by Alice Adams
How she wishes that he still drank!
It is easy to imagine Clover naked—a Maillol, a Henry Moore.
It is often very hard for Hope to sleep.
Clover supports herself as she always has, in a borderline way, with commercial art. Just now she has a better job than usual, with a gallery, doing promotional brochures, with a more than generous budget and an employer who seems quite civilized, for a welcome change, although he is bald and fat. Gregory Rovensky, a dark Russian-Israeli, an ebullient, enthusiastic type; he sometimes reminds Clover of a balloon, or several balloons, bouncing about in a room. A kindly person, he even tells her that she undercharges, and he ups her fee. “Money is not something for you to be foolishly genteel about,” he says. “In a commercial society it’s a mistake to undervalue yourself.”
This seems sensible advice—and how good it would be if she could earn enough money not to worry! Clover has always lived rather well, and dressed well, on the whole, but the cost in anxiety has been tremendous.
In a grateful way she confides in Gregory some of her unease about her friends, Josiah and Hope. “Sometimes I think I’m not quite catching on. Something is happening that I don’t understand,” she says.
“It sounds as though you were quite necessary to them,” says Gregory.
Clover ponders the wisdom of this, although at first it sounded unreasonable. Surely Hope and Josiah like each other? Hope is crazy about Josiah, Clover feels that—and Josiah has always been diffident, nonexpressive of feelings, she remembers that much.
Clover and Gregory are drinking tea, which Clover too likes Russian-style, very strong and lemony, in Clover’s crowded North Beach living room, across town and as far removed in its effect from Josiah’s and Hope’s still-barren space. Generous Clover is the sort of person whom people like to give things to; her rooms are crowded with presents, paintings and drawings and small sculptures from artists she knows, ferns and straw flowers and records and books, hundreds of books, from years of friends. She is unable to throw things away; she almost never breaks off with a friend, or with a lover, finally.
She works at home. In one corner of the room is a huge slanted table, as littered as is every other space in that apartment. It is hard to imagine how she works there, but she does work, much better and harder than her rather languid manner would suggest. She is very good; most of her friends, and Gregory, and a few others among her more generous employers tell her this. For herself, she is not quite sure.
Now both she and Gregory seem to feel that their small conversation about Hope and Josiah is over; perhaps Gregory has said the final word, that they need her, for whatever purposes of their own? In any case, since it is most unlikely that he will ever meet them, Clover sees little point in going on about what at times she feels to be a problem.
Soon Gregory, who has come by to drop off some proofs, takes his leave. In an exaggeratedly “Russian” way, he kisses her hand, a gesture made funnier by both his girth and his baldness.
Alone, with a small sigh, Clover moves toward her bedroom to begin the ritual of bathing and dressing to go out to dinner, with a man whom she does not much care about. At times, many times, she feels that there is something radically wrong with the way she conducts her life, but she does not quite see what to do about it.
Spring can and often does arrive crazily in San Francisco: sometimes in January there are balmy days, blossoming trees and bright green grass. On one such day Clover and Josiah and Hope decide to go on a picnic—or, rather, Clover and Josiah make the plan, on the phone. They will go to a beach that they used to frequent during Berkeley days, near Inverness. And that is what they do; they drive to Inverness, and arrive to find that they have the small beach to themselves. No one else has been so venturesome, in the midst of what is actually winter.
Clover eagerly peels off the sweater and skirt that she has worn over her bathing suit. Like many large women of a certain type—big bones, firm flesh—she looks even better naked than she does in clothes; sometimes clothes make her look constrained. But in the sleek brown bathing suit, a just-darker shade than her skin, she looks naked and wonderful, in the unseasonal hot sun, and she feels terrific.
She and Hope and Josiah spread their blanket on the sand; they eat cracked crab and sourdough French bread and tomatoes, and the two women drink a lot of white wine. Josiah drinks Calistoga water, which he has just discovered: quite as good as Perrier, and much cheaper.
Josiah and Hope have both told Clover how great she looks and Hope takes a lot of snapshots, smiling at Clover even as she squints behind the lens.
