Superior Women

by Alice Adams

  “Not at all, that was the whole point. Don’t you see that? How stupid you are!” Megan hears her own too loud voice, strident, ugly and hateful.

  “I suppose you’re right, given Lavinia,” muses Henry, thoughtfully—academically, “objectively.” “That’s not how it seemed at the time.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet not!” Now Megan feels her own face redden, her blood heating, everywhere. How she would like to hit him, oh, scratch his face! Crazily flashing backwards, irrelevantly, she wonders if this was how her mother was: did Florence scream and yell at Harry? Megan thinks how she would love to throw something, red wine, or the soup, which is extremely hot.

  “Is there any point in telling you I’m sorry it happened?” Henry asks her.

  “No!” screams Megan.

  “Megan, darling, please—”

  “Lavinia, of all people in the world!”

  For this is what Megan has been thinking all day, in various ways: Lavinia, who represents, as it were, everything that Megan has come to despise, most of whose ideas and aims are indeed despicable. Lavinia the bigot, the proud, beautiful, and irrevocably rich; unimaginatively, self-righteously filthy rich. And, almost worse, Lavinia the former condescending friend, who knows: who knew that Henry is Megan’s lover now, who chose to tell Megan. “Jesus, don’t you see that?” she cries out to Henry, from the depths of her helpless, degrading rage.

  “But I thought you always knew about Lavinia—,” he begins.

  “Knew that you had an affair with her—that you used to—fuck? Yes, I did, and it didn’t exactly make me like you any better, ever.” (But is that true? On the other hand, perhaps it did? Lavinia was part of her attraction to Henry? How sick.)

  “I went to bed with someone when I went to Hawaii, when Cathy died,” Megan now tells Henry (and why? why now—for punishment? She does not quite know, but goes on). “But it was someone you don’t know. Who doesn’t know you. I mean, it had nothing to do with you.”

  “Your reasoning is very interesting.” Henry’s voice has gone hard, and dry. Bone dry.

  “It’s you, you’ve ruined everything!” Megan cries.

  Henry stands up. “It sounds to me as though we’ve both ruined everything,” he tells her.

  They are staring at each other, still, their eyes full of rage and disbelief. Their eyes might melt, in that violent heated terrible glare.

  It is Megan who breaks it. “Okay, just go!” She shoots out the words at him, and then forces herself to look down, at her hands, which grip the edge of the table as though she were drowning.

  She continues to clutch the table as she listens to Henry’s receding footsteps. The closing door.

  Gone. As Megan thinks, “for good.”

  40

  “I am living in a lovely house out on California Street. I am with some lovely new friends.” These are the first and seemingly innocuous sentences of a letter that comes to Megan from her mother, Florence—a letter that, reread, sounds so alarming, so wrong, that Megan, never a dutiful nor even a particularly affectionate daughter, begins to make arrangements to go out to California, to rescue her mother.

  This letter arrives on a day early in March, a March that closely resembles the previous November, and the day looks much like that on which Megan last saw Henry Stuyvesant: the terrible final fight, about Lavinia. This day too is gray and full of snow, and unseasonably cold; now, as then, from her high office window Megan observes the pedestrians down on 57th Street walking stiffly, defensively, braced against chill winds.

  This is the month during which, in balmier Virginia weather, poor Lavinia is recovering from her face and breast lifts, which Megan of course does not know about. Nor, for that matter, does Henry Stuyvesant.

  The first thing that seems odd or wrong about Florence’s letter is the return address, “out on California Street.” The numbers in the address are familiar to Megan, dimly but certainly; as they come into focus she remembers paying bills to that address, to a doctor’s office she once went to. It must have been right next door to her mother’s lovely new house, or a couple of houses down. Except that there were no lovely houses around, Megan clearly remembers: more doctors’ offices, a mortuary, a motel, and a rest home, the last two almost indistinguishable from each other, both very ugly, one-story redwood structures.

