Superior Women

by Alice Adams

  Connie Winsor Wharton is another sort of surprise, however. Having assumed considerable beauty, Megan is startled by her carrot-red hair, tiny pale blue eyes, and thin-lipped, unpretty mouth. (Why? an insistent voice within Megan cries out, startlingly, after so much time; why did George choose her?)

  Striving for charity (people can’t help how they look, or not entirely), Megan watches Connie, observing her as closely as she can, without appearing to spy. And she concludes that Connie is a perfectly nice, unattractive, perfectly ordinary woman. She is rich, of course, her voice is loud and somewhat rude, in the way of the very rich. But George probably knew a lot of very rich girls. And Megan wonders: could it have been Connie’s very ordinariness that he found so appealing? Are some men put off by extremes of intelligence or even attractiveness in women—put off by superior women? This is a new thought, highly puzzling, unwelcome, and difficult to digest. And it is true; she is quite sure of that.

  Henry Stuyvesant is on Megan’s right; on her left is Price Christopher, who tells her that he has left law school for business school, a move which he seems to find it necessary to explain and excuse to Megan. Actually she does not care in the least; she thinks, For all of me he could have switched to anthropology, although of course he never would—no money in it.

  But, “Lawyers are really out for the big bucks in a very twisted, covert way,” Price tells her. “Businessmen are simply more honest. Anyway, this Cold War is going to end in the big blast, and if anyone survives it’s not going to be some Village idealist, now is it. Of course I don’t mean you, dear Megan. It’s going to be the really rich, and that’s just what I’ve got in mind for myself. All the way on the Scotch and lobster train.”

  Lucy, who (of course) seems to be a good friend of Connie’s, is looking at Price and Megan with an expression which Megan finds difficult to read, but surely not pride? Megan is thinking that he must be somewhat drunk, or did he always sound so simpleminded? And, perhaps Lucy has heard this so often that she no longer cares? she is (happily for her) quite deaf to Price?

  In any case, Lucy has made the transition from being a very pretty girl to a beautiful woman. Her fair hair is long and smooth, her dark translucent eyes serene. It then occurs to Megan that perhaps Lucy was brought up to believe that once married one does not have to pay much attention to one’s husband. Not expecting much of marriage by way of companionship, much less rapport, such women can probably remain serenely married forever, to almost anyone.

  The first course having come and gone (served by a young man even crosser and blacker than Elvira is), Adam rises to his feet. Picking up an opened bottle of red wine, with a great flourish he pours a large splash out on the spanking-clean white linen tablecloth. “Now, no one who spills will feel any shame!” he shouts. “And as the Jews say, enjoy!”

  Not knowing quite how to respond, herself, Megan checks out reactions around the table. Janet looks mildly embarrassed, although surely Adam has done that before? It did not look quite spontaneous. Henry Stuyvesant too looks a little taken aback. Both Connie Wharton and Lucy Christopher look simply surprised; they can barely believe that anyone would do such a thing. Only Price laughs, and he claps enthusiastically. And, out of some dim sense that Adam’s gesture has not gone over well, that he needs help, Megan too gives a feeble clap.

  Price is muttering in her direction. “What an idiot, isn’t he. I love to watch him making an ass of himself.”

  Megan stares, not sure that she has heard him right.

  As Price goes on to ask, “I suppose you know all the news about your old pal Danny?”

  “Well no, I haven’t heard anything. He doesn’t write.” But the mention of Danny at that moment seems cheering, to Megan; for an instant his blithe, graceful presence is restored to her.

  “Well,” Price for some reason has begun to whisper. “You know that he’s in London, and he’s living with—–!”

  He has whispered a name that Megan failed to catch, entirely, but she understands that she is supposed to have been both astonished and impressed. “Really?” she asks.

  Price, with exaggerated eyebrow raisings, begins to imitate an English actor old and homosexual, although he still is whispering. “Well yes, my dear, Danny’s found his true niche, or his true nature, as it were. Not to mention some juicy parts on the London stage—and offstage too, I would imagine. You’ll forgive the dreadful pun? Dear Megan, how surprised you look. You didn’t guess, or know?”

