, then, is to be matron of honor? Not knowing how to respond to what seems startling news, Megan is silent.

  Slightly tipsier than usual, Lavinia fails to notice this silence, or to find it significant. She giggles again, and then she says, again, “Honestly, that Cameron must be a real stallion. They must do it all the time. But just wait until next summer, little Megan. I can tell you all about married love, and I will, I promise.”

  It occurs to Megan to say what Lavinia must know, that you don’t have to “do it all the time” to get pregnant. She does not say that, however. She has just been struck full force with the fact that she herself has in no sense even been asked to be in Lavinia’s wedding. There has been no mention, actually, of her possible attendance, even. Nor has Lavinia made any mention of Megan’s coming down to Washington at Christmas. Engagement parties.

  So much for Henry James; I do not belong to his novels, Megan concludes.

  Later, lying in bed, in the chilly Cambridge dark, Megan tries to fight off a deep, sharp pain that is somewhere in her chest. You are being ridiculous, she tells herself. Why would you even want to go to a bunch of parties with people you never saw before and very likely would not like? Why would you spend all that money, which you don’t even have, for train tickets and new clothes? And wherever, even, did you get this idea about going down to Washington? Lavinia never said any such thing—it was all in your head, not in hers.

  But she is hurt, and it takes her longer to recover from that hurt than she believes it should.

  “My mother told me a long time ago,” says Cathy to Megan, “that if you don’t expect very much you’ll never be disappointed.”

  This conversation occurs sometime in the middle of the following spring, the spring of 1946. Christmas has come and gone, Lavinia is back from Washington and is officially engaged. Somehow she and Megan have little time for each other, these days, at least in part because Lavinia, true to her own social rules, no longer goes out with Russell Finnerty; she no longer comes home tipsy, for a final cigarette with Megan on the stairs.

  These days, again, Megan and Cathy have schedules that perfectly coincide; they both are writing theses, both studying for finals. Cathy and Vince are still friends too, but they seem to see each other less.

  Megan has of course got over her hurt about not going down to Washington—of course Lavinia would never have asked her to. She has even been able to tell Cathy about that ludicrous fantasy, which has become another joke between them, and the occasion of Cathy’s remark about her mother’s theory of disappointment. To which Megan responds, “Of course your mother’s absolutely right.”

  “Lavinia lives strictly by rules of her own,” Cathy adds. “But of course I guess we all do?”

  “I guess. It’s just that hers are really far from mine,” answers Megan, at the same time thinking that very likely Cathy’s (Catholic) rules are also unlike hers, whatever “hers” are. But very likely Cathy and Phil-Flash never actually did it?

  Telepathically, it seems to Megan, Cathy then asks, “Can you guess what I got in the mail from Phil-Flash?”

  “No.”

  “An invitation to his wedding. Can you believe it?”

  “No. Oh, no.”

  This sets them both off laughing, possibly because there is no other available reaction; they literally shriek with laughter, they almost cry, until finally Megan gets out, “I think you should go! We both should go, I’ll go with you. It’s so wonderful, not being invited to Lavinia’s wedding—I wasn’t even invited to George Wharton’s, come to think of it. And going instead to Phil-Flash’s. Whatever shall we wear?”

  “Oh, I think both of us in black crepe, don’t you?”

  They go on laughing.

  • • •

  In June, both Megan and Cathy graduate with Highest Honors, both Summas, whereas Lavinia is only Cum Laude. But the following week Lavinia, in Washington, is splendidly married to Potter Cobb, unattended by any of her college friends. Her old friend Kitty is her maid of honor, Kitty being only six weeks pregnant, which no one knows, or could possibly see.

  13

  Two letters, from the summer of 1946:

  One, from Megan Greene, in Palo Alto, to Janet Cohen Marr, in Paris:

  I could hardly believe it, three thousand dollars. My parents are not rich, my mother works at a really dumb job, and they have always been thrifty as hell, but my mother said they just inherited a farm in Iowa, which they sold, and this is my share. I was tearing through college partly to save them the dough, and now my mom is saying how they appreciated my efforts, how proud they are of my Summa, etcetera. And so, three grand. I am not sure what they expected me to do with it, probably some neat little savings account, so that in fifty years I would have ten thousand (is that right? I was never good at compounding).

  I am pretending to be thinking it over, and also pretending to be thinking a lot about a Ph.D. at Stanford. I could live at home. Whereas, actually, truthfully, I am thinking all the time about Paris. Never mind Henry James in London, I just know that Paris is my place, especially with you and Adam there. Do not worry, I won’t hang around.

  So, please, could you and Adam sort of work it out, and tell me how little I could live on? Subtracting about six hundred right away, for the train to New York and then the boat, leaves twenty-four hundred. So, could I live there for two hundred a month? I will diet and give up cigarettes. I will do anything for a year in Paris.

  I would really appreciate a really specific letter from you.