  Megan first thinks, Well, silly old Florence. If she’s living in a motel, why can’t she just say so? Can she be managing one, with Harry?

  She reads on.

  “You father sure surprised me when he left, or rather when he said for me to leave, but I guess the wife is always the last to know, ha ha. Well, dumb old me, but I never would have thought he had the energy for a younger woman. To me forty-five is plenty younger, a chick. But I sincerely hope they will be very happy together, and I was very happy to let them have the house, especially with me being ‘out of a job,’ which I guess a lot of folks are, these days. But there is no point in my living next to the Bayshore anymore. I never did like it out there, and I know you didn’t either, Megan. Harry’s welcome, I say.”

  It is all false. Wrong. Impossible.

  The telephone operator in San Francisco is no help. Chilled, with rising fear Megan hears that there is no number listed for Mrs. Florence Greene at that address, and that the operator does not know what building is at that street number; they do not give out numbers like that. It is clear that if anything further indeed were known, he would not tell Megan, not this operator. Not this phone company.

  Megan then dials her father’s number, the old awful near-the-Bayshore house, and then his shop, WE BUY JUNQUE. No answer at either place, and Megan thinks, unkindly, The old bastard. Off with a chick indeed.

  Obviously Florence is in the rest home, and Harry put her there—so convenient for him. And for all Megan knows there is really something wrong, some physical problem that Florence has not seen fit to mention; Megan over the years has never exactly been a sympathetic audience for her mother—she knows that.

  All the rest of that morning, through several dozen phone calls, some dictated letters, and three appointments, Megan thinks of Florence, in the “lovely house out on California Street.” By early afternoon, her first lull of the day, through which light snow flurries still vaguely drift, it is clear to Megan that she has to go out there. To see Florence, find out what is going on.

  Leslie is out “doing lunch” again with Benny, the still hot, still young publisher.

  Megan and Biff have discussed this slightly odd connection. “If either of them was even remotely like anyone else, in a sexual way,” Megan has observed, “I’d think they were having an affair. Off screwing, in some hotel.”

  “Well, you’re certainly right that they’re not like other people, in that way,” Biff has agreed. “Maybe they go shopping together. Or maybe they go to hotels and do something really sinister, like trying on each other’s clothes. God knows they’re both thin enough, they’d probably fit,” sighs portly Biff.

  “I did hear that Benny and his wife are separated.”

  “Benny married at all is more than I can contemplate,” sniffs Biff.

  “Well, he loves those little girls.”

  “Darling Megan, of course he does. But wait till they grow up. So clever, his clearing out before that happens.”

  “Do you think that’s how he loves Leslie, as a skinny little girl?”

  “Or a little boy. Well, quite possibly. Although I rather see a naked lust for power as the great bond there. It’s a marvelous substitute for sex, I’m told.”

  In any case, the Leslie-Benny connection has provided a theme and many variations for gossip between Megan and Biff, and undoubtedly for many other New York publishing people as well.

  Megan and Henry Stuyvesant have exchanged a few letters since their ugly “final” quarrel, the preceding November. He being more in the wrong (his episode with Lavinia being “worse” than Megan’s with Jackson Clay—in what Henry termed Megan’s odd logic, but which he has accepted), i
n any case Henry wrote the first letter to Megan; he wrote several letters before she answered. His tone was sad, regretful rather than specifically apologetic. He seemed most to mourn the loss of their friendship, and indeed in important ways their connection has been precisely that. They have always talked so much to each other, have talked, and talked, and talked. Possibly because she felt the same regret Megan has responded in kind; she and Henry began a correspondence which had the sound of two people sharing a loss. Sad old friends.

  And so it is to Henry that Megan now writes and explains her flight to San Francisco, on the following day. “She is obviously in a rest home,” Megan writes, “and trying to sound as though she were not. Putting a good face on things, which is what she’s always done, now that I think about it. I guess I do that too, sometimes. And of course one reason that I’m going out to see her is guilt for all the times that I didn’t. Anyway, I’m off tomorrow.

