by Alice Adams
And no one scolded Claire for her dirty dress, making it a most unusual evening for all of them. Claire took some chicken and biscuits up to her room, with the vague thought that maybe from now on her whole life would be patterned after this extraordinary day: happy hours of attention from the older kids, and smiles and kisses and happy getting-along-well parents at home.
Naturally enough, things did not continue in quite that way. Sometimes the older kids were nice to Claire and sometimes not, and most of the time Isabel and Bayard got along as badly as ever, and they drank, and drank.
And, like many couples whose mainstay is sheer rage, they kept on being married. Flamboyant Isabel had a couple of flagrant affairs (Claire gathered this from local gossip, later); they separated, reconciled; they both threatened suicide and got drunk together, instead.
Later, Claire escaped to a college in New England, where she was for the most part extremely happy: new friends, a turbulent emotional life, with boys—and no parents. She kept vacations at home to a minimum, often visiting New York or New England friends, instead.
And then, having graduated, she further escaped, to San Francisco, to the first of a series of impressive jobs (impressive to her friends; Isabel and Bayard always seemed a little vague as to what it was, exactly, that she did). But, writing letters back and forth, they got along quite well, Claire and her parents. Better than ever.
Which led to one of her more conspicuous errors in judgment: one June, having been told that her parents were going to Greece for a month, on an impulse Claire wrote and asked if (maybe, possibly) she could have—even rent—the house for that period; she was between jobs and had four weeks’ vacation coming. She hadn’t been home for so long, and she would really like to see them. Getting no answer at all to her letter, she was—well, hurt. And, characteristically, she castigated herself for that silly pain. How could she possibly, after a lifetime of evidence to the contrary, believe that her parents would behave in an ordinary “parental” way, would want to see her and maybe lend her a house?
However, at the very last minute—the week before they were to leave for Greece—Isabel wrote and said of course she could stay in the house; in fact, it would be quite helpful, since the latest maid had just quit; she was only sorry that their timing now worked out so that she and Bayard could not be there when Claire was, not even for a couple of days.
And so Claire rushed about getting tickets, packing—rushed back to Hilton and into love with Spencer Goddard, an impossible man, a local doctor, an allergist, whose wife and children were spending the summer in Vermont. And she fell in love despite several of Claire’s private rules: against affairs with men who were married, with doctors and especially with Southern men, to whom she was not usually drawn (an unreliable lot, in regard to women, as she perfectly well knew). She later excused this lapse by concluding that it was not so much Spencer she had fallen in love with as it was the countryside, the land around Hilton. And that was very likely true.
The house itself was a little depressing that summer: floors long unpolished, certain necessary repairs not made to the tiles on the bathroom floors, the pantry shelves. There was even a smashed pane of glass in the sideboard, where the china and glassware were kept. The absence of a maid could explain some of this, or maybe Bayard and Isabel were drinking even more than usual? Claire was not much bothered by the state of the house, however; once she had fallen in love with Spencer Goddard she paid little attention to anything else.
They met at a party that someone gave for Claire the first week she was back in Hilton (gave out of sheer curiosity, she believed). Spencer was tall and lean, his blond hair almost gray, maybe twenty years older than Claire. Within ten minutes of their meeting he told her that he couldn’t keep his eyes off her, that something about her face was haunting—if he never saw her again he would never forget her face. (Claire to Susan, later: “Only a submoron would fall for a man who came on like that.”) And the next morning he was at her door with roses, saying that this was the most beautiful day, so far, that summer; wouldn’t she come for a walk?
They walked down the white dirt road that led from her house to the woods, and turned off on the path that led to the waterfall and the small meadow of broomstraw, where the children used to build Indian huts.
The waterfall tumbled, still, from a flat ledge of slick black rock, between two densely rooted giant pines, down to an almost perfectly circular pool, dark and deep and always cold. Sometimes there were wild anemones in the crevices between the surrounding rocks, and below the pool the brook ran on through wild tangles of flowering honeysuckle vines—where, naturally enough, Spencer and Claire exchanged their first kiss.
