Superior Women

by Alice Adams

  “Oh, Cathy, that’s terrible.”

  “They say it may grow back, but I rather think not. These good Sisters can be the most terrible liars.” And then she said, “One of the problems with cancer is that it can be so fucking slow.”

  Did Cathy used to talk that way? Shocked, Lavinia was almost sure that she did not; only Megan would sometimes use those words, that she probably got from that terrible Adam Marr, or Janet Cohen. Could this person, just possibly, not be Cathy after all?

  Reading Lavinia’s mind (again), Cathy said, I’ll bet you’d hardly have known me, right?”

  Lavinia murmured something—helplessly, incoherently.

  “Well, you might as well sit down, mightn’t you? And tell me what brings you to adorable San Francisco.”

  “Oh. I, uh, came to see you, really.” Lavinia could feel herself flushing, as she said this.

  “Oh, come on now, Lavinia. Don’t be silly. You’re not a nun, you don’t get to lie to me.” The barking laugh again.

  There was no possible answer to that non-joke. Lavinia busied herself with sitting down, putting her bag on the floor beside her. She was still holding the superfluous roses, which fortunately looked very well against her dress: a striped silk, black and yellow, in which she had been shivering, in the San Francisco summer fog that she had heard about but been unable to believe in. She had been unable to imagine a climate other than the one that she was in as she packed, New York’s summer heat. It was rather like trying to imagine yourself another person (at which Lavinia had never been successful): how would it be to be Cathy, dying of cancer?

  “Those roses are perfect with your dress,” unnervingly commented Cathy; in an ironic way she had underlined perfect, as they all used to do—Lavinia sharply, painfully remembered, that funny language of the four of them, the four friends who possibly never really liked each other. The language that she, Lavinia, had always insisted derived from the Duchess de Guermantes, from Proust.

  “Perhaps you should take those roses along to wherever you’re going next,” Cathy then suggested.

  “Oh, don’t be so silly.” Lavinia had not wanted to sound so sharp, but she had just come to a sudden and clear decision, which was that, even dying, Cathy did not have to be so cross, so rude. Nevertheless, Lavinia then asked very gently, “How’s your son getting along—Philip?”

  “Stephen.” Cathy frowned, and looked away, and then she was quiet for a while.

  Lavinia floundered: should she not, after all, have asked about the boy? Of course she had never, not for a minute believed that fishy story of Megan’s, Cathy’s brief marriage to someone instantly dead—but maybe that was true? maybe he too had had cancer? Is anyone absolutely sure that it is not contagious, or somehow passed on?

  Cathy cleared her throat. “Actually Stephen’s fine,” she said. “Remarkably. He lives with my mother and Bill, her husband. It’s as though—” (a long pause) “as though he had been meant to be there, all along. With them.” Her new, quick alarming laugh. “If anyone believed in that kind of master plan.”

  In the pause that followed, Lavinia recognized—and very likely so did Cathy—that that was it. They had covered everything they had to say to each other, possibly. However, how could she possibly leave after only ten minutes?

  “Did you hear about Peglet’s divorce?” Lavinia next brightly attempted. “So crazy, and she’s moved to some old house in the country. In Georgia, of all places.”

  “Is that crazy, necessarily?”

  “Well, uh, in the circumstances. You may not know this, Cathy, but Peglet is an extremely rich girl. Extremely rich.”

  “Oh. Well, you’re right, I didn’t exactly know that.” A pause. “But do you mean that extremely rich people don’t get to live in old houses in Georgia? I would have thought that to be a virtue of richness, you could live anywhere.”

  Lavinia laughed in a feeble way, and only added, “Well, at least she’s had the sense to take a friend along. Some social worker she met in Georgia that summer is going there too.” A pause, before she went on, “And of course now Megan’s the head, or joint head, of that really successful agency.”

  “Oh yes, since her boss died of cancer,” was Cathy’s quick response.

  “Well yes, I guess she did. Barbara Blumenthal.”

  Cathy laughed. “Well, there sure seems to be a lot of it around.” Abruptly, then, she lay back and closed her eyes. “Nap time, I guess. You’ll forgive me?”