  “I’ve been trying to imagine Florence old. She is just the same age as the century, which at least makes it easy to remember. Born in June.”

  In these old-friends letters that pass between Henry and Megan, two things are never mentioned: one, Lavinia, and his defection; and two, the possibility of their seeing each other again, Henry and Megan. And if those omissions seem odd to either of them, that too goes unsaid.

  Two days later, in the St. Francis Hotel, in San Francisco, Florence Greene is talking to her daughter.

  “What I loved about that work was all the friends,” says Florence. “You wouldn’t believe all the folks I got to know. The whole trick to it, the trick to being a carhop, is to work real hard and fast but be friendly too, when you get to take a breath. And it’s plenty hard work, I can tell you that. Folks hassle you, some don’t act nice. Guys coming on. But if you can take all that, and still be nice and get your work done, well, you’ve got yourself a lot of friends. You’re a person folks will want to come back to, just to see her. And I have to tell you, Megan honey, I was really super good at what I did. I got to be the fastest with the orders, and I was the one the most folks came back to see. And of course I don’t mean any of that sex come-on stuff. As you well know, I was almost a middle-aged woman when I started out there. Although, to be honest with you, there was sometimes a little of that. For a while, at first. Well, sometime I’ll tell you. Or maybe I won’t.

  “But it was mostly the friends, just plain old friends. Local folks were lots of my friends, of course. That figures. Folks from Mountain View, down to San Jose, over to Cupertino. And city folks, coming down from up here in San Francisco. After a few times they’d get to know me enough to call my name. ‘Hey Florence, I bet you don’t remember us.’ You would not believe how many people said just those exact, identical words to me. But the thing is I did remember them, I could call to mind exactly what their order was, the time before. You know, cheeseburger, hold the fries, no onion, special onion rings. Whatever. I have this kind of a trick memory. I can bring back any order, as soon as I see the person’s face. So it’s really lucky I got into that kind of work, although I know both you and your dad were dead against it, at first. Do you have a specially good memory, Megan?

  “Anyway, when I could recall like that those folks got such a kick, it was like some present I’d given them. They’d get excited, and I guess it was one of the things that made them come back again, to see if I still remembered. People coming back, some of them from really far away. Friends all over the country, and some of them would even send me postcards from the rest of their trip, or from when they got back home. You won’t believe this, Meg, but there was one couple from England, used to visit in Woodside, that’s a fancy place, you remember—lot of horses, pictures of horses in the paper, with their people. Well, these visiting English got to know me, sort of, and they used to write to me, from there. This funny sounding town, Chipping-something. Funny, how I can recall what they ordered every time but not the name of their town.

  “Well, friends from all over. Always something to look forward to, every day. No telling who might show up. I can tell you, I really miss it now. And while the place was still there, and I wasn’t, I used to wonder what they’d say to folks who come there, asking for me. Well, it stands to reason, some of them must have? I left my new address, when I moved, but I wonder about the postcards I used to get. The drive-in’s all tore down now, a big old office building put where it was.

  “Now Meg, don’t look so sad. It’s all okay, things work out, some way. I’m just telling you how it was, my good old times.”

  Megan is less sad than embarrassed, disturbed at these revelations of her mother’s strong, eager needs, so like her own. The needs that made her, too, so “good with people.”

  • • •

  Florence, in her late seventies, looks, well, odd. Her hair, for so many years bleached and dyed a brassy bright blond (“waitress blond,” Megan, to her present shame, has termed it, to herself), now has grown out several inches, at least two, past blond to white, a bright clean white, as startling in its way as the blond hair was. Her face is weathered, tanned. “Rain or shine, I walk my five miles a day, and sometimes more. I like it outdoors,” Florence has explained. “May have ruined my skin, though. Doctors tell us everything too late, it seems like to me.” Her skin is less ruined than it is intensely wrinkled. With her small nose and round brown eyes, and the violent band of white hair, she has the look of a monkey, an impression increased by the animation, the energy involved in all her gestures, her facial expressions.

