by Alice Adams
He read aloud, this professor, in a low but penetrating near monotone, a voice that was tightly controlled, but still his passion for the words, the words of the poets, came through. He read: “And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die!” and “I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,” and “April is the cruellest month … mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots …”
And, in an apologetic, hesitant way, he said, “I am purposefully choosing the most available, the most popular—the most trite, if you will—of their lines, in the hope that you will be seduced into lifetimes of further reading. Of such glorious pleasure.”
Graham was indeed seduced. He left each class in a state of blind euphoria, seeing no one, aware only of those words—and of weather, April, the cruelest month, but so beautiful in its way, in New England.
Alone, as though furtively, he read more and more of those poets. And he developed a special feeling for W. H. Auden, as yet unmentioned in class. On one of the book jackets there was a photograph of Auden, of that long, lined hyperintelligent, sensitive, witty face. Graham wished that his father had looked like that, in fact that his father had been Wystan Auden instead of handsome American Southern Russell Byrd. His father could never have written, “… mad Ireland hurt you into poetry,” nor, “We cannot choose what we are free to love,” nor, “… the distortions of ingrown virginity.” Could not have written, very likely not understood. And Graham wondered, Did he really understand? When Auden wrote, “… honor the vertical man, / Though we value none, / But the horizontal one”—did that mean what Graham believed that it did?
One day, leaving class in the crowd, Graham overheard this exchange:
“Do you think we’ll ever get to old Auden?”
“Maybe not. Maybe the old man has it in for queers.”
“But he is one. Haven’t you heard that? Everyone knows.”
Oh, you too, I’ll bet. That was what Graham wanted to say, but did not dare. Nor did he dare to believe what he had heard.
The roommates (“suite-mates,” as they were called, and in fact each man did have his own tiny room for sleep) all—usually all but Graham—went out to a great many movies at night. “A flick at the U.T., and then a couple of beers at the O.G.” was the standard description of an evening. U.T.—the University Theatre, O.G.—the Oxford Grill. Wednesdays were Revival Nights at the U.T.; the films revived were from the thirties, mostly, ten years back, with a few twenties treasures thrown in. They always politely asked Graham to come along, but much more often than not he refused. He said thanks, but he had a lot of reading to do. Or, more honestly, he said that for some reason he had not slept well the night before, and hoped to make up for it that night.
Sleep—elusive, stubbornly eluding him, it seemed. At night Graham’s mind announced, I’m busy thinking, I’m remembering everything that ever happened, every place or person that I ever saw, and what they said, and I’m scrambling in a frantic haste over fantasies of what will happen next, beginning tomorrow.
All the sounds of Cambridge made this sleeplessness worse, cars and horns and street shouts, the occasional ambulance or fire truck. A cacophonous conspiracy, preventing sleep.
And not sleeping well on one night did not guarantee a sound night’s sleep on the next, nor an early one, Graham found. Sometimes, lying awake, he yearned for the sounds he was used to in Pinehill; only those sounds would allow him to sleep, would lull his troubled head: the tree frogs in the spring, the hum of pines in summer winds, the stray lone baying of a hound. A long train whistle.
Thus, when they all had gone off eagerly to see Top Hat (Fred and Ginger were perennial favorites with everyone), Graham was still at home alone. Truly tired, that night he went to bed early, and, amazingly, fell almost instantly asleep.
He woke slowly, sometime later, to the feel of someone in his bed with him. Hands on his back, hands reaching. Strongly aroused but still half asleep, he thought, Another dream, one more wet fantasy. But in the next instant he knew that this was not a dream; it was Paxton, his friend, now holding him, hard. Pressing, pushing in. So that Graham experienced first pain, then an unbearably escalating pleasure. Pleasure that made him suddenly scream before he could stop the sound. But Paxton cried out too—they must be alone, and in another minute Paxton whispered, “It’s okay, they’re still out. I sneaked back.” A little pause. “I wanted you, I planned this. God, I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
Graham slowly turned around in his arms, and they kissed.
The next morning, though, having met for coffee by appointment at St. Clair’s, they spoke very seriously. They both knew what they had done and meant to continue to do—something for which, if apprehended (Jesus, apprehended!), they could both be thrown out of Harvard. And they could be permanently labeled. In many ways ruined, for life.
Paxton’s face was dark and narrow, as his body was. A long thin pale face, with a very high white forehead, a long thin nose, and narrow green-gray eyes. A serious (and sensual!) wide mouth. Very quietly he said, “There’s something I have to tell you.”
Graham’s heart froze as he watched Paxton’s face, and waited. As he thought that Paxton was going to say, You know we can’t ever do that again. I didn’t like it. Let’s try to be friends. I have this girl.…
But Paxton said none of those things. What he said was, “This is something very serious for me—I mean, what I feel is serious, and I think you too—?”
“Yes. Christ! Yes,” Graham breathed.
A taut smile from Paxton, “Well, we have to plan. We can’t just meet, any old way—tumble into bed of an afternoon.”
Hearing those words, Graham experienced a quick jerk of desire as he thought, We can’t? We can’t right now—?
