by Alice Adams
Before them, then, was their destination: the inn, with its clump of white cottages. And the meadow. So far, nothing that Molly could see had changed. No condominiums. Everything as remembered.
They were given the cabin farthest from the central office, the one nearest the meadow, and the river and the sea. A small bedroom, smaller kitchen, and in the living room a studio couch. Big windows, and that view.
“Obviously, the bedroom is yours,” Sandy magnanimously declared, plunking down his bag on the studio couch.
“Well,” was all for the moment that Molly could say, as she put her small bag down in the bedroom, and went into the kitchen with the sack of breakfast things. From the little window she looked out to the meadow, saw that it was pink now with wildflowers, in the early June dusk. Three large brown cows were grazing out there, near where the river must be. Farther out she could see the wide, gray-white strip of beach, and the dark blue, turbulent sea. On the other side of the meadow were soft green hills, on which—yes, one might have known—new houses had arisen. But somehow inoffensively; they blended. And beyond the beach was the sharp, rocky silhouette of Point Lobos, crashing waves, leaping foam. All blindingly undiminished: a miraculous gift.
Sandy came into the kitchen, bearing bottles. Beaming Sandy, saying, “Mol, this is the most divine place. We must celebrate your choice. Immediately.”
They settled in the living room with their drinks, with that view before them: the almost imperceptibly graying sky, the meadow, band of sand, the sea.
And, as she found that she often did, with Sandy, Molly began to say what had just come into her mind. “You wouldn’t believe how stupid I was, as a very young woman,” she prefaced, laughing a little. “Once I came down here with a lawyer, from San Francisco, terribly rich. Quite famous, actually.” (The same man with whom she had so quickly rushed off to bed, on their arrival—as she did not tell Sandy.) “Married, of course. The first part of my foolishness. And I was really broke at the time—broke, I was poor as hell, being a typist to support my poetry habit. You remember. But I absolutely insisted on bringing all the food for that stolen, illicit weekend, can you imagine? What on earth was I trying to prove? Casseroles of crabmeat, endive for salads. Honestly, how crazy I was!”
Sandy laughed agreeably, and remarked a little plaintively that for him she had only brought breakfast food. But he was not especially interested in that old, nutty view of her, Molly saw—and resolved that that would be her last “past” story. Customarily they did not discuss their love affairs.
She asked, “Shall we walk out on the beach tomorrow?”
“But of course.”
Later they drove to a good French restaurant, where they drank a little too much wine, but they did not get drunk. And their two reflections, seen in a big mirror across the tiny room, looked perfectly all right: Molly, gray-haired, darkeyed and thin, in her nice flowered silk dress; and Sandy, tidy and alert, a small plump man, in a neat navy blazer.
After dinner they drove along the beach, the cold white sand ghostly in the moonlight. Past enormous millionaire houses, and blackened windbent cypresses. Past the broad sloping river beach, and then back to their cabin, with its huge view of stars.
In her narrow bed, in the very small but private bedroom, Molly thought again, for a little while, of that very silly early self of hers: how eagerly self-defeating she had been—how foolish, in love. But she felt a certain tolerance now for that young person, herself, and she even smiled as she thought of all that intensity, that driven waste of emotion. In many ways middle age is preferable, she thought.
In the morning, they met the dog.
After breakfast they had decided to walk on the river beach, partly since Molly remembered that beach as being far less populated than the main beach was. Local families brought their children there. Or their dogs, or both.
Despite its visibility from their cabin, the river beach was actually a fair distance off, and so instead of walking there they drove, for maybe three or four miles. They parked and got out, and were pleased to see that no one else was there. Just a couple of dogs, who seemed not to be there together: a plumy, oversized friendly Irish setter, who ran right over to Molly and Sandy; and a smaller, long-legged, thin-tailed dark gray dog, with very tall ears—a shy young dog, who kept her distance, running a wide circle around them, after the setter had ambled off somewhere else. As they neared the water, the gray dog sidled over to sniff at them, her ears flattened, seeming to indicate a lowering of suspicion. She allowed herself to be patted, briefly; she seemed to smile.
