Return Trips

by Alice Adams

  However, she did none of those things. She simply went on with her calm new life, as before, with her cats. She wrote some poems.

  But, although she had ceased to be plagued by her vision of the dog (running, endlessly running, growing smaller in the distance) she did not forget her.

  And she thought of Carmel, now, in a vaguely painful way, as a place where she had lost, or left something of infinite value. A place to which she would not go back.

  Mexican Dust

  Four North American tourists are walking through the interior of a small church, near Oaxaca: one square room, shabby but strictly decorous, with its white lace altar cloth and intricate silver candlesticks; its outsize, bright floppy flowers, and vague, dark holy pictures. Single file, the tourists tiptoe: three large fair-haired people, a woman and two men, followed by another woman, who is small and dark, named Miriam. Miriam lags slightly behind the others, in the gray stone shadows.

  The group of three which Miriam trails is led by Eric, her husband, a doctor. Next comes Eric’s twin sister, Joan, also a doctor, and after Joan bearded Russell, a physicist, husband of Joan. Earlier that morning the two couples visited a splendid cathedral, very near the pretty hotel where they are all staying. This little church seems drab, comparatively. “It’s sort of dreary, for a church,” Joan whispers ahead to her brother Eric. Eric laughs, very quietly.

  The group is all related, then, although Miriam is aware that the others are more related to each other than to her; and they look so alike, those three, so blond and full-fleshed. Before she met them (they were all at Stanford together), Miriam imagined them to be a family, two brothers with their sister, and she thought she had never seen such glamorous, such quintessentially California people. Small dark Miriam, from Quincy, Mass., on a scholarship, was dazzled, and she remained dazzled after they met—or, rather, after she met Eric (at a swimming party at Lake Lagunitas, of all odd circumstances; Eric said she looked like a goldfish, in her small yellow bathing suit). She and Eric fell in love, and he introduced her to his twin sister, Joan, in medical school along with him and married. And she met Joan’s husband, Russell, studying physics.

  And so, in addition to their similar looks, those three have science in common. Miriam, who studied English, now does volunteer work at the public library in Seattle, where she and Eric have moved. However, it is Miriam who has, just then, in the church, a weird science-fiction thought: she thinks that all the dust particles in Mexico could be silicon chips, programmed for some violence. She thinks that anything at all could happen there, and she is suddenly afraid.

  Still tiptoeing behind the others, Miriam then notices a small crucifix, in a deeply recessed niche. Even in those dark shadows, though, she can see that the sagging figure of the Christ is lined with blood; red blood (well, paint, of course) seeps down from the gaping wound, just below his ribs.

  Or did Miriam’s peripheral vision catch that image, that blood, just before her strange, quite uncharacteristic thought about dust and violence? She is not sure, not then or later on, when she considers everything.

  Usually—almost always, really—Miriam finds it wonderful to be associated with those others, to be with them. When she is with them she has, even, a sense of being assimilated by them, with them, into them. It is as if by sufficiently gazing up at them, at Eric, Joan, and Russell, she could absorb—could take on their qualities, even their blondness and height.

  And in their separate and collective ways they cherish her, too, Miriam feels; even her differences from themselves are appreciated. “How small you are!” Eric sometimes laughingly, lovingly remarks, even now, after eight years of marriage. And Joan: “What heaven it must be to shop for size-3 clothes!”

  It has sometimes occurred to Miriam, though, that she could do with fewer remarks about her size; so much attention to it makes her feel rather like their mascot. She is simply small, a fact not terribly interesting to herself.

  And she does have to argue with them all, when the four are together, about her library volunteer work, her arguments being the obvious ones: tax cuts are killing the libraries, libraries need all the help they can get. And, she adds, with only a B.A. in English lit., what sort of job could she get these days? Also, Eric’s cardiology practice brings in plenty of money. Everything she says is true, they have to agree. Still, they all—especially Joan (who earns more than either Eric or Russell)—seem to wish that she did something else. That she had a career.

