by Alice Adams
Lucienne, as she always had, chose to take him seriously. “Perhaps you are right; almost certainly you are right not to see them for a while, and I have never believed in the foolishness of funerals. I will tell John. But you know, she has succeeded in punishing them quite a lot. They will feel it.”
Walker thought she was probably right—they would feel Althea’s punishment, but at that time, and for years to come, he was absorbed in his own violent hatred for those two people. He hated them with the intensity reserved for former loves—for surely in some dim unremembered time he had loved his father, and he could remember the moment of falling in love with Posey, with humiliation, rage.
Obsessively, he thought of killing them. Easy enough: in some disguise or other he could travel to his town, that now-burgeoning suburb on the lake, and, as he often had, he could sneak into that house, unheard. Confront them, with a gun. Talk for as long as possible and terrify them, absolutely, before shooting them both. This was not, however, a very satisfying fantasy—remaining, as it did, implausible.
His only real comfort and source of support in what were truly months of agony, so powerful and pervasive was his anger, aside from letters to and from Lucienne, was Timothy Stern, his former instructor who had now become a friend, a drinking buddy. Timothy’s mother too had died relatively young, although not a suicide, and his father had remarried with indecent haste, as Timothy saw it. Someone awful. Timothy’s father had died soon after that, leaving everything to the stepmother—“of course!” And so Timothy, brilliant and somewhat older, could easily understand.
From drinking and talking companions Timothy and Walker became, not too surprisingly, lovers. Walker, who had had no previous experience of that nature, although very little experience with girlfriends either, at first was deeply shocked, but quite soon it all seemed perfectly right, seemed logical, even. He felt at home with Timothy in a sense that he had never felt at home with any person, nor in any place. Except possibly with Lucienne, in her small cluttered house, or walking in her garden—and something about Timothy even reminded him of Lucienne. If only he and Lucienne had been the same age, he thought; she was the only woman he could have loved.
Thus, what had begun as an exchange of angry confidences, revelations of familial agony, became a source of warmth, of friendship and perfect confidence. When Timothy went on from the New England college to a better job in New York, Walker went along. Together they took an apartment in the East Village, and Walker, who had a little money from his mother, worked at various bookish jobs, articles, reviewing, at the beginning of the more permissive Sixties.
Walker had adhered to his principle of noncommunication, ever, with his father and Posey, who of course in due time had got married, as Walker was informed by letter from Lucienne. Nor had he ever, of course, returned to his town, to that house.
A couple of years after his marriage to Posey, John died, of a heart attack, which Lucienne called Walker to report. What Walker first said was, “Well, now Posey can have the house. She’s getting what she always wanted most.”
“It is quite possible that you are right. Still, she is not as young as you remember her. It may not be the most comfortable place for a woman who ages.”
“Christ! It was never comfortable for anyone. It’s a terrible house, except from the outside. You know that, Lucienne.”
“Well, I have to confess to some admiration for it. And you know I always had a great feeling of friendship for your father. I will miss him.”
Again, as when his mother had died, Walker experienced more anger than grief. Though he could hardly have expected his father to have left him the house, or any part of it, still he hated the thought of Posey in residence.
“Couldn’t we go there?” asked Timothy. “Disguise ourselves in fright wigs, or sneak in when Posey’s out? Doesn’t she ever go back to Texas for visits? My stepmother went tearing back up to West Newton as soon as the old man died. After first selling his apartment, of course. But I’d love to see your house. I have such a sense of it.”
Despite their continued rapport, in some areas, however, Timothy and Walker by this time were less lovers than generally amiable, sometimes quarreling comrades. For each of them there had been “other people,” then guilt, recriminations and at last a somewhat uneasy acceptance of each other, as less than perfect friends.
To Walker’s considerable surprise, a year or so after his father died, Posey did sell the house (“You see?” said Timothy) and she moved back to Texas. (“I believe there was an old beau somewhere in the offing,” wrote Lucienne.)
Walker wrote and asked if she knew the people who had bought the house; strangely, that was important for him to know. But Lucienne answered that she did not know them. People named Engstrom.
