After the War

by Alice Adams

  “Why River? Why not Creek?” irritatingly asked Graham.

  “I suppose you mean Graham Creek.”

  “Well, that’s where you found him.”

  “Be like naming you Pinehill Hospital.”

  “I wasn’t born there, I was born in California—” As if they all didn’t know where Graham was born, and to whom. To Deirdre, and to Russ.

  “You children!” Deirdre called out from the dining room, where she had been arguing with Ursula over menus, and cooking: what was good for the children. “You-all are supposed to be grown up!”

  So are you, you dumb slut, Melanctha muttered under her breath, just out of the hearing of Graham. The other boys, as usual, were off somewhere, and SallyJane slept.

  The beautiful puppy, River, could be said to have got Melanctha through that holiday. Melanctha bathed him in her own tub, and then surprised Deirdre by cleaning out the tub, cleaning up the whole bathroom. And River surprised them all by being even handsomer, wavier, and silkier than before.

  “Too thin, though,” tall, gaunt Ursula observed. “That little dog needs some flesh on those little bones.” And for once Melanctha agreed with Ursula. “He sure does,” and Ursula set about making a special mush that they used to feed dogs in Kansas.

  Otherwise, taken to the vet, Dr. Marx, River was pronounced an exceptionally healthy dog, about four months old, probably. “Don’t exactly know what breed,” said Dr. Marx when questioned. “Part Lab, part collie, maybe part setter, I’d guess.”

  River was friendly and playful but showed no real interest in anyone but Melanctha, at the sound of whose voice or footsteps he raced forward with small yelps and licks of love. At night he slept on Melanctha’s bed, cuddling his small body next to her back, or if she lay on her side in the bend of her knees.

  Abby, while acknowledging to herself Melanctha’s greater need for a dog, generally for love and companionship (after all, she had Joseph, there for Christmas), still could not resist the thought that they could have somehow shared the puppy. Joint custody, she wryly thought. After all, they had come upon him together, and just because Melanctha was the one to go out and pick him up, did that mean—? But even as she inwardly voiced this query, its sheer childish selfishness came loudly through, and she erased it from her mind.

  However, Abby had to admit that she could have used some help, from somewhere.

  Harry had come down for the week of Christmas, and at night he and Cynthia went out to a lot of local parties: the Bigelows’, Mrs. Lee’s, the Hightowers’. During the day, they nursed hangovers and exchanged bad jokes at each other’s expense. Abby thought if she heard one more Veracity joke she would leave home, for good.

  Cynthia had fixed up the guest room for Joseph, everything pretty and fresh and clean, flowers in a silver pitcher on the dresser. But as things turned out that room was where Harry slept; Joseph stayed with Abby, in her room.

  About which Abby and Cynthia had a whispered conversation in the kitchen, the first morning Joseph was there (one among many whispered conversations, in the course of that holiday):

  Cynthia: “Abby, I really can’t let you just—”

  Abby: “Oh please, would you rather we tiptoed around, lied about where we sleep? We live together—”

  “I know, but—”

  “Besides, last night Harry was in the guest room—”

  Cynthia had no answers; everything that Abby said was true.

  The trouble, for Abby, was that she and Joseph spent most of their awake time in bed talking. His parents were separating but not exactly saying so, Joseph told her. His father was moving out to L.A., “at least for a while, he says,” his mother was staying in New York. “The apartment’s rent controlled, you can’t believe how cheap. I think around two hundred.”

  “That wouldn’t be so cheap around here.”

  “Yes, but New York—a block off Fifth?”

  His sister Susan was trying to transfer to Wisconsin. “She’s got this bee in her bonnet about Madison. I don’t know, she must have met some guy who goes there. I know her, that’s how she functions.”

  “It’s a good school—”

  “I know, but I just don’t think that’s it. Susan’s a long way from being academic.” He sighed. “Anyway, it’s creepy at home, she may just want to get out of it all. I wouldn’t blame her.”

  “Creepy how?”

  “We’re being spied on. I know that sounds melodramatic, but we are. Crazy stuff, like the mail comes and a lot of it’s been opened. Some of your letters, by the way.”

  “God, how embarrassing.”