  Being alone with Eric is not at all the same as being with Eric and Joan and Russell; of course not. Alone, in Seattle, Miriam and Eric have domestic conversations: what needs to be fixed (their house is old, and large). And food: big Eric eats a lot, and on her way home from the library Miriam often stops to shop at the Pike Place Market (she loves it there, the beautiful open displays); Eric likes to hear about that, what she saw, what looked best. Their dinners are the high points of their days.

  She occasionally feels, though, that Eric is more himself when they are with Joan and Russell than when there are only the two of them. With Joan and Russell, Eric talks more, expresses opinions, makes jokes. Mostly medical jokes. (Russell collects dirty limericks; he knows thousands.)

  However, since Eric and Miriam have been in Seattle, they see Joan and Russell considerably less, Joan’s practice being in Palo Alto; Russell works on the linear accelerator, at Stanford.

  But they still have these trips: by tradition the four of them take vacations together. Joan and Russell do not come up to Seattle; they have let it be known that they really can’t stand the Northwest. Miriam has not let it be known that she is not truly fond of San Francisco, where they sometimes meet. Everything so pretty, so “cute,” she thinks, and does not say. She also thinks (silently) that cable cars are dangerous. But: one year a barge trip in France, another the small towns of Umbria and Tuscany. Last year Scotland, this year Mexico.

  Miriam’s features are rather small, and her face has a curious flatness to it. A small mask. Dark eyes in shallow sockets, freckles across unprominent cheekbones. Small pointed nose, small mouth. Longish black-brown hair, which she sometimes knots up, to give herself more height.

  Miriam.

  On the day after she has her curious intimation of violence in the dusky church, Miriam and the others go out to the ruins at Monte Alban in a hired car, with a guide. Magnificently preserved flattened stone pyramids, rising up from the broad flat plain, at mystical intervals.

  On their way home, driving along the Pan-American highway, approaching the city of Oaxaca, they see an ambulance stopped just ahead of them, and a small cluster of people. Miriam begins to hold her breath.

  “A woman and a baby, both killed,” their guide mutters. He is sitting in front, next to the driver—but how did he know this, Miriam later wonders. He could see ahead? See the feet?

  The car slows down, and Miriam, who is closest to the window on the left, looks out and sees: on the ground, a white cover of some sort pulled over two human shapes, one medium-sized, one tiny. Two thin brown ankles protruding from the larger shape. Dusty brown feet. Red streams coming from underneath the cover. Blood.

  Sadness, misery on all the dark surrounding faces, the clustered onlookers. Their driver is very upset, although he goes on driving, slowly, as though in a mourning procession. To the guide, or perhaps to himself, he speaks in a low, continuous way, very softly, in Spanish.

  Miriam also speaks to herself, but inwardly, with no sound. People are killed every day, in one way or another, somewhere, she tells herself; you must not sentimentalize these two, they are out of pain now. You did not know them.

  Joan says, “That’s absolutely horrible.” Her mouth twists, and tightens.

  And Eric, in a bitter voice: “They think God will get them across highways.” He is looking anxiously at Miriam. To reassure him she smiles, and touches his hand.

  Ten or fifteen minutes later, Joan speculates, “It could have been an older sister carrying a baby. There seem to be a lot of
them—older kids helping. Family support systems.”

  Eric: “Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s the mother, girls having babies at fifteen or sixteen.” Eric is in favor of zero population growth, generally. Miriam would like to have one child. Early on in their marriage she was pregnant, accidentally, and she had a miscarriage: a lot of pain, blood. She still hopes for a child, eventually, but they no longer talk about it.

  During the rest of that day Miriam, anyway, thinks often of the family of those killed people. She imagines a small funeral parlor, too many bright flowers. People sitting around, moaning, crying. She can see it all quite clearly.