It is a successful day. Clover basks in the sun and in the intense admiring affection of her friends. She has been wrong about them: Hope and Josiah are really fond of her, as she is of them; they are all good friends, and nothing strange or untoward is going on. She even feels their friendship is something unusual, a triumph of goodwill and sophistication over more primitive and sometimes stronger emotions. And, curiously, this confirms, at least momentarily, her sometimes-wavering faith in her own work, her artistic skill: if she is so much cared for, by such friends, perhaps after all she is a talented, worthwhile person?
However, it really is January, and by midafternoon the nearly invisible sun sheds no warmth. This has happened quite abruptly, or so it seems to Clover, who, suddenly shivering, wraps herself in the heavy old sweater, out at the elbows, in which she no longer feels beautiful.
“You girls have really put down a lot of wine,” observes Josiah. The “you girls” is a tease; he knows they both dislike that appellation, but perhaps this afternoon he is also anxious to link them? he wants them to be friends?
As though at his suggestion, Clover begins to feel the wine, not as an intoxicant but as a weight in her head, a heavy dull ache.
Collecting possessions, bundling garbage into a bag, seems to take much longer than it should. The sky has gone gray at the edges, the sea is gray and cold and they are all slightly chilled.
However, finally at home, and lounging in her deep warm scented bath, Clover still thinks of the day and their picnic as a success. It was love that she felt from Hope and Josiah, intensely, from both of them.
“Clover is promiscuous for precisely the same reason that I am not,” Josiah once remarked to Hope. “Because sex is not important to her.” Cold with terror, Hope sees the truth of this, at least in regard to Josiah. He has attachments to women that are worse than sexual, from Hope’s point of view. She has even thought what a relief it would be to have a simple ordinary husband who chased girls into motel rooms, out of her sight. But no: with Josiah there is always another woman, but Hope has to be there too.
In New York there was Isabel, a lonely cellist, a gaunt dark girl. (They never look like me, Hope has noted; does he secretly hate blondes?) Josiah and Hope were always with Isabel, concerts, plays, the ballet. Hope despairingly thought that Isabel was with them for life; eventually there would be trips to Europe with Isabel, finally hospitals and death with Isabel. She even considered hiring someone to murder Isabel, but she had no idea how you would find such a person. And then she had her inspiration: “Wouldn’t it be funny if Isabel married Walter?” she remarked to Josiah, and Josiah (how gratifying!) fell apart laughing; it was the best idea Hope had ever had. And so, insofar as it is possible, Hope and Josiah arranged that marriage, from introductions to flattering confidences (“Isabel said she thought you were exceptionally sensitive, Walter”) to weekends at Hope’s family’s house, in Newport—to the gift of a wedding reception. Tall, talented, formerly lonely Isabel, and Walter, a crippled, mildly alcoholic cornetist, out of work. Very funny.
Maybe Clover could marry someone?
“Do you think Clover will ever remarry?” Hope asked Josiah.
“Oh, I doubt it. She’ll more likely kill herself, in a couple of years. That’s what happens when a woman of her sort runs out of affairs.”
Hope isn’t sure that she can wait for a couple of years.
&nbs
p; Then another inspiration reaches Hope. “I wonder,” she says to Josiah, in a tellingly idle way. “Do you suppose Clover ever runs into several of her lovers at the same party, some of them with their wives?”
Josiah looks at her for a long moment of speculation, and then he bursts into a laugh of pure delight, which to Hope has the sound of sacred music. “Fantastic,” he says. “My dearest Hope, you are invaluable. I will have to keep you forever.”
“I think a party sounds terrific,” says Clover to Hope, on the phone. “February is such a depressing month, neither one thing nor the other.”
“Really,” Hope agrees.
Clover sighs. “I seem to be freshly out of gentlemen callers. I wonder, should I come alone? Or maybe I’ll bring Gregory. I sort of owe him an invitation, or something.”
“Whatever. On the other hand, though, maybe not Gregory Bald-Fat. Maybe we’d rather just think about him.”
