by Alice Adams
“You’re afraid they’ll scare him away from Susan?”
“Yes, and try to recruit him too.” He looked across at her. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a very smart girl?”
“Actually, Benny did. A long time ago. ‘Smart for a girl,’ I’m afraid is what he said.”
“And you told him he was pretty smart for a boy?”
“How’d you know?”
“I know you, or I’m getting to. And I’m pretty smart too.”
“For a boy.”
Abby did not think: I am madly in love with Joseph, or even, Joseph and I have fallen in love. She supposed that it could be said that she loved Joseph, but it would not have been she who said it, not even to Joseph himself. For whatever reasons, rare at the time, she refused the non-wisdom of popular songs of the day. She did not think that love had walked right in, nor that it had to be you (Joseph Marcus). Her heart was not on fire, smoke did not get in her eyes. Unlike her mother, she was quite unmoved by all that.
Abby waited for Melanctha at their favorite drugstore table, the small round white table at the back, and as Melanctha walked in, her head up, not slouching so much, what Abby first thought was, Oh good, she looks much better.
When they were both interrupted. Dolly Bigelow, swooping down on them like a greedy sparrow. “Well. Such a treat to see the both of you two almost grown-up girls, and the both of you looking so pretty. And Abigail, your mama’s off to Washington, I hear? You tell that Odessa she’d better come over to see me, now she’s got some time on her hands. I need her, though a lot she cares, the uppity old thing.” And Dolly now laughed, to indicate that she was not serious, and to say too that, really, she was; she really did think Odessa was uppity, very.
Before anyone could answer or even greet her, Dolly went on: “And, Miss Melanctha, you are looking more up and perky every day. It must joy the heart of your old daddy, and that darling Deirdre. How are they doing these days? Haven’t seen hide nor hair for a coon’s age.” And Dolly laughed again; she liked to pride herself on sounding more down home, more true country Southern than anyone. (Only Russ could outdo her at this game, but he did it in a kidding way.)
“Russ’s in Hollywood, and Deirdre’s fine,” Melanctha told her.
And Abigail: “I’ll tell Odessa.”
But both girls smiled politely as they spoke.
Dolly looked from one to the other, with her bright, intelligent, small mean eyes. That day she was wearing a vivid green suit; normally acutely sensitive as to color—though less so than Odessa, on whom she had relied—she had chosen a green that was wrong; it gave her the look of a small unwelcome plant, quite possibly poisonous.
As though to the world at large, she next said, “Why am I just standing here, talking my fool head off when I’ve got a whole slew of errands to do, will you tell me that? Including getting all Archer’s shirts fresh ironed and back to him at the Deke House.” She turned her attention to Melanctha. “You-all must have had some kind of a time at Thanksgiving.”
Melanctha stared up at her. Stricken. Accused.
Abby saved her friend. “I’ll tell my mother to call you the minute she gets back, and Odessa too.”
“Well, it was just really lovely to see the two of you—but now I’ve really got to get at it.” And Dolly scurried off, not without a couple of backward smiles and waves.
• • •
“I’m not studying Miz Bigelow,” said Odessa, with a lift of her head. “She get herself in some kind of trouble to do with the wrong clothes she bought, or even just napkins, and she expect me to get her out. I’m like her rescue woman, and then she blame me if’n it don’t work out.”
Surprised by this burst of confiding from Odessa, who was known to be proud (“uppity”) and taciturn, Abby was also flattered; she thought, Odessa must think I’m okay, an all-right person she can trust. She’s right, she can trust me, but I wonder how she knows that? My mother is trustworthy too, though not entirely, which is something else Odessa seems to know.
To Odessa, Abigail said, “I don’t see any reason for you to call Mrs. Bigelow if you don’t want to. You don’t owe her a thing.”
“That’s it, but she think I do.”
“You did all her decorating stuff for years, and then that store she had with my mother was mostly because of what you had in it. I think she can’t get used to the fact that now you’ve got some money salted away, and you don’t need her anymore.”
“Most likely you be right.” But Odessa’s smile was uncertain; she too had trouble believing that she had money in her own name in the bank, and more to come in.