Molly and Sandy walked near the edge of the water; the dog ran ahead of them.
The day was glorious, windy, bright blue, and perfectly clear; they could see the small pines and cypresses that struggled to grow from the steep sharp rocks of Point Lobos, could see fishing boats far out on the deep azure ocean. From time to time the dog would run back in their direction, and then she would rush toward a receding wave, chasing it backward in a seeming happy frenzy. Assuming her (then) to live nearby, Molly almost enviously wondered at her sheer delight in what must be familiar. The dog barked at each wave, and ran after every one as though it were something new and marvellous.
Sandy picked up a stick and threw it forward. The dog ran after the stick, picked it up and shook it several times, and then, in a tentative way, she carried it back toward Sandy and Molly—not dropping it, though. Sandy had to take it from her mouth. He threw it again, and the dog ran off in that direction.
The wind from the sea was strong, and fairly chilling. Molly wished she had a warmer sweater, and she chided herself: she could have remembered that Carmel was cold, along with her less practical memories. She noted that Sandy’s ears were red, and saw him rub his hands together. But she thought, I hope he won’t want to leave soon, it’s so beautiful. And such a nice dog. (Just that, at that moment: a very nice dog.)
The dog, seeming for the moment to have abandoned the stick game, rushed at a just-alighted flock of sea gulls, who then rose from the wet waves’ edge and with what must have been (to a dog) a most gratifying flapping of wings, with cluckings of alarm.
Molly and Sandy were now close to the mouth of the river, the gorge cut into the beach, as water emptied into the sea. Impossible to cross—although Molly could remember when one could, when she and whatever companion had jumped easily over some water, and had then walked much farther down the beach. Now she and Sandy simply stopped there, and regarded the newish houses that were built up on the nearby hills. And they said to each other:
“What a view those people must have!”
“Actually the houses aren’t too bad.”
“There must be some sort of design control.”
“I’m sure.”
“Shall we buy a couple? A few million should take care of it.”
“Oh sure, let’s.”
They laughed.
They turned around to find the dog waiting for them, in a dog’s classic pose of readiness: her forelegs outstretched in the sand, rump and tail up in the air. Her eyes brown and intelligent, appraising, perhaps affectionate.
“Sandy, throw her another stick.”
“You do it this time.”
“Well, I don’t throw awfully well.”
“Honestly, Mol, she won’t mind.”
Molly poked through a brown tangle of seaweed and small broken sticks, somewhat back from the waves. The only stick that would do was too long, but she picked it up and threw it anyway. It was true that she did not throw very well, and the wind made a poor throw worse: the stick landed only a few feet away. But the dog ran after it, and then ran about with the stick in her mouth, shaking it, holding it high up as she ran, like a trophy.
Sandy and Molly walked more slowly now, against the wind. To their right was the meadow, across which they could just make out the cottages where they were staying. Ahead was a cluster of large, many-windowed ocean-front houses—in one of which, presumably, their dog lived.
; Once their walk was over, they had planned to go into Carmel and buy some wine and picnic things, and to drive out into the valley for lunch. They began to talk about this now, and then Sandy said that first he would like to go by the Mission. “I’ve never seen it,” he explained.
“Oh well, sure.”
From time to time on that return walk one or the other of them would pick up a stick and throw it for the dog, who sometimes lost a stick and then looked back to them for another, who stayed fairly near them but maintained, still, a certain shy independence.
She was wearing a collar (Molly and Sandy were later to reassure each other as to this) but at that time, on the beach, neither of them saw any reason to examine it. Besides, the dog never came quite that close. It would have somehow seemed presumptuous to grab her and read her collar’s inscription.
In a grateful way Molly was thinking, again, how reliable the beauty of that place had turned out to be: their meadow view, and now the river beach.
They neared the parking lot, and Sandy’s small green car.
