by Alice Adams
Half waking from the lively nonsleep of a drugged insomniac, at 4 A.M. (too late for another pill), Lavinia, alone in the house in Fredericksburg, begins to contemplate the rest of her life. Ahead she can only see, like giant impending tombstones, a row of unbearable anniversaries, all close at hand: the day on which her father will have been dead for a year; the anniversary of Watergate, which sent Harvey Rodman finally off to the Bahamas; her fiftieth birthday; her thirtieth college reunion (Christ, thirty years since that hopeful—well, fairly hopeful, very pretty June?). And the final tombstone, the largest, marks thirty years of marriage to Potter, which will require an enormous party, and she simply cannot, cannot do it.
What she will do, she thinks—what she often, almost always plans at that hour—will be what she thinks of as “take-some-pills.” She will do it very carefully, too: she will not eat a big dinner (perhaps no dinner is best, just a lot of wine?) so as not to throw up, and live. So disgusting—an ambulance, stomach pump, retrieval. Everyone’s curiosity as to why, and their flowers, sympathy. Herself looking awful. No. She will go about it properly, systematically, scientifically (she smiles to herself just slightly at that last). She will very successfully take-some-pills. Instant sleep, lovely, permanent sleep.
If she could stop smoking, could possibly, conceivably just quit, Lavinia thinks, several hours later, over morning coffee and her third cigarette (possibly her fourth, if you count the one in bed, at five)—if she could possibly stop smoking her skin would most assuredly improve, not to mention the dry cough that seems to attack her voice, especially at the end of phone calls.
Dry. Dry skin, a dry cough, a dry, uh, “place.” (At that moment she curiously recalls Henry Stuyvesant, who used to talk, or whisper, rather, about her “lovely cunt,” a word she has never brought herself to use. In any case, not lovely now.) Hot, dry. Would an ice cube possibly—God, she might try anything—would an ice cube there do anything for her?
Sipping coffee, smoking, in the prettyish (it should be redone) breakfast room, on the cold Virginia morning, Lavinia is wearing a long white quilted satin robe, which is warm but rather old, at least three or four years old, but whoever except Potter will possibly see her in it? It is even somewhat stained, she then notices, looking down, with the interesting interior frown that no one is there to observe. Lavinia has then an instant of pure déjà vu: with a lopsided jolt of her heart she sees that her robe could be the old one she always wore around Barnard Hall (although it is not, of course not; nothing lasts that long, thank God).
However, in 1943, or ’44, ’45—for years, whatever she wore (it didn’t matter) Lavinia was so beautiful, a rarely lovely young blond girl, who could get by with wearing anything at all. Whereas now—now she needs everything she can buy, all the Laszlo and Elizabeth Arden, the Valentino, Gucci, everyone. She needs them all desperately, and still they are not enough.
All the men she has known have loved her clothes, Lavinia recalls, with a diffuse affection that includes both the men and the clothing. Even Gordon Shaughnessey (she won’t think how long ago that was, will not count back), even poor Gordon always loved the silk and lace panties she used to wear, on top of her lace garter belt. She thinks of Gordon touching all that silk and lace that he never actually saw, since they never took off clothes, never actually (thank God, Potter had to have his virgin) ever did anything but touch.
Even Henry Stuyvesant, who turned out to be such a horrible radical Communist—Henry always loved, or said he did, the dresses that Lavinia wore, the scarves, the tiny bras, from France.
Whereas, whatever Megan wore would be just not right, no matter where she shopped or how much money she spent. Lavinia sits up taller and she almost smiles at this, her most cheering thought in hours. Something to do with coming from California, probably, or more to the point, with coming from nothing, in terms of family. No real family, no money.
Style in dress is rather like an accent, one’s way of speaking, Lavinia concludes; a notion that she finds extremely interesting. No matter how people try to change they can never really hide where or from whom they come. Poor Harvey Rodman, with his careful (well yes, too careful) Ivy League clothes, and that perfect Princeton accent (and at least that part was true; he did go to Princeton); but sometimes some other telltale vowel would escape, and Lavinia would be reminded that before Princeton there was probably a public high school, and not the quite uncheckable Midwestern Catholic military place he named. Just as Megan’s shoes or her gloves or her makeup or something would always be just wrong.