The notion of totally unknown, unimaginable people in that house was, curiously, deeply disturbing to Walker. Although he had for the most part hated and been miserable in that house, he had also been proud of its splendor—from the outside, or at a party. At least with his father and Posey living there, or even Posey alone, he could perfectly imagine the house, and thus in a way retain it; but now, with strange people (it occurred to him that he did not even know how many people: a family? little children?), he felt a severe deprivation.
His father’s death had been in November, and the news of Posey’s selling the house in February. And then in May, although he had not tried to describe his feelings to her, Lucienne responded as though he had.
In a more imperative tone than he had ever heard from her before, she wrote that he must now come for a visit. “I have met the people who live in your house, and they are quite nice. A middle-aged couple, and a son who sometimes visits. I have spoken to them of you, and they have said they would always be pleased to see you there. And so, my dear Walker, I urge you to come. Of course I would wish you to stay with me, but perhaps at the inn you would be more private and comfortable. But do come. I think that to see the house would kill off some of the ghosts in your mind.”
A strange letter, and one by which Walker found himself strangely, deeply excited. He made plans to leave the following weekend, which would be the first in June. He chose to go alone, Timothy being “involved” with one of his students, or so Walker believed. He would stay at the inn.
And so at last, after so many years, once more Walker sits in Lucienne’s small memento- and photo-crowded living room, in the heavy June scent of roses, and earth. They are a mile or so from the lake, from his house. “I will give you a cup of tea on your way there,” Lucienne had said. “But I think you should go out alone, don’t you?”
Violently agitated, Walker agreed. Now, seated across from her in that warm familiar room, he is exhilarated, even, with a sense of some extraordinary event quite close at hand.
Lucienne has at last left middle age, he notes; she is old. Her fine skin is finely wrinkled, her hair quite white, and soft. She moves a little stiffly, pouring out the tea, going back into the kitchen for something forgotten—as always, refusing his help. But her voice is exactly the same: slightly accented, a little hoarse, and low, and beautiful.
She is talking about the Engstroms, who now live in what she tactfully persists in calling “his” house. Mr. Engstrom is an engineer; Mrs. Engstrom teaches in the local public school, and is politically involved, somehow. The son is mentioned again: a graduate student, at Madison, in literature. “Quite handsome,” remarks Lucienne—and in his overcharged, susceptible state, for one wild instant Walker wonders: is Lucienne trying to “fix him up”? They have never in an explicit way discussed his “tastes,” but of course she must know. But the very idea is crazy, and he dismisses it.
And then it is time for him to start out. Four-forty-five. He is due at the house for drinks at five; taking his time, over that familiar mile (an inner, imperative voice has insisted that he walk), he will make it by five-fifteen. Just right.
“You won’t be too hot?” cautions Lucienne, seeing him off. She has offered to drive h
im, or to lend her car.
“Oh no.” They kiss in their customary way, brushing each cheek, and then Walker starts off, in the early June warm bright dusk.
Lucienne’s house is on a ridge of land from which one cannot see the lake, at first, so thickly wooded is that area. The wide white highway winds down and down; on one side, where there used to be the deepest, thickest woods, of oak and beech and poplar, now there are newish houses: expensive, very conventional, set widely apart from each other. Across the highway there is an upraised, still-unpaved sidewalk, where Walker makes his way toward his house. His clothes are indeed too hot for the day—old tweed blazer, gray flannels—and he feels, as he walks, a painful weight of apprehension, somewhere in his chest. The combination of the blood-familiar landscape with the unfamiliar new houses superimposed is radically jarring.
Then, before him, there is the lake. All his life it has been unexpected, a sudden violent glimpse of the deepest, sharpest possible blue. And enormous, miles and miles of lake, lake water.
Hurrying now, his heart risen, Walker can see his house, and he experiences a soaring pride in its splendid outline: the wide high spread of roof, and all the bright reflecting glass, in which, as he draws closer, he can see the wind-driven lake.