  Their ultimate destination is Ixtapa, for a rest, but they will get there by way of Puerto Escondido, a smaller, less well known resort. (It was Miriam who came up with the idea of Escondido: a young woman she knows in Seattle, a weaver with a stall in the Pike Place Market, has said it is beautiful, wonderful, undiscovered.) On maps it looked as though both those laps—Oaxaca to Escondido, Escondido to Ixtapa (skirting Acapulco)—were possible by car; their travel agent also believed that they could drive, although she cautioned them about bad roads. However, it turns out in Oaxaca that the only way to Escondido is by plane. A DC-3.

  Miriam, of course, is the nervous flier of the group. It is explained to her that although the DC-3s are small and old, from the Second World War, they are (undoubtedly) kept in very good shape; after all they make the trip every day. Russell, who was a Navy pilot, cannot resist teasing; he says, “I can’t imagine a trip on a DC-3 with no parachute. We always had parachutes.”

  Joan and Russell laugh, watching Miriam. She laughs, too, though unconvincingly.

  However, as a farewell to their Oaxaca hotel, they have Margaritas in the bar, just before departure. Miriam has two, purposefully, and she loves that plane trip.

  They fly very low over sharp green mountains that are crisscrossed with tiny, narrow perilous roads, so low that each tree is visible, and occasionally there is a small village, a scattering of shacks. Tiny people are walking around—she can even see them as they look up at the plane.

  “Oh, it’s really beautiful!” says Miriam, several times; she is a little drunk.

  “Miriam thinks that flying low is safer: it’s closer to the ground,” Eric explains to the others, who laugh. But that is just what Miriam does think, and she continues to believe it.

  The view from their hotel room is exceptionally beautiful: a long broad white beach, deserted, beside the glittering, bright blue-green sea. Some strange greenish-gray vegetation and, at the far end of the beach, some white cliffs, or dunes—high, deeply ridged.

  “Oh, how lovely,” Miriam breathes; she is feeling the Margaritas, a little.

  Behind her, Eric is saying, “This is the dirtiest room I’ve ever seen.”

  Miriam turns to see that he is right: an unmade bed, glasses with inches of dark liquid at their bottoms, floating cigarette stubs. A smeared mirror (lipstick? blood?), deep dust on the floor.

  They both are right, about the view and the condition of the room.

  It is quite a while before a maid comes in to clean it up, although Eric goes out to the desk to make a fuss.

  For whatever reasons—fatigue, drinks, the flight—Miriam has a headache as she and Eric go to bed that night. But women cannot say that anymore, she knows, when they are not in the mood to make love. “I have a headache”: a sitcom joke. And so she does not say it, and they do, happily—a happy surprise.

  Downstairs in the hotel, and outside, some sort of fiesta seems to be going on. A rock band, as well as mariachis. Amplified.

  All night.

  The hotel is up on a high bluff above the sea—as they did not quite realize the day before, on their arrival. Its broad grassy grounds stretch to an edge, a dropping off. There is a round blue swimming pool and a thatch-roofed bar. A romantic situation for the central building, which is itself romantic, with its balconies and long arched windows, its heavy growth of bougainvillea—brilliant blossoms, delicate green vines.

  However, the fiesta of the night before has left an incredible litter everywhere—piles of empty bottles: Scotch, French champagne, Mexican beer. Heaped-up ashtrays. Dirty plates.

  Observing all this, around noon, Russell severely remarks, “Do you realize that no one has touched this since last night?”

  And Joan: “Ugh. They’re probably all home sleeping off hangovers. They just don’t give a damn.”

  Perversely, Miriam finds something appealing, romantic even, in all that mess (although she does not say so, of course). So much champagne everywhere—what an incredible time they all must have had! It is how Gatsby’s lawns must have looked after one of his parties, before the servants came.

  But at that hotel, in Puerto Escondido (not West Egg), no one comes to clean up, not all day.

  The ocean water—which holds, surrounds, embraces Miriam as she swims, and dives down to explore beneath its surface—is like no other water in her life; surely not the New England ponds of her childhood, or the harsh Atlantic waves that pound the Northeastern coast. This clear and lightly cool green water seems another element—enchanted water—and, swimming there, in the gentle waves, Miriam feels herself transformed, her body as quick and light as a minnow. As small and brown.

