Second Chances

by Alice Adams

  “Oh, I too! I like them so much. For friendship.” Fervent Fernando, who then laughs as he admits, “And I do admire their clothes.”

  They continue their laughing together for some moments, although Edward feels himself closer to tears of sheer joy: is it possible, at last? But the waiter just then interrupts—though deferentially, most discreetly, asking what they might care to eat.

  Which they manage to order.

  Still elated (dangerously so? Is he taking too much for granted?), over the smoked salmon Edward begins to talk about his work: his early writing, his current teaching job. And he soon realizes that he is talking in a way that he has not talked before, not even to Dudley, whom he often considers his favorite friend. “In many ways I like teaching very much,” he tells Fernando. “Sometimes I think almost too much, it’s too easily ego-inflating, do you know what I mean? But the worst is that it takes the same sort of energy that writing does. I wonder if I should teach, really, or if I should get into some entirely other, entirely non-literary job. And write.” Edward has never said any of this before; he has barely allowed himself to think it.

  Fernando’s eyes, so marvelously flashingly changeable, now are solemn, serious and intent as he says, “I think it is what you must do. To write again. To do anything that is necessary for that.”

  “Oh, I do so enjoy talking to you,” bursts from Edward.

  “I too, I too enjoy. So much.” Soft, luminous eyes.

  “Fernando—”

  “My friends, my certain friends call me Freddy. I should so much like that you—”

  1965

  8

  “If it weren’t for being so worried about my darling Sara, I think I might be at last quite terribly happy,” says Celeste to Polly Blake. In the absence of Dudley, now married to Sam and moved out to California, Polly has become Celeste’s closest friend. (However, Polly too is considering a move to California.) “Why must there always be one fatal flaw, though? One ugly fly in one’s nicest ointment?”

  “God’s way, I suppose,” contributes Polly.

  This conversation takes place in Celeste’s large bedroom, in her very pleasant new East Sixties apartment, during the short and very hurried week in April that precedes her marriage to Charles Timberlake. Celeste is indeed almost dizzily happy, “in love.” “So ridiculous, in fact quite ludicrous at my advanced age to be so madly in love,” she has more than once said to Polly, who quite probably agrees.

  She is happy except for the fact that Sara, now twenty years old, is apparently lost. Somewhere in Mexico, where she was traveling with an unspecified, never described or, God forbid, not named group of friends, Berkeley classmates.

  In addition to so much conversation, Celeste and Polly are also engaged in sorting out Celeste’s clothes, from her very full but perfectly organized closet—or, rather, that is Celeste’s occupation: Polly would never help or give advice in that area. “You know that basically I don’t give a shit what anyone wears, especially me,” she has said, the shit earning a distressed “Must you?” from Celeste, to which Polly has answered, “Yes, I must.”

  Meticulous Celeste is going through the cavernous sections of that closet: blouses, suits and coats, dresses, night things, furs. Choosing what to keep for her new life with Charles Timberlake. What to give away. And then the giveaways themselves must be sorted out: some for friends, some for some reliable secondhand store. St. Vincent de Paul.

  They are to travel a great, great deal, she and Charles. And as Charles keeps insisting, with an indulgent smile in Celeste’s direction, they must travel light. Actually she knows very well that he loves all her luxuriousness, all her fancy silks and cashmeres; nevertheless, both to please him and to satisfy her own innately orderly instincts, she is getting rid of a lot, a task that she has to admit to herself she enjoys. Throwing things away, getting rid of surplus stuff is cleansing; she is sure that it is good for the soul.

  And, as she has just said to Polly, if it weren’t for this awful, seemingly bottomless worry over Sara—whose mother, Emma, died the year before, so cruelly, of cancer—if it weren’t for that, Celeste would be perfectly happy. But no one even knows where in Mexico; they simply took off, a group of kids. Being constituted as she is, a woman of will, Celeste determines not to think about Sara, about whom for the moment she can do absolutely nothing. Don’t worry unless there is something active you can do, has been one of Celeste’s more helpful personal mottoes.