  “Oh, Cathy, of course. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stay. Uh, I’ll call you before I go.” Unable to go over and kiss Cathy goodbye (that was probably all right with Cathy, she looked already asleep), Lavinia got up and tiptoed out of the room. She had to get away from all those garish flowers, in their awful plastic containers. Away from Cathy.

  Once out in the corridor, though, Lavinia noticed that she was still carrying the roses she had brought. Too ridiculous; still, no point in their being entirely wasted. They would help her hotel room a little, her supposedly view suite, in the Mark.

  She pushed through the hospital’s swinging doors, passing more nuns, more priests (how ugly they all were, no wonder they’re celibate) and went out into the foggy cold that she had been told about, but not believed.

  She had to wait quite a while before getting a taxi—as she would have to wait, with not much to do, all the next day, until her late afternoon plane to Juneau.

  She did not, therefore, arrive in Juneau in a mood that was exactly upbeat. That grim visit with Cathy left her disturbed and vaguely guilty; she wondered what she could have done, otherwise, in the face of such determined unpleasantness from Cathy. When she had thought at all before of dying people she had believed that they could be counted on to behave in a quiet, somewhat distant way, like saints. But Cathy, who was never notably sweet-tempered, was much worse than ever; in fact she was terrible, and the more Lavinia thought of it the more marked (the more inexcusable, really) that terribleness became. When you came right down to it, Cathy was extremely rude.

  Also, the descent into Juneau is frightening: a narrow passage between steep mountains, sheer cliffs of rock, and below a bluish-white field, which someone at Lavinia’s elbow identifies as a glacier. The Mendenhall Glacier. The air outside the plane is gray with fog, or maybe rain—and dark, and dull.

  She walks into the terminal building, meaning to head straight for the baggage pick-up area. The room is full of foolish-looking, mostly fat, and all very dowdy people, who must have come to meet someone, see someone off. But suddenly there among them she sees Harvey, off to one side, frowning (and shorter than anyone, any grown-up, because of his terrible legs). His face is perfectly all right, just a plain man’s face, which, curiously, away from him Lavinia can never quite remember. However, at the sight of him standing there like that, despite being so “madly in love” with Harvey, Lavinia’s heart drops, coldly. So that he will not limp over to her she rushes toward him, though, her face smiling, beautifully. Reaching him she bends down and they kiss, passionately, although Lavinia can already see that he is annoyed. He is preoccupied with something else, having nothing to do with her.

  Together they move toward the luggage place, as Harvey explains that the hotel at which they were to have met has turned out not to be, after all, the very best one; there was no way to let her know where to go and so, unprecedentedly, he has come to meet her. However, the hotel problem is not what is most on his mind—nor is she at the moment foremost; Lavinia can tell. And she prepares to wait, probably to listen to some boring news about the group called CREEP that he talks about a lot, these days. (Lavinia thinks the name is extremely funny, and she can never remember what those initials stand for—something about re-electing the President, that creep. Harvey laughs too, sometimes.)

  As they stand there together, among all those awful-looking people, in the awful light, Harvey’s small hand holds Lavinia’s, which is fortunately even smaller. As she often does, Lavinia takes in the fact that they are by far the m
ost elegant, the richest-looking people in that place, no comparison. In that dreary, dowdy company they could be visiting royalty, and perhaps they are being taken for exactly that, at just that moment. However, as though she herself were one of those staring people, looking at herself, at Harvey, Lavinia at the same time senses that there is something wrong, in a visual way, with her and Harvey. Something morally amiss is suggested by her height and beauty, coupled with Harvey’s too-short crippled legs, his dreadful ungainly walk. They should not be together, aesthetically; from an exterior or moral point of view, they look like two people who are up to no good, and their sin is much darker and more complex than the simple fact of adultery.

  • • •

  The room in the hotel to which Harvey has moved them is tacky beyond belief (piss-elegant, Megan would probably say, which of course is awful, but sometimes quite descriptive): gold threads in the draperies and a huge painting of big white bears, on black velvet. But they do have windows overlooking the harbor; there are boats, shining silver-gray water, and across the way some darkly wooded islands.

  “Strange, it looks sort of like the coast of Yugoslavia, doesn’t it,” Harvey remarks, as for a moment they stand there, contemplating Juneau. Then, “Christ, come on, let’s go to bed,” and he pulls her along with him, to bed.