  The others, Eric and Joan and Russell, are swimming there, too, but they are off somewhere else; Miriam hears them, distantly. She feels most splendidly, luxuriantly alone in the lovely water. And she is alone, except for a little Mexican boy, a child, who from time to time swims up to her; he smiles shyly, darkly, and as quickly disappears, another fish.

  “Miriam, come on, we’re getting out now,” she hears someone call.

  “I think HI stay in for a while. I’ll meet you up at the room.”

  “Well—”

  She dives down as far as she can, in the watery green silence.

  Late that afternoon, they learn that there are no rental cars available, and anyway it is not allowed to drive rented cars from Escondido to Ixtapa, or even to Acapulco.

  Airplanes do not fly to Ixtapa, or to Acapulco. Only backward to Oaxaca.

  There is only the second-class bus to Acapulco, and from there they may take a first-class bus to Ixtapa. One must travel from the second- to the first-class bus station, a matter of no distance. First class is called Estrella de Oro. A good sign.

  “But, uh, couldn’t we possibly just stay on here? It’s really nice, don’t you think? And second-class busses—” It is of course Miriam who has said all this.

  She is answered by a chorus: “Oh Miriam, of course not, we have reservations, Ixtapa …”

  Because they get there early, well before nine in the morning, they all have good seats on the bus, Miriam and Eric across the aisle from Joan and Russell, the two women at the windows.

  They are the only North Americans on the bus.

  The Mexicans who crowd into the other seats, and who, at the first and all subsequent stops, begin to fill the aisles, are not the poorest Mexicans—after all, they are travelling second class, not third—but they are considerably less rich than the four norte-americanos. Their clothes, the Mexicans’, are bright and cheap and new, possibly bought for this trip, in some cases, whereas the North Americans wear old jeans and old cotton shirts; their leather bags are hidden in the luggage compartment, under the bus.

  Miriam wishes that she were wearing something else. In these circumstances the jeans seem an affectation, besides being too hot. In a bright cotton dress, for instance (there are several in her suitcase, old summer favorites), she could look like any other passenger. She feels not liked by the Mexicans.

  In addition to stops at all the small villages for new passengers, the bus is often forced to stop for sheep and cattle, or goats that appear in small herds or scattered at roadsides, evidently just emerged from the rich green tropical growth that lines the way. At moments, through the thick palm trunks, a portion of the sea is visible, sharp blue, as quickly gone; mostly the road wander
s up small hills and down into dried-out creek beds. A burdened beast, the heavy, packed bus lumbers and creaks over potholes as large as moon craters.

  At the village stops the windows are opened, things to eat and drink passed back and forth; shouts, laughter, money exchanged. To Miriam it all looks very good: the fruit, dark meats, strange pastries. But no one, not her husband or friends, would approve of such exotic fare; she knows this perfectly well.

  Joan has brought some soda crackers in a package, from some restaurant; she passes them across to Miriam and Eric. Miriam is actually quite hungry, and the crackers help a little, although they are stale.

  The bus is supposed to arrive at Acapulco at three, but it does not—not until four—and so the six-hour trip has taken seven.

  “Seven hours on a second-class bus! No one will believe this story,” Russell says, once they have got out and are standing there, stretching, breathing in the hot, murky city air. But he is laughing; Miriam can tell that it will be a good story for him, later on. They will all laugh about it on later trips together—probably.

  They are standing in an incredible area of broken paving, refuse, dirt, over which hordes of shabby people are rushing with their battered luggage, packages.

  Now they pick up their own suitcases (easy to recognize) from the pile outside their bus; they head for the street, where taxis can be seen cruising by. At some distance, in another direction, they can also see a large building, which is probably the station. And Miriam cannot resist saying, “We’d probably do just as well to get on another bus right here.”

  “Miriam, you’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Another second-class bus? Come on.”

  However, as soon as they have piled into a taxi and told the driver that they want the first-class station, Estrella de Oro, to Ixtapa, he tells them that they will have much trouble. Many crowds, he says gloomily; they may not get to Ixtapa.