  “I know, and the maid says somebody went through the garbage can. Talk about embarrassing.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah. My father thinks the FBI’s investigating him, and Mother thinks the Party’s after her.”

  Neither of them at that moment added what they both knew to be true, which was that an FBI investigation of either (or both) of the Marcuses did not bode well for Joseph in terms of future jobs in physics.

  All terrible, and nothing to be done.

  But why are we even having this conversation? Abby wondered. Why are we talking so much? She was thinking of a recently discovered sexual pleasure for which they had no name, or words, but which was intensely exciting to them both.

  At just that moment, Joseph moved closer to her ear, and he whispered, “We’re wasting time—”

  “Shall I—?”

  He murmured something, some assent, and Abby began to move slowly down his body, licking lightly at all that smooth stretch of skin.

  In Cynthia’s room a couple of doors beyond, she and Harry were less happily engaged, in what threatened to be an endless conversation. It had begun with some of the old familiar phrases: “—you always,” “—you never—”

  There was then what seemed to Cynthia a protracted interval in which they were making speeches to each other, each striving to sound in the right, to sound generous and wise. And honest, terribly honest, as though they had discovered honesty (a much overrated virtue, Cynthia thought).

  “ ‘In love’ is hardly the point anymore,” said Harry. “We know each other, you and I. I’ve known you longer than anyone. I think you’re beautiful even early in the morning. Or usually you are. And you’re sexy. I just seem to have this problem—”

  “Well, maybe it’s my problem,” Cynthia assured him. “Maybe it’s me. Or maybe we just shouldn’t expect sex to last.” She was really thinking, though, that she had never been so tired, and that the burden of what he did not say was exhausting. She did not, could not say: And what about Veracity? Are you up to snuff with her? Do you mean that sometimes I look awful in the morning early? Well, as for that, you look pretty awful yourself, with that half-gray stubble and those bleary eyes. But I feel mostly friendly toward you; sometimes I actually hope that Lady V. is nice—nice to you, I mean. Marrying a Lady might be just the thing for you. Maybe we’re meant to be friends?

  She said none of that, but those and similar thoughts kept her awake for a long unaccustomed hour.

  River did various bad puppy things around the Byrd house, none of them original; he barked at the mailman and chased the paperboy, who came on a bike; he dug up some recently planted (by Ursula) bulbs and scattered them around the lawn. He peed under one of the boys’ beds, and worst of all he made a smelly mess on Deirdre’s puffy boudoir rug, so that it had to be thrown out.

  Melanctha defended all these terrible acts; to her they were mostly funny. She thought River had a great sense of humor, and she said defensively, “The bulbs may come up all around the lawn, and that’ll be beautiful, I think. Those boys’ rooms are such a mess, I don’t see how anyone ever even smelled dog piss.” And, “That leftover meat loaf Ursula fed him wasn’t good for him. I don’t think dogs like meat loaf.” (Besides, a “boudoir rug,” what could be tackier? She heard her mother’s voice in this unspoken judgment.)

  The clearest fact about River, aside from his increasing b
eauty and energy as he visibly changed from a puppy to a young dog, was his total love for and loyalty to Melanctha, feelings that were more than reciprocated. There were really no words for Melanctha’s emotions concerning River. Love, gratitude, affection, admiration, adoration—all of those came close but did not quite say it. River warmed and brightened the very center of Melanctha’s heart; she had no idea how she had lived before they met. She thought, If anyone ever hurt River, I would probably kill him.

  Sometimes she worried about the future of River, along with her own. She had heard from someone, maybe her father, that in Paris it was fine to bring dogs into restaurants. She and River could go and live in Paris?

  On the other hand, River seemed to like it very much where they were; he liked the house, liked running up and down stairs with his big growing feet, nails clicking on bare floors. And especially he liked the woods that surrounded the house where he and Melanctha went for walks every day. Sometimes he ran ahead of her, but never for long and never completely out of sight.

  Melanctha stuck to those woods around her house. For every reason, she did not take him down to the creek.

  Maybe, she sometimes thought, she should take a little apartment in town and get some sort of part-time job at the college, and take a course or two, and still have afternoons free for River?

  In not too many years, as she saw it, everyone but her would have moved out of that house. Deirdre would marry that Derek, or someone or other, and she would have to take little SallyJane along. And the boys, including Graham, would all be at college and then off to jobs somewhere.

