by Alice Adams
They all look at each other. “But we have to get to Ixtapa,” Eric mutters. “We have reservations for tonight.”
Downstairs in the Estrella de Oro station a large crowd surrounds the ticket counter that is marked Zihuatanejo-Ixtapa—all kinds of people, mostly Mexican. It seems impossible that so many people would want to go in just that direction at that moment, but there they are.
“I suppose some people live and work there,” Miriam suggests.
The waiting rooms and restaurant are on the second floor. “Why don’t you girls go back upstairs? No point in all of us waiting in line,” Eric says.
By now, it is six o’clock, and there is, in theory, a bus that leaves at seven-thirty. But will there be room on it for all these people, plus four North Americans? Quite possibly not.
The upstairs restaurant is closed, it seems, for repairs, and so Miriam and Joan simply wander about, in an idle though nervous way.
At one point they go out to the front entrance and stand there, observing the garish, tropical, and infinitely dirty scene, the broken-down cars and the beggars, dark withered women with sleeping children in their arms. “I think Acapulco is the bottom of the world.” Miriam shudders as she says this, in the thick infested heat.
“Oh, I’ve seen worse,” Joan says. She has recently been to India—a medical conference—which is presumably what she means.
Looking up at Joan, who is visibly tired, her light hair straggling down, her face dirt-streaked, lipstick gone, Miriam hopelessly thinks that Joan is still very beautiful, and then she wonders (not for the first time), But does Joan like me, really?
And then (a new thought), Oh, I just don’t care!
After a while, they go back downstairs to see what has happened to Eric and Russell.
What has happened is that they have been given numbers and moved to another line.
“It’s like a lottery?” asks Miriam.
Eric frowns. “Jesus, I hope not.”
By about eight it is clear that they have missed the seven-thirty bus, but it is said that there is another at ten. Everything is shouted in Spanish, though, which they only partially understand, and they never actually see the busses as they come in or depart.
“Miriam was absolutely right,” Eric concedes, in a rueful way. “We should have just gone into the second-class station and got on another bus.”
Miriam does not quite remember having said that, but she supposes that she did.
Clear information comes through at ten-fifteen: they have indeed missed the ten-o’clock bus, but there is another at eleven. However, there are still many people who wait for the bus; that is evident.
“Eleven. Jesus, that gets us to Ixtapa about three, or four.” Russell fumes.
“Terrific, that’s what we really need right now. Five more hours on a bus. Even if it is first class.” Eric is muttering, as though to himself.
In a low, very reasonable voice, Joan asks, “Do we have a choice, though? We’d never get into a hotel. Or could we?”
At which Miriam cries out, “Oh, no, God, not a hotel here—it’s so horrible! Why not just take a bus back to Escondido?”
She has spoken heedlessly, an outburst; still, she is unprepared for the silent, stony rage on those three so similar faces, looking down at her from their impressive heights. Joan’s mouth is taut; Russell’s eyes are wild, they glare as he says, “That’s crazy.”
At which Eric turns from Miriam to Russell, as he says, very quietly and furiously, “That’s enough, now, Russ. Just shut up, will you?”
As though they had always hated each other, the two men glare at each other for a moment that lasts forever, in the throbbing, crowded, filthy Allen room, in Acapulco.
At eleven, having hardly spoken, any of them, for the past forty-five minutes, in a blind exhausted way the four of them pile into the bus that has mysteriously appeared, out of the night. There are, strangely, just enough seats for everyone.
Miriam has stumbled into a window seat, on the left of the bus, next to the ocean, as they wind northward, up the coast. If anything were to be seen, through the heavy darkness—if there were a view, hers would be the best, and she feels a miserable guilt over even that nonexistent advantage. She also (miserably) feels responsible for their quarrel. Eric and Russell never fight.
The road seems very smooth, on this stretch of the coast. No potholes, but there are curves, which the driver takes at top speed, so that several passengers, Miriam among them, gasp aloud. Miriam thinks it quite possible that he could be drunk. Why not, at this dangerous, unreal hour? They will all be killed, she thinks, and then, so total is her discomfort, so deep her unhappiness, she further thinks that she does not care if they are. But please don’t let me be the sole survivor, she earnestly prays, to someone.
