After the War

by Alice Adams

  “Oh, I’m not so sure about that.”

  “I’m pretty sure. Seeing you there, I saw you’d found your element. And what I think is, you should go back up there. If you think you need an excuse, there’s always the Navy, some unfinished business.” She caught herself: Why am I planning his life for him, even inventing his excuses? But she went right on. “And I think you should find some sort of psychiatrist up there. You could ask Dr. MacMillan.”

  “Jesus, Cynthia, I could find my own doctor. Assuming I need one.”

  Standing up, and managing a smile, Cynthia told him, “I really think I have a headache. I guess I’m not a very good drinker anymore either. I’m going up to lie down.”

  Back in bed, before she mercifully fell asleep again, Cynthia’s first thought was, Will things get any better for us, after the war? And then she thought, Shit, it’s already after the war.

  PART TWO

  18

  YOU could tell Deirdre almost anything and she would believe you—or so Melanctha thought. Later it occurred to her that maybe Deirdre believed what she chose, and that it had been convenient for her to believe Melanctha when she had said, “I guess I’ll be heading up to Cambridge next week. Early registration.” Deirdre, not having been to college herself, would not know that after you’ve been a freshman you do not have to register again. Or maybe she was as anxious to have Melanctha out of the house as Melanctha was to be gone? To be back in Cambridge, in the familiar dormitory, Whitman Hall, but alone. No one else would be back yet. Just a few of the maids around, maids who liked to open all the windows wide, to air out the rooms before the girls came back with their dirty habits, their cigarettes and their coming in at night with beer or worse on their breath.

  Melanctha, who did not smoke and certainly did not go out drinking beer or anything else, to a great extent shared their attitude. Alone in the now smokeless smoking room, she savored the air, which even then in early September was brilliantly blue, electric. Which spoke of fall, in intensely New England accents.

  She was supposed to be studying, in fact reading two novels for a course in American literature, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! These were assigned not by the professor—an elegant Henry James scholar, who was worried by Faulkner, made nervous by his “Negroes”—but by the section man, a young poet.

  Not really wanting to work, Melanctha leaned back with the books on her lap, in the lumpily padded maple sofa, beside the opened window, and remembered her father, Russ, the poet, saying (incorrectly, as almost always), “Ten years from now no one will give a thought to Henry James, who as Mr. Faulkner once said was a very nice old lady, and everyone will have recognized Mr. Faulkner as the giant-above-us-all genius that he is. Or was, if he’s drunk himself into the grave by then.”

  Melanctha opened one of the books—it was The Sound and the Fury, Russ’s favorite, and she began to flip through pages (she had read the book several times before), and there were all the old familiar words: bright, brave, honor, truth, death—and Caddy, and caddie. All those old words to which Melanctha responded as to the sound of a bugle, a call to tears, even as she thought: This is a bunch of shit, of brilliant junk, I hate it, I hated Russ—and she remembered without even looking at it the end of the other book, the end of Absalom, Absalom! where Shreve, the Canadian, asks the Southern Quentin, “Why do you hate the South?” and Quentin answers, “I don’t, I don’t. I don’t hate it!” She thought, I hate William Faulkner. Probably his ancestors owned slaves who were the ancestors of Ed Faulkner, whom I must find. And for the first time she acknowledged to herself that that was her true reason for coming back to Cambridge so early, alone.

  • • •

  The house in Roxbury that Melanctha picked, almost at random, as belonging to Ed Faulkner’s family, was large and gray-shingled and shabby, and far enough from the street and the sidewalk to seem vague in its outlines, indistinct. Certain parts of it—a tiny unattached house (cabin, cottage) in the rear and a rotting, half-fallen shed—would seem to have been added more recently than the building of the house itself, and maybe on the cheap. However, despite all the disrepair, the decay, the sheer size of the main house, its sprawl across its high, commanding hill, made it clear that this had once been a grand house.

