by Alice Adams
Is he smiling? In the darkness, she can’t tell. Peg makes a sound that is intended as assent.
Very likely sensing her unease, Henry is quiet for a while; then, in a slow, undemanding way he begins to talk, almost as though to himself. He remarks on the similarities between this north Georgia countryside and Chapel Hill, where he teaches. The two areas are more alike than not, he says, and both of course are vastly unlike the New England countryside where he grew up. He then mentions Cambridge.
At which Peg, who is breathing more easily by now, can say, “Oh yes, Cambridge. I was there for four years. In school. I loved it.”
At Radcliffe?
Yes.
Which gets them almost immediately to Lavinia. (Although, as Peg remarks later to Vera, you do not exactly expect to find a friend of Lavinia’s doing civil rights work.)
“Oh yes,” Peg now gasps, “I knew her very well. Or, I mean I spent a lot of time with her. She was the most beautiful girl around, I always thought. I mean, I sometimes thought we must have looked sort of funny together. Like some beautiful small white monkey and a big, uh, elephant.”
“My so-called friends at prep school used to say I looked like a giraffe,” Henry tells her. He is smiling—she can see him now.
“Oh, really?” Quickly seeing the accuracy of this (he does; he looks tall and awkward, and his eyes, like giraffes’ eyes, are beautiful), Peg laughs, very much in the old jolly Peg way—although to herself it has the sound of someone else laughing, some ghost.
“In a way I sort of took care of her, I guess,” she continues, speaking of Lavinia. “Mothering. I must have been practicing up to actually be a mother. And then I was supposed to be in her wedding but I was home having another baby.”
Henry asks, “You have a lot of children?”
“Oh yes, four. But the oldest two, the twins, they’re nineteen, and they’re pretty nice girls, usually. I bribed them to help Cornelia so I could come here this summer, and I bribed Cornelia to stay with all of them for the summer. Cornelia’s the, uh, maid.” Two hundred dollars apiece for the girls, Candy and Carol, a crazy sum, she knows that perfectly well; Cameron would have a stroke if he found out. And even worse, from Cameron’s point of view, two thousand to Cornelia, which he will never know about though. Especially since it will let Cornelia quit work in the fall, when Peg gets home, and go to the Teachers’ College.
Peg has said none of this last to Henry, of course; she only thought of it, fleetingly. She now tries to go on about Lavinia. “They came to see us, Lavinia and Potter, a few years ago,” she tells Henry, “and Lavinia was wonderful, and beautiful, and such a help. I had been sick, a nervous breakdown, I guess you’d call it. She was really nice, and we wrote letters, but some things I can’t explain to her.”
“Coming down here, for example,” says Henry, in a quiet way.
“Well yes, exactly. Only for me it’s up, not down. We live in Texas. Midland,” she explains. She is thinking that because in this strange, still shadowy darkness Henry’s face is still almost invisible to her, he is less frightening than he might be, if she could see him. What comes clearly across to her though is his niceness; he is nice and kind and intelligent, remarkably so. And Peg is not so foolish as to believe that everyone she meets in Georgia, everyone in the Movement, in “good works,” is necessarily nice, or kind or even smart.
Out of some odd necessity, she now tries to explain further about Lavinia. “I don’t mean to say that there’s anything really wrong between us now,” she tells him—but perhaps she is over-explaining, is talking to herself? “Although of course,” she quickly continues, “she’s so polite that even if there were something the matter I wouldn’t know that there was, not necessarily. If you know what I mean.” This has been a new thought, to Peg, the notion of the deceptiveness of Lavinia’s “politeness.”
Henry laughs, in an understanding way, and for no good reason it then flashes through Peg’s mind that he and Lavinia could have been lovers, have had an affair. But then Peg thinks, Oh no, Lavinia would never do that, she would not sneak around.
(Does Lavinia like to, uh, “do it?” Peg has wondered about this of course; does she cry out, like women in D. H. Lawrence, a few other writers? Peg herself of course does not, she cannot, ever, something wrong. She is not at all sure what it would be that women would do together, but she thinks about it.)
In his quiet voice Henry asks, “Your husband didn’t mind your coming here this summer?”