After that day, and that night, Spencer came to her house, the big stone house, for the moment entirely hers, at all hours, several times a day and every night. He couldn’t get enough of her, he said. And under such a barrage of apparent adoration, in the familiar June smells of roses and flowering privet and rich earth, the high singing of summer breezes in the pines, Claire began to think that she had, indeed, fallen in love; she had come home in order to find Spencer Goddard.
Actually, San Francisco was his favorite city, Spencer told her; he had often thought he would give anything to live there, and now that he had found her, lovely Claire, whom he could not live without—well, he would have to see. And Claire thought, Well, why not? Men do divorce their wives for younger women, sometimes; it can’t be much of a marriage; maybe he will.
She said very little to Spencer along those lines. She said nothing at all until the day he took her to the airport (the airport in which she now sits, in an almost empty plane); on that last morning, sad and sleepless and slightly hung over, she said everything that she had not intended to say; she said that she did not see how she could get through the next few months without him, that if he came to Reno for a divorce she could join him there. And she cried, and for once Spencer said almost nothing at all.
He did not follow her to San Francisco, did not write or call. Once, having come in late from a party at which she had drunk too much wine, Claire called him—to hear him say, in a cold, very wide-awake voice, that she must have the wrong number.
She did hear quite a bit, however, from both Bayard and Isabel. In their version of her summer at home, she had wrecked their house and disgraced them both with her flagrant carryings-on, about which everyone was talking.
Almost as angry as she was wounded, Claire wrote back that they seemed to have forgotten that the house was in awful shape when she got there. Was she supposed to have waxed the floors and repaired the tiles and replaced the broken glass in the cabinet? And as for flagrant carryings-on, what about theirs?
A stalemate, no more letters.
And then Bayard died.
Claire went home for the funeral, dreading everything: what would have to be a maudlin, probably drunken reunion with her mother, and the likelihood of some glimpse or word of Spencer Goddard. And she was wrong, all around.
Isabel had stopped drinking entirely and, even more out of character, stopped dyeing her hair. What had been gloriously, if artificially, red was now plain and gray, and Isabel further announced that she was going back to the Catholic Church, from which, she now said, Bayard had stolen her away.
Bayard’s funeral, however, was Episcopalian, and also, to Claire’s even greater relief, it was not attended by Spencer; she saw and heard nothing of him on that visit.
There followed a period of friendship, or something like it, between Claire and her mother. Claire wrote letters about San Francisco and her job, never mentioning lovers; and Isabel wrote about her new happiness and peace, and her new friends, an order of nuns, cloistered nuns whom she was uniquely privileged to see.
And then quite suddenly Isabel died, and it turned out that she had left the house to the nuns. Which should not have surprised Claire in the least; it was very much an Isabel sort of gesture: attention-getting and absolute. But Claire was surprised, and hurt.
> Having been left some money by her father, and being on the whole a fair-minded person, she could not object on material grounds; she could even see the appropriateness of a large stone hilltop house for a cloistered order. It was upsetting, though: the thought of those nuns, whom she envisioned as all clothed in white—white ghosts in all the rooms where Isabel and Bayard had shouted each other down, rooms where, all that summer, Claire and Spencer had violently made love; and the fact of those nuns made the house irrevocably alien, not only not hers but forbidden to her, forever.
“Well, you do look absolutely great” is the first thing that Susan says to Claire, at Dulles Airport, in Washington. “The trip’s been a success?” Trim blond Susan, who does not look great; she looks tired and strained, too pale.
They are in the baggage area, waiting for Claire’s suitcase. “Oh yes, on the whole,” says Claire. “I learned a lot. I’ve got a suitcase full of notes.” As an afterthought, she adds, “One funny thing—we landed at the Raleigh-Durham airport. An unscheduled stop.”
Their eyes meet as Susan asks, “Oh, how did it look?”