  “The colored have taken all of it over, all of what used to be the grandest neighborhoods, and they’ve just let it go to rot, the way they do.” In that manner, Hattie, one of the Irish maids at Whitman Hall, had described Roxbury to Melanctha, who had asked for directions. And Hattie went on, “But you being from down South, you must know how they do?”

  “No, it’s very different. They live mostly out in the country, they don’t move much, and certainly not into fancy neighborhoods.” She had tried to explain, even as she had thought, I don’t know what I’m talking about. The Negroes may all move North after the war, which is now. “Up here it may be all they can afford,” she said vaguely, at that moment hating both Hattie and Mayor James Michael Curley, who presided over Boston—charmingly, dishonestly. Mayor Curley, Melanctha was sure, would agree with what Hattie had said: “You let the colored into decent places and they wreck them as quick as they can.” And Melanctha would argue back, and she would be right, but they would win the argument.

  A familiar sense of total frustration and outrage almost choked her.

  • • •

  In the Boston telephone directory under Faulkner, in Roxbury, there were fifty-seven names. The impossibility of getting in touch with such a number of people was relieving, and actually Melanctha could not imagine the necessary conversations: “Ed Faulkner? Who? Why? Which one? How come you looking for him?” (That last being the crucial and impossible question, since she didn’t know herself.)

  On the map Roxbury was just across the river from Cambridge. Very easy on the subway, although she was a little uncertain about the names of the stops along the way—and she did not want to ask one of the maids, especially not Hattie.

  Which is how she ended up in Brookline, on her first try, instead of in Roxbury. On Longwood Avenue, in front of Harvard Medical School.

  The crisp and bracing air of earlier that morning had evaporated into midday heat. Fall leaves hung limply from their trees, and a steamy odor of tar rose from recent patches of street repair. A hot breeze from the coast, the Atlantic, smelled of salt and dead fish. A foreign, alien land; only the tar was familiar. What on earth was she doing there? What was this quest for Ed Faulkner? Should she ever find him, what on earth could she say or do with him? His coming to see her in Pinehill had really been enough, and more.

  Students from the med school hurried past her, men in Army khakis or Navy blues mostly, a few civilians. No visible women. And Melanctha felt herself to be invisible; she who had no reason to be there, actually. Dazed, she stumbled over to a bench and sat down.

  A very large Negro woman in decorous black sat near her, with a younger, much smaller woman, also in black: her daughter? Were both of them maids somewhere? Could they know Ed Faulkner? At that preposterous thought, Melanctha covered her mouth and forced a cough, as though she had spoken those words aloud and the women could have heard.

  Or had she possibly come out here, so stupidly unconscious, because she hoped to see Abby’s friend, the mythically handsome (supposedly) Ben Davis? Who, she then remembered, is not even in med school; he turned it down and switched to some other line of study. Besides, if she were in fact looking for Ben Davis, how would she know him, or for that matter, how could he know her? Especially as she sat there on that bench, her hair too curly and long, her breasts too large (she was as usual hunched over to hide them). Kind Abby, her friend, would not have said any of those things describing her, Melanctha. But Abby could not possibly be out here, on Longwood Avenue, in front of Harvard Medical School, looking for Benny Davis, who did not even go to med school.

  Melanctha felt that in some inner and crucial way she was seriously off track, maybe truly crazy, which she could not be;
she could not be crazy, could not be like her mother, crazy SallyJane. She could not have gone mad in this heavy sultry unnatural displaced heat, which seemed to Melanctha to have risen up from the South.

  With the utmost care and deliberation she got up from the bench and walked toward a sign that read Bus Stop, and then listed directions to Park Street, the all-change stop in Boston, which she wanted. And that was where, with the most extreme care as to both choosing and getting off and on cars, she at last arrived and found the easier-to-manage subway to Cambridge: Kendall, Central, Harvard Square.

  She got off at the Square, and walked back through the Cambridge Common, past the Commander Hotel, to Whitman Hall, where at last upstairs in her room she fell across her bed in total exhaustion, forgetting dinner, forgetting everything—almost.

