by Alice Adams
Ironically, since she had so many, Felicia was not especially fond of babies; a highly verbal person, she was nervous with human creatures who couldn’t talk, who screamed out their ambiguous demands, who seemed to have no sense and who often smelled terrible. She did not see herself as at all a good mother, knowing how cross and frightened she felt with little children. Good luck (Charles’s money) had provided her with helpful nurses all along to relieve her of the children, and the children of her, as she saw it. Further luck made them all turn out all right, on the whole. But thank God she was done with all that. Now she liked all the children very much; she regarded them with great fondness, and some distance.
Her husband, Charles, loved Felicia’s pregnancies (well, obviously he did), and all those births, his progeny. He spoke admiringly of how Felicia accomplished all that, her quick deliveries, perfect babies. She began to suspect that Charles had known, in the way that one’s unconscious mind knows everything, that this would be the case; he had married her to be the mother of his children.
“I have the perfect situation for a painter, absolutely perfect,” Charles once somewhat drunkenly declared. “Big house, perfect studio, money for travel, money to keep the kids away at school. A wonderful kind strong wife. Christ, I even own two galleries. Perfect. I begin to see that the only thing lacking is talent,” and he gave a terrible laugh.
How could you leave a man in such despair?
Waking slowly, her head still swollen with sleep, from the tone of the light Felicia guesses that it must be about midafternoon. Eventually she will have to order something to eat, tea or boiled eggs, something sustaining.
Then, with a flash of pain, Martin comes into her mind, and she begins to think.
She simply doesn’t know him, that’s half the problem, “know” in this instance meaning able to predict the behavior of, really, to trust. Maybe he went to another party and met another available lady, maybe someone rather young, young-fleshed and never sick or tired? (She knows that this could be true, but still it doesn’t sound quite right, as little as she knows him.)
But what does FEW DAYS mean to Martin? To some people a week would be a few days, CRAZY DELAY is deliberately ambiguous. Either of those phrases could mean anything at all.
Sinkingly, despairingly, she tells herself that it is sick to have fantasies about the rest of your life that revolve around a man you have only known for a couple of months.
Perfectly possibly he won’t come to San Francisco at all, she thinks, and then: I hate this city.
When the bellboy comes in with her supper tray, Felicia realizes for the first time that he is a dwarf; odd that she didn’t see that before. His grin now looks malign, contemptuous, even, as though he recognizes her for what she now is: an abandoned woman, of more than a certain age.
As he leaves she shivers, wishing she had brought along a “sensible” robe, practical clothes, instead of all this mocking silk and lace. Looking quickly into the mirror, and then away, she thinks, I look like an old circus monkey.
She sleeps through the night. One day gone, out of whatever “few days” are.
When she calls to order breakfast the next morning, the manager (manageress: a woman with a strong, harsh Midwestern accent) suggests firmly that a doctor should be called. She knows of one.
Refusing that suggestion, as firmly, politely as she can, Felicia knows that she reacted to hostility rather than to concern. The manageress is afraid that Felicia will get really sick and die; what a mess to have on their hands, an unknown dead old woman.
But Felicia too is a little afraid.
Come to think of it, Felicia says to herself, half-waking at what must be the middle of the afternoon, I once spent some time in another San Francisco hotel, waiting for Felipe, in another part of town. After the abortion.
She and Felipe met when he had a show at one of Charles’s galleries; they had, at first tipsily, fallen into bed, in Felipe’s motel (Charles had “gone to sleep”) after the reception; then soberly, both passionately serious, they fell in love. Felipe’s paintings were touring the country, Felipe with them, and from time to time, in various cities, Felicia followed him. Her excuse to Charles was a survey of possible markets for her pots, and visits to other potters, which, conscientiously, she also accomplished.
Felipe was as macho as he was radical, and he loved her in his own macho way, violently, with all his dangerous strength. She must leave Charles, Charles must never touch her again, he said. (Well, Charles drank so much that that was hardly an issue.) She must come with him to Paris, to a new life. All her children were by then either grown or off in schools—why not?
