by Alice Adams
Back at home, in Pinehill, Melanctha, like her father, had bad, obsessive dreams of her breasts. Over and over, in dreams, and then lying awake, she heard again that horrible voice on the phone: “Your tits—”
And there she was, that hanging heaviness on her chest, from which there was no escape.
And that old man, almost falling on top of her, then dying, at the Deke House.
She is not sure how she feels about being dead, herself. I am not suicidal. She has been forced to repeat this to the doctor who was summoned to see her, and, very coldly, also to Deirdre.
But, is she? She likes the word “suicidal.” What she does not like is the idea of herself as a body, limp and dead. Exposed to anyone who wanted to see her. In the morgue or funeral parlor, wherever they took her, she would probably lie naked. All exposed. Dead.
In the meantime, she is so tired of her room, which is up at the top of the house, big windows on three sides, so that on very sunny days, like today, it gets very hot. Even now, in November.
If it wasn’t important that everyone still believe that she was sick, she could walk out into the woods. And then Melanctha remembered that no one was there today. All her brothers—even Graham—were off in school; Deirdre had taken the baby, SallyJane, somewhere for her birthday or something. Her father, Russ, was in New York, or maybe Hollywood by now, and Ursula was off. She could go out. She could step on dry leaves, and breathe the fall smells of earth and smoke and pines, and just air.
In a hurried way she pulled clothes on, her college dungarees and a big old gray sweatshirt that was one of her brothers’. (Deirdre: “Melanctha, you just swim in that old sweatshirt. I sure wish I’d had something like that when I was pregnant.”) God, what a stupid bitch, and getting stupider, the more she drinks. Melanctha had not had a drink since Hilton, the Deke House.
Outside, in the woods, Melanctha breathed more easily, and with less anger. There was no one around, none of the people she feared and who so enraged her, both the easily named and the nameless.
The day was so bright; unused for a while to natural, real light, Melanctha was dazzled as her nostrils were assailed by many smells, and so strong, of rich fall rot, of wood smoke from some Negro cabins, much farther out in the woods, around by the creek. Almost happy, almost forgetting the body and the self that she could not bear, she walked along the dry leaf-crunching path, sure-footed over tough exposed roots and slippery needles, with almost nothing in her mind but November, and air. Just breathing.
But there is another person out in the woods. Someone walking very lightly and carefully. Someone else who does not want to meet anyone she knows; it must be a woman, with those delicate steps.
Mrs. Baird. Cynthia Baird, in a dark green coat, almost the color of pines. Surprisingly friendly.
“Melanctha! You are a nice surprise. I heard someone and I thought it must be—oh, several people I’m not dying to see.” A complicitous smile, as Melanctha wondered who she meant that she didn’t want to see. Deirdre, or maybe even Russ, Melanctha’s father?
“It’s nice to see you too,” Melanctha answered politely.
“Shall we walk a little way? I just remembered this old path from when we lived out here, in the Hightowers’ house. It goes from where you live almost out to where we do now.”
“Oh? I’ve never walked exactly here.”
Cynthia said, “Actually I don’t think I’ve seen you since that awful night at the Deke House, in Hilton. That must have been terrible for you, Melanctha. Just awful. I started to write you a note but it was so bad—I didn’t know—”
“It’s okay. I’m a lot better now.”
“Well, good. I was with a friend, Derek McFall, you know, the correspondent. And then later at the dance I just caught a glimpse of you.” She added, without much of a pause, “I miss Harry a lot these days, and most of the time he can’t call from London, and his letters take forever. I miss Abby too, but Swarthmore seems so much closer, and she’ll be home for sure at Christmas.”
“Oh, that’s neat. I miss her too.”
“I’ll tell her I saw you.” A big smile from Cynthia.
“She still likes Swarthmore?”
“Oh, yes. And she seems to spend more and more time in New York.” And Cynthia began to talk about the Marcuses. At first Melanctha was puzzled, this stream of unself-conscious conversation from a woman she knew but really did not know at all—a grown-up, Abigail’s mother. But then she thought, It almost doesn’t matter who I am, she needs someone to talk to. She’s lonely—although “lonely” seemed an incredible word to use for a beautiful, stylish, perfect woman like Cynthia Baird.
