Second Chances

by Alice Adams

  “Well, darling,” Celeste attempts, “I do hope California will be an improvement. This time.”

  A grin. “It’d almost have to be. But remember, Celeste, this is where I come from. I’ve been here before.”

  By now they have passed through the main lobby—or lobbies, so confusing. They have reached the parking area. And then, although she has carefully recorded it in her mind, Celeste cannot—she cannot for the life of her remember where the car is. Letters and numbers tumble about in her mind, a hopeless jumble: B one six H G L M N O P. Six—six seven eight nine. Oh, dear God!

  However, so that nothing will show, she carefully controls her face; Sara must not begin by thinking she is dotty. (But no one even gets to be dotty these days, they call it Alzheimer’s, a person not knowing where her car is.) Still. Celeste leads the way, toward rows and rows of bright shiny cars that are not her car. Then, when she can, breathing better, in a casual way she remarks, “My goodness, I could have sworn I left it exactly here.” (She may have sounded silly but surely not senile, not sick. Not exhibiting the panic that she actually at this moment feels.)

  Surprisingly, she is rescued by Sara. Sara saying, “I do this all the time. Whenever I have a car. I write down the number of where it is in my head, but never on paper. And then I mix it up.”

  Celeste looks up at her. “I’m afraid that’s just what I’ve done.”

  “What you have to do is stop and close your eyes. Blank out your mind, and the right numbers will come to you, I promise.”

  “Like meditation.” Meditation, her own sort of meditation, is a practice that Celeste has long employed, never mentioning it to anyone. Especially she did not mention it to Charles, after all the silly sixties transcendental business. Charles would have laughed.

  “Yes. Like meditation,” says Sara. “I’ve always done it.”

  “B. Nine.” These syllables come to Celeste almost the instant her eyes are closed, and she says them aloud to Sara. “B. Nine.”

  “Well, look.” Sara points to a big cement column on which is painted, in yellow, a very large B. “You see? We’re in the right place. You really weren’t lost at all. Nine must be right over there.”

  And, naturally, there it is, her nice small pale brown Jag. Celeste might have seen it herself. Why on earth was she so worried? Still, she has to admit that Sara was helpful.

  “I’m afraid it’s rather a long drive,” Celeste says to Sara as at last they swing out and onto the freeway.

  “Celeste, I remember. I know it’s not next door.”

  Oh, why must she sound so gruff sometimes? It is frightening to Celeste, the very idea of gruffness. Having such a tone right in her house, for what she had thought might be forever. However, Celeste tells herself, Sara is not always gruff, not solely rude and gruff. And besides, she herself, Celeste, should be more tolerant of differences. (Polly tells her this often, as though Polly were not a mass of prejudices of her own.) Young people simply speak differently, these days.

  She will take the long way to San Sebastian, Celeste then decides: over the hills to the coast, and then down. Instead of the freeway route, through ugly, boring San Jose.

  * * *

  “Oh God, it’s so beautiful! How could I ever forget how incredible? That yellow!” Sara cries out, at the sight of a field of mustard: only mustard, but its thick bright color is spread across a billowing green meadow. “And look, there’s the sea! Celeste, it’s too much, I never saw anything so marvelous.”

  There are tears in her voice, Celeste is sure that she hears tears. Very moved, Celeste nevertheless controls her own voice as she says, “Yes, it is nice, isn’t it?”

  “Nice. God, Celeste, you’re really spoiled.” But Sara has laughed as she said that, not really scolding. Celeste only wishes that Sara would be less profane, and she decides—she determines not to mention that wish. After all, Sara is almost forty.

  In some of her earliest imaginings of this meeting, her picking up Sara at the airport, Celeste had thought that they would then head into San Francisco, maybe for lunch at the Clift, or somewhere. Maybe, even, Bill would join them there?

  It was Dudley, though, who talked her out of this plan. “Honestly, Celeste, you don’t know how tired she may be. It’s not always fun to be met and then just whisked off somewhere.”