“The thing is,” Paxton continued, “I have all this money. My grandfather—this trust—this month—I’m eighteen. I mean, I could rent an apartment—”
“I’ve got some money too.”
Paxton smiled. “Well, we’re lucky, aren’t we?”
For discretion, they did not go apartment hunting together. Paxton simply called a friend of his father’s, a trustee of his trust, who just happened to own a building.
“I need a space to go to, it’s so hard to study in the dorm,” Paxton explained.
“Well, I have this one that should do you fine. If you don’t let yourself get overrun with those Radcliffe girls. I hear they’re pretty aggressive these days.”
“I’ll try not to, sir.” The trustee too was a product of St. Paul’s, as was Paxton’s father.
The small furnished apartment was on Walker Street, near the Radcliffe dorms. “It’ll look like we have dates over there.” Paxton laughed.
“Well, in a way we do.”
Sometimes, before or after love, they met for a drink in the nearby Commodore Bar, which was suitably dark, and a perfectly natural place for a couple of men to go for a drink. There was actually a rather male tone to that bar, at that time; it was certainly not a place to which women (in those days) would go alone. Paxton and Graham often noted at other tables a couple of ensigns, say, or a captain and a lieutenant who did not look like father and son. Friends? Or—possibly—? In any case, it was a place in which they felt at home, although the observance of some caution still seemed necessary: any show of affection was out. They should not even appear there together too often. One could never tell.
23
THAT spring Odessa’s husband, Horace, discharged from the Navy, stayed around longer than he had ever been known to do, there in the Bairds’ garage apartment with Odessa. Sometimes he worked odd jobs around town, but mostly he just worked out in Cynthia’s garden. (It was felt in town that the Bairds overpaid Odessa and very likely Horace too: what did Yankees know about treating their help?) Horace certainly did a lot of work for Cynthia, and with resultant magic, although all over town that particular April was deemed extraordinary. Such a profusion of tiny curled pale green new leaves, like secrets, everywhere, and such bursts of tender b
loom, white dogwood and redbud trees and pear trees, azaleas and rhododendron. And roses; roses bloomed all over town, although it was generally conceded that Cynthia Baird’s were the most various, and striking. “She’s got every kind of rose known to man, and some not ever seen before this, not anywheres.”
It did not seem quite fair, and her luck, as it was termed, with her garden was mostly attributed to Horace, who everyone knew had a way with flowers like no other gardener, white or colored.
It was also attributed to money, and not only what she allegedly paid Horace. “She must’ve spent a fortune on that place, the manure alone don’t come cheap these days.”
Or to Harry’s stray weekend visits, down from Washington, when he was indeed observed to spend a lot of time out in the garden.
Or, getting into metaphysics or maybe theology, it was said that Cynthia’s beautiful garden was God’s recompense for all her bad luck with men, Harry trying to ditch her for that English lady, Miss Obesity, whatever her name was. (Dolly kept this view current, whispering it about, trying not to let Odessa, especially, hear her.)
The one thing that no one seemed to notice, or anyway to say, was that in her garden Cynthia worked her hands to blisters and then to hard calluses with trowels and rakes and shovels, and wrecked her nails—although this was surely one of the truths about her flowers.
Abby, however, home for Easter and observing both her mother’s hands and the beautiful, perfectly tended garden, did observe, “Mom, talk about working your fingers to the bone, you’ve really done it.”
Gratified, Cynthia told her daughter, “Nice of you to notice. Harry just asked why didn’t I get a manicure. Come to think of it, Dolly asked me the same thing.”
“I’m a scientist, an almost-doctor, remember? I observe.” And Abby laughed, in her easy, good-natured way.
Abby was either too good-natured or, maybe, too absorbed in her own life to ask Cynthia, What’s really going on with my father? Which Cynthia could not herself have answered, even had she wanted to. He came down from Washington on weekends—occasionally, and without a great deal of notice: a phone call on a Thursday, say: “Okay if I come down? I thought, tomorrow?” Once, experimentally lying, Cynthia said, “No, I’m sorry, this weekend’s really out for me.” But that seemed to be all right too, no questions asked. In fact, they talked rather little, and in a personal way hardly at all. At a much later time, thinking over this period, Cynthia wondered at it, amazed: how could they have said so little, have asked so little of or from each other? At that later time she concluded that it was at least partly out of fear.
And how could they have shared a bed on all those weekend nights and not made love? But that was the truth of it; for months they neither seriously talked nor made love.
A partial explanation for both these lapses was that they were drinking a lot, a lot. Harry had some access in Washington to a very good English gin, and French vermouth—less of that, the vermouth, but then the martinis that they drank, and drank and drank were little more than a glass of chilled gin, with a twist of lemon or a tiny pickled onion, and sometimes a whiff of vermouth. And so, on most nights, by the time they went to bed they were pickled themselves, too drunk for love or for significant conversation.
And occasionally, in what talk they did have, small dangerous flashes occurred.
Harry referred to someone called Vera. Several times.
“Vera?” asked Cynthia.
“Veracity. I told you she was in Washington, she has this job—”
He hadn’t, actually, or if he had Cynthia had not taken it in, but she told him, “Yes, of course. The Lady V. I suppose you refer to me as Cyn?”