“Dan Marcus is something in Hollywood, I think a producer, though I’ve never exactly understood what producers were. They’re both Jewish, I guess, and they have these two children, Susan and Joseph. They seem to be Communists—the parents, I mean. I don’t really know any Communists, do you? I guess Russ might, in Hollywood. You might ask him if he knows Dan Marcus. Anyway, they’re very involved with Joint Anti-Fascists and Russian War Relief, things like that. All very worthy, I’m sure, though my Republican parents would not be enchanted to meet them, exactly. What I don’t quite understand,” said Cynthia, with a pretty, small frown, “is just what Abby finds so fascinating there. I wonder if I’m jealous! But almost all I hear about is the Marcuses, and weekends in New York. Good heavens, I’ve talked so much we’re almost to my house. You’ll come in for a cup of something hot, I hope?”
It was over fragrant English tea, in Cynthia’s luxurious sun-warmed living room (bright silk cushions everywhere, and all the chairs were deep, enfolding) that Cynthia said, “I hope you won’t mind if I say this, dear Melanctha, but now that you’re feeling better, and you are! I can tell—I do think you should pay a little attention to your posture. I hope I don’t sound like some gym teacher—” and she laughed, “but I used to have a good friend who slouched a lot, so it’s something I know about. And maybe for the same reason. She had a really big chest, that she wanted to hide. Of course all of us flat-chested types really envied her. We thought, If only we had her problem! But she told me how it embarrassed her, a certain kind of attention she didn’t like. She finally did start standing better, though, and that was a big improvement, honestly. I hope you don’t mind my saying all this—please don’t mind. Oh, Melanctha, I’m so sorry—”
For Melanctha had burst into tears, her whole body shaken with sobs, her throat choked, tears raining from her eyes. She had instantly covered her face with her hands, but the tears leaked through her fingers. So horribly embarrassing—embarrassment made her cry harder.
Cynthia now stood beside her; she patted and stroked Melanctha’s shoulder, until as suddenly as the tears had begun, they stopped. “I’ll go wash my face,” said Melanctha.
In the pretty powder room, with its starched embroidered linen towels, jars of scented soaps and oils, as she splashed cold water on her face, Melanctha had a curious sense of feeling better, despite embarrassment, some shame. She had to admit it, she felt better now.
To Cynthia, in the living room, she said, “I’m sorry, really. I don’t know—I’ve been sort of sick, I guess.”
“Sit down and have more tea. I’m sorry. God, I’m so dumb sometimes. Harry tells me so. God, I say things that are really none of my business.” She smiled, and laughed a little. “Please don’t tell Abigail what a dumbbell her mother is.”
Melanctha gulped at her tea, still curiously aware of an improvement in her spirits. “I’m really glad I came out for a walk,” she said. And she forced herself to add, though shyly, “I’m glad I met you.”
“Oh, I’m glad,” Cynthia told her, and in a friendly way she laughed. “You’ll have to come for tea again. I’ll call you. And at Christmas, Abigail—we’ll all get together.”
As they regarded each other with affection and some curiosity, one of the things that Melanctha wondered was: Just what was going on, back a couple of years ago, between Cynthia and Russ? I
mpossible of course to ask that question, and so she asked the other pressing question in her mind: “What finally happened to your friend? The one with the big breasts and bad posture?”
“Oh.” Cynthia seemed to hesitate, then to decide to speak. “Well, actually she had some plastic surgery on her breasts. Seemed crazy to all her underendowed friends, but I guess it worked out. She stood up better, and she was always pretty thin, so she looked more in proportion. And she married very well—at least twice that I know about.” Cynthia finished with one of her small laughs, and Melanctha joined in.
And Cynthia added, “Of course it cost a lot, those doctors.”
And Melanctha said, “I’ll bet,” very thoughtfully.