This money was from the store that Cynthia Baird and Dolly Bigelow had started about five years back, not long after the Bairds moved down to Pinehill from Connecticut. Cynthia had seen it as an outlet for napkins and such, handmade by various women in the surrounding countryside. Dolly saw it as a business, money of her own coming in. For a while it flourished, money did come in—though there had been trouble at the start about Odessa’s part; Dolly thought the work should only come from white women, nice country people like certain cousins of hers and of her husband Willard’s. Cynthia however insisted, and she won, and when the Bairds moved up to Georgetown, at the start of the war, they sold the store and Harry saw to it that Odessa kept getting paid, as a sort of founding junior partner. The trickle of money was pin money to Cynthia and to Dolly, but groceries to Odessa.
Against any logic but her own, however, Dolly still felt that Odessa owed her, owed her a little work here and there, advice and perhaps a little more work on certain domestic projects like sewing clothes or running up curtains. Odessa was known to have a superior and original eye for color.
Odessa resisted Dolly as best she could, and Cynthia tried to help.
All of which had led to some coolness in the Cynthia-Dolly friendship.
“You-all favor some of this Brunswick stew for your dinner? You and Mr. Joseph?”
“Sure, Odessa, sounds great.”
“Well, you just heat it up when you’ve a mind to,” Odessa instructed (so much for Odessa as chaperon) as Abby thought, How beautiful she is. She wondered how Odessa felt about sex, and for that matter about Horace. Of course she would never know, but her instinct, or imagination, or some other sense, informed her that Odessa and Horace had great sex when they were together, but that during his long absences, sometimes for a year or so, if someone else came along—well, Odessa could enjoy him too (as Horace most certainly would be enjoying other ladies along his way). All without a lot of drama of betrayal and hurt feelings, all that. But Abby knew too that this could easily be an idealized view of Odessa, a projection of her own feelings, or rather, her ideas about feelings, onto Odessa.
Odessa had changed very little in the five years that Abigail had known her. Tall and muscular, with broad shoulders and that curious walk, she remained unlined; her very dark, slightly slant eyes were lively and intelligent—they said a great deal more than Odessa actually spoke. It was in her eyes that one could sometimes read affection, or anger, impatience, or private pain.
How would it be introducing Odessa to Benny—to Ben? Abigail and Cynthia had discussed this, and Cynthia had said, “I think she’d be embarrassed.” And maybe that was true. Cynthia did have an instinct, her daughter admitted, for “social” situations. However, in Abigail’s imagined scene, Ben (probably with Susan, who seemed to have a bigger crush on him even than her parents did)—Ben would come down to visit, and there would be no more or no less of an interchange than with any other guest.
Odessa would not be a problem.
Dolly Bigelow would, as would most of the other people in Pinehill, whom Abby could list to herself, smiling with pure pleasure as she did so.
“And, Dolly, this is Abby’s old friend, Ben Davis.”
Well.
Waking the next day, close to Joseph’s back, and aware that on that very afternoon, almost simultaneously, Cynthia would return from Washington and she, Abby, an
d Joseph would take the train up to Philadelphia, Abby felt a premonitory sense of loss, of deprivation. It was not wrenching, no pain or possible tears, just the thought, Why can’t we go on like this? Why can’t we sleep together every night?
His skin smelled—it smelled like Joseph’s skin, no other words to describe it. And the bed smelled of both their skins, and their intimate moistures, of sweat and semen and whatever it is that women produce—odd that that word is not more generally known, Abby thought. She stretched, rubbing one bare foot against Joseph’s nearer leg, so that he woke, and slowly turned to face her.
Smiling, he said, “Do you know that sometimes you snore? I mean, it’s sort of cute, but you do. You make more noise than my roommate.”
“Speaking of roommates,” Abby began, but by then Joseph was kissing and touching her in a purposeful way. And so Abby for the moment did not finish what she had meant, or thought she meant, to say.
