by Alice Adams
It would not do simply to throw the package into the yard, in a random way; a dog could carry it off, a sudden rain could camouflage the foil with mud. Once about a year ago, by mistake, a defective throw, Polly did just that; she watched the money land some feet from the door of the González family (a tubercular child, a medflyruined crop) on soft grass. Failing to convince herself that it would be all right there, that they would soon come out and find it, Polly then had to scale the fence, not high but difficult, with no footholds. She kept slipping, falling back, in the wet black night, and she was so frightened, her heart and every other muscle strained to capacity.
After that night she spent two full days in bed with an actual fever, shaking from panic.
Now, though, at the crisis moment she is not afraid. And she makes a perfect pitch. The money package hits the Pessoases’ front door with a loud, resounding thud, and Polly hurries back to her bike, which she has hidden behind a conveniently spreading mulberry tree. As she hides herself, she can hear the front door being opened behind her. And a blast of exclamations, at first quite fearful: is this thing a weapon, a bomb? But mostly they sound surprised. In another moment they will note the innocent, slightly tattered, domestic-looking foil; they will dare to open it and will find the money. The several thousand dollars that at least will serve to cheer them for a while.
One of the things that Polly counts on entirely is families not telling each other about these strange events, cash money thrown into their lives in the dark of night. And in this assumption she is very likely correct: she knows these proud poor people, their superstitiousness, their iron clannishness. Their eternal suspicions. To tell anyone outside would jinx their luck, they would reason—“outside” meaning anyone not living in their house, in their immediate family. If they told about it, the person who threw it on their doorstep—no doubt by mistake, they might think—that person would come back and try to claim it.
That at least is Polly’s reasoning, her reconstruction of reactions to her clandestine presents.
* * *
Remounted on her bike, Polly pedals as long and as hard as she can, remounting her hill. Then she gets off and pushes the bike along, avoiding the ruts as best she can. The fierce damp cold has penetrated the layers of clothes she wears, despite her exertions. She looks forward to her house, to warmth. To her cats.
Dumping the bike on the floor of her garage, with no energy left to pick it up and prop it, properly, she approaches her own door. And she hears, from within, the first ring of her telephone, and she thinks, almost saying the name aloud, Oh! Celeste.
5
Celeste is possessed of a small and perfectly proportioned body, on long thin perfect legs. Large hands and feet, about which she once was sensitive. First coming to New York, in the early thirties (after the demise of her first and only pre-Charles marriage, to a man named Bix Finnerty), Celeste worked briefly as a dancer; she was (very briefly) what was called a chorus girl, a phase of her life that she never talks about. But she has retained a dancer’s walk: a tall stride, rather aggressive.
Her nose too is imperious, high-bridged, impressive. Once, after a love affair whose ending coincided with her fortieth birthday, Celeste considered having her nose made shorter and smaller. “I’m tired of having such an impressive nose,” she wrote to her California best friend, Emma (mother of Sara). And Emma, still in San Francisco, involved in labor strikes, wrote back, “For God’s sake, forget the size of your nose. The world is much uglier and larger than your nose.” And so Celeste did forget it, almost for good.
As a very young woman, back in the days of Bix, Celeste had fine silky pale red hair, and fine white skin. Dark, dark large eyes. Shy-looking, even frightened eyes, despite such beauty. “Doe eyes,” Bix Finnerty used to say, as did quite a few others, later in her life.
What Celeste was most clearly to remember from that on-the-whole-dismal first marriage, which took place when she was only eighteen, was a curious trick that Bix played on her—and on his mother.
Having left her family on the farm, near Sacramento (that farm, along with the chorus and a couple of other minor autobiographical facts, went unmentioned, ever, by Celeste), Celeste took the train to Oakland, and then the ferry to San Francisco, where she was to be met by Bix’s mother, Mrs. Finnerty, Bix being at work selling shoes at that particular hour. Almost immediately Celeste spotted a woman of about her own height, but round, a jolly type with the red plastic cherries on her hat that her son had described. But why was she looking up into the air, as if for someone tall? Celeste went up to this woman anyway, who was indeed Mrs. Finnerty, who greeted her effusively and giggling with pleasure—she adored this only son. She very soon apprised her new almost daughter-in-law of the wonderful prank: what Bix had written to his mother was “She’s tall and blonde and terribly beautiful, of course.”