  “Of course I knew,” she furiously lies, hating Price.

  Price looks at her in a cool and wholly contemptuous way. “No, Megan, I don’t think you did know, actually. You girls are generally the last to tumble to certain truths.”

  This too has been said in the aging-homosexual voice, as Megan suddenly thinks Price loves to talk that way. Obviously.

  She cannot resist saying, “Honestly, Price, your imitation is almost too good.” And she remembers then some gossip that used to go around their particular group, in Paris: Price was said sometimes to go to expensive bars, like the Ritz, where he would let himself be picked up and taken expensively out to dinner by some fag, and then, when the pass was made, Price would feign absolute indignation; if necessary, he would beat the guy up.

  “Thank you, Megan,” Price now says, chillingly.

  Turning to Henry Stuyvesant, who is not just then talking to Janet, as he has been, Megan asks him, “Do you ever see Lavinia, and Potter?”

  “Uh, yes. Fairly often. You did hear about the baby, Princess Amy?”

  Under no circumstances could she have said what it was, but something in Henry’s voice, or his eyes, makes Megan for one instant imagine that he and Lavinia are lovers; they are, or have been, or perhaps will be, at some time in the future. But she next thinks, No, of course not, Lavinia would never have an “affair,” not perfect, cool Lavinia. She says to Henry, “Yes, Lavinia sent me an announcement when Amy was born. But I haven’t seen her. Them.”

  “She’s very beautiful. The baby. I mean, everyone says she is. Lavinia seems very happy with her. And Potter,” he adds. “Well,” he continues then, “tell me about you. You live in New York? You work there?”

  Infrequently asked what she does, or even if she works at all, Megan with some considerable enthusiasm tells him about a book that her house is publishing, on the Spanish Civil War, by two veterans of the Lincoln Brigade.

  At this Henry’s whole face brightens—with what could be relief at a new subject, and could also be genuine interest. “Oh, well,” he says. “That’s terrific. Do you know, I ran away from Milton Academy in nineteen thirty-eight to join the Brigade.”

  “Really? That’s amazing. What happened?”

  He laughs briefly, self-deprecatingly. “Well, actually they turned me down,” he says. “I was just seventeen and unfortunately looked younger. I was a pretty protected kid. And then my family got into the act. Well, it was pretty much of a mess. And then I tried to make up for it, when I got to Harvard. Make up for not being in Spain, I mean. I kept track of all the battles, and I joined everything that said anti-fascist. I was a young fanatic.” Henry has said all this as though telling a joke, but at the same time his tone is sad and regretful. He has taken off his glasses, taken out a handkerchief to wipe at them.

  Observing that his eyes are very beautiful, so dark, soft, deep, Megan says, “I hope Senator McCarthy doesn’t hear about you.”

  “Well, I doubt if he’d have time for all the idealistic undergraduates, back then. Anyway, I’m hardly important.”

  Henry has spoken as though his undergraduate time of idealism were an isolated period of his life, unrevisited—as though even to mention it is strange and unfamiliar. And Megan wonders: has he never talked about the Spanish War, all that, with Connie Wharton, or with Lavinia and Potter? Well, probably not. And on an impulse she tells him, “I’d be glad to send you a copy, when the book comes out.” And then she is shy: will he imagine that she wants to see him again, looking for an excuse?
r />   And is that even possibly true? Does she want to see him again, and if so, for what purpose—more friendly conversation? Yes. For love? Well, no. Yes? Maybe? There would be an interesting, almost Jamesian logic, Megan thinks, if she should have a love affair with someone who has also (possibly) been the lover of Lavinia, possibly the lover of George Wharton’s former wife. But because she doesn’t care at all, she thinks, she smiles at all this contrived complexity.

  Henry Stuyvesant seems to believe, though, in the purity of her friendly intentions. He reaches and hands her a card, saying, “That would be great. I’d really appreciate it.” With his glasses on again he looks both highly serious and more remote, a professor, possibly.