  If only Polly or any of her friends wore the same size 4 that Celeste wears—this wish has been repeatedly in her mind as she fingers the discards. But so far she has managed not to say this to Polly, who would snort in some awful way. However, at the sight and then the touch of a gray silk organza coat, very sheer, Florentine, impossible to pack, almost involuntarily Celeste cries out, “Oh, if only you could wear this!” Already she feels that she misses the coat, in which she has looked, she is quite aware, spectacular.

  Polly laughs—the dreaded snort. “Wrapped around my old bald head? Or just over fat old naked me?” She laughs again, seemingly enjoying this imagined picture of herself. (But how can she, really?)

  Since her cancer surgery two years ago (her recovery has been astounding, an amazement to her doctors) and her subsequent baldness, Polly has been given to this awful form of humor, so distressing to her friends, and especially to Celeste, who now murmurs, “Oh, Polly.”

  At which Polly laughs, or snorts again.

  A long time ago (Celeste is quite sure of this) Charles and Polly had some sort of love affair: Celeste has simply, infallibly deduced this. And neither of them, neither Charles nor Polly, knows that Celeste does know. Which makes it all the more interesting for Celeste to watch. Not upsetting, really on the whole not upsetting. They were such very different people then, Charles and Polly. They were not her adored almost husband and her almost (after Dudley, now that Emma is gone) dearest friend. (In fact, both Emma and Polly were mortally ill at the same time, diagnosed within weeks of each other, so that Celeste was flying back and forth, from coast to coast, trying to care for her friends. And then Emma died, and Polly, against every prognosis, got well.)

  But Polly’s “relationship” with Charles must have taken place when he was married to Jane, Celeste (correctly) believes, when he was in Paris. Probably, they actually saw very little of each other—and how perfectly inappropriate, how entirely unsuitable a match! Warm handsome sociable Charles, who is nearly a clotheshorse (more like an Edwardian dandy, actually), with his silly jokes, little songs that he hums, his flirtatious ways. And serious, heavy Polly.

  Although certainly Polly was very beautiful at one time, with those pale, brilliant burning eyes, and her heavy hair, and great huge breasts. Well, she still has the eyes, and the breasts, although of course large breasts are not nearly as attractive in an older woman, as Polly now is.

  These are Celeste’s thoughts concerning Charles and Polly in the daylight hours, possibly when she is with one or the other of them; at those sunny moments she will have these somewhat disbelieving, these less than kind thoughts. However, at lonelier hours, at night, she cries out against this atrocious—this almost obscene—historical fact: the love affair between Charles Timberlake and Polly Blake. How could they? she inwardly screams, as though she herself had been present at the time, in Paris—the location, she imagines, of their love.

  She has even had to ask herself, Is the love affair with Charles what truly draws her most to Polly? Otherwise it is surely an odd-looking friendship. But if that is true, thinks Celeste, how perverse and horrible. I am then a sort of voyeuse, oh dear.

  “Well, anyway,” Celeste now says to Polly, with her customary briskness, as she holds up a rose-colored taffeta New Look skirt (Lord, almost twenty years old), “Anyway, no one alive could have any use for this old thing.”

  “Incredibly enough I remember having one made in Paris that was quite a lot like that” is Polly’s startling response.

  “Did you, darling Pol? So o
dd, I often forget that you were there at all.”

  “Well, actually I didn’t spend much time in Paris,” Polly tells her as she has before. “I was traveling a lot. Ah, youth. But I just for some reason needed a party skirt. Oh, ‘needed,’ ” she snorts.

  “Well, you certainly don’t have to be so apologetic about it,” Celeste almost snaps. (Why must Polly keep insisting that she really wasn’t there, was not really in Paris?) “All young women need things for parties. Don’t be such an old puritan, Pol.”

  “Well, you needn’t be so cross. Such a dictator, Celeste.”

  But what on earth has happened, suddenly? Polly and Celeste, so fond of each other, really, are quarreling, or nearly. In the yellow April sunshine from Celeste’s long open window, in the attractive room, now all festively strewn with pretty clothes, soft fabrics—in the midst of all this attractiveness a quarrel has erupted. It is present in their eyes, Celeste’s and Polly’s, as for an instant they simply stare at each other, glittering brown-black into pale blue.