“I consider it for my face sometimes,” Cynthia continued. “I mean, I know I look okay now, but how about when I’m fifty, or sixty? What I hope is that by that time I’ll be less vain, more self-accepting. You might work along those lines yourself, Melanctha. Tell yourself every day that you are the way you are, and most women would give anything for a larger chest. And men love it—”
But Melanctha had stopped listening. It was almost as if she had left the room, though she still smiled in a polite, attentive way.
6
IN early January of 1945, in Pinehill, there was a stretch of sunny weather. Conversations in the A&P reverted to the warmth, the state of various gardens, local gossip. If anything, there was less talk than usual about the war. Not that wartime news had ever been a major topic—but in this lovely, extraordinary sunshine people generally felt less guilty about not discussing the war. Who wanted to hear about battles and deaths and home-front shortages—not this week!
“My rosebushes are just plum crazy,” Dolly Bigelow told Cynthia Baird, in a shopping interlude. “They think it’s spring. Just putting out buds all over the place, and the crape myrtle too, and the quince. I’m just mighty afraid they’re in for a big surprise, the lot of them. Next thing we’ll all be taking a dip in you-all’s pool. Tell me, Cynthia darlin’, how’s old London treating your Harry? You don’t get scared with the bombs and all over there? My goodness, there’s Deirdre Byrd, still seems strange to call her by that name, don’t you think? With her darling little SallyJane—now, talk about names that take some getting used to! She sure has put on a pound or two, hasn’t she—of course I’m referring to Deirdre, not that darling baby. Billy says that her Graham—I guess I should say their Graham—anyway Graham is the worst little sissy in school. But you know how boys talk, not one grain of sense in a carload. But I surely hope he’s not going to turn out like that—you know what I mean. His daddy Russ would kill him, or more likely kill himself. Speaking of children, you must be purely delighted to have your darling almost grownup Abby visiting you for so long. And so nice that that young New York man of hers would visit too. Jacob? Jonathan? Joseph? Oh, I’m just getting so bad about names, especially those ones that are sort of, you know, unfamiliar. And to speak in a serious way for just one minute, that’s one good thing this war has done, don’t you think? It has surely changed around the way we all think about Jewish people. Why, some of those refugees over to the university are perfectly lovely, as I’m sure the parents of Abby’s Jacob are lovely too.”
“Joseph. And I’ve never met the Marcuses,” said Cynthia when she could. And then she said, “Sorry, I’ve got to rush. I’m taking the afternoon train up to Washington, and I can’t leave Abby and Joseph with nothing to eat.”
“Oh, well—” Dolly’s small bright eyes sparkled. “You’re leaving those two young people in that house all by themselves? My, you certainly are—advanced.”
Cynthia, used to Dolly, laughed. “Odessa’s there in the apartment,” she told Dolly. “And Horace. So they’ll be fully chaperoned.”
Dolly laughed too, with no humor at all. “Oh well then,” she said to Cynthia. “That’s all right then.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you think so.” Equally unconvinced—even to her it seemed somewhat careless—Cynthia smiled.
• • •
Odessa was indeed late. Late that same afternoon, after Cynthia’s departure for Washington, Abigail, from her broad bedroom window, watched as tall Odessa with her curious swinging gait crossed the backyard, along the flagstone path to the garage and the apartment above that she shared with Horace. When he was around. “Some chicken and greens on the stove,” Odessa had told Abby. “Be ready anytime you are, you just heat it up. Just a tad.”
Abigail’s room faced west, and now in the final brilliant burst of winter sunlight the white sheets on the tousled unmade bed were golden, as Joseph’s bare back was gold, the smooth muscles sculptural. Abigail’s sense of her own body was golden too; she was irradiated by an inner dazzle—as she wondered why no one had ever said (but who would have; maybe Cynthia?) or she had never read, not really, that actually making love was like—like this. Like a prolonged involvement of every nerve, every cell, an extreme of sensation. Like nothing possible in words.
She was smiling as she turned from the window to stroke the nice curve of Joseph’s buttocks, slowly, admiringly.
Looking up, he smiled back before he said, “I’m sorry, I can’t do it again, you’ve worn me down. I’ve heard about you younger women—” He smiled again.