  And then there would just be River and her at home, the house and the woods left all to them.

  Although sometime they might take a very small trip to Paris.

  22

  IN Cambridge, that heady March with its wild swooping winds of spring, Graham fell in love with almost everyone he saw in Harvard Yard. So many incredibly handsome young men, many of them ravishing in their uniforms or in their Harvard civilian uniform of tweed and gray flannel. Lucky for him, he thought, that a New England tradition of reserve prevailed; if anyone had smiled in a friendly way, he would have come unglued. He thought of the words of one of his mother’s favorite songs, “He’ll look at me and smile, I’ll understand—”

  That was the good part of being there, the look of the Yard itself, so beautiful and dignified, with all the old brick and stone and hard white paths, the green irregularly sloping but perfectly tended grass. And mainly all the faces. The marvelous male ways of walking. The possibilities.

  The bad came late at night, when the three boys with whom he shared the suite in Weld had gone to sleep, probably, and he lay there alone, crying like a baby, a mute, dumb baby with an inconsolable erection as he thought, You goddam little Southern queer faggot, you fairy pansy, just wait till someone finds out about you and what you’re really like, you’ll be punished, sent home for everyone to see. They don’t want little boys like you around Harvard, or anywhere else.

  Of his three suite-mates, two were from Andover, the other from St. Paul’s; all three seemed more adjusted to and less intimidated by Harvard than he—but then, the same was true of everyone else he saw. Pierce and Bradley were both ex– and probably future track stars, real jocks. Pierce planned to concentrate in Gov. (his father was someone important in Washington right now); Bradley thought probably Econ., and then the business school. Paxton Sedgwick, from St. Paul’s, was the least jock-like of the three, although the tallest. He was thin and soft-spoken, certainly the least threatening. Paxton wanted to study American History and Lit., a new field of concentration—with a famous and controversial political-leftist scholar. Paxton had read some of Russ Byrd’s poetry, which he admired. Or he said he did. But he seemed to know not to ask too much, no dumb questions about what Russ was “really like.”

  It seemed to Graham that the handsome faces, the tall or small terrific bodies that he saw in the Yard were constantly new, some principle of beauty perpetually renewed. New faces, but also ones that he came to recognize as almost familiar, some that he looked forward to or searched out. There was the dark blond man in the Navy, a tall trim officer, with his Navy raincoat and his hat—and the smaller brown-haired one in tweed who smoked a pipe, or at least always carried one around. And the very slightly plump blond guy in his sailor suit, with a shy, fey look of Peter Pan.

  And Graham thought, Which—oh which one for me? Then sternly telling himself, None, not one, you goddam little fool. You’re the only little fairy pansy queer at Harvard. Then, mustering what logic, what rationality he could, he knew this to be unlikely; still, that was how he felt.

  Bad jokes about people like him circulated:

  “Do you know why there’re no stairs in Dunster House?

  It’s full of fairies, they fly up and down.”

  Sometimes, daringly (although he hardly had a choice; he saw no way out), Graham took part in group discussions on this topic.

  Pierce said that at his sister’s school, in Virginia, some girl had a big crush on another girl; there were intercepted letters, found by some super-wary teacher, saying, according to Pierce’s sister, “these really sicky things, about touching breasts and stuff.”

  Shudders around the room at this shocking revelation: “Girls touching tits—oh, yuck.”

  What happened finally was that the school expelled both girls; it seemed the only way to quiet things down.

  It was Paxton who said, “That seems hard cheese for the one who was just the object of the crush. I mean, she didn’t write any letters, did she? She was probably embarrassed.”

  No one agreed with him—except Graham, who did not dare speak.

  The other boys, the Andover jocks, were as one in their view that the girl who was the object of the unspeakable “crush” must have done something herself to bring it on. She must have been asking for it in some way. “I mean,” Bradley tried to sum up their joint feelings, “how come the queer one chose that girl out of all the other girls in the school?”

  “Still seems unfair to throw her out of school,” Paxton muttered.

  And Graham, silent, agreed, of course he did, at the same time that he thought, What an incredible ass of a girl to write letters like that! Lord God, girls! He further resolved that if anyone made any kind of a gesture of that nature he would turn them down flat, no matter how handsome they might be; they could easily turn out to be a spy for Harvard, trying to seek out and expel all queers.