  Suppose I said it? Celeste now wonders. Suppose all vulgarly like a fishwife I said to Polly: I know you had an affair with Charles, whom you don’t—you could never deserve. You were never beautiful enough for Charles. But I know. You can’t pretend any longer.

  Celeste shivers at the very thought of saying such a thing, such things. And for an instant she closes her eyes to cancel the thoughts. Opening them after an instant, she says to Polly, “I’m sorry, darling. I am being snappish today, I know. Do you think it’s pre-bridal tension, even at my age?”

  “Well, that would be quite legitimate, I think.”

  “The truth is,” lies Celeste, “I’m just so worried over Sara. In some way she’s more like my daughter, you know? Especially now that Emma’s gone. I suppose it has to do with not having children, don’t you think?”

  “I guess.” Enigmatic Polly, so solemn. Polly who never in a million years would have done for Charles, at any age.

  Sara and her lover, a thin, towheaded boy named Alex, were picked up for buying dope in Puerto Vallarta, and that is where they are now, in jail: a single room with no floor, just smooth, unevenly worn-down dirt. No windows, no air. A toilet hole for men on one side of the room, for women on the other. People take turns shielding each other while they defecate, and then they give up on privacy, usually.

  One couple, a girl from Florida and a very young Mexican boy, about sixteen, make a point of humping into each other in a corner of the room as a few people watch, idly clapping to the rhythm of their fuck. The girl, whose hair is long and blonde but now all heavily dirty, darkened, tangled, cries out as though in climax, but Sara for one does not believe her. Sara does not believe that she is at all enjoying what she does.

  Sara and Alex themselves sit chastely and angrily some feet apart, and Alex, whose beauty has been so frightening, so powerful a force to Sara—Alex now looks greasy and fat; he looks like everyone else in the room. He looks like Sara. Except that this is probably how she has always looked to him: a dark fat girl whom he happened to fall into bed with, stoned. A girl who kept hanging around after that and who finally said, “Why don’t we go down to Mexico during spring break? I know a place near Vallarta where we could score some really good stuff.” And handsome, evasive Alex, with his wild white-blond curls, unkempt beard, strong nose and clear sea-green eyes, Alex said, “Yes. Well, okay. Why not?”

  Sara’s birthday check from her Aunt Celeste covered the cost of the two round-trip tickets, and they found a cheap hotel out near the tiny, corny airport. The town was fairly corny too, but sometimes extremely pretty: a pink plaster wall all overgrown with falling purple flowers, with heavy, sexy blossoms. They walked a lot, Alex and Sara. They crossed the bridge where to one side women were spreading their laundry out over the rocks to dry in the sun, and where on the other side the river came down from the hills. Where rich Americans have large fancy houses. A whole colony of them. Gringo Gulch—Alex had somehow come by that name. So disgusting.

  But everything was fine, everything going really well between them: a lot of sex, early-morning sex and siesta sex and then long stoned hours of sex at night. And, in between, all those long beach hours, sun and swimming. “You should stick to bikinis, Sara,” Alex even told her. “You look really good.”

  Their habitual political controversy abated too: Alex stopped describing the Socialist state of Sara’s dreams in terms of horror, he stopped telling her how she would hate the actuality of Socialism. And Sara did not mention Vietnam, not once.

  Everything was fine, until the morning that began with margaritas at the appointed hour, at the bar of the Oceana Hotel, with its louvered view of the sea, its seedy American drunks. The day began there and ended in jail—all clearly Sara’s fault, she having made the contact, all the arrangements.

  Once we are out of here Alex will never speak to me again, Sara now thinks, in jail. Well, fuck him, I won’t care. And she knows that for the rest of her life this room will inhabit her mind: the slick dirt floor, here and there worn down to paths, long indentations and holes like basins of dirt. The dim, never varying day or night light. The smells, and the huddled prison population: a legless man with furious, malevolent eyes; skinny ragged women, some with children. Americans, Mexicans, a couple of German kids. The boy and the Florida girl, there fucking. All of that in her mind forever. Becoming her mind. Her unconscious.