When they learned that she was pregnant he desperately wanted their child, he said, but agreed that a child was not possible for them. And he remembered the Brazilian chiropractor that he had heard about, from relatives in San Francisco.
The doctor seemingly did a good job, for Felicia suffered no later ill effects. Felipe was kind and tender with her; he said that her courage had moved him terribly. Felicia felt that her courage, if you wanted to call it that, had somewhat unnerved him; he was a little afraid of her now.
However, they celebrated being together in San Francisco, where Felipe had not been before. He loved the beautiful city, and they toasted each other, and their mutual passion, with Mexican beer or red wine, in their Lombard Street motel. Then one afternoon Felipe went off alone to visit a family of his relatives, in San Jose, and Felicia waited for him. He returned to her very late, and in tears: a grown man, broad-backed, terrifically strong, with springing thick black hair and powerful arms, crying out to her, “I cannot—I cannot go on with you, with our life. They have told me of my wife, all day she cries, and at night she screams and wakes the children. I must go to her.”
Well, of course you must, said Felicia, in effect. If she’s screaming that’s where you belong. And she thought, Well, so much for my Latin love affair.
And she went home.
And now she thinks, Martin at least will not come to me in tears.
Martin Voort. At the end of her week in Duxbury, her visit to the old school friend, Martin, whom in one way or another she had seen every day, asked her to marry him, as soon as possible. “Oh, I know we’re both over the hill,” he said, and then exploded in a laugh, as she did too. “But suppose we’re freaks who live to be a hundred? We might as well have fun on the way. I like you a lot. I want to be with you.”
Felicia laughed again. She was secretly pleased that he hadn’t said she was wonderful, but she thought he was a little crazy.
He followed her home with telegrams: WHEN OH WHEN WILL YOU MARRY ME AND ARRIVING IN YOUR TOWN THIS FRIDAY PREPARE.
And now, suppose she never sees him again? For the first time in many months (actually, since Charles died) Felicia begins to cry, at the possible loss of such a rare, eccentric and infinitely valuable man.
But in the midst of her sorrow at that terrible possibility, the permanent lack of Martin—who could be very sick, could have had a stroke: at his age, their age, that is entirely possible—though grieving, Felicia realizes that she can stand it, after all, as she has stood other losses, other sorrows in her life. She can live without Martin.
She realizes too that she herself has just been genuinely ill, somewhat frighteningly so; what she had was a real fever, from whatever cause. Perhaps she should have seen a doctor.
However, the very thought of a doctor, a doctor’s office, is enough to make her well, she dislikes them so; all those years of children, children’s illnesses and accidents, made her terribly tired of medical treatment. Instead she will get dressed and go out for dinner, by herself.
And that is what she does. In her best clothes she takes a cab to what has always been her favorite San Francisco restaurant, Sam’s. It is quite early, the place uncrowded. Felicia is given a pleasant side table, and the venerable waiters are kind to her. The seafood is marvelous. Felicia drinks a half-bottle of wine with her dinner and she thinks: Oh,
so this is what it will be like. Well, it’s really not so bad.
Returned to the hotel, however, once inside her room she experiences an acute pang of disappointment, and she understands that she had half consciously expected Martin to be there; Martin was to be her reward for realizing that she could live without him, for being “sensible,” for bravely going out to dinner by herself.
She goes quickly to bed, feeling weak and childish, and approving neither her weakness nor her childishness, not at all.
Sometime in the middle of the night she awakes from a sound sleep, and from a vivid dream; someone, a man, has knocked on the door of her room, this room. She answers, and he comes in and they embrace, and she is wildly glad to see him. But who is he? She can’t tell: is it her husband, Charles, or one of her sons? Felipe? Is it Martin? It could even be a man she doesn’t know. But, fully awake, as she considers the dream she is saddened by it, and it is quite a while before she sleeps again.
The next morning, though, she is all right: refreshed, herself again. Even, in the mirror, her face is all right. I look like what I am, she thinks: a strong healthy older woman. She dresses and goes downstairs to breakfast, beginning to plan her day. Both the bellboy and the manager smile in a relieved way as she passes the desk, and she smiles back, amiably.