But it does not make Lavinia happy to think of Megan and Henry Stuyvesant together—even if she is quite sure that Henry must wish that Megan had more style. And they have been together for years, although of course with Megan so busy in New York and Henry still (incomprehensibly) down there in Chapel Hill, they probably do not spend much time together. And of course she, Lavinia, could always get Henry back, if she should condescend to do so.
That last sentence, like a tiny bead, a bright gleam among Lavinia’s now habitually shadowy thoughts, drops entirely from her mind, for most of the hours of that day, as she goes about doing nothing: some phone calls, reading, out for shopping, eating, resting. She achieves nothing but further steps toward age: aging, drying, gravity pulling at everything, all of her sagging downward, until she begins to wonder: Why not now? Why not today, to take pills?
But then that small sentence about Henry reappears, this time expanded and much more clear: I could get Henry back, if I condescended to do so, and then make sure Megan found out, and then I would drop him cold, Lavinia thinks. Of course she will do no such thing, but the certainty that she could—she could ruin everything, for them both!—makes Lavinia smile, for the second time that day. And it makes her decide that no, no: no need to take pills just yet. She might as well stick around for a while and see what happens.
Although she rarely drinks at all (well, Potter drinks enough for both of them, God knows), she decides to have a glass of wine with her dinner.
“It’s odd that you should call,” says Henry Stuyvesant.
Lavinia laughs, rather sadly. It is about ten, that night, and all the monsters that haunt her mind are out in force. And so, having more or less planned that her tone with Henry would be frightened, close to panic, even, she now finds no need for pretense. She is frightened. It is raining outside, and cold, with a bellowing wind, and the images in her mind are worse than any possible weather. “I called you because I hate everything so much,” she now says to Henry, “and I didn’t use to. I mean, when I knew you I was okay, and now I’m not.”
A pause, before Henry clears his throat. “Well, dear Lavinia. You mustn’t feel like that. Although we all do sometimes, I suppose.”
“Oh, Henry, please don’t lecture me. I honestly can’t bear it.”
“I didn’t mean to, Lavinia. I’m upset at how you sound. I’d like to help.”
They settle, at last, on his stopping by the next day. He is driving up to Washington, then going on to New York. They do not mention Megan.
After all that wind and rain, the following day is brilliant, washed all clean and perfectly clear, except for some low-lying silver mists down on the river, far below Lavinia’s house.
All day she has moved in a dreamy, tranced way, avoiding Jethro, the black man who is there to clean. Everything that Jethro does makes so much noise, the vacuum, with all its attachments, all the cleaning water that he runs; Jethro even makes furniture polish whine.
With a cup of tea and then a small blue bowl of soup Lavinia wanders wherever Jethro is not, sometimes resting, or at least just sitting down for a while. Every now and then in a surprised way she observes that she is crying.
She is still in her long white robe (still stained, with some ugly blood at the back, she has noticed) and she knows she should change, before Henry comes. I will change into something beautiful and then take some pills, she thinks, but does neither.
Jethro leaves around six, as usual,
and then the house is empty and perfectly quiet. So quiet, and it occurs to Lavinia that the phone has not rung all day. Picking it up she discovers that the line is dead, out here a not at all unusual occurrence. But sinister, just now.
Of course Henry will not come to her at all; he was simply “being nice,” when he said that he would. He was hoping to get her through a bad night, maybe thinking that she was drunk, and would be over it in the morning. Nice Henry.
However, with Henry not coming there seems no point in taking pills—nor does there, for that matter, seem to be much point in not taking pills. In “sticking around.”
In that suspended mood Lavinia decides, at least, to bathe (maybe take pills in her tub? not tonight, but maybe later on? She had not quite thought of that before. However, it is probably not a good idea, after all. The water might wake her up, or else make her all swollen, a bloated corpse. Very Grade B). She throws a lot of flower-scented foamy lotion into the tub, hoping to make her bath last an hour or so, thus to take up—to kill off an hour.