  Adam Marr, in Paris, to Megan Greene, who is still in Palo Alto:

  You delicate bourgeois bitches really kill me. Don’t you know that two hundred dollars a month, which comes to about eight thousand francs on the black market, is about four times what the average worker makes, to support a whole family? Or do you plan to stay at the Ritz, like your old asshole buddy Henry James?

  Christ, Megan, just get on the fucking boat and come on over. Take your chances with the rest of us. And remember, everywhere you look there are people poorer and hungrier than you, much poorer, whose parents do not give them handouts of money, no matter how swell they are.

  P.S. If you can ever get your nose out of the aforementioned H. James (and I meant that just as it sounds) you just might try reading Marx. He just might improve your alleged mind.

  P.P.S. Janet
and I will be glad to see you.

  Megan does just as Adam bids: she takes the day coach, exhaustingly but without adventure to New York, where she does not call anyone she knows: not Simon, who is now married to Phyllis; not Lavinia, who is married to Potter and living in the East Sixties (of course). She does not even call Jackson Clay, who is probably off somewhere on a tour.

  From New York to Cherbourg she takes a converted troopship, which is filled with college kids like herself, all off for their first look at Europe, postwar. Megan has three foolish, fairly unpleasant roommates, Holyoke girls, and so she spends most of her nights up on deck, necking near the lifeboat station with a rather handsome (though chinless) blond boy whom she knew at Harvard, though not very well: Price Christopher, from Toledo, Ohio. Price is going to study at the Sorbonne, something quite grandly called Cours de la civilisation française. You just sign up for the course and that way you can collect the G.I. Bill, Price explains. (Which is what Adam Marr must be doing, Megan reckons.) Price has heard that you can get a room on the Left Bank for twenty or thirty dollars a month, and the student restaurants around there are very cheap.

  Handsome Price, however, being of an exceptionally calculating nature, has another plan, which he confides to Megan; he has correctly gauged her relative lack of interest in himself, beyond a certain fleeting sexual attraction. He plans to cruise the expensive bars, he says, and he will take in most of the better concerts, check out bookstores, until he meets an attractive French girl, preferably a rich girl, of course; he will move in with her for the duration of his stay in Paris, thus both saving some money and at the same time improving his French. He is so convinced of the feasibility of this plan that Megan believes in it too; of course he will meet such a girl. Megan can almost see her.

  The room that Megan herself finds, at last, is three stories up, in the Hotel Welcome, on the Rue de Seine. Its shape is peculiar, trapezoidal. It contains a very wide, low bed, two chairs, a desk, a sink, and a bidet: the French essentials. Its long shuttered windows look out and down on that narrow street, its fishmarkets, galleries, bookstores, and flower stalls, and over to the wider, grander Boulevard St. Germain.

  The toilet is down the hall, but this is Megan’s first room of her own; she finds it wonderful. Among other things, she wonders with whom she will first make love, in that bed—in Paris, France.

  Somewhat surprisingly, Adam and Janet are not living in one of the cheap hotels, as everyone else is. They have a small, quite comfortably arranged apartment, on the Rue de Tournon, near the Luxembourg Gardens. “Okay, no cracks about our bourgeois mode of existence,” is almost the first thing that Adam says to Megan, although she had not been about to make such a crack.

  What has struck her most, and what she could never say, on first seeing Adam and Janet is the intensity of their affection for each other. What can be recognized only as love is present in the very air between them, surrounding them; it is visible on both their faces. Their affection is like a steady fire that warms a room, and for that reason, that year in Paris, that winter, people gather around Adam and Janet, everyone wants to be with them. (There is also Adam’s wonderfully energetic intelligence, and Janet’s slyer, wittier perceptions.)

  Megan especially wants to be with them. She wants to see them almost every day. And Adam and Janet make it clear, in one way or another, that they want to see her too, every day. Closest friends.

  A party at the Marrs’. “Come any time after dinner, and bring a bottle of something,” is how Adam’s invitations ran, which led to considerable divergence as to hours of arrival, and also among choices of drink. People began to arrive at Rue de Tournon about eight o’clock, and continued to do so until after midnight. And everything was being drunk, from the most sensible vin ordinaire, to Pernod, to the Scotch that some misguided person brought along.

  Adam would seem to have walked through the central courtyard of the Sorbonne and to have invited everyone he saw. Surely, Megan thinks, he can’t really know all these people, or not by name? She tries to work out a guiding principle.

  To begin with, they all look fairly poor. The men are in old army clothes, in various stages of shabbiness, and the girls wear old sweaters and skirts, last year’s college clothes. The exception is a dazzling young blonde, a Smith girl on her Junior Year Abroad, who looks uncomfortable in her smart blue velvet and pearls. She arrived, it turns out, with Price Christopher (who must not yet have found just the right French girl). Price introduces his blonde to Megan: Lucy Wharton. Even now, Megan jumps at the name—Lucy Wharton?