An older woman, heavy and rather bent, was just coming into the lot, walking her toy poodle, on a leash. Their dog ran over for a restrained sniff, and then ambled back to where Molly and Sandy were getting into the car.
“Pretty dog!” the woman called out to them. “I never saw one with such long ears!”
“Yes—she’s not ours.”
“She isn’t lost, is she?”
“Oh no, she has a collar.”
Sandy started up the car; he backed up and out of the parking lot, slowly. Glancing back, Molly saw that the dog seemed to be leaving too, heading home, probably.
But a few blocks later—by then Sandy was driving somewhat faster—for some reason Molly looked back again, and there was the dog. Still. Racing. Following them.
She looked over to Sandy and saw that he too had seen the dog, in the rear view mirror.
Feeling her glance, apparently, he frowned. “Shell go home in a minute,” he said.
Molly closed her eyes, aware of violent feelings within herself, somewhere: anguish? dread? She could no more name them than she could locate the emotion.
She looked back again, and there was the dog, although she was now much farther—hopelessly far behind them. A small gray dot. Racing. Still.
Sandy turned right in the direction of the Mission, as they had planned. They drove past placid houses with their beds of too-bright, unnatural flowers, too yellow or too pink. Clean glass windows, neat shingles. Trim lawns. Many houses, all much alike, and roads, and turns in roads.
As they reached the Mission, its parking area was crowded with tour busses, campers, vans, and ordinary cars.
There was no dog behind them.
“You go on in,” Molly said. “I’ve seen it pretty often. I’ll wait out here in the sun.”
She seated herself on a stone bench near the edge of the parking area—in the sun, beside a bright clump of bougainvillea, and she told herself that by now, surely, the dog had turned around and gone on home, or back to the beach. And that even if she and Sandy had turned and gone back to her, or stopped and waited for her, eventually they would have had to leave her, somewhere.
Sandy came out, unenthusiastic about the church, and they drove into town to buy sandwiches and wine.
In the grocery store, where everything took a very long time, it occurred to Molly that probably they should have checked back along the river beach road, just to make sure that the dog was no longer there. But by then it was too late.
They drove out into the valley; they found a nice sunny place for a picnic, next to the river, the river that ran on to their beach, and the sea. After a glass of wine Molly was able to ask, “You don’t really think she was lost, do you?”
But why would Sandy know, any more than she herself did? At that moment Molly hated her habit of dependence on men for knowledge—any knowledge, any man. But at least, for the moment, he was kind. “Oh, I really don’t think so,” he said. “She’s probably home by now.” And he mentioned the collar.
Late that afternoon, in the deepening, cooling June dusk, the river beach was diminishingly visible from their cabin, where Molly and Sandy sat with their pre-dinner drinks. At first, from time to time, it was possible to see people walking out there: small stick figures, against a mild pink sunset sky. Once, Molly was sure that one of the walkers had a dog along. But it was impossible, at that distance, and in the receding light, to identify an animal’s markings, or the shape of its ears.
They had dinner in the inn’s long dining room, from which it was by then too dark to see the beach. They drank too much, and they had a silly outworn argument about Sandy’s smoking, during which he accused her of being bossy; she said that he was inconsiderate.
Waking at some time in the night, from a shallow, winey sleep, Molly thought of the dog out there on the beach, how cold it must be, by now—the hard chilled sand and stinging waves. From her bed she could hear the sea’s relentless crash.
The pain that she experienced then was as familiar as it was acute.
They had said that they would leave fairly early on Sunday morning and go home by way of Santa Cruz: a look at the town, maybe lunch, and a brief tour of the university there. And so, after breakfast, Molly and Sandy began to pull their belongings together.
Tentatively (but was there a shade of mischief, of teasing in his voice? Could he sense what she was feeling?) Sandy asked, “I guess we wont go by the river beach?”
“No.”
They drove out from the inn, up and onto the highway; they left Carmel. But as soon as they were passing Monterey, Pacific Grove, it began to seem intolerable to Molly that they had not gone back to the beach. Although she realized that either seeing or not seeing the dog would have been terrible.