  As always, Harvey undresses her; he makes love to her with his usual eager vigor. He makes her come twice, although she notices that he does not come, himself.

  A little while later he orders champagne; good, they do have Dom Pérignon. And he tells her his worrying news: some Cubans have been caught breaking into Democratic headquarters. In the Watergate.

  35

  Letters from Cathy to Megan, excerpted; 1972-73:

  Lousy Lavinia came to see me, such a surprise. I had a strong sense that I was her excuse to be somewhere else, and I responded “appropriately,” i.e., by being horrible to her. All the saint went right out of me at the very sight. I was even glad that she had worn all the wrong clothes, probably the first time in her life that happened, i.e., she had on summer silks, in which she must have frozen. In any case, it was my feeling that she was “up to no good.”

  You are very nice to offer to come to see me. My feeling really is, no. I look terrible and you would be upset. Even hardhearted Lavinia was upset. Your letters are great. I enjoy writing to you. I repeat: it is kind of you to offer, and it is good to know that you would come if I asked. Okay? You can hear what I’m saying?

  One thing about dying is the time that it is a waste of (do you like that sentence?). I can no longer kid myself that I am engaged in any other activity whatsoever. I am dying, and the process seems to get slower every day. If only I weren’t stuck in this religion which prohibits the “easy way out.”

  Stephen is fine. I have made my mother stop bringing him here. She is much better at motherhood than I was (am, would be—this dying messes up tenses, along with everything else). But did God have to give me cancer to get me out of the way? I would willingly just have given her the kid.

  Aren’t the Watergate hearings fun? I have fallen in love with the eyebrows of Senator Ervin.

  I now seem to be having what is called a remission, and I can’t tell you how that enrages me. It is like going back to GO, without passng anything worthwhile or collecting anything. I have really had more than enough cancer time already. My mother brought me a lovely book, however, which you have no doubt already read a dozen times. Cranford, by Mrs. Gaskell. That Victorian coziness is so comforting, like being born into the right family after all. It’s too bad the afterlife can’t go backwards, or around in a circle, if you see what I mean. In that case I could die and be reborn as a Victorian spinster, in some English village, which would certainly beat being an unmarried Catholic mother, in what we call modern America. Are you going to marry that Henry Stuyvesant? I never think about the Father (cap’s a mistake, but honesty makes me let it stand) of Stephen. Thank God for that.

  I think the remission is over. Would you really come out? I think I need to see you.

  At that small note, which unaccountably took five days to get from San Francisco to New York, Megan instantly calls her travel agent. The first flight she can get on is the next morning, a Friday, and it goes from Newark, rather than JFK, to Oakland, rather than San Francisco, all of which is all right.

  She will call her own parents once she has got there and seen Cathy, Megan decides—sitting at her important cluttered desk, at her important East Fifties address. And she plans to call Cathy’s mother late that afternoon; surely she will be able to find the letter on which Cathy, with the prescience which has seemed a part of her illness, has given Megan her mother’s new married name, and her telephone number. “In case you ever have some hurried need to know how I am,” Cathy wrote.

  Megan tells Leslie that she will be in California—“for at least a week, probably.”

  “No problem.”

  Megan reflects that she cannot stand people who say “no problem.” And that it is qute unnecessary to explain to Leslie the nature of her mission in California.

  Later that afternoon, that Thursday, there is to be a book party at one of the big uptown hotels, to which Megan feels that she must go; the publisher is extremely important (viewed, currently, as “hot”), and Megan has been at times much less cordial toward him than she might have been, professionally. (She privately regards him as an idiot, but how could he be? she has asked herself.) In any case today seems an opportune time for her to show up, if briefly. However, since she is leaving so early the next day, must pack and all that, she decides not to go home to change before the party.

  About five, then, Megan begins to look for Cathy’s mother’s new name and her telephone number, which surprisingly she finds right away; she herself had neatly written them down in her address book, just under Cathy’s name and her hospital address. In any case, she must now call Mrs. Piscetti—her number has an old San Francisco prefix, SKyline, which is enough to make Megan sadly, briefly sigh for California, as she dials the familiar area code, 415.