“What I meant was,” Abby told him, “why don’t we sleep for a while?”
“You have the best ideas.”
He turned so that his back pressed against her chest, her stomach; he reached around to her arms and clasped them around himself.
And with absolute pleasure Abby adjusted. And that is how they napped, for an hour or so.
Or rather, Joseph slept. Abby was thinking, in a somewhat confused way. Unsurprisingly, her thoughts had to do with sex.
She knew from studious reading on the subject—Abby had an energetic curiosity, what was actually a lively scientific mind—she knew that “orgasms” were what she had experienced before, while “necking heavily” with boys, in backseats, on sofas in darkened rooms. And boys did too; they “reached a climax” sometimes, making stains on their pants that embarrassed them a lot, poor things. She had always enjoyed, looked forward to that moment of release, that “climax,” although in a way it was less pleasurable than all the intense and sometimes frantic kissing and touching that went on before. The “foreplay,” which was always referred to in texts as being very important, especially to women, “crucial to their pleasure,” but somehow, in some cases, said to be difficult.
However, none of those earlier experiences seemed to have any relevance at all to what happened with her and Joseph—happened for the first time in New York, when Sylvia and Dan, the parents, were away, and back at Swarthmore in his room, where she was not supposed to be—and now down here in Pinehill. Her previous experience, such as it was, and her reading did not get anywhere near it.
When she was older and went to med school, Abby thought, she would study this enormous and misunderstood difference in orgasms. Freud, she thought, had oversimplified. Clitoral versus vaginal, that was not the issue. Unless, and she smiled to herself, unless what she experienced with Joseph was both at once.
• • •
Gently caressing her, just enough to wake her up, Joseph was saying, “But now I can.”
And so they did. Again.
The sex between her parents, Harry and Cynthia, thought Abby, must be really good too, which would explain almost everything: why they stayed together all these years, and why they made so many excuses to go off and take naps. During which there were always non-sleeping sounds. And as for Cynthia’s occasional crushes on other men—a long time ago, Mr. Byrd, father of Abby’s friend Melanctha, Russ; and now this Derek, the broadcaster—they were only that, big crushes. Cynthia was a romantic, her daughter recognized, and recognized too that she herself was not romantic; she was a realist, with a scientific bent.
Years ago, when Abby had first started kissing boys, she liked it so much that she thought she was a nymphomaniac, but with no idea of
the meaning of the word. Probably, she now thought, “highly sexed” was more like it.
And most likely, she thought, the realistic plan would be for her to marry Joseph. To get all that over with, so to speak. She could go to Harvard Med (she was not yet worried about getting in) and Joseph to MIT, and they would live in Boston, somewhere in between. And after they both got degrees they might have a few children, or maybe not. They would both work hard and they would always make love, wonderfully.
She wondered what Joseph would think of her plan, but decided to postpone asking him for a while.
• • •
“My parents,” Joseph told Abby as together they ate Odessa’s good chicken fricassee and greens, “my parents are not entirely to be trusted.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, Communists are tricky. They change their minds. They change directions like a boat in some shifting wind. The wind of course being the Soviet Union. Mr. Stalin.”
Abby laughed; her body’s pure euphoria made even serious observations light and funny to her. “My mother’s sort of unreliable too,” she said. “But in a quite different way.”
“Not so totally different, when you think about it,” Joseph mused. “They’re all romantics. Just in different areas. I mean, your mother’s not exactly political.”
Abby laughed again. “No, she thinks Roosevelt is very handsome, and she loves his voice.” She added, “And I think you’re very handsome.”
Now Joseph laughed. “And I think you’re very nuts. No, as a matter of fact you’re not. Not nuts. But speaking of handsome, I’m a little worried about the way my parents are about Ben. They’re too crazy about him. I mean, I can see he’s a swell guy, but they’re both—they’re both sort of in love with him.”
“You mean because he’s so good-looking?”
“No, to them that’s the icing on the cake. Because he’s a Negro. That’s catnip to Commies. Read Richard Wright. How they used him. And Paul Robeson. Whom Ben sort of looks like, don’t you think?”