  The next morning, she got up, rested and okay, and she walked to the Square for breakfast at St. Clair’s. And then she took the subway to Park Street, changed to a trolley, and proceeded to Roxbury with no trouble. And she found, after walking around for a while, the tumbling-down gray house that she thought must belong to the family of Ed Faulkner—for no reason at all except the strength of her own instinct.

  Recent hot weather, including this day’s heavy, turgid heat, had yellowed and almost flattened the overgrown grasses that surrounded the broken cement path leading up to the broad and (very likely) once grand front door. The house and its scraggly yard were raised up, separated from the sidewalk by a grayish sagging concrete wall, at which Melanctha now stood, gazing up at those blank wide windows, that door—when something amazing happened: the door cracked and then swung wide open—and out came Odessa! Great tall Odessa from Pinehill. Who used to work for awful Dolly Bigelow, and then for Cynthia Baird, and now sort of lives at Cynthia’s in a garage apartment. But now here she was in Roxbury, next to Cambridge, Mass. Odessa in a puffy yellow dress with a ruffled white apron, and her hair piled up in some kind of a yellow turban, so that she looked even taller, more majestic.

  But of course it was not Odessa, who would never wear yellow (she always favored dark clothes, maybe because she was so big), or ruffles on an apron, or a turban, for heaven’s sake. It was just a tall scowling woman of about Odessa’s size, and of her color—and whatever was wrong with her, with Melanctha? What kind of Southern-bigot-racist was she, thinking all Negroes looked alike?

  Laboriously, tired and defeated, Melanctha made her way by trolley car and subway back to Cambridge. Back to the dorm and to the empty smoking room, where she did not feel like reading. Especially not Melanctha, which the section man thought was Gertrude Stein’s masterpiece and which she was supposed to be reading along with Faulkner.

  She heard the phone ring down at the switchboard, which was one floor below where she was, and she half expected someone to answer; then remembered that no one would, there was no one else there. She smiled to think that no one, no one could find her there.

  But someone did answer the phone, and the next thing Melanctha heard was her own name, “Melanctha Byrd! Miss Byrd!” in the harsh angry Irish voice of Hattie, who seemed to be the only maid around. “Melanctha, line one!”

  Goddam it, she thought. It had to be Deirdre, just checking on her. Damn it, damn Deirdre. And no way to pretend she was not there: Hattie had seen her come upstairs.

  But it was a man’s voice that said, “Hello? Is this Melanctha?” And in just that first instant she thought, A colored man? He sounds colored. And then, Bigot, Southern pig—she lambasted herself.

  But she answered, “Yes?”

  “This is, uh, Benny Davis? Abigail’s friend. Uh, Abby told me you’d come back to school early, and I thought—”

  • • •

  His face was powerful, the skin bright black and smooth and mysterious, especially in the candlelit booth where they sat, in the Oxford Grill. His eyebrows were also thick and heavy, and his brow commanding. His lashes were thick (almost too thick, for a man?) his nose long and broad, and his mouth—his mouth was—you could only call it sexy, long and curvy, a beautiful (too beautiful) mouth.

  Earlier, as they had walked in, Melanctha had had a terrified sense of being stared at, as though at any minute someone might loudly, horribly cry out: Who’s that nigger with that young white bitch, or is she maybe part nigger, with that kinky hair?

  But that voice was a Southern voice, rural, redneck (no one in Pinehill said “nigger”)—and she was now in Cambridge, Mass., where people stared because Benny was so conspicuously handsome, and probably a lot of them knew who he was: Benny Davis, last year’s football star, now 4-F because of a football injury, a torn ligament that made him limp a little—who had turned down early admission to Harvard Med, just saying he didn’t want to be a doctor anymore.

  Now, halfway through the second Scotch, which she had not much wanted although it tasted better and better, Melanctha was saying, “… and I didn’t really know what I’d do about this Ed Faulkner if I found him, you know?”

  He said, Benny Davis said, “I do know. Those imperative impulses that you don’t quite understand.” His voice was deep and gentle—beautiful.

  “Imperative,” Melanctha echoed, in a pleased whisper, mostly to herself. She felt that he had understood whatever she meant but had been unable to say. She was a little dizzy, and blinked to stay awake.