“Well, actually he did mind quite a lot.” Peg is surprised to hear herself saying this, to a relative stranger. She is so surprised that she goes right on. “But a few years ago when I was sick, with my, uh, nervous breakdown, I was really off my nut, if you want to know the truth. And that made him a little afraid of me, if you see what I mean.”
Henry does see; she can tell that from the quality of his listening, his silence, his murmured, Oh.
“Also, this is a funny thing to say,” Peg goes on, “but I have more money than he does. My family, I mean. And when I got to be thirty my trust fund went up a lot, to more than he makes, even in oil. Although of course he is going to be very rich. But now he thinks that my money makes me a powerful person. Which must be the whole point, don’t you think?” She gives a sudden big jolly-Peg laugh, echoing in the lofty barn, in the silent dark.
Henry laughs too, but in a surprisingly sad way. “Well, I’m sure it beats being poor.”
“Oh, God, of course. Honestly, I’m not that silly. I know you have to have money,” she tells him piously. “I only meant that money gives me a kind of, uh, hollow power over Cameron, my husband.” This need of hers to overexplain things, in an apologetic way, is something that Peg and her doctor have discussed, but it is still very hard for her not to, sometimes.
The oddity of being with Henry, so comfortably, as easily as old friends, or cousins, then strikes Peg with such force that she stops talking. (For one thing, nonsexual friendships between men and women were so very rare, in those days.) Peg, the big old cow, and dark, distinguished Henry. But, she next thinks, that is exactly the point. If I were good-looking, pretty, we would not be here like this. Henry would have to make a pass at me, if I looked like Lavinia, for example. Even if I looked like Megan, with those breasts, and her pretty blue eyes.
At that moment Henry laughs, so that Peg searches around in her mind for whatever it was that she last said; surely nothing about Megan’s breasts?
“Hollow power,” is what Henry next says, as though he were quoting her. “That’s good. It’s what I think I’ve always had, people responding to something that has nothing to do with me, like my name. It makes me nervous.”
His tone has made Peg giggle, its wry self-deprecation, even some sly self-pity.
“You’re right, it’s really funny,” he tells her then. “And in a way of course I’ve loved it.”
With no idea what he has meant, Peg is quiet, and reaches for another cigarette.
Even in the dark, Henry has sensed or felt her gesture, and he reaches to light it for her, so that for a moment his face is illuminated—just long enough to intimidate her (again) with its authority. He is not so much handsome as impressive; so dark, so defined.
Now really scared of him, and shy, Peg gets to her feet. “Oh, I didn’t realize how late it was,” she mumbles foolishly, and she looks at her watch.
Sensing her shift in mood Henry tells her, “I think I’ll have another smoke out here. You can get back to the house okay, by yourself?”
“Oh yes.” Peg stubs out her just-lit cigarette, and she mutters, “Well, bye,” and she hurries up the path. She is thinking, Well, of course we can’t really be friends, how silly to think that, even for a minute.
But she is wrong.
Waking early, on the following morning (August 5, 1964), Peg is the first person in the kitchen; already, just past 6 A.M., the air is heavy with threatened heat, maybe rain, maybe thunderstorms. She has just put on the kettle for coffee, and a sauc
epan for boiled eggs, and is about to slice some bread when Henry comes in. He first looks surprised at seeing her there, and then he smiles widely; he is pleased to see her, clearly happy. “Oh, how great! Good morning,” he says. “But you should have stuck around last night. I began to feel sorry for myself, and I had another drink, which I really didn’t need. It’s all your fault. While you were there I wasn’t thinking about myself, or not much,” and he laughs, in a friendly-brother way. His eyes are a little red, Peg sees, as he takes off his glasses, and his dark, dark hair is uncombed.
Feeling a blush, Peg asks, “Can I boil you an egg? Two eggs?”
“Sure, two. I’ll do the toast. Lord, it’s almost too hot for toast already, don’t you think?”
In this incredibly companionable way, they are having breakfast together (which Peg might have known, had she thought about it, would be broken by some disaster), both in their unironed white cotton shirts.
When Vera comes in.