  “Uh, Mrs. Piscetti? This is Megan Greene, we’ve met—I’m Cathy’s friend—”

  “Oh, Megan, of course. And how very good you are to call.”

  Megan hears the light hint of a brogue in Cathy’s mother’s voice. She tells her, “Cathy wrote me that she’d like to see me, and so tomorrow—”

  “Ah, Megan.” The force in Mrs. Piscetti’s voice has interrupted Megan. “Ah, Megan,” she says. “But Cathy left us. The day before yesterday. Tuesday it was, when she died.”

  “Oh, Jesus.” Gone suddenly cold with shock, Megan clutches the phone to her ear, as Cathy’s mother goes on talking. “In her sleep—no pain—a mercy—”

  “I think I’ll come to California anyway, if that’s all right,” is all that Megan can find to say, and she adds, “I’ll call you when I get there. If you could see me—”

  “Well, Megan dear, of course.”

  In a numb way at the same time Megan decides, hanging up, that she will go on to that party anyway; she will do everything as though Cathy had not died, and she were going out to see her (as though magically that would make Cathy less dead; as though Cathy would go on writing letters, having stronger, more convincing remissions).

  In a dazed way she begins the walk up Fifth Avenue, past all the store windows which at this season blaze with splendor, gold and velvet and furs for the coming holidays. Which Megan barely sees. But, looking down certain side streets in the East Sixties, then Seventies, she is struck by the absolute uniqueness of a particular New York look: the old irregular sidewalks, thick old trees, the small rise of trim white steps, with iron handrails leading up to heavy substantial black doors, polished brass mail slots and nameplates. No blocks in Paris look quite like that, she recalls, nor in San Francisco, where Cathy is. Cathy was.

  She then realizes that she is looking at New York in a strange, elegiac way, as though she would not come back, ever, from her trip to California.
Which is foolish; she is only going for a week or so, and not exactly to see Cathy. She is no longer certain why she is going out there, being simply led by an impulse that instructs her to continue as she was headed, more or less, before Cathy died.

  She then thinks, How odd that I didn’t call Henry. Of all people he would know how much I cared about Cathy. Thinking of not calling Henry, of Henry, Megan suddenly and quite irrationally feels as though Henry too were lost, gone, along with Cathy. Ridiculous: they were together the weekend before.

  In an unconscious way she has walked along one of those so characteristic New York blocks, not quite stumbling on the uneven sidewalk. She has reached her destination, Madison Avenue. And, as she turns the corner, again heading north, she is accosted by a mammoth travel poster, in a window (later she thinks of, finally remembering, the scene in The Informer, and Victor McLaglen, Gippo, caught by a poster whirled around his legs, advertising escape). This poster shows an almost naked couple on a beach. Bright blue ocean, palm trees. Come to Hawaii, at a new bargain rate. Its appeal is so improbable, so trashily unreal, that Megan thinks, Well, why not? Why not do just that: go to a trashy, unlikely place, and lie there anonymously, in the harsh, leveling sunlight, impersonally, for a week? She notes that the airline involved is the same one on which she is traveling to San Francisco, which seems some sort of sign, in her curious, numb mood. She could fly to San Francisco, she could go to see Cathy’s mother—and then go on to bake in the sun, to sweat everything out of herself, to forget everything, in Hawaii.

  Although she is early, the party which is Megan’s actual destination is already crowded, and smoky.

  The first person she sees, though at a distance, is the hot young publisher, Benny, for whose sake she is here. He is not hard to see, in his pink suede blazer, with his conspicuously blond hair, his famously frightening pale blue eyes. Although he is married, and the father of several children, this man’s appearance and his rather high voice (“he sounds so much like Truman”) both give rise to constant rumors as to his sexual direction: “But of course he’s gay,” is whispered, or sometimes loudly, drunkenly asserted, up and down Madison Avenue. To Megan, however, this seems not to be the case; to her he comes across as not in any sense a sexual person, he is as sexually neutral as anyone she has ever met. And all the talk about how he published and extravagantly promoted a novel by a certain beautiful boy is nonsense, she believes; Benny was drawn to that book in a business way, and to its author by a pure and violently commercial instinct, which turned out to be quite sound: the book made hundreds of thousands for Benny’s house, as he knew that it would.