  And Benny then said, “And now I’m going to order us up some French fries. They’re really good here, and I’m hungry, and you’ll have to help me out. You get one whale of a lot.”

  French fries! How could he have known? Melanctha loved French fries above all else, just great crispy French fries with catsup; she could eat French fries forever, at any time, even times like now when she didn’t really feel like eating—although she knew that she should eat something, she had not got around to lunch. If she didn’t eat she’d be drunk; she might be drunk anyway.

  “Do you know Abby’s friend Joseph Marcus, and his sister, uh, Susan?” Ben was asking, quite out of the blue, it seemed to Melanctha.

  “Not really, I mean we haven’t met, but of course I’ve heard so much. You know,” she told him, “French fries are my truly favorite thing. I love them.” She had meant it, but how incredibly silly she sounded, how girl-undergraduate, and worse, how Southern. Her very accent must sound terrible to him although she did still catch certain Southern turns in his speech.

  “Really nice, the whole family, I think,” Ben told her, sounding not entirely as though he meant it, something perfunctory in his voice.

  “You met them all?” Feeling better at the very prospect of French fries, Melanctha was curious.

  “Uh, yes, I did. A couple of times. Together and sort of separately.” He looked away, around the room, as though conceivably the Marcuses might all be there—at separate tables, maybe. And then he said, with a laugh but sounding as though he absolutely meant it, “I think Joseph is almost good enough for Abigail.”

  “Oh good, I’m glad you think so. She really likes him.”

  They were still talking about how great Abigail was when the French fries came, and at even the first few bites Melanctha felt better, so much so that she said, “You may have saved my life. I was feeling a little rocky.”

  “I thought maybe you did.”

  “Maybe you should have been a doctor, after all.”

  “Maybe so. I just wish I knew what I was—was going to do, I mean.”

  “But you could be anything!” Good Lord, was she drunk, after all?

  Wryly, “I’m afraid that’s true,” he said. And then he asked, “How would you look with your hair cut really short? You’ve thought about that?”

  She could feel an uncomfortable, unreasonable blush. “Not lately, I mean I’ve been really busy. Trying to decide stuff.” As she thought, I’ll get it cut tomorrow. I’ll call the Ritz, they’re supposed to be best—she remembered that Rosalyn, the most beautiful (and richest) girl in Whitman Hall, had said that.

  Ben said, “In a way, you remind me a little bit of Susan
Marcus.”

  Melanctha forced a laugh. “She has long kinky hair?”

  “Oh, come on, not at all.” He mused. “Don’t know what it is.”

  Melanctha immediately thought, All white girls are alike? She drinks too much? One more nice-girl incipient alcoholic … I wonder if her parents drink a lot too; it seems to run in families, I think.

  “Her parents are kind of, uh, odd,” Ben told her, exactly as though she had asked the question aloud.

  “Odd how?” God, so are mine! she wanted to say.

  “Well, they talk a lot about the Party, I guess they mean Communists, and they say a lot about Russia that sounds sort of, uh, sentimental. I mean I admire that army too, they’ve been incredible, but I don’t know, with the Marcuses it’s more like worship.”

  “Oh.” The oddity of the Marcuses, then, was entirely unlike that of her own parents, nothing to do with drinking, or sex, or depression, nothing like that. Following her own rather than Ben’s train of thought she told him, “My stepbrother’s coming up to Harvard next year. He’s really my half-brother, I mean, my father was his father too, but no one was supposed to know that, and then after my mother died my father married his mother, that’s Deirdre. His name is Graham. He and Abby used to be really friends—in fact, he was the first one of us she met.”

  “I sort of remember, something about the pretty little boy with a beautiful mom. Is he still a pretty little boy?”

  “Well, not exactly.”

  Feeling better, Melanctha became more aware of her surroundings. Immediately before her there was the giant glass bottle onto which many colors of candle wax had dripped, like a painter’s palette, she thought. Not having seen this done before, she assumed it to be accidental.