Hanging up, Clover’s first emotion is a strong regret that she ever described Gregory to Hope and Josiah, that they have given him that name. She now feels uncomfortably disloyal, and to a man who has been tremendously helpful in her professional life. In fact, although low on lovers, as she puts it to herself, Clover has never worked so well, nor for that matter enjoyed her work so much.
The weather has been dull: gray skies, early mornings and nights of heavy fog, days of moist and heavy air. No real rain, or real cold. Clover can’t think what to wear to Hope’s and Josiah’s party. She thinks, I never know what to wear in February, meaning that she is tired of all the clothes she has worn all winter—meaning, really, that for the moment she is tired of going out.
“Gregory, you know my crazy friends, Hope and Josiah? Well, they’re having a party.” Clover has decided that she would rather go with Gregory than alone; she plans that with him she will simply appear for a short time.
But, “My dear Clover, I am most sorry. I have a dinner that night, old colleagues, impossible to get out of it,” says Gregory. “However, it will be an early evening. I could pick you up at ten, or ten-thirty, and go with you to the party of your friends?”
“Well, I’m afraid not. Dinner, they said. But I’m sorry, Gregory.”
“I too, dear Clover.”
Another of Josiah’s techniques for the discomfort of guests, along with the lack of comfortable furniture, is to serve rather little food and great quantities of cheap wine. This sits well with his innate penuriousness, and it reminds him of his student days at Berkeley, his happiest, even before he met Clover. Tonight he has made what he calls his Berkeley stew, which consists of a few shrimp, some green pepper and a little rice. Also, unlike most alcoholics, who tend to be bored with drunks, Josiah loves to watch them; he meticulously notes each stage of inebriation, from the first slurred syllable to the final lurch toward the bathroom.
Hope also feels that the food served at parties should be minimal, and the drinks very cheap. She always thought her rich parents vulgar in their display of imported foods, vintage wines. Josiah is right: how much better to serve a small simple stew and some California jug wine.
Thus, at the party, people as usual are still hungrily drinking wine after dinner, and some are drunk.
Clover, in a red silk dress (several years old, but she has always liked it), is neither hungry nor drunk. Having worked through most of the day, she forgot about lunch until late afternoon, when she ravenously devoured some cold meat and cheese. By the time she got to the party she was very thirsty, and she had some of Josiah’s Calistoga water, which tasted good. It was interesting being the soberest (except for Josiah) person at a party.
The drunkest person there is Nicholas, the only former lover of Clover’s (again excepting Josiah) who is present—so much for malevolent plans. Nicholas is satisfactorily drunk, but he has come alone; he and his wife have recently separated.
Clover watches Josiah watching Nicholas, who has risen, with considerable difficulty, from his cushion on the floor, and is lurching in the direction of the bathroom, and Clover thinks what she has not quite dared to put into words before: Josiah is a genuinely mean person—he truly enjoys other people’s discomfort.
She wonders if this was always true. She thinks not, but then when she knew him they drank so much that it is hard to remember. Maybe, she thinks, he’s mean because he doesn’t work anymore—he plays around with people instead? Maybe he used to get drunk to dissolve his meanness?
“I do hope Nicholas hasn’t gone to the bathroom to shave,” Josiah says, and he and Hope laugh. Possibly they notice that Clover isn’t joining in, for then Hope says, “Clover, I hardly know you as a Calistoga drinker.”
A mild enough remark, but as Clover looks at Hope she sees in Hope’s doll-blue eyes a startling intensity of venom. She wishes I would vanish, go away, would maybe kill myself, thinks Clover.
Someone has put on a record, an old Beatles album. The first song has a lively, attractive beat, and several couples get up from the floor to dance, some drunkenly, but others with real expertise, this being the era of a disco-dancing craze. Clover watches Josiah frown; he doesn’t like dancing at parties.
Another song comes on, dreamy, romantic, and more people get up to their feet.
Josiah says to Clover, “But why aren’t you dancing, my lady in red? I’m sure if you could rescue Nicholas from the bathroom he’d be delighted.” And to Hope he says, “Clover in her day was famous as a dancer.”