Most people have fallen instantly, noisily asleep, despite the danger. Beside Miriam, Eric sleeps lightly, restlessly.
The dawn is dirty, yellowish, menacing. In the coconut-palm plantations, just now barely, grayly visible, the heavy fronds are too still, and the ocean, glimpsed at intervals, is flat and black, dangerous-looking.
“Does it ever storm down here?” Russell has leaned across the aisle to ask this question of Eric, just awake.
Miriam watches Eric as he frowns and speaks impatiently. “I don’t know. Probably.”
If any of them spoke Spanish it would all have been different, Miriam thinks. They would have understood what was being said in the station about the busses, and even, maybe, have grasped a little more about the terrible accident on the road: how the guide knew so quickly what had happened, and what their driver was saying to himself—so sadly, so brokenly.
She will study Spanish, she then swiftly decides. There is a night course at the library branch at which she works; she will sign up as soon as they get home.
At about 5 a.m. they arrive at Ixtapa: a cluster of thick pale high buildings (an eruption of poisonous growths, Miriam thinks) in the sulfurous light. Across the way an endless golf course spreads, the smooth grass now all silverish gray.
They enter a building; there are red tiles, wooden arches hung with cut-tin ornaments.
From behind the desk a sleepy clerk hands out room keys.
In a heavily carpeted, perfectly silent elevator they all ascend.
Miriam and Eric’s room has a gigantic bed, thickly quilted in red and orange. Two big chairs, and on the walls several huge garish paintings, of improbable bright flowers. A mammoth mirror, all shining.
Beyond exhaustion, they each in a perfunctory way wash up; they remove a few clothes and fall into bed.
Lying there, in the yellowish semi-dark, Miriam has a vivid sense of having arrived at last in hell. Beside her, Eric has gone instantly to sleep; his heavy breath rasps, regularly. She closes her eyes, but then uncontrollably re-sees, with perfect clarity, that tragic roadside scene—the covered bodies, blood, the protruding brown bare dusty feet.
Quickly opening her eyes, she feels that all her senses are conspiring to make sleep out of the question; she is so over-tired, so hungry, so afraid. She lies there for a while, eyes wide.
When she closes her eyes once more, however, Miriam has quite another vision: she sees herself on the second-class bus again, but she is headed back toward Escondido, and this time she’s wearing a cotton dress, her bright blue, and she is alone. The bus rumbles along, much faster this trip, although from time to time it stops for passengers, and once more windows are opened, food passed through. And Miriam eats, everything she wants! Spicy aromatic meats and flaky pastries, pulpy fruits and tall sweet, colored fruity drinks. All exotic, delicious. And at Puerto Escondido the grounds have been all cleaned up; here and there are clumps of tropical vegetation, flowering bushes, small trees. And then the hotel itself, with its lovely bright covering bougainvillea.
Her room is clean and bright. She puts her bag down, undresses quickly, puts on her bathing suit and sandals. Grabs up a towel.
And she rushes, at last, down t
he winding rooted pathway, almost stumbling in her hurry—to the beach! She runs across the sand, to the gently lapping, warm clear water.
Half waking from what she recognizes as a dream (but how real it was, the water against her skin), Miriam tries, and fails, to read its meaning. Further awake, she realizes, too, that she is refreshed, as though she had indeed dipped into the ocean, or certainly had slept for more than the couple of hours which is actually the case.
Eric is still asleep. Carefully she slips out of bed and goes over to the window; she parts the heavy gold-threaded draperies and looks out. The menacing dawn has become an overcast, gray day, with strange dark clouds at the horizon. Closer in, on the beach, dozens of people are lying out on towels, body to body almost, all oiled as though there were sun—or as though they were dead.
Miriam unpacks some toilet things and goes into the bathroom, into further garish opulence: thick green towels, glistening green tile. And everything is scented, so sickly sweet that she hurries through washing.