“But of course I knew right away it was you,” laughingly lied Mrs. Finnerty. “The terribly beautiful part. I’d have known you anywhere.”
For an instant, then, there at the Ferry Building, Celeste considered going right back to Sacramento, even back to the farm, and taking up that life again; but she did not. Although “in love” with Bix, she did not think this funny at all. It struck her as very mean to them both, to herself and to Mrs. Finnerty. Also, she was more or less aware of the wish contained within the “joke”; Bix wanted a tall blonde wife. Small wiry Bix, whose hair was a brighter red even than her own.
The only person to whom Celeste ever described this scene of her windblown, apprehensive young self in search for red plastic cherries on a hat was her early best friend, Emma, when the two of them were “office girls,” after Celeste’s divorce and before her move to New York. “Once I caught on, I thought, Oh, then he really doesn’t like me,” Celeste said to Emma, back then.
“I think men are better at what they call love than liking,” Emma told her. “But, Celeste, you are terribly beautiful, really.”
“Oh, I suppose.” Meaning: Yes, I guess so, but what good does that do me? Meaning: So far, being beautiful has only brought Bix Finnerty in and out of my life.
Celeste’s eyes indeed seemed to gain in intensity, in depth, as she aged. They became more passionate, or more passion showed in her eyes. “In truth they are the very mirrors of your soul,” said bantering Charles Timberlake, in his cups, early on in their love affair.
Celeste’s voice too is passionate, a vibrant alto, even as she now only says, “But, Polly, child, I worry about you.” There are almost tears in her voice.
From the white plastic receiver at Celeste’s left ear come Polly’s breathy sounds of reassurance: “… just for air, it gets so stuffy in this house, you mustn’t fuss. I wasn’t out long.”
Celeste is sitting upright, legs crossed before her. A semi-lotus, on a bed that another might have sprawled across. It is in fact just where Charles did often sprawl, and that is one of the visions at this moment foremost in Celeste’s mind: tall lean lanky Charles all sprawled, all those long fine bones gone limp. Celeste fights off that picture.
An expanse of fine gray linen with borders of heavy lace is pulled taut across the bed, evidence of no one sprawling.
Celeste tries to laugh, and succeeds in a sound that is just a little unreal. “Oh, I know it’s selfish, my wanting you home,” she says to Polly. “But I like your being so near. I like everyone around me, you and Dudley and Sam and dear Edward. And Freddy. I guess I really want all of you home all the time available to me.” And she laughs again, this time with somewhat more success.
“But tell me about Edward and Freddy,” she demands. “Do you think they’re still getting along? You don’t notice any new, uh, tensions? I couldn’t bear it if they got a divorce.” A small, perfunctory laugh. “I can’t bear it when friends divorce—or, for that matter, when they die.”
A pause, during which she listens somewhat perfunctorily as Polly reassures her about Freddy and Edward, the permanence of their connection.
Celes
te’s various despairs are genuine enough, but so is her odd, very clear wish to prolong this conversation, despite her definite sense that Polly is tired and would like to get off the phone and into bed—with a good book, probably. And, despite all Celeste’s intended and unintended conversational gambits, Polly does manage to get off the phone quite soon, with kindly affectionate good-nights, but still leaving Celeste all alone, and leaving her waiting.
* * *
What Bill quite clearly said was “I’ll call you New Year’s Night.” Which is surely now, tonight?
Why does he so often not do precisely what he said he would do? Why does he seem to forget what he so clearly said?
Or, for that matter, why did he in the first place follow her out of that antique shop on Jackson Square (he followed Celeste, an old woman), out to her car, and insist on having her card before handing her into the Jag? He seemed very excited, almost “high.” And then all those flowers, that lovely mass of spring flowers, and the invitation to dinner? It can’t have been the sheer coincidence of their having met earlier that day in the horrible, dingy IRS office (where Bill seemed to work) where they did not talk; he only passed her along to someone else. But, “Fated,” they both said of it, laughing to each other, that afternoon in the store.