She will see as much of San Francisco as possible today, and arrange to leave tomorrow. Why wait around? This morning she will take a cab to Union Square, and walk from there along Grant Avenue, Chinatown, to North Beach, where she will have lunch. Then back to the hotel for a nap, then a walk, and dinner out—maybe Sam’s again.
She follows that plan, or most of it. On Union Square, she goes into a couple of stores, where she looks at some crazily overpriced clothes, and buys one beautiful gauzy Indian scarf, for a daughter’s coming birthday. Then down to Grant Avenue, to walk among the smells of Chinese food, the incense, on to North Beach, to a small Italian counter restaurant, where she has linguine with clam sauce, and a glass of red wine.
In the cab, going back to the hotel, she knows that she is too tired, has “overdone,” but it was worth it. She has enjoyed the city, after all.
An hour or so later, from a deep, deep sleep she is awakened by a knocking on her door, just as in her dream, the night before.
Groggily she calls out, “Who is it?” She is not even sure that the sound has been real; so easily this could be another dream.
A man’s impatient, irritated voice answers, “It’s me, of course.”
Me? She is still half asleep; she doesn’t know who he is. However, his tone has made her obedient, and she gets out of bed, pulling her pale robe about her, and goes to the door. And there is a tall, red-haired man, with bright blue eyes, whom of course she knows, was expecting—who embraces her violently. “Ah, Martin,” she breathes, when she can.
It is Martin, and she is awake.
The only unfamiliar thing about his face, she notes, when she can see him, is that a tooth is missing from his smile; there is a small gap that he covers with his hand as soon as she has noticed. And he says, “It broke right off! Right off a bridge. And my dentist said I’d have to wait a week. How could I send you a telegram about a goddam dentist? Anyway, I couldn’t wait a week to see you.”
They laugh (although there are tears somewhere near Felicia’s eyes), and then they embrace again.
And at last they are sitting down on the easy chairs near the window, next to the view, and they are quietly talking together, making plans for the rest of that day and night.
Legends
Partly because she was so very plain, large and cumbersome, like her name, at first I liked Candida Heffelfinger better than any interviewer who had come around for years. Tall, almost gaunt, she had a big white pockmarked face, lank brown hair and beautiful dark eyes—have you ever noticed how many otherwise ugly women have lovely eyes? Also, she had that special, unassuming niceness that plain women often have; I should know, it was years before I dared to be as mean and recalcitrant, as harsh-mannered as I had always wanted to be.
I liked her as soon as I saw her awkwardly getting out of the red Toyota that she must have rented at the Raleigh-Durham Airport, and start up the pine-strewn path to my (Ran’s) house. And I liked her although I knew that she would want to talk about my legendary love affair, about Ran, rather than about my work, the sculpture. I was used to that; it interested everyone, our “love,” and besides, what can you say about structures almost twenty feet high, some weighing thousands of pounds?
In a welcoming way, and also as a surprise—I would not be the ogress that almost anyone in New York would have warned her about—I went to the door to greet her.
“Miss Phelps?” she puffed out. “Jane Phelps?”
Well, who in hell else would I be? But I said yes, and asked her to come in, and what would she like to drink?
In her dowdy-expensive gray flannel suit she followed me into the living room, and said that she drank bourbon-and-water.
I made the drinks, and we both settled down in that high-ceilinged, glassed-in living room; we stared out at the fading November sunset, against the black lace network of trees. We smoked our cigarettes, and drank, and we made friendly small talk about her flight, the drive from the airport to Hilton. This house, its view.