  It was much easier all around in Pinehill. In his secret heart Graham knew; he knew how he felt and what he was, but no one else seemed even curious about him, in that way. His mother, Deirdre, made excuses for him, although probably she did know what she was doing.

  “Graham’s in some ways a little young for his age—”

  “Graham isn’t really interested in girls yet, thank the Lord!”

  “Graham is much more advanced in his head than he is in other ways—”

  “Someways Graham doesn’t favor his daddy at all—”

  “I guess I’ve always babied Graham, starting out like I did pretty much by myself—”

  “Graham’s always been kind of small for his age, could be that keeps a boy young—”

  Sometimes, even, remembering his mother’s pretty, silly voice, Graham could still miss Pinehill. He missed mostly the weather there, and the things in bloom, especially in the dirty Cambridge March, when everything was cold and gray and wet. Without meaning. Whereas, in Pinehill, Deirdre wrote (and Melanctha too; he’d had a surprisingly long letter from her), the dogwood had suddenly burst out all over; back in the darker woods it was frothy like fountains, and big creamy magnolia blossoms and the most beautiful rhododendrons of any season ever. Reading his letters and thinking of Pinehill brought quick hot tears to Graham’s eyes, even as he told himself, in one of his familiar litanies, You dumb little sentimental fag, you’re just lonesome without your silly mum—and horny too.

  In her letter, Melanctha also
said that Benny Davis, the Negro boy who had been Abby Baird’s friend up in Connecticut when they were little kids (and who was supposed to be extremely good-looking now), was coming to Pinehill to visit Abby; they were all wondering how that would work out. Melanctha thought Dolly Bigelow should throw a party for him (joke).

  Graham remembered almost nothing of his earliest years, in California. They had not lived on the coast, his mother told him, but quite far inland, in Sacramento. Nevertheless, that ocean was what Graham remembered: a coarse gray beach, at the foot of some crevassed green-gray cliffs, and gentle, small, but very cold waves that had lapped at his bare feet, too cold for wading. “I guess we would’ve gone over there for a picnic or something,” Deirdre told him. “My dad really took to the fishing out there. Although I can’t say as I remember any wading days at a beach. California to my mind was really cold, except in the summer when Sacramento anyways was hotter than blazes.” Graham did not remember anything hot as blazes, or hotter. He did remember gray, gray clouded air that people out there called fog but that seemed to him more like rain.

  Insofar as he had academic ambitions, or intentions, Graham’s were not poetic; God knows what he wanted to be (he wanted to be heterosexual—oh Christ! he wanted to be normal, hopelessly yearned for just plain normal). He was sure he did not want to be a poet. Well, easy enough, he told himself, just don’t write poetry. And, easy enough: just don’t do anything sexual with boys—Graham had as yet no clear idea of just what it was that boys did together beyond kissing and touching, touching all over, he guessed; what he thought of when he dared to think of it at all as Mutual M. The scoutmaster at home, Mr. Mountjoy, had told Graham that in France men kissed each other, but he had not wanted to kiss Mr. Mountjoy, who got mad.

  However, partly because it worked out with his schedule, Graham took a course that spring called Criticism of Poetry, which required him to read poets he had barely heard of before: Yeats, Auden, John Donne, T. S. Eliot. “What they have in common, at least in my own view, which is to predominate in this class”—a slight twist to his small tight mouth that the class later came to recognize as a smile—“what they have in common is excellence. Also, as some of you have no doubt noted, all are English, except for Mr. Eliot, who became so by adoption, and Mr. Yeats, who was Irish, which is closer than he would have cared to admit.” Again the tiny twist, the semi-smile. This professor was short and bald, pale, with intense, burning dark brown eyes—eyes that, Graham imagined, saw everything, even himself; Graham sometimes had a sense of being noticed, observed by this distant and brilliant man, this famous scholar. Which was probably not true, he thought; or it was true that he was noticed, but only because he was there on the second row. (B for Byrd got Graham into many second rows, alphabetically speaking.) He, the professor, was given to discreetly elegant shirts and ties, smooth dark suits (actually all from London), tidy socks, and impeccably polished shoes.