Pale brown-skinned great-eyed Vera. She says, or rather she croaks out (her voice is terrible, broken): “You guys hear the news last night? They’re dead. All three of them. They found them yesterday. All three murdered.” By now she is weeping—as is Peg, as Henry is. “They found them buried in the dirt,” says Vera.
29
In the early sixties, before it became fashionable, Adam Marr developed an obsession with the war in Vietnam. That distant and to most people, including the President, alien conflict pervaded his mind, his conversation—and his plays. Previously he had written dramas that were described as “psychological,” or “contemporary,” having to do with love and sex, marriage and divorce, an occasional violent death, a murder—and so far his plays had been immensely successful. The few bad reviews, the dismissals of Adam as “melodramatic,” “sensation-seeking,” or, routinely, “pornographic,” did nothing to hurt Adam at the box office—any more than did his very public, fairly frequent brawls in bars, his hinted-at liaisons with young actresses and “models.”
But especially after President Johnson’s Tonkin Resolution, Adam’s style and mode entirely changed. He wrote a series of one-act plays that were all either overtly or sometimes indirectly about the war. Even when the ostensible subject was a soccer match in Australia, he was writing and preaching against the war.
These one-acts were produced off-Broadway, and were variously received. Bloodthirsty, trivial, warmongering, passé, obscure, and blatant: those were among the words used by his negative critics, in addition to the old staples of Marr criticism: violent, obscene, sensational. Other, younger critics, and a few old leftists, found the new plays powerful, eloquent, brilliant. “At last Adam Marr has found a subject matter commensurate with his formidable talent,” said one young critic, in the venerable Partisan Review.
Megan is generally in agreement with the latter group, and she thinks his new plays are by far the best work that Adam has ever done.
But somehow she and Adam have not seen each other for several years. For one thing, her life is as intensely private as his is public. Following the example set by Barbara Blumenthal, and also her own inclinations, Megan never goes to the places considered “in,” she is never seen at P. J. Clarke’s or the Russian Tea Room or Elaine’s; she does not even go to the Algonquin, or the Oak Room, at the Plaza. All of which are favorite haunts of Adam’s; he has seemed especially fond of the Oak Room (curious, to anyone not knowing him as well as Megan does); he is even careful to behave well on those premises.
However, after seeing the second of his new plays, the soccer match, Megan is so moved, so really overwhelmed, that she goes home and writes a note to Adam.
To which he responds with a phone call, and an invitation to lunch. “Your note was exceptionally kind,” he says to her over the phone, in a formal, quite unfamiliar tone, and then, more recognizably, “I’ve missed you, you silly old bitch.”
She is to meet him in the Oak Room at one on the following day.
Early September; it is Labor Day weekend, in fact.
And there he is. Megan spots him standing at the bar, the moment she shyly enters that large, dark, and crowded, rather intimidating room: Adam in dark gray flannels, blue button-down shirt, and black knit tie (his Oak Room costume?), the too curly hair slicked down. Adam, coming toward her with his broad twisted smile, and a drink in his hand that turns out to be sherry.
“My God, you’re so thin,” is his greeting, after their classic non-kiss; but he looks at her approvingly, so that Megan decides that she has after all worn the right dress. (Dressing, she remembered harsh words from Adam to Janet on that subject: “You dumb cunt, you still dress like a college girl.”)
He leads her to a small window table that he has evidently reserved.
“Thin,” he says again, and grins, as they sit down. “But actually you look terrific.” That last in his most Harvard voice.
Away from Adam, Megan has tended to see him at his worst, which is surely his most conspicuous side: his drunken or even sober arrogance, his racist obsessions (all the crazy talk about Jews, sometimes blacks); his compulsive obscenity (she does not like, has never liked being called a cunt—does anyone?). His real cruelty to Janet. And, recalling all that, Megan has wondered at what she has to recognize in herself as unshakable vestiges of fondness for him. How can she even think of liking Adam Marr? she has often wondered.
However, face to face with Adam, across the small table, Megan is very much aware that she does like him, and not for the first time she wonders if what she feels for Adam is sexual, after all? Certainly it does not seem so. Emphatically, she does not want to go to bed with him (but would she, if she had not first encountered him attached to Janet, so to speak? She still thinks not).