7
CALIFORNIA made Russ crazy—crazy, crazier, and then more crazy. He was not even sure that he was there any longer. This place was called Death Valley, California, or maybe Nevada. The Furnace Creek Inn. The furnace of death—in plain words, of hell. He smiled, and for one instant he saw himself as an actor, an old, experienced, and sated actor now playing the part of a poet, who witnessed with amusement the disintegration of his own mind. From poems to puns. Never mind that Shakespeare liked puns too. Never mind—now, never you mind: what did such phrases mean, closely examined?
They meant that he was in California, and that his mind was almost gone (but never mind).
Once before, or maybe several times before, he had been in California with his wife, at that time SallyJane, whom perversely he had renamed Brett, for all the good that did. And they had liked it in sunny California. Or at least he had, he was fairly sure of that—though it was hard to remember.
Outside the window now, steeply sloped gravel paths wound around and around, lined by waving palm trees that rattled their fronds at night like snakes, but that now in the false brilliant day barely trembled, barely stirred in the crazy January summer breeze. If it was January—Russ was no longer sure.
“In Los Alamos,” the man seated across from Russ in the hotel lounge was saying, “about due east of here, maybe seven or eight hundred miles, as the Caddy flies.”
“If I was to start off in the Caddy, I’d get all the way to home,” Russ told him: it was Oscar, his agent; in a burst of intelligence he had just remembered Oscar. “I don’t want to go to this Los Alamos. It may be east of here but not far enough east for me.” He laughed, and heard his own bleak sound.
“Robert Oppenheimer,” said Oscar. “Hell of a guy, from what I hear. A physicist.”
“Why me?” Russ asked, in what he felt was a very reasonable way. “I don’t know a thing about physicists.” And he had just remembered that he did not have a Caddy out here—or for that matter, anywhere; in Pinehill he just had a nice old Chevy, bought after the Caddy died. He had flown out here from New York, after seeing Esther, and he would probably have to fly back, if they ever let him go. “Why me?” he repeated, feeling that he was backed by plain old common sense.
“To get you back on track,” explained Oscar, using his own Hollywood version of common sense. “You called me, remember? Said you were tired of being a college playwright, little amateur college productions. You’d been sidetracked by Ursula’s pig, you said—your very words. You’d like to get back in the money. And I can see why—all those kids, a lovely young wife. They don’t come cheap, those assets.”
“No, they don’t,” Russ agreed as he was thinking, Back on track. I could take a train home. No New York. No Esther. No airplane. Russ had no memory of making any such phone call to Oscar, although the phrase “Ursula’s pig” was vaguely familiar, and at the same time incomprehensible. And so he said, as though he knew what he was talking about, “Ursula’s pig.” Reminiscently.
“A great play,” Oscar informed him. “But not right for out here. You knew that, remember? But this Oppenheimer thing, it’s about the war and then again it’s not. It’s perfect. It’s going to make someone really rich and famous, and I’d like that person to be you. I mean, you were doing great until that fucking pig.”
The pig. Crossing Kansas, in his old Caddy, Russ had run over a pig. All his children—all of them, five? No matter. They were in the backseat, and his wife was up in front with him. Brett, SallyJane, Deirdre—what wife? Well, Brett, at that time, he’d named her himself, from SallyJane to Brett, but then she went back to SallyJane, and then he married Deirdre; it was beginning to come more clear.
When he thought of the pig, though, he recalled a horrible disgusting smell, dead-pig shit, and a great big woman, Ursula, who was very nice. Who was now, at times, his housekeeper. His wife’s housekeeper. One of the people for whom he needed more money. And Deirdre, once his beautiful secret girlfriend and now one more fat wife, as SallyJane/Brett had been. Of course he remembered the pig, and Ursula, and later he wrote a play, raising pigs in Kansas, the Depression—a sort of Grapes of Wrath, with pigs for grapes, except that it was not a best-seller or a movie; nobody out there would touch it. Too fucking folksy, they all said, in one way or another. And so it went to little theatres, university playhouses, and won various prizes for Russ, and not much money. To Oscar he said, with his slowest, most Southern smile, “I reckon pigs are more in my line than physicists are. Come to think of it, I never even met a one of those guys.”