This old house, which was built a couple of hundred years ago, between the Revolution and the Civil War, like an elderly person seems to creak the more, with its increasing age. And its sounds are unreliable; generally they signify nothing. Lavinia, in her cooling bathwater, tells herself these things as she hears what could be (but undoubtedly is not) the distant opening, the closing of the front door of her house.
She turns on more hot water. Lying back, just for a minute or two she runs her hands along her body, so beautifully smooth, so lightly, lightly oiled.
But unless she is crazy, delusional, which most surely is highly possible, there are footsteps on the stairs.
She is slightly groggy from so much immersion in warmth and steam, and what she thinks is, Well, good. Someone has broken in, to murder and rob me. I won’t have to take pills. I wonder, will he rape me first? Don’t they usually? (And if he does, will I come? Does anyone, being raped?)
Strangest of all, the intruder—and there really is someone, she can hear him—the intruder knows her name. She can hear herself being called, “Lavinia, Lavinia where in hell are you?”
She recognizes that Henry Stuyvesant has arrived, at last, and probably does not mean to murder her, or to rape. She sighs, before answering, “I’m in here.”
Watching the gold doorknob as it turns, a motion that seems infinitely slow, she has time to think: Could some murderer have learned to impersonate Henry’s voice?
But it is Henry, though, who comes in to her, the old tall giraffe, with his thick glasses and old tweed coat, his receding, graying curly hair. At the sight of him, uncontrollably and quite incomprehensibly Lavinia bursts into tears. Sitting up in the tub, in all those stupid bubbles, one arm covers her breasts (though small, they have fallen a little, in all those years); with the other hand she tries to shield her eyes—getting soap in, making everything worse.
Henry quickly sits down on the heavy white rug, beside the tub (or squats: his knees creak, like her house, as he does so). He reaches toward Lavinia, touching her back. She feels scratchiness, then smells wet tweed.
He is saying, “Jesus, I must have scared you, Lavy, I’m really sorry. My goddamn carburetor, damned old car—damn Detroit! I tried all day to call you.”
Through sobs, she manages to say, “It’s not that, I wasn’t afraid. Oh Henry, that’s what’s so frightful, I wanted someone to come in and kill me. So I won’t have to kill myself. Oh Christ, if you knew how I hate my life.”
“Come on, now.”
“Oh, it’s true, I hate everything. Potter, and Amy, and everyone I know, and me. Christ, how I hate being me.”
“Lavinia, come on. Get up out of that cold water. Right now. Later we can talk all night, if you want to.”
She has stopped crying; she is looking at Henry, his thick fogged glasses, big nose, wide mouth.
He says, “Come on, I mean it. Shall I help you out?”
“No, you go on into the sitting room.” But then she begins to cry again—crying, shivering, everything out of control, nothing as intended, as meant. She is an ugly white old woman, all gooseflesh, crying, crying, and every single minute getting older, uglier. It no longer matters at all if Henry sees her fallen breasts.
Making what seems the most enormous effort of her life, Lavinia stands up in the tub; she reaches past Henry for a towel—but of course he can already see everything, even (probably) the two white hairs that hurt too much to pull—except that his glasses are still so fogged, he might not see.
Henry wraps the towel around her, and rubs.
It is like an embrace but it is not one, not really, except that Lavinia suddenly longs to be kissed—to be healed, to be blessed. She looks up at Henry, who now has taken off his glasses, in so much steam; she sees his eyes, so dark, so thickly lashed, so beautiful. In what she believes to be her old familiar voice (in control), Lavinia says, “Henry, I can’t tell you how sorry I am, I’ve been acting so crazy.”
Henry says, “The truth is, you’ve never been more beautiful.”
Even as Henry is making love to her, in the broad soft bed that for so long was theirs (the Porthault sheets are new, however, or relatively new; they were presents from Harvey)—even then, as Henry kisses her lightly, perfectly, a far part of Lavinia’s mind continues to think: How strange, what I meant all along to happen is happening, but somehow not as I meant it to.
And she thinks, He must do this to Megan too, but I don’t care; she is awful, and I am very beautiful, lovely, everywhere.
“I guess I’ve just been, well, extremely depressed,” Lavinia tells Henry, the next morning, over a rather scanty breakfast (hardly anything but cold cereal and instant coffee in the house, no eggs or milk). Lavinia laughs, at the same time giving him her old serious concentrated look. “I’m not aging well,” she says. “But today, I must say, everything seems gone. All the horrible things, I mean.”