“Shabby as ever. You know.” Claire looks away for a tiny instant, then turns back to Susan as, smiling, she says, “And I really hated the food in New Orleans. I have this theory …” And, still smiling, she tells about the underground kitchen that supplies all the restaurants, and the black vat of béchamel.
Susan laughs, and then Claire asks, “Well, how’s Jack?”
Three years ago, Susan was planning to leave Jack, her husband; she even came out to San Francisco, to get away and talk, and to be comforted, presumably. But then she went home and apparently decided not to go through with it. And now she says, “Oh, he’s fine. Working too hard. You know.”
The two women exchange a reassuring, quick smile, acknowledging that this is not to be a visit for serious conversation; neither of them is up to that, just now, but surely, some other time, they will talk again.
That night Susan and Jack give a party for Claire. Although she has met several of their friends before, people who know that she comes from Hilton, she does not explain, if they ask, how come she went almost all over the South but not to Hilton, and several people do ask that. “I just decided not to, this time,” she says.
Nor does she drink too much, or urge anyone, particularly anyone’s husband, to be sure to call her when he comes to San Francisco.
Nor, at this party, do Jack and Susan quarrel.
On the way to the airport with Susan, leaving Washington and heading for San Francisco, Claire remembers the story about the cabdriver in Atlanta, which she tells (“Once they’s had they lunch …”). She and Susan laugh, and then Claire says, “It’s curious, the ways in which it will absolutely never change.”
“Yes—”
“On the whole I think I prefer the landscape to the people.”
Susan laughs again. “Well, that’s a good line. You could use it in your piece.”
“Well, I just might.”
Back in San Francisco, in her small house on the eastern slope of Telegraph Hill, her sanctuary, Claire, who at the moment has no ongoing love affair to disturb and distract her, begins to get to work on her article; she stays home from the office, and for long periods of time she turns off her phone. But not even a good title offers itself. In fact, from the beginning, the trouble that she has with this piece is an unwelcome surprise. Seated at her broad desk, before her window that looks out to the bay, Bay Bridge, Treasure Island and the Oakland hills—to water, boats and birds—in a laborious and quite unfamiliar way she lists possible topics, she tries for a plausible central thesis. At the desk, where she has so often worried and suffered acutely over love affairs, and at the same time managed to work quite hard and well, she now worries and begins to suffer over her work, over what has become an impossible assignment.
After a few such days it does begin to go a little better, but it is sheer labor; at no time does she feel the pleasure that she usually experiences in work, that lively joy in her own competence.
This is all very troubling to Claire, who has prided herself, always, on functioning in a highly professional manner, who has even been somewhat critical of those who do not.
Telegraph Hill is in many ways a small town, or perhaps several small towns; there are neighborhood feuds and passionate loyalties, complex and concentric circles of current and former lovers, husbands and wives, all of whom meet in the local restaurants and bars, the grocery stores and Laundromats along Grant Avenue, Green Street, Vallejo Street, Columbus Avenue. Many people who, like Claire, are for one reason or another alienated from where they grew up feel very much at home on Telegraph Hill.
One of Claire’s long-standing, non-lover friends is a man named Dan Breckenridge, an aging, still-handsome bachelor, whose pattern with women is invariable, and unfortunate: a gambit going from heavy pursuit to a few weeks of heady love, quickly followed by elusiveness and distance—to, when he finds it necessary, downright meanness. But as a friend he is perfectly all right; he is amusing and generous and kind. From time to time he makes a semi-serious pass at Claire, a sort of sexual feint in her direction which is easy to head off, although (she has admitted to herself) she does find him attractive. They remain good friends, and their friendship is undoubtedly enhanced by this not-acted-out attraction.
Like many adoptive Californians (he is originally from Chicago), Dan is enthusiastic about California wine; he has usually just found something new and wonderful, from a small vineyard that no one else has heard of yet.
A week or so after her return from her trip, he invites Claire to dinner and he serves a nice dry Pinot Chardonnay—of which he and Claire both drink too much.
So that when he says, in his decisive Midwestern way, “There must be some reason for that article’s hanging you up; I wish you’d really tell me about your trip,” she does tell him.