Why then the long, romantic and extremely expensive dinners, the great interest in everything she said about Charles? About Sara? And then between those dinners the broken dates, the waiting for calls? Is this what it’s like, an “involvement” with a handsome, younger man?
Celeste knows the answers to none of this, and is fairly sure that she never will.
In the meantime she does have friends, and what are friends for, if not an occasional phone call?
Dudley (so gratifying!) answers on the first ring.
“Darling Dudley!” Celeste exclaims. “Happy Happy New Year! It doesn’t really seem like New Year’s, does it? Well, actually I’m fine, barring the usual aches and pains that we all find so boring. I am somewhat apprehensive about Sara, though. I mean, I’ve been so selfish. Frankly I’ve only thought about how much I need her here, or I think I do, and now I really wonder if she’ll enjoy herself. Find things to do.”
This conversation—or, rather, this monologue of Celeste’s, with small polite but warm murmurs from Dudley—all this talk is a considerable success. Dudley reassures Celeste that Sara will love being in San Sebastian: walks, all that. And after all if she gets restless there is always San Francisco, so near. And Dudley is reassuring too about Edward and Freddy, describing her morning walk with Edward, during which he seemed perfectly fine. Not worried and assuredly not sick.
“I know you worry about his cough,” puts in Celeste, a little sharply; she is generally opposed to a scrutiny of symptoms and especially to talk about those symptoms, in one’s self or one’s friends.
“Oh, I do,” Dudley admits contritely. “I can’t help it. You know, you read so much, one simply does, all this in the papers about coughs and lungs.”
“I never read those articles,” Celeste tells her, now enjoying this part of the conversation. Feeling in charge. “What earthly good? You never learn anything useful. Doctors change their minds every couple of years about almost everything. Don’t eat salt, do eat salt, don’t exercise. Do. Next they’ll be saying that everyone really should take up smoking.”
As she continues, though, in this silly vein, Celeste’s enjoyment lessens; she is increasingly aware of having said all this before, quite possibly too often. She is talking to hear herself talk, as her father used to say. And so she stops.
But Dudley—oh, bless her!—continues. “Speaking of walks,” she interjects, “as we just were. This morning Edward and I went to that new diner sort of place for coffee. It’s quite attractive. And a quite adorably bearded young man waited on us there. David, he told us his name.” Dudley laughs. “I could see that Edward was quite taken with him. I’m afraid Freddy would be even more so. But I don’t think he’s, uh, gay.”
Celeste has spent considerably more time in restaurants than Dudley has, in San Francisco. With Bill. “So annoying, this new friendly way with names, don’t you think? I don’t care bugger-all what their names are, as dear Charles might say.”
Dudley, however, is struck with a new idea, or an idea new to her conversations with Celeste. “Have you noticed,” Dudley asks, “how we seem to impute much stronger sexual feelings to homosexuals than we do to each other? We really do.”
“Oh, do we?” vaguely asks Celeste, who has begun to think again of her anticipated call: perhaps she is overdoing this keeping busy of her phone? He might give up?
“Well, I do think so,” Dudley tells her. “Even old Edward, honestly. Do you think it’s a sort of outgroup thing, like white people all hung up on the sexual prowess of blacks? I remember girls at college who were convinced that going out with Jews would get them instantly pregnant. Or was that Catholics?”
“Well, maybe.” So ironic: now Celeste can hardly get Dudley off the phone. And all this about sex, really the last subject one would choose, although she has an impression that Dudley thinks about sex considerably, more than one would expect in a woman of her age. “Well,” Celeste attempts. “You’re so good to chat with me like this. Letting me keep you away from dear Sam all this time.”
“Dear Sam and I have been chatting for almost forty years, dear Celeste. We can stand an occasional break.”
“Well, darling, of course you can. I guess I just wanted reassurance about Sara, and you know how I get about parties. I worry.”