Someone has put in flower beds where there used to be a severe graveled area, Walker notes as he approaches the actual house: beds of multicolored primroses, giant pansies and thriving yellow cowslips.
He knocks, and almost immediately is confronted with a big round-faced smiling woman, who greets him enthusiastically. “Oh, Mr. Conway, I’m so very glad you could come. Such an amazing coincidence: I’ve been reading and admiring your reviews for years, and now it turns out that this is your family’s house!”
Quite unused to being greeted in that way—book reviewers do not gather a lot of fans, Walker has learned—he tries to readjust his normally diffident manner, but it comes out stiffly as he says, “You’re too kind.”
Undeterred, Mrs. Engstrom smiles yet more warmly as she says, “Oh yes, you seem to have such a different feeling for what you read. Most reviewers—they’re so—small-minded.”
Walker murmurs in what he hopes is a helpful, assenting way, but she needs, apparently, no help.
With a small frown she tells him next, “I’m so glad you’re here, but I have been worried. How you’d feel about how we’ve changed your house.” And she begins to lead him down the hall, which is now lined, he notes, with blown-up cartoons by an artist that he himself very much likes.
He is not prepared, however, for the turnabout of the living room: all the stark built-in furniture—those bleak narrow banquettes, ceiling-high bookcases and the trapezoidal central coffee table—has been taken out, and replaced with much more ordinary things: a big overstuffed, faded, flowered sofa, some cracked leather club chairs and low bookcases that overflow with old and a few new books, and some magazines—including, Walker observes, the one for which he most frequently writes (and, out of his old suspicious nature, there comes the pleased thought: Oh, she wasn’t lying. She does read my reviews).
But he has hardly time to react to all this, for there, coming toward him, is a man who must be Mr. Engstrom. He bears, in fact, a striking resemblance to his wife, both being large and fair and square in shape—a phenomenon that Walker has noted with certain very compatible couples. (He and Timothy do not look in the least alike.)
Mr. Engstrom, in a deeper voice, says almost exactly what his wife has just said. “So glad you’re here, but we have worried how you’d feel about the ways we’ve changed your house. Well, what can I get you to drink?”
Knowing himself to be already too stimulated for drink, Walker opts for club soda, which is produced, and the three of them settle down to small talk—surprisingly easy, for Walker, with these strangers.
Most of his mind, however, and his vision are absorbed in taking in that familiarly shaped and vastly changed room, a change that he would not have believed possible: if it has become a little dowdy, it also has been made—Christ! the impossible—comfortable.
Not sure that he will be believed, he tries to say as much to the Engstroms. “Actually,” he says, “I quite like what you’ve done. It was always so cold.”
As they are responding, in a pleased, accepting way (“Well yes, it was a little chilly, those lake winds”), a fantastic thought comes to Walker, suddenly, which is: these are the people, the parents, he dreamed of and longed for, as a cold child, in this house, in his galley bedroom, all those years ago. It is as though once more Lucienne has responded to an unspoken dream, or wish, and he is flooded with gratitude for the magic and the kindness of her intuition.
Somewhere in the house, even, there is music playing— not Althea’s despairing, brilliantly unresolved chords, but what must be a record, or an FM station: a Mozart quintet. The music stops, and at that moment steps are heard in the hallway.
“Our son Paul.” Mrs. Engstrom beams as a tall, somewhat stooped but good-looking, bearded blond young man comes in.
Weak-kneed, Walker rises to be introduced. Smiling, Paul Engstrom says, “I guess I’m sleeping in the room that used to be yours? A sort of ship’s galley?”
In a diffident New York way, Walker shakes Paul’s hand, and he smiles and says, “Well, actually I guess you are,” as, for the second time in his life, in that same room, his whole silly trusting heart rushes out, toward Paul, with love.
To See You Again
Like so many acutely dreaded moments, this one arrived and passed in an unanticipated fashion: the moment after which I would not again see my most brilliant and beautiful student, Seth. I looked up from the group of girl students—ironically, the ones I had least liked—who were asking me silly questions; I looked toward his seat, and was confronted with his absence, his absolute loss.