She tells him about the cloying prettiness of Charleston; the more interesting beauty of Savannah; New Orleans food, and the vat of béchamel; the new architecture of Atlanta; the racist cabdriver.
And then she tells about flying from Atlanta to Washington. “I was looking down at the woods, and they looked so familiar,” she said, “and then one of the men across from me said it must be Hilton—and, Dan, it was horrible, I burst into tears. I couldn’t help it. God, it was awful.”
Saying what she has so far said to no one, Claire feels the onset of tears, but this time she is able to control them, almost, as she hears Dan say, “Well, I don’t think that’s so terrible. Flying right over where you grew up, not expecting it. A lot of people would cry. And you really were exiled from there. Dispossessed.”
Looking up at him, Claire sees that he is especially drawn to her at that moment (he likes women who cry?); and his kindness and empathy so move her that she is afraid of losing control. If she begins to cry seriously he will touch her, one thing will lead to another, and the last thing she needs, just then, is an affair with Dan Breckenridge. And so, with all the sobriety that she can muster, she gets up and says she’s sorry she’s so tired, the dinner was terrific—thanks.
Customarily, although affectionate in a verbal way with each other, Claire and Dan are not physically so; they almost never touch, and they do not do so now. They do not kiss good night after Dan has walked with her the two blocks from his house to hers, in the cool, very clear starred night. But at her door, he gives her a longer, more serious look than usual.
Can she have fallen in love with Dan? That is what some of the symptoms with which Claire wakes up the following morning suggest: a nervous lassitude, some fear of the oncoming day. However, she gets up and drinks a lot of tea; she concludes that she has a slight hangover; and she tries to get to work.
Around noon Dan telephones. That is not a usual time for him to call, and at first Claire thinks, Oh, I must have sounded terrible last night, and worried him.
He asks how things are going, and she tells him that, curiously enough, they seem
to be going a little better. She is getting somewhere, at last, with whatever the problem was.
And then, in an odd, abrupt way, Dan says, “Well, how about tonight? Can we see each other?”
“Uh, sure. I’m not doing anything. Should I cook?”
“No, don’t be silly. You’re working. I want to take you out. Let’s drive to Sausalito, okay?”
“Well, sure.”
Claire hangs up, more puzzled than she is pleased. Nervous, apprehensive. She even thinks of calling Susan; she can hear herself saying, “Well honestly, now I’ve done something really dumb, I think. I’ve fallen in love with an old friend, Dan Breckenridge, and I think he feels that way too. And he’s just my type, mean and selfish and elusive.”
And Susan will laugh and say, “Well honestly, that’s really too bad.”
It is true, though, that she has begun to feel considerably better. After Dan’s call she goes into the kitchen and heats up a can of tomato soup, with a lot of Parmesan, for nourishment. And she makes more tea.
Back at her desk, the beautiful bright familiar view is reassuring; this is, after all, where she has chosen to live—at the moment it seems a good choice.
However, instead of finally getting down to work on the serious article that is her assignment, in a dreamlike way Claire sits back in her chair, and she begins, rather, to recall the particularities of her trip. She remembers certain accents, heard on streets, in restaurants, in Atlanta and Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans—and gestures observed, both unique and indigenous to that region. And she sees again the colors of earth and leaves which, at certain times of the year, in a certain place, are absolutely unmistakable.
The Girl Across the Room
Yvonne Soulas, the art historian, is much more beautiful in her late sixties than she was when she was young, and this is strange, because she has had much trouble in her life, including pancreatic cancer, through which she lived when no one expected her to. Neither her doctor nor her husband, Matthew Vann, the musicologist-manufacturer, thought she would make it, such a small, thin woman. Make it she did, however, although she lost much of her hair in the process of treatment. Now, seated with Matthew on the porch of an inn on the northern California coast, her fine, precise features framed in skillfully arranged false white waves, she is a lovely woman. In the cool spring night she is wearing soft pale woolen clothes, a shawl and Italian boots, daintily stitched.