Distantly, from the bedroom, she hears a knock at their door, in Russell’s familiar rhythm—then Eric’s sleepy voice, and Russell’s. The closing door.
When she reënters the room Eric is sitting on the edge of the bed. He is still mostly unwashed, of course, his face blue-shadowed, blond stubble on his chin and his cheeks. But he looks cheerful, restored to himself. “A great place, huh?” he asks her. “Finally.” And then he says, “Well, Joanie and Russ think a swim might be just the thing.”
“Let them go swimming, then.” Miriam has spoken with a calm, an assurance, that is absolute. “I think it looks dangerous.” Let them drown, she does not say.
In her blue robe she goes over to stand beside him. She says, “I have to leave here.” At that moment she is taller than he is.
He looks up at her, worriedly, uncomprehending. “You mean, just us?”
“I don’t care. I have to leave.”
Intelligent Eric has almost understood her, though. Reaching for the phone, he says, “I’ll try for an afternoon plane,” and he smiles, his old blond dazzling smile. “In the mean-time, you don’t want a swim?”
“No, I don’t. But you go on, if you want to,” and she smiles back.
Miriam. A small woman, who can suddenly, vividly see her husband Eric’s body washed up on a beach, blond hair spread against cold sand, and long pale legs crookedly stretched down to the murky, turbulent sea.
Elizabeth
For every reason, including conventional wisdom’s dictates that one should not go back to the scene of exceptional past happiness, I did not at all want to return to the Mexican beach at which I had not only been happy, my whole inner balance had seemed restored to me there, there at the extraordinarily lovely beach, with Elizabeth, my friend who now was dying and whom I could in no way restore, or save.
Since Elizabeth is—was about thirty years older than I am you say that her role in my life was maternal; my mother, a psychoanalyst, as my father is, does say just that; she is also aware of her own jealousy of Elizabeth—of course she is, both jealous and aware. To me that is not how it seemed at all; I did not see Elizabeth as “mother”; I simply liked her, and I admired her more than anyone I knew. For a long time I wondered whether my feelings for Judson, to whom I now am married, were colored by the fact that I first met him in her house. I have concluded that yes, they were, and are; after all, they loved each other too. Elizabeth and Judson.
In any case I did not at all want to go back to Mexico, to the beach and to Elizabeth’s house, where now my friend lay miserably dying, of emphysema. And I knew at last that I had to go, although of course Elizabeth did not say so—Elizabeth, the most elegantly tactful, most graceful of all people. I had been conscientiously writing her at least a couple of times a week, since she had allowed me to know of her illness, and for a while I managed to convince myself that that was better; many warm “interesting” letters might be less disturbing to her than an actual visit.
Then Judson, with whom I was not exactly in touch at that time—our connection was tentative, indefinite, perhaps anomalous—Judson telephoned me from Iowa, where he was living and teaching that year (Judson is a poet; I am a lawyer and I live—we live in Oakland, California). Judson said that I had better go down to see Elizabeth.
“It’s simple, Minerva,” he said. “If you don’t you won’t see her again.”
Judson’s poetry is minimalist, nor in personal conversation does he tend to waste words. I probably waste most things, certainly time and energy. Sometimes friendship, or love.
I asked him, “Will you go too?”
“If I can.”
Judson and I had talked a lot, becoming friends, that first summer at San Angel, and once we had kissed. Not what anyone would term an affair, or even a “relationship”; still, the kiss took it a little out of the pure friendship class.
But I think I should begin with meeting Elizabeth, all those years back, the August when I was house-sitting for my parents in the hills of Berkeley. Being shrinks they both always took August off, and they usually rented a house in Wellfleet, Mass., where they got to see a lot of other shrinks. Then as now I was living in Oakland, and at that time I was going to law school, at U.C., in Berkeley. And so it made sense to stay in my parents’ big house during August, to take care of their plants and the pool. They even offered to pay me, which I proudly refused.