  There are five, then six young Negro men there, Megan observes, which is all the American Negroes at the Sorbonne. Does Adam have some special feeling for Negroes?

  And, that night, Megan notices an odd fact about Adam, which is that his accent changes, perhaps unconsciously, according to the person with whom he is speaking. Megan has usually seen him alone, with Janet, and at those times Adam, like Janet, and probably like Megan, speaks a somewhat Harvard-modified version of Brooklynese. With the Negro men, though, his voice becomes markedly Southern, or, actually, Negro. Later still Megan is amazed to hear his accent in French; someone has brought along a very pretty dark French girl.

  “I used to know someone named George Wharton,” Megan says to Lucy Wharton, when she can.

  “Oh, you know George? My absolutely favorite cousin. And Connie, isn’t she divine? Not exactly pretty, is she, but such a dear.”

  “Uh, actually I met him a long time ago. When he was out at Stanford, actually. One summer.”

  “Oh, George’s California experience. I’d forgotten all about that. In fact he was very cozy about the whole thing, we heard practically nothing.” Lucy looks over toward Price, who is headed for the pretty French girl. Not turning back to Megan, Lucy goes on talking nevertheless. “I asked Price if by any chance he knew George, but he didn’t. They must have been in different houses, or clubs, or something.”

  Price would not have been in a club at all, Megan thinks, but does not say. She further thinks it is more likely that Price would have known Phil-Flash, also from the unclubbable Midwest. “Harvard’s awfully big,” she weakly lets drop.

  Beautiful Lucy, whose eyes are a true dark azure, gives Megan a consummately scornful look. “Oh, I know. Actually everyone in my family’s gone to Harvard for generations. Of course I thought of Radcliffe, but Mummy’s an old Smith girl.”

  “You probably wouldn’t have liked it there anyway,” says Megan, intending unkindness.

  But Lucy might not have heard her; she is still looking worriedly over at Price, who is being very gallant to Odile, the pretty French girl. He is bent over her in a classically romantic pose; even his French has improved for the occasion.

  Megan thinks, but does not say to Lucy: You don’t have to worry, really. She’s not rich enough for Price. She’s pretty, but her dress is much too shabby for Price’s ambitions.

  “I did meet one absolutely divine Cliffie,” says Lucy, with a somewhat tactless emphasis on one. “Lavinia Harcourt. In fact she’s married to someone I practically grew up with. They had the most divine wedding, down in Washington. But you probably wouldn’t have known her.”

  “Actually I did. In fact we lived practically next door to each other.”

  A quick look from Lucy brings Megan to an odd realization, which is that she herself has been doing exactly what she observed in Adam: she has been aping Lucy’s very Bostonian accent, so much so that even preoccupied Lucy notices. But in her own case the intent, although unconscious, was surely parodic, wasn’t it? Whereas Adam would never parody Negro voices, would he?

  Because of the variety of things to drink, the guests at that party all tend to get drunk at uneven rates, and in divergent, incompatible ways. Poor Lucy Wharton, predictably enough, being unused to such rough social scenes as well as to the ordinaire Price brought—poor Lucy gets sick; she is led off to the bathroom by kindly Janet, and soon taken home by another of the Smith girls, as the whole sce
ne is almost ignored by unchivalrous Price, who is still occupied with gallantry to Odile.

  Adam, drinking Pernod, is a wild manic drunk; his loud energy gives the nonparty whatever life it has. All night his voice can be heard over everyone else’s, in those impossibly crowded, over-furnished, overheated, and now extremely smoky rooms. Adam is shouting Marxist theory or newly acquired French obscenities. He is in love with his new Marxist culture, and in love with words.

  And he is deeply in love with Janet, Megan feels, observing the two of them at the door, near midnight, as finally people begin to leave. Adam’s arm clutches Janet’s much smaller shoulders, drawing her close, as he shouts good nights: “Ecoute, mon vieux, soyez sage, eh? Et bien, bon soir, mon gars, ma fille—”

  At last only a few people are left, of that original throng: there are Adam and Janet and Megan, and a fragile-looking French boy, a painter named Danny, who has somehow attached himself to Megan. And Price Christopher. And the French girl, Odile. And somehow it is then decided (Adam decides) that they must all go on to a place called Bal Nègre, on the Rue Blomet.

  They all troop through the blackened streets, in a direction which Adam, mysteriously, is sure is correct, and he turns out to be right. Adam has a photographic memory for maps; he has already memorized Paris.

  They arrive at last at a door, which is easily opened—opened to an absolutely jammed, brightly lit, enormous room, incredibly noisy; from a block away they were able to hear the wild West Indian music, the shouts, the pounding, dancing feet. Just inside, as they enter, there is a long crowded bar, at which they all stop for drinks. Adam insists on Pernod all around, his new addiction, before they climb some rickety steps to a balcony that overlooks the dance floor.

  And somehow Adam commands a table. And, almost immediately, before sitting down, he asks Odile to dance.