  “Mr. Stuyvesant, please, no campaigning at the dinner table,” Adam’s heavy voice has broken in. “Besides, Megan there doesn’t know a fucking thing about politics.”

  Megan blushes uncomfortably, and for the first time it comes to her very clearly that someday, somehow, there will be some sort of reckoning between herself and Adam. What he does and says goes farther and farther beyond “friendly teasing.” Or, another possibility, at a certain point they will simply cease to know each other at all.

  Her blush gone, Megan looks at Adam in an appraising way, and she sees the familiar warm-clown grin quickly painted onto his face, disarming, and so far irresistible.

  That long formal dining room has high moldings, an elaborate marble fireplace, Piranasi etchings; and Adam’s chair, the host’s chair is heavily carved, ornate. Beyond his end of the room are long glass French windows, leading out to a small circle of lawn, some low flowering shrubbery, a surrounding wall of dark clipped cypresses. There is a single bench, stone, beneath those trees; just now, in the deepening June dusk, it looks entirely desolate—possibly no one has ever sat there.

  Megan, looking out at that bench, at the strange surrounding trees, then formulates what she has been half thinking ever since she arrived, which is that this is an extremely strange house for Adam and Janet. And Aron. It simply does not make sense, for them.

  Nor does the dinner make sense, really. Course follows rich course, new wines are produced, until Megan feels swollen and groggy, half asleep. As do almost all the others, from their look. Only Adam has remained alert; he even looks half expectant, still, excited about his lavish dinner party, as though it might yet yield up something marvelous.

  Which it suddenly does: there is the sound of the car, from outside, a car furiously driven up over all that crushed asphalt. Brakes, a slammed door. By this time Adam is on his feet, and then out of the room. Some moments of a heavy, waiting silence follow. They all, in the dining room, look at each other in a questioning way, and at various instants, separately, everyone looks at Janet, and then away; she is seen to be staring miserably at her plate, at the half-eaten pastry into which she has just plunged a cigarette, ignoring the tiny silver ashtray placed beside her recently emptied wine glass.

  Adam comes back into the room, grinning, followed by the tallest, the darkest, and very likely the most beautiful woman that Megan (and possibly everyone there) has ever seen. In a yellow satin cape. She is well over six feet tall, dwarfing Adam, of course, with mahogany-brown-black skin and wild frizzed-out hair (the style later known as an Afro, a natural, but not at that time seen at all, in New York; Sheila was sometimes credited with that fashion, its general use). But other than her color and her hair Sheila does not look “Negro,” or African. Her flat, exotic features could be Egyptian, Oriental: wide slanting liquid, amber eyes, a long narrow nose, thin mouth, painted scarlet. She is more stylish, more fashionable than any fashion model could be. She is futuristic.

  Adam is looking at her, this apparition from the night, with the most evident delight, with obvious lust and absolute admiration; and his look is observed by all his guests, none of whom quite dares to look back at Janet, again.

  “Well, friends, this is Sheila,” Adam announces, and he might as well have been announcing his intention to abandon Janet, there and then, and to run all over the world hand-in-hand with his gorgeous captive giant, with beautiful Sheila.

  Sheila smiles, showing brilliantly white teeth, and she ducks her head, a shy queen, acknowledging obeisance.

  One of the things that Megan thinks, observing this small but significant scene, is, Well, now Janet can go on to med school.

  Another thought is, Oh, so that’s what this house is all about. A place for him to leave Janet in. What a bastard Adam is.

  23

  Although they have talked about almost everything under the sun, the one thing that Peg and Cornelia (Cornelia, who works for her now) have never mentioned is the curious fact that they look very much alike; they are close to the same size, both being large, rather squarely built women—and that is only the beginning.

  Like Peg, Cornelia has round blue eyes, although legally (and in practical terms—not voting, for example) she is a Negro. And like Peg, she has a large upturned nose and a wide full mouth. Only her skin is quite another color; Cornelia’s skin is a shadowy pale brown, whereas Peg’s is simply pale, either dead white or pink, the sort of skin that does not tan. Also, Cornelia has a long and terrible scar across one cheek, a souvenir from her first marriage, and of an emergency room that put off any aid to a bleeding Negro woman until all the white people (mostly drunks) were taken care of.