At some point, along with various instructions, in an afterthought-sounding way my father said, “Oh. Your mother and I met an interesting woman at the Garsons’. An art historian. Originally Viennese, I think. She’s renting the Jefferson cottage up the street and we told her to come use the pool if she ever felt like it.” Piously he added, “Of course we told her to call you first.”
“Dad. Really.” My father knew perfectly well that I was having a relationship with a lawyer who was married but who spared me an occasional afternoon.
“Well, as you know it’ll probably be cold all August anyway. How often we wonder whatever made us dream of putting in a pool. She might very well never call. Anyway you might like her.”
If anyone else talked like that my father would call it “cross-signalling,” which I believe is supposed to be “schizophrenogenic,” but in himself he does not, of course. And in fact I am not especially schizy, more given to depression, unfortunately—although schizes probably don’t much like their condition either.
“Her name is Elizabeth Loewenstein,” my father added, and he repeated, “I really think you might like her. She has a very beautiful voice.”
Only that last statement came as a surprise. Funnily enough, in view of his trade, my father is not at all a good listener, and so I was struck by the notion of a voice so beautiful that he would listen to it.
As things turned out, he was wrong only about the weather of that August, which was record-breakingly warm and clear, amazing and beautiful. From my parents’ giant picture windows I watched the sun set over San Francisco and the bay, all implausibly gold and glistening.
Elizabeth Loewenstein, the possibly garrulous nuisance whom I had feared never phoned, and it is hard to recall on just what impulse I finally called her and asked her over for a swim. Partly it was because I was lonely—were I a believer, though, I would say that God had instructed me. As it is I see my call to her as a piece of sheer good luck, for me. In any case, I did call, and she said that yes, she would like to come over for a swim.
Elizabeth was small and dark, with short, graying curly hair and gray-green eyes. Lightly lined pale skin, a bony nose. Her manner was tentative, rather shy—and she had the most attractive voice that I had ever heard. (It was almost annoying, to have my father proved so accurate.) A low voice, slightly hoarse, and very slightly accented. A voice with great range: warm brightness, and a complicated depth of shadows. “Your voice has chiaroscuro,” I once said to Elizabeth, and she laughed, of course, but she was pleased. She had a certain, highly characteristic way of saying “Ah!” like a tiny bark. T
hat “Ah” was one of her responsive, listening sounds; she listened more actively than anyone, I thought—I think so still. She smoked a lot.
God knows what we talked about, that first afternoon. I only remember liking her very much and urging her to stay. She left after less than half an hour, and I told her please to come back whenever she could.
Nor do I remember much of the content of later conversations; it is rather the quality of being with Elizabeth that I remember. And her voice, and that tiny barked “Ah!” And her just-hoarse laugh.
Rather little of our talk was personal. Elizabeth almost never talked about herself, and so I was not encouraged to do so—which, that summer, was quite all right with me; I was tired of talking or even thinking about my trouble-some, somewhat sordid love affair. Elizabeth often talked about places, her passion for Venice, and for the hill towns of Umbria and Tuscany. And she told me about the extravagant, wildly impractical (not even quite legal) gesture of buying a house in Mexico, near the beach.
Once I talked to a Berkeley woman who also admired and liked Elizabeth, and that woman said, “Oh, Elizabeth is so wonderful. You can do absolutely anything you want around her. Say anything.”
Well, that was entirely to miss the point of Elizabeth, I thought. I would never knowingly have expressed a trivial or mean-spirited thought to Elizabeth; her own elegant, supremely intelligent demeanor forbade it. And actually one of the reasons that I so much liked Elizabeth was that she, as the phrase goes, “brought out my best.” With her I was less trivial and mean, and much more intelligent, more finely observant than usual, and if not elegant at least restrained. Judson and I have talked about this, and he says that he felt the same. “Elevated,” is a word he used. “Ennobled, even,” Judson said.
This is the much abbreviated story of Elizabeth’s life, as I pieced it together from stray remarks, tiny glimpses over our years of conversation, and all our letters.