Clover, who at best has been a mediocre dancer, made awkward by shyness about her height, is genuinely incredulous. “Josiah, how can you say that? We never danced—”
“We didn’t? I thought we had.” Josiah laughs in a private way, then frowns, looking at Hope. Clover understands that this would be something he has told Hope about her, Clover the wonderful dancer. What else has he said? No wonder Hope hates her.
Nicholas emerges from the bathroom, looking pale and sober. He takes his leave.
The party, then, from every point of view, has been a failure, neither the loud disaster that Hope and Josiah had envisioned, nor, in anyone else’s terms, a pleasant party. Although just possibly some of the dancers had a better time than they were supposed to.
And although nothing terrible has happened to Clover, except her unhappy perception of her friends, she is suddenly afflicted with the severest, most terrible cold wave of loneliness, pervasive, penetrating. She almost thinks of chasing after Nicholas, who also looked lonely. The idea of going home alone is quite unbearable, and how can she bear the rest of her life?
Nevertheless, she does go home alone; very soberly she drives across the black night city to her solitary flat on Leavenworth Street.
As she lets herself in and then double-locks the door behind her, the phone begins to ring. She imagines that it must be Josiah, who has sometimes called to go over a party with her—again. And just now not wanting such a conversation, Clover almost does not answer, but then, out of old habit, she does answer, and it is not Josiah but Gregory.
“I do apologize to call so late,” he says. “But my party was so borrrring, and I thought perhaps to save the evening with a small brandy with you, that I bring to your house?”
“Oh Gregory, that’s the best idea I’ve heard for months.”
Hope and Josiah sit in their scarcely furnished living room; the windows still are bare, everywhere exposing the room and its occupants to the windy black night, and the groaning sound of foghorns from the bay.
“Clover is getting to be less and less of a good party person, don’t you think?” asks Hope, in a tentative way.
“She’s becoming very tiresome,” Josiah says, decisively. “I do hope the poor thing doesn’t imagine that not drinking is fashionable.”
“About as fashionable as that dress she wore.”
They laugh, momentarily pleased with each other.
“Actually I’m afraid she’s in pretty bad shape,” Josiah pronounces, professorially. “Did you notice the look on her face as she was leaving? However, n
ot being, au fond, a charitable person, I can’t stand friends in bad shape. Unless, of course, I have put them there.”
Yawning and stretching, Josiah gets up, and Hope follows him toward their bed.
No more phone calls to Clover. Hope and Josiah busy themselves with other people; there is always someone new around, if you look, and Hope and Josiah have little other occupation—although, like many idle people, they always sound very busy indeed.
Sometimes, still, they talk about Clover. They hope she isn’t too badly off, they say to each other, in sepulchral voices.
Or, in an opposite mood, Josiah will cheerily announce, “Well, there’s always a great deal to be said for dropping an old friend.”
Being out of touch with her, there is no way that they could know that this is one of the happiest seasons of Clover’s entire life, this finally arrived-at spring. Too busy and happy to know that she has been dropped (such a confusion often seems to exist between the dropper and the droppee), she sometimes says to Gregory, with whom she is living now, “I suppose I really should call Hope and Josiah?”
“As you will, my darling, but don’t think of it as ‘should.’ Call them when you want to see them, and only then.”
She smiles. “That’s just the problem: I don’t want to see them at all.” And then she says, “Gregory, you are the nicest man I’ve ever known.”
He laughs. “Should you say that again I would be in danger of taking you seriously.”
One afternoon in late spring, near Memorial Day, Josiah comes home to tell Hope that he has discovered the most marvelous bookstore down in the Marina. “And the woman who runs it—well, you’ll have to see for yourself. She’s got to be eighty, if she’s a day, and absolutely mad, surely certifiable. She says she’s related to both Isadora Duncan and Gertrude Stein, can you believe it? It turns out that she lives not far from here, and since tomorrow’s a holiday I’ve asked her over for dinner. Ça va, my love?”