“I should have been a doctor.” Henry smiles, then frowns. “But there are some things you could do, you know. About being depressed, I mean.”
“Oh, I know. A shrink, or some encounter group. A face lift, a vigorous exercise class. If you knew how I hate exercise.”
“Honestly, I wasn’t thinking of any of those.”
“Not even a shrink? Oh, I’ll bet you were. But I know, you’d want me to get ‘involved,’ to join in some left-wing groupie thing.” Lavinia can see that she is successfully annoying him (but why?).
Henry only says, “No, I don’t want you to join anything,” but he sounds cross.
“It’s odd how much Amy is like you,” Lavinia comments, as though she had never said this before. “Not in looks, of course, but her ideas—pure you.”
“Lavinia, for God’s sake, we’ve been through all this. She simply is not—she is not my child. Just because you’ve decided not to like her.”
Lavinia laughs, her old light self-admiring laugh. “Not like my own daughter? Don’t be silly, of course I love Amy. I just didn’t like her living in that Berkeley commune, or whatever it is. With those Hari Krishnas, or whoever. Or being so fat,” she adds, with feeling.
“Well, you must admit that Potter’s quite a lot fatter than I am.”
“Oh Henry, why do we always quarrel? Do you know? Do you and Megan fight?”
Henry frowns, severely. “No.”
That is all the mention of Megan between Lavinia and Henry, that day. When Henry leaves, as he quite soon does, Lavinia does not say (although it crosses her mind that she might do so), Give my love to Megan.
But Megan stays in Lavinia’s mind all that day—curiously, almost more than Henry does. She wants very much to talk to Megan, but even with her excellent mind working hard at this problem (perhaps too hard?), it takes her quite a while to work out what she will say.
“Megan darling, I know it’s late, but I’ve had such a day.”
It is about four thirty, but Megan so far has sounded surprisingly relaxed, not so cross and rushed as she
often does, these days. She merely asks, “Where are you, Lavinia? You sound so far away.”
“Oh, just down in Fredericksburg. You know, resting up. Doing things around the house.”
“Oh.” Megan does not sound especially interested in Lavinia’s house, but then she never has.
“Well, it’s about Amy. I’ve been meaning to call you. I know how busy you are, but Amy has this friend, her boyfriend, I guess—they’re all so strange about sex, these days. Anyway, Amy insists that he writes absolutely terrific poetry. And she knows that I know you. And so I said I’d ask.”
Startlingly (and rather irritatingly) Megan laughs. “This seems to be children-of-friends day,” she explains, and laughs again. “I just had a really nice long lunch with Aron Marr. You know, Janet and Adam’s boy.”
“Oh, really? I’d heard he was, uh, queer.”
“Well, I guess he is homosexual, yes.” Megan’s voice has stiffened. “But I think he’s written a very good novel. So ironic in a way that he should.” (Lavinia has sensed that Megan is not thinking about her—is more or less talking to herself.) “I wonder how Adam would have reacted to his son’s being a good writer.”
Who in hell cares, Lavinia does not say. But it is annoying for Megan to go on, as she now does, about this silly little Jewish fag, when she, Lavinia, called to talk about her daughter and her daughter’s talented friend. Also, every time Megan has ever mentioned that awful Adam Marr, since his very sordid death, she has sounded almost mournful.
In a heedless (or perhaps deeply thought-out) way, Lavinia next says, “I meant to ask Henry about all this with Amy, but then just as he was leaving I forgot.”
“Leaving?”
“Yes, this morning.”
A pause—has Megan hung up? But there was no click. And then Megan says, very clearly, “I assume that this call was really to tell me that Henry has just been to see you in Fredericksburg?” Unused to direct accusations, Lavinia improvises. “Oh now, Megan baby, don’t be so ‘uptight,’ as the kids say. I assumed you two had some really civilized arrangement, after all this time.” She suddenly recognizes that she has not felt so well in years; in fact, it could be all of thirty years ago, when she used to have such a good time teasing Megan, so easy to bring her close to tears.