“But, Celeste, your last big party was terrific. Lord, it must be ten years ago, is that possible? With all those attractive people.”
Dudley would clearly like to reminisce in detail about that party, when all Celeste can remember of it is that everything was yellow, the yellow-gold night, and the dress she wore. Was that the night that Dudley, uh, drank too much—something to do with Brooks Burgess? She can’t remember, and in any case does not want to discuss it now. “I might just have a small dinner, after all,” she tells Dudley. “You and Sam, Edward and Freddy. Sara and me. And, uh, Bill.”
“You could have Polly, make it eight.” Helpful Dudley.
“Of course Polly would make it eight. But then suppose someone can’t come, or something.…” Celeste hears her own voice trail off unconvincingly. “Well, of course I’ll probably invite Polly, after all. You know I always do.”
“Besides, Polly’s used to being odd, so to speak.” Dudley meant: When Charles was alive, we were often seven at dinner.
This unspoken remark is afflicting to Celeste, though; she feels it cruelly, yet she cannot bring herself to blame Dudley, who did not even utter it, actually. But, Charles, cries out Celeste, within her heart.
Sensitive Dudley, however, seems to have heard her own unvoiced remark; her tone is much gentler, is infinitely affectionate as she tells Celeste, “In any case your parties are always fabulous, dearest Celeste. You know that. Sam and I always so look forward—”
“Well, you’re dear to say so. And now I do believe I should say good night. Good night, and sleep well, dear Dudley.”
“Oh! the same to you. And much love, Celeste.”
This note of great affection is natural to all these people. To the occasional outsider, invited into their midst (no one could just wander there), it might have a sound of exaggeration, even of extremity, but to them, this group of almost very old people, it is both genuine and sustaining. What they say to each other is true, and real: they feel great affection for each other. One could call it love. And particularly at partings. Any parting, even the end of a phone conversation. They all need blessings, reassurance. The old have that need in common with small children, seemingly.
And, though indeed reassured, Celeste observes that it is still too early, really, to go to bed. And so she stalks about her room, a caged lioness, sniffing at shadows.
The tall, handsome Biedermeier bureau, with its tiny linen runner, holds m
any (seven or eight, at least) large, heavy silver-framed likenesses of Charles. Of Charles and Celeste together, but mostly just Charles. Attractive Charles, an American classic, with his sad-boyish, sincere blue eyes, his clear wide brow and those eyebrows. His nose is a shade too small for true handsomeness, but his chin is deeply cleft.
Celeste herself never photographed well at all—interestingly, age has made her more photogenic. Then, in those pictures, her eyes and nose both seemed somewhat too large, and her expression tended, in pictures, to be severe. When she did smile, the smile looked reluctant, forced.
Celeste does not just now look at any of those pictures.
Instead, pausing momentarily, she inspects a small carved desk, hers since childhood, and the only piece of furniture from that distant time. The desk was in fact brought out across the plains by her grandparents from Vermont, in post–gold rush days. Long ago Celeste had some trouble wresting it from her brothers, when both parents died in the flu epidemic of 1918. Finally, “It’s the only thing I want, I need to have it,” she told them, over the objections of a sister-in-law, who predicted, “You travel all the time. It’ll break.” “It won’t.” Celeste got the desk, and she did travel and move a lot, and the small desk remained intact, always perfectly polished. A lovely piece, which always seemed part of Celeste, an essential.
Now, though, it is piled with letters, so many, though neatly stacked. All something to do with Charles. And inside are more letters, and old photographs, snapshots from everywhere. For a long time now, Celeste has meant to go through them all: suppose she died and some interested person (Sara? Dudley? Edward? Those three first come to mind, as survivors)—suppose someone found all these pictures, these letters. “Well, how extremely interesting.” (She can hear this in Dudley’s voice, those loud implacable accents of the East Coast rich.) “Celeste seems to have grown up on some sort of farm, not terribly far from here, up in the Valley. And her first husband was a shoe salesman, can you imagine? With her big feet? Explains quite a lot, don’t you think?”