  “Well, we don’t look much alike, that’s something you’ve escaped,” Florence has commented, to her daughter.

  “No, but I really wish we did. I’ve always wished I were thin and blond,” Megan tells her, as Lavinia crosses her mind.

  “Well, what I would have given for a shape like yours. Nobody’s content with themselves, have you noticed? But I probably got myself in plenty of trouble without a shape.”

  “Well, me too. With.”

  They both laugh, a little warily—still sizing each other up, still questioning.

  The rescue of Florence, once launched, turned out to be less difficult than Megan had imagined.

  First, she remembered that in the office they had a San Francisco telephone directory, the fat book of yellow pages. Under Rest Homes she found what came to a single page of listings, and on that page, easily enough, she found the address that Florence had given her. “California Pines,” the place was called.

  At that time it was eleven thirty in New York, thus eight thirty in San Francisco, a perfectly reasonable time to call a rest home, Megan decided. But still she had to force herself; her hands shook and she didn’t trust her voice. She was sorely afraid of whatever she would find out about Florence. Afraid of Florence.

  A creaking, elderly voice answered the phone, which in her panic Megan assumed to be the voice of Florence. But no; however this person would summon Mrs. Greene, right away.

  And Florence, who arrived with merciful alacrity—she could have been waiting for Megan to call—Florence was instantly reassuring. Her voice, if not young, was clear and strong. How smart of Megan to find her, Florence said, and how good of her to call. Although she, Florence, was perfectly all right, never better. It is pretty silly, actually, her being in any rest home. The truth was, she took sick the winter before and finally she had to have an operation. Her gall bladder, it turned out to be. And that damned Harry arranged for her to go from the hospital to the rest home. And since then she’s just not quite had the gumption to get out of there, just too lazy, she guessed. And she did like the people, although most of them were too old to be much fun.

  “But we can’t just gab on like this, this call must be costing you a fortune,” she said to Megan.

  Megan explained about WATS lines, and then she said that she wanted to come out to California, to see Florence. And at that point the conversation became very strained, and difficult.

  Florence repeated how well she was, what a lovely place, what love
ly friends. No need for Megan to go to any trouble. She went on and on until Megan concluded that Florence hated and was deeply ashamed of where she was.

  She had to come to San Francisco on business, Megan lied. She had booked a double room at the St. Francis; would Florence please just meet her there? That way they would have a chance to talk, maybe plan something. Maybe, even, Florence could come on to New York for a while?

  And that is as far as they have got, with plans; the next day Florence, in the car that Megan has rented, will go back out to “California Pines” to collect the rest of her things (it is clear that she does not want Megan to come with her). Megan will attend to the business that brought her out here. And then they will take an early afternoon plane for New York. Florence has been assured that Megan has plenty of money, plenty of room. She, Florence, will visit “for a while.”

  • • •

  The last time Megan stayed at the St. Francis was for the short visit that terminated in New York with the horrifying news of Adam’s murder. Megan now thinks about Adam—and about Cathy, remembering that she did not call Mrs. Piscetti again, having once failed to get her.

  And she decides against calling her now; it is easier to imagine or to assume that they are all well and happy, Stephen growing up, college, all that.

  She does wonder about Cathy’s priest, the father of Stephen: where and how he is, and if he thinks much of Cathy, and of Stephen. Very likely he has more children, by his wife? Megan does not wish him well.

  Adam’s murder has remained unsolved, a “random killing.”

  But Megan is in fairly close touch with Aron Marr, son of Adam; his novel is coming out the following fall, two book clubs are interested, and Megan believes, and has confided to Janet, that it will do well. “Maybe just as well Adam’s not around to see that,” is Janet’s wry response. “I’m not sure that he could cope with a successful writer son. And Jesus, a novel about a gay relationship.” Megan thinks that Janet is probably right.