What it seems to be is simply affection, the affection of old friends who sometimes fight. Maybe this is how women feel about their brothers? Not having had one, Megan cannot precisely know.
All through that lunch, though, Adam is at his interested, kindly, noncombative best, so that Megan realizes that she had forgotten just those most appealing qualities of his. He can, for instance, be more genuinely “interested” than anyone; his curiosity is infinite, and real—as when he asks Megan about her literary agent life, in detail, perceptively.
She explains, as he listens carefully, and then he says, “I get an impression that that’s all you’re doing, though. Which is not a criticism. I’m just remarking that you’re not in love.”
“Oh. Well, no.” It is possible that Megan is blushing; she can’t tell.
Adam stares out the window, half frowning at the green rises of Central Park, as Megan wonders apprehensively what is to come.
Returned to her, Adam speaks much more hesitantly than usual. “You superior women have a real problem for yourselves, don’t you. Just any old guy won’t do. You wouldn’t like him, and even if you did your strength would scare him, even make him mad. You know, that’s actually one reason I had to dump Janet, though I can’t say I knew it at the time. I began to have some black suspicion that she was stronger than I was. So I dumped her for that dumb dinge. Poor Sheila was dumber and more cowardly than anyone. What you need”—Adam is visibly winding up this remarkable set of admissions—“what you need is a hero.”
Megan is silenced, suffering from a variety of shock. Not seeing herself as “superior,” or as especially “strong,” she is intrigued by Adam’s view, though at the same time she wonders: is he simply inventing her, as though she were a woman in one of his plays? She recognizes the probability of this.
But for Adam to say that he left Janet because of a perception of her strength is extraordinary, fantastic. In fact it is so fantastic that Megan is convinced that, should she ever remind him of this view (which she never will), he would deny it, as being her fantasy.
Adam suddenly laughs. And, as though continuing with his last thoughts on Megan’s need for a hero, he snorts, “But you seem to go in for antiheroes. Very fashionable, Miss Greene. That silly little French que
er, Danny. Whatever led you to him, I wonder?”
This has been a serious question, and so, very much liking him at that moment, Megan tries to answer. “I’m not sure,” she says. “Partly pity, I guess. He was so thin, and so broke. I guess you could call it maternal. Besides, we were just friends. And I think it’s harder to have good judgment in another country. You suspend all your usual standards, or something.”
“Your old pal Henry James did pretty well with that idea. Dining out on it, so to speak.”
Slightly surprised at even this degree of awareness of James on Adam’s part, Megan half agrees. “I suppose.” And then she asks, “Do you still see Danny? Isn’t it odd that he’s never called me here?”
“He’s a coward. I told you, inferior men are afraid of you, Megan. Anyway, he’s gone back to Paris. I couldn’t make an actor out of him. God knows I tried. And maybe all I sensed in him was that basic dishonesty. His playing a role. Acting male.”
“What’s terrible is that I can hardly remember him at all.”
“He didn’t really touch you,” Adam speculates, but his voice is vague; he has lost interest in Danny. Then he scowls, “Did you know about Aron?”
“Uh, what?”
“He’s a fucking queer. A Jewish fag.”
“How do you know that?” Megan has simply asked the first question that came to mind.
“Janet told me. And do you know how she knew? He fucking told her. Can you imagine that, a boy telling his own mother that he’s queer?”
“Well, it might be better than not telling her?”
“Aaaah.” Adam makes his well-known sound of disgust. “Don’t give me that psycho claptrap.” But, are there tears in his eyes?
“Well, whatever he is,” Megan tells Adam gently, “he’s awfully nice. And really bright.”
“You’re a nice woman. Most of the time.” Adam has regained control, and some cheerfulness. “Even if you are a little too big for your britches, as my sainted mother liked to say.” He grins, so that Megan wonders if he really has suffered over Aron’s being “queer”; she believes that he has, and she wonders why Janet told him. Janet had already told Megan about Aron: Janet, new and cool, saying, “Adam will have a fit, but I actually think it has more to do with genes.”