I not only liked Ms. Heffelfinger; I felt that I knew a lot about her. With that name, and that flat, unaccented voice, she would be Midwestern, as I am, from somewhere in Minnesota, or Wisconsin. I imagined a rural childhood for her, and I saw her as the eldest in a family of brothers, whose care would often fall to her. Then adolescence—well, we all know about the adolescent years of ugly girls: the furtive sexual encounters with boys who later don’t speak to you in the halls at school, who invite small fluffy blondes to their parties. Then college, at a state university, where the social failure would be somewhat balanced by academic triumph, and maybe even a passingly satisfactory affair with a young instructor, although more likely an aging professor, paunchy and grimly married. Next the New York experience, the good job and the lonely love affairs: married men or alcoholics, or both, or worse.
You might ask why such an unattractive girl would be chosen in that way at all, but only if you had never heard the old saying that ugly women as lovers are fantastic. I remember the first time I heard that voiced, by a short, very truculent and quite untalented painter. I was entirely outraged, as though one of my most intimate secrets had been spoken aloud, for of course it is often true: a beautiful woman would expect to be made love to, we expect to make love.
Ms. Heffelfinger and I said what we could about the town—very old pre-Civil War—and the house, Ran’s house, which was built in the Twenties—and then considered very innovative, all that glass—with prize money from his first symphony. (Ran was once a famous composer.)
Perhaps by way of changing our direction, I asked her if she minded living alone in New York—and I was totally unprepared for her answer.
“Well, actually we don’t live in the city,” she said. “We live in a small town in northern New Jersey. It’s very unchic, but it’s great for the kids, they love it.”
We? Kids? Perhaps unfairly I felt that I had been deceived, or at least misled. I tried to keep surprise and suspicion from my face but they must have shown (everything does), for she laughed and said, “I know, I don’t look married, or much like a mother, but maybe that’s just as well?” And then she said, “Well, we might as well start? It’s okay to turn on the tape?”
I said yes as I noted what nice teeth she had, just then exhibited in her first smile. I thought too that I had better be on my guard, more than usually so.
Now the sky beyond all that naked glass was entirely black, and you would have thought that everything outside was stilled, unless you knew—as I, a night walker, knew—that in those depths of woods small leaves yet stirred, and tiny birds were settling for the night. Ms. Heffelfinger turned on her recorder, and she began to say what I had known that she would say: a small
speech to the effect that she knew very little in a general way about sculpture, “although I am really moved by it, more so than any other visual form.” (Was that true?)
I said I understood, and I gave the snort that over the years I had perfected. “Actually no one knows a damn thing about my work but me, and sometimes I’m not at all sure that I do,” I told her.
She smiled, again those nice teeth, our smoke circled up to the arched, beamed ceiling, and then she made her second predictable speech; everyone said it, in one form or another. “Of course you realize that the main interest, prurient though it may be, is in your relationship with Randolph Caldwell.”
I smiled, showing my tolerant indifference to prurience, to vulgar curiosity. “Of course, the legendary love affair,” I said.
“By now I’m quite an expert on the legend,” Ms. Heffelfinger assured me, looking off into a distance that might have contained her notes. “You came to Hilton not long after Luanda Caldwell died, is that right? Mr. Caldwell at that time was still in mourning for his wife?”
“In his way. Yes. Mourning.” I had never met Lucinda, of course, but I too, in my way, had sometimes mourned for her.
And while I had strayed off in that direction, poor Lucinda’s, Ms. Heffelfinger slowly inserted her knife into my heart.
“One thing I don’t quite understand,” she said, beginning gently, so that I hardly felt it. Then, “About Gloria Bingham.” In. “Just when was it that she first came here, and met Randolph Caldwell?”
All the books and articles, if they mention her at all, other than as a footnote, make it perfectly clear that Gloria Bingham was a totally unimportant figure in Ran’s life, a girl who came after Lucinda, and before me, his major love. But I was unable just then to parrot the legend to Ms. Heffelfinger—or even, had I wanted to, to tell her that it was a bloody lie. I began to cough, passionately, as though I were trying to cough up my heart, that sudden cold stone in my chest.
Candida Heffelfinger looked alarmed, of course. She got up—for a moment I thought she meant to hit me on the back; fortunately she decided not to. She looked wildly about, and at last discovered the bar. She went over and brought me a glass of water, so helpful.