Having left Death Valley, and Oscar, to whom he had said no, all that pig history returned to Russ’s splotchy mind as his train east rattled and shook across mountains of sand, the desert with its obscene and terrifying shapes of cactus. Cross shapes, crucifixes. Or cocks, big giant spiky cocks. The phallic cross; he’s never thought of that before, but very likely a great many people already had, and knew what they worshipped.
For all he knew, they were passing Los Alamos right now, the train with its load of soldiers and sailors, mothers and wives and girlfriends and children and luggage, all over the aisles, swaying across the fucking desert—where at least he had known not to go. Los Alamos. He shuddered against the worn green velour of the harshly upright seat, in which he had sat and not slept the night before. All around him babies had been crying, small children with their loud sleepless whines, and oblivious lovers, immodestly necking, repulsive in their need, their ugly greed for each other’s grimy faces, their lumpy bodies.
Crossing Texas at night, endless black plains with here and there some sparse and scary vegetation, Russ took two long swallows of bourbon from his pocket flask and was visited by some half-remembered fragments of his last letter from Melanctha. Partly to divert himself from the lunatic scene surrounding him, he tried to bring it into sense.
“My back hurts a lot, and my shoulders, the bra straps cut into them … the boys make fun … was my mother a Manic Depressive? Sometimes I think I am … I’m drinking your wine as I write this, in your study. It’s French and sweet, very good.…”
Sleeplessness, and the actual, visible disorientation of alien land had made him even crazier, Russ knew, so that nothing in his mind hung together or made any sense. But he would go home and at least would check his will, to make sure there was money for her, Melanctha, and Deirdre, and the new SallyJane, his baby.
Sometimes, though, he had visions that had or seemed to have great clarity. Abstract visions, for the most part, of future history. Conflict, that was mostly what he saw. Large and small wars. Russians, Americans, white people and black ones. Whites against blacks, in cities, and blacks against blacks, in the cities and out in fields, everywhere.
He sat there, sick with sleeplessness, and terrified.
He could die.
He would die. Without some air. Without a drink.
Desperately, incoherently dying for either some fresh air or some more bourbon—or, dearest sweet Jesus, both! He lurched up from his seat, and slowly, slowly, stumbling over large and small sleeping and a
ngrily wakeful bodies, he made his way toward the rear door of the car. Which, with hysterical effort, he was finally able to open. He stumbled then, and he would have fallen—maybe out, somehow between the cars, as he was meant to do, probably—but someone already standing there, a man, grabbed onto him, grabbed his arm and held him there, until Russ, with that help, could get up to his feet.
The other man was a Negro, but a sergeant in the Army, who said in a soothing way, “Just you take it easy, sir.” A very polite, tall, extremely pale—Negro, but almost white.
Unable to speak, Russ tried to smile, but he found that difficult too; the circumstances, him and this Negro, this sergeant, out on this platform of a banging and rattling old train, in the Texas night—all that made him unsure what expression he should wear.
“You’re not in too good shape,” the Negro, the sergeant, observed.
“We still in California?” Russ asked the man, offering his flask.
“No-sir-ee. In Texas now. I’m heading home. Got my discharge papers, and a bunch of dollars, all set to buy some new civvy threads right in my hometown.” The tall pale Negro went on about his discharge: how he got wounded in the leg while his platoon was out on maneuvers, in the California desert; he seemed to find this remarkably funny. “My accident war wound,” he said, and laughed. “I got me a lot of money, all set to buy the new threads,” he repeated. “Got a discharge and money just for getting a damn old limp.” Extending his right hand, he added, “Name’s Ed Faulkner, from Massachusetts,” and he laughed again.
“Russ Byrd. James Russell Lowell Byrd, how’s that for a moniker?” Odd that these should be the last words he ever spoke, Russ thought then.
For he was going to die. Russ suddenly knew that, and the knowledge made him smile. Oh, thank God. At last.
A few swallows of bourbon, could he possibly just be drunk, and not dying at all?
But Russ felt himself lurch, and then his hand unaccountably slid. He lost his footing and began to fall. The other man, the Negro, the sergeant, tried to grasp him but could not.