“Very funny.”
During this period, Cynthia rarely thought about and never heard from Derek McFall. She assumed that he was off somewhere, covering something. (Her interest in world events, like that of many people, had greatly diminished since the end of the war—thus Derek’s important broadcasts from Moscow escaped her attention.) Did Deirdre ever see him? Did she travel glamorously to New York or wherever to see him? Cynthia did not know, but she tended to believe that she would have heard of it, in talkative little Pinehill. Dolly Bigelow would surely have said, “Well, that Deirdre Byrd’s not wasting much time. No grass growing under that young woman’s feet. Off to New York City to see that newspaper fellow, that Derek whatever. Well, she always was some looker. And what you’d call sexy, I guess.” Very easy to imagine Dolly saying all that—but in fact she had not.
In this period of her life, though, humiliatingly, Cynthia found herself very moved by trashy songs that she sometimes—well, often—heard on the radio. Disgusting—disgraceful; she felt her blood and her literal heart respond to those throbbing trombones, pulsing drums, sleazy saxophones, and whining clarinets. Such awful music, and the words were even worse. How could she react with such strong and vague yearnings? Not, thank God, for Derek, or for Harry. Just someone. Someone to make her feel less alone. To kiss. She often got up and turned off the radio—and soon turned it on again.
And now she was listening, again, to Frank Sinatra (“This love of mine—”) and not to Abby, who had stopped whatever she had been saying to announce, “God, I can’t stand Sinatra.”
“Me neither,” Cynthia lied. “And he’s everywhere.”
“Well,” said Abby, in the tone of one continuing a conversation, “at least we can be pretty sure Dolly won’t give a party for him,” and she laughed.
In an agreeing way, Cynthia laughed too as she tried to recall exactly what Abby had been saying, and then it came—the (to Cynthia) not entirely welcome news that Benny Davis, Abby’s old (Negro) friend, the former Harvard football star, now an about-to-be law student, was coming to visit. This weekend. Here.
But in that quick following moment of looking at her daughter, Cynthia felt a sudden surge of pure love for Abby, love and pride in her, admiration, some awe, and not a little fear. Abby would not go easily through life, and Cynthia inwardly sighed with this knowledge. Abby was too straightforward, wholehearted, clearheaded; she was warm and generous—all too much for a devious, crooked-pathed world.
Abby was directly and unequivocally pleased that her old friend was coming to see her, of course she was. The fact that he was a Negro, was “colored” as they said down here, and that her home was here, in the middle (bigoted, narrow) South was secondary to her affection for her oldest friend. Being far from stupid, being in fact highly sensitive and aware, Abby saw some complexity ahead, with the visit, but that is what she saw, complexity, surmountable complications. Dolly would not give a party: a joke.
“The thing is,” said Cynthia, feeling her way and not at all sure just what “the thing” was, “the thing is, no one’s ever had a Negro come and stay with them. Not in this town.”
“Not even at the college? Some visiting prof?” Abby’s tone was purely judicious, curious.
“I don’t think so. But if they did, no one here in town knew, you know? So it wasn’t an issue. But if we do—”
Abby smiled, but now her voice was clear and purposeful. “You mean, when we do. Mother, he’ll be here Saturday. This is Tuesday.”
“Of course. You’re right.”
“Mother, of course I am.”
“I was just thinking about Odessa.”
“You mean, I should warn her?”
“Abby darling, of course I don’t mean ‘warn,’ but maybe tell her? Let’s face it, this will be unusual for her? She could be—embarrassed?”
Abby spoke firmly. “Odessa will be like she is with any guest.” She half smiled. “But after all, he did go to Harvard. Compared to Odessa and Horace and their kids and anyone they know, he’s rich, and that almost makes him white.” She laughed. “Joseph says it’s like that with Jews. If you’re rich enough, you’re not really Jewish.”
“I suppose. Buffy Guggenheim in school seemed—” Cynthia had been about to say, “just like anyone else,” and then with a small laugh stopped herself. “I
guess the truth is I haven’t known all that many Jewish people,” she said. “Even in Washington, somehow—”
“But now you’re getting a Jewish son-in-law, and a bunch of Jewish in-laws. Communists at that,” Abby laughed. And then she said, “Speaking of all that, Joseph is really worried and sort of ticked off at his sister.”
“Oh?”
“She ran off to Madison after that Ed Faulkner. You know, the Negro soldier who was on the train with Russell Byrd when he died, and then the C.P. almost loused the whole thing up, interfering—”
“I remember.” Cynthia had always found the whole story confusing, but of course she remembered who Ed Faulkner was. “How did Susan know him?” she asked.
“From when the Marcuses asked him to come and stay—mostly because he’s a Negro, I think. Communists!—they’re so irrational. Anyway, Susan developed this big crush on Ed, and when he went out to Madison to school, she pulled together all the money she could get out of her family, borrowed some from Joseph too, and went out after him. She rented a house and everything, said she’d get a job and maybe even finish her degree there. God, with her grades, fat chance. But of course it didn’t work out, their living together. Joseph has the idea that Ed never really even liked her very much, it was all in her head. Not his.”