  In the cruel Texas heat the two women perspire a lot, and each has trouble with what Cornelia calls the monthlies. They each have four children, although Cornelia is a little younger than Peg is. These and other affinities are discussed between them; what neither of them has ever said is, You know, we really look a lot alike. To Peg, this would seem a tactless observation.

  Cameron though has noticed the similarity, and has said so to Peg. He thinks it is very funny. “Honestly, I’ve heard of pets resembling their masters,” he has said, “but honestly, Peglet, only you could find a goddamn maid who looks like you.”

  “I didn’t find her, the agency—”

  “Oh, don’t be so literal. You hired her, and she looks like you. That’s all.”

  The truth is though that Cornelia is considerably prettier than Peg is. Peg recognizes this (it is one of her reasons for not pointing out that they look a little alike) and she has wondered if Cameron does. Perhaps not, she has concluded. For one thing, if he had he would probably have said so; he is not given to holding back things of a wounding nature; he does not spare Peg’s feelings. For another (and this is a truth about Cameron that she does not like to admit to herself), he is the sort of white man who is literally blind to Negroes, in sexual or aesthetic terms; he only sees Negro, he does not differentiate. Which is not to say that he is more prejudiced than most people are (in the early fifties), or that he would treat Negroes in an unfair or cruel way. He would not (or so Peg believes, she has to believe). He simply does not see them.

  Peg thinks that Cornelia is also smarter than she is, and she thinks that it is terrible that Cornelia barely got to finish high school, and had her first child at sixteen. Cornelia should have gone to college and then to med school; she could have been a doctor—Cornelia is the one who should have gone to Radcliffe. But no chance of that now, with all those children and no husband and no money, and boyfriends that are worse off than she is, usually. In addition to the problem, in Texas, of her “color,” in terms of getting an education.

  In any case they talk a lot, Peg and Cornelia; they are very close friends, although that is not exactly how they think of each other.

  • • •

  Peg still thinks of Lavinia as her closest friend, although since college they have seen each other hardly at all. On one of Cameron’s recent trips to New York, on business, Peg got to come along, and she met Lavinia for lunch, and they were all supposed to meet for dinner later that week, Potter and Lavinia, Cameron and Peg—but after Peg was there for two days Cornelia called to tell her that the twins had simultaneously come down with chicken pox. Cornelia said she could perfectly well ta
ke care of them, but Peg took the next plane back to Texas; and so on that trip she did not see very much of Lavinia. But they have kept in touch by letter, and for years they have said that they would celebrate their thirtieth birthdays together, which are to occur within a week of each other, in late January 1956.

  And the preceding fall Lavinia writes that it is really going to work out, after all: she and Potter are going to New Orleans. And then they will come on to Midland, to Peg and Cameron. Perfect, it will all work out perfectly, even though they can only be in Midland for one night; they have to get back to Amy—although their nurse is marvelous, a true jewel. She is Swedish, and Swedes make fantastic nurses, of course.

  But, “I don’t know why, the idea of that dinner is really making me nervous,” Peg confides to Cornelia. “I can’t even decide what to cook. And it’s just the four of us, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Some friends can make a person nervous, even if they’s friends,” is Cornelia’s comment.

  “Oh, that’s right. But sometimes I think everyone makes me nervous. Except you, Cornelia.”

  Peg is not only nervous about the dinner; she is strangely depressed at the very idea of the visit, Lavinia coming to her house, seeing everything—and is that it? Is she afraid of what Lavinia will see?

  However: she determines that she will be strong and “womanly,” in the way that her doctor has recommended. No more sicknesses or secret rebellions.

  Of course Cornelia will be a great help. The very idea of Cornelia is strengthening (just as the very idea of Lavinia makes her nervous? Peg drops this thought instantly).

  Thoughtfully Peg remarks to Cameron, one night at dinner, “I think maybe beef Wellington, don’t you? For Lavinia and Potter. Doesn’t everyone like it?”