  In Venice, where Celeste and Charles are spending a week, a part of their glamorous, amazing, beautiful (oh, wonderful!) honeymoon, at American Express Celeste receives a letter from Sara, which she instantly (or almost instantly) decides not to read to Charles.

  The end of May: Venice is still all raw with rain, and gray and cold. On the Piazza San Marco, plank walks have been erected to keep all the tourists clear of the water lying there. Lines of tourists: the practical Germans and English who thought to bring raincoats; wet, shivering American kids in their trusting jeans, “hippies,” long-haired boys and girls with flowers in their hair, even here in Venice, out in the rain. And Charles and Celeste, in their new London-purchased Burberrys. Small, perfectly erect Celeste, taut-faced, her smile a stretch of skin. And loose, comfortably ambling Charles, securely handsome—Charles, who, if bothered by anything relating to his honeymoon, does not look bothered.

  In any case, returning from American Express, alone, as she makes her way over small arched bridges, through narrow stone passages that open out onto miraculous squares, stones, tracery, Celeste thinks of the just read letter, now well hidden in her passport case. She thinks of the letter even as almost despite herself her whole soul responds to the beauty, to the sensual complexity of Venice. (Over-stimulated, she thinks, not smiling. Wryly thinking: The irony.)

  “I am living with a group of friends here in Berkeley now,” Sara has written. “We are a commune, in the truest sense of that word. We are working together against the war.”

  Reading, Celeste for a moment thought, What war? But then quickly remembered Vietnam. Of course Vietnam, where Charles believes that “we” are performing a sad but necessary duty. “What we are doing may at times involve violence,” Sara’s letter continued (so curiously sounding like Charles, whom she has never met). “But whatever happens, Celeste, I want you to know how much I have always appreciated your unfailing generosity to me, and your wonderful love and support when mother was sick. I want you to know that I love you, Celeste. Sara. P.S.—Mexico was awful. It is a beautiful country, with beautiful people, but the man I was with and I did not get along well at all. Basically we have political views that are totally opposed. In fact, I think he is trying to get into the army.”

  A strangely stilted letter, Celeste is thinking as she approaches their hotel: the Fenice; they have the most wonderful penthouse suite. It is as though Sara’s whole commune, solemnly, all together had written this letter.

  But it is certainly not a letter to read or even to mention to Charles, who at this moment is no doubt lounging in his bath. It is alre
ady established between them that Celeste is the early riser; especially in foreign cities, she can barely contain her morning eagerness, her passion to be out, to walk around and to see.

  Charles is in his bath, in their bedroom. Naked Charles. Hidden. Forbidden.

  They sleep in marvelous silks, the two of them, between clean crisp linen sheets. They kiss affectionate good-nights, not quite turned toward each other, their bodies not in contact. They murmur temperate endearments.

  Lying awake at night, Celeste wonders: Is this, then, the end of my sexual life? Did she “fall in love” and marry for these nights? And in that case, what about all the passionate kissings and heavy breathing, the heartfelt (she supposed they were) sighs, in the months and weeks before this marriage—Charles’s kissings and sighs?

  Well, she supposes that this is it. After all, she is fifty-five, though her body seems to believe itself some other age; it stays thin and smooth, and it demands, it wants. Sometimes aching with wanting.

  Their wedding was in San Francisco, less because Celeste’s dearest friends Dudley and Sam live out there now (nor because Celeste, after all, began her life as a Californian) than because Charles adores that city. “I’ve always wanted a wedding breakfast at the Palace,” Charles confided to Celeste, in his laughing, bantering way. Celeste would have been happy with a wedding breakfast almost anywhere at all, with Charles.

  However, it was finally Celeste who made all the fairly complex arrangements: the suite at the Huntington (Charles’s favorite hotel), wedding breakfast at the Palace. Dinner at Trader Vic’s. And before that the federal judge in his Montgomery Street office.