Considerably older than these kids, and especially, cruelly, older than Seth, I had envisioned quite another scene: I had imagined and feared a moment at which the students would recognize, collectively, that it was over, that this was my last class, the end of my temporary and quite accidental presence in their lives. They would never see me again, any of them. At that instant of recognition, I thought, I would have to smile and say something like “Well, it’s been very nice knowing all of you. I’ve enjoyed this time at Cornford.”
(Of course I would look at Seth as I spoke, but could I do it with no break in my voice, no catch?)
And what would they all do, my students, including Seth, I had wondered: would they smile back and maybe clap? What sort of expression would Seth wear, on that most entrancing face?
But that is not how it went at all. The class—it was in freshman composition—simply ended as it had every day of my time there. Across the campus some clear bells chimed; in the classroom books were gathered from the floor; slowly the kids began to get up and move toward the door. And some of the silliest, noisiest girls gathered at my desk, not to say goodbye or anything so formal, just to be told again what they already knew: that their final papers were to be collected from the English office. And then I looked up to the total absence of Seth.
One of the things I first thought was: If I ever see him again he’ll be older. Still handsome, probably, but he won’t look quite like that.
Seth: red-gold curls, a wild never-combed tangle, curls that shadowed remarkably white unfreckled skin. Narrow green eyes; a small childish nose; and a wide, somehow unformed mouth—a young mouth. And an incongruous, scruffy reddish beard. Just a messy red-haired kid was how someone else might have seen him. Whereas to me: perfect poignant beauty. And what he wrote was extraordinary—weird wild flashes of poetry, flaming through the dullest assignments. At times I considered the possibility that he was in some way crazy, at others the possibility of genius. But how can you tell with anyone so young? He might be, or might become, anything at all. Anything, in his case, except ugly or ordinary.
Not quite anguished—I had had worse losses in my life (I have them still)—but consi
derably worse than “let down” was how I felt as I began the drive from Cornford west to San Francisco. To my house, and Gerald, my sad fat husband, a distinguished architect—and my most precariously balanced, laboriously achieved “good life.”
Cornford is about forty miles east of San Francisco, near Vallejo, in the tawny, oak-shadowed foothills. It is on Interstate 80, the main east-west thoroughfare; after Vallejo and Cornford, the highway continues past Sacramento to Tahoe, Reno, Salt Lake City, the East. Going anywhere in that direction, and Gerald and I often spend time at Tahoe, we will pass right by Cornford, again and again. Next fall Seth will be there, after a summer of hitchhiking in Spain. How will it feel, I wonder, to drive right past where Seth is, in the fall and following winter?
Or suppose he should move to San Francisco. Kids do, all the time. Just what would I do with him? What, really, do I want of him? I have asked myself that question, repeatedly, at terrible sleepless predawn hours, and have come up with no answer. The obvious ones do not apply.
Meaning that it is nowhere near as simple as sex (Christ! as if sex were ever simple). If my strong feelings in his direction do have an object, it is not the act of love—I find the very idea both terrifying and embarrassing, and oh! how horrified he would be if he knew that I had even, ever, considered that. How old I must seem to him! Revolting, really, although I am in very good shape “for my age.” But to him revolting—as I sometimes am to myself; as often I feel that I am to Gerald.
I reread Death in Venice, and, with all due respect, I do not think that Aschenbach knew what he wanted of Tadzio, either.
In an earnest way I have tried to see Seth as objectively as possible—to catalogue him, as it were. I began, for what ever reason, with his voice, and right away I was balked. I could not decide whether the sound was high or deep, and I concluded that it is simply young, a little rough. Some softness in the lines of his face might suggest a plump body, but the actual body that I saw in his daily, worn, taut jeans is thin, a thin boy’s body; maybe in middle age he will be heavy? I wistfully considered that. His facial expressions, too, are elusive, escaping definition—a shade of defiance, sometimes a slow smile; he is far less ready than the rest of the class to show amusement. A wary, waiting look, perhaps—is that it?