If she now demanded that Sandy turn around and go back, would he do it? Probably not, she concluded; his face had a set, stubborn look. But Molly wondered about that, off and on, all the way to Santa Cruz.
For lunch they had sandwiches in a rather scruffy, open-air place; they drove up to and in and around the handsome, almost deserted university; and then, anxious not to return to the freeway, they took off on a road whose sign listed, among other destinations, San Francisco.
Wild Country: thickly wooded, steeply mountainous. Occasionally through an opening in the trees they could glimpse some sheer cliff, gray sharp rocks; once a distant small green secret meadow. A proper habitat for mountain lions, Molly thought, or deer, at least, and huge black birds. “It reminds me of something,” she told Sandy, disconsolately. “Maybe even some place I’ve only read about.”
“Or a movie,” he agreed. “God knows it’s melodramatic.”
Then Molly remembered: it was indeed a movie that this savage scenery made her think of, and a movie that she herself had done the screenplay for. About a quarrelling, alcoholic couple, Americans, who were lost in wild Mexican mountains. As she had originally written it, they remained lost, presumably to die there. Only, the producer saw fit to change all that, and he had them romantically rescued by some good-natured Mexican bandits.
They had reached a crossroads, where there were no signs at all. The narrow, white roads all led off into the woods. To Molly, the one on the right looked most logical, as a choice, and she said so, but Sandy took the middle one. “You really like to be in charge, don’t you,” he rather unpleasantly remarked, lighting a cigarette.
There had been a lot of news in the local papers about a murderer who attacked and then horribly killed hikers and campers, in those very Santa Cruz mountains, Molly suddenly thought. She rolled up her window and locked the door, and she thought again of the ending of her movie. She tended to believe that one’s fate, or doom, had a certain logic to it; even, that it was probably written out somewhere, even if by one’s self. Most lives, including their endings, made a certain sort of sense, she thought.
The gray dog then came back powerfully, vividly to her mind: the small heart pounding in
that thin, narrow ribcage, as she ran after their car. Unbearable: Molly’s own heart hurt, as she closed her eyes and tightened her hands into fists.
“Well, Christ,” exploded Sandy, at that moment. “We’ve come to a dead end. Look!”
They had; the road ended abruptly, it simply stopped, in a heavy grove of cypresses and redwoods. There was barely space to turn around.
Not saying, “Why didn’t you take the other road?” Molly instead cried out, uncontrollably, “But why didn’t we go back for the dog?”
“Jesus, Molly.” Redfaced with the effort he was making, Sandy glared. “That’s what we most need right now. Some stray bitch in the car with us.”
“What do you mean, stray bitch? She chose us—she wanted to come with us.”
“How stupid you are! I had no idea.”
“You’re so selfish!” she shouted.
Totally silent, then, in the finally righted but possibly still lost car, they stared at each other: a moment of pure dislike.
And then, “Three mangy cats, and now you want a dog,” Sandy muttered. He started off, too fast, in the direction of the crossroads. At which they made another turn.
Silently they travelled through more woods, past more steep gorges and ravines, on the road that Molly had thought they should have taken in the first place.
She had been right; they soon came to a group of signs which said that they were heading toward Saratoga. They were neither to die in the woods nor to be rescued by bandits. Nor murdered. And, some miles past Saratoga, Molly apologized. “Actually I have a sort of a headache,” she lied.
“I’m sorry, too, Mol. And you know I like your cats.” Which was quite possibly also a lie.
They got home safely, of course.
But somehow, after that trip, their friendship, Molly and Sandy’s, either “lapsed” again, or perhaps it was permanently diminished; Molly was not sure. One or the other of them would forget to call, until days or weeks had gone by, and then their conversation would be guilty, apologetic.
And at first, back in town, despite the familiar and comforting presences of her cats, Molly continued to think with a painful obsessiveness of that beach dog, especially in early hours of sleeplessness. She imagined going back to Carmel alone to look for her; of advertising in the Carmel paper, describing a young female with gray markings. Tall ears.