  “That’s quite true.” And then Celeste acutely recalled Charles’s habit of just such whiskings: her arrivals to meet him in Paris, or for heaven’s sake Dubrovnik, she longing for just a bath and bed, but no, she would have to look perfect, as Charles always wanted and expected her to look. And then he would whisk her off for lunch.

  “Besides,” continued Dudley, in her brisk, Bostonian way, “you haven’t seen Sara for quite a while. You hardly know what she looks like.”

  Prophetic, really, Dudley has turned out to be. No, Celeste had certainly not been sure how Sara would look, this time, and if she had she would not have thought for one minute of taking her to the Clift. With or without Bill.

  However, recalling the conversation with Dudley has suggested an alternative plan, since it is almost lunchtime, and Sara cannot have eaten anything decent on the plane.

  “You must be starving,” she says to Sara. “There’s a new place in town that a couple of friends of mine have been raving about. They had lunch there recently, I think. You remember Dudley Venable, and Sam? And Edward Crane? Well, you’ll see them all again soon—in fact I’m giving a little dinner, the week after next. Valentine’s Day. I know it’s terribly silly, and Valentine’s is certainly not the point of it. I just thought—”

  Glancing over at Sara, Celeste observes an expression of puzzlement, perhaps annoyance? What has been wrong? Does Sara hate the very idea of a party in her honor—hate Valentines? And why is she, Celeste, talking now about the dinner anyway—what was she talking about before? She is lost!

  “I am sort of hungry,” Sara after a pause remarks. “The stuff they hand out on planes. Incredible. Pure shit.”

  Back in focus, Celeste registers shock: did Sara have to say that word? However, she manages only to say, “Well, do let’s try this new place that Dudley and Edward seem to have liked so much.”

  The San Sebastian Bar and Grill. That is the name of the place, which, without much trouble, Celeste manages to find, where she stops and parks. It looks very much like several San Francisco restaurants that she has seen recently with Bill: a window of ferns, bright brass, white napkins, mirrors. Much more San Francisco than San Sebastian in spirit, is one of Celeste’s reactions; it even strikes her as just slightly presumptuous. And then recognizes that that was a Charles reaction, not at all her own. Why should she care what anyone calls his restaurant? In fact, she does not care, could not care less, as Edward might say. (But she must stop this miming of other people, of men. It is not a good sign.)

  As they enter, Celeste opening the door for Sara and Sara then stalking ahead, at first they see no one around, neither customers nor waiters. No help. Murmuring that they might as well sit down, someone will come, and she for one is exhausted, Celeste leads them to a table by a window, near a broad recessed bank of giant, exuberant ferns.

  Quickly, though, Celeste begins to feel that Sara is reacting very badly to this place. She observes the stiffness with which Sara adjusts to the booth. (Celeste has been reading about body language, so interesting, so unconsciously revealing, especially in people whose bodies are entirely untrained. And she thinks of her own very rigorous training, the disciplines of dancing, those early years in New York.)

  And Sara is frowning, but then Sara seems to frown a lot. Celeste has already noted these frowns; there must be a deep line between her eyebrows.

  Minutes later, though, an attractive (despite his beard) young man appears soundlessly before them. So nice-looking, and now Celeste thinks she remembers Dudley mentioning such a person, or was it Edward? Dudley, she decides; it was Dudley, who still has such an eye for handsomeness in men, really more than Edward does. This per
son looks to be about Sara’s age, although he is clearly in much better shape than Sara is. A young person who takes care of himself: clear smooth skin, barely tan, a soft beard and sad yellow-brown eyes.

  “Hi, I’m David,” he tells them familiarly, and Celeste begins to like him slightly less. She knows this to be the current custom; still, they don’t actually have to introduce themselves.

  “Is that so?” Sara interrupts both the musings of Celeste and anything else that “David” might have had to say. So rudely! So loud.

  “Well, yes, that’s my name,” the poor fellow almost stammers.

  “Is it really.” Glaring, terrible Sara.

  “Well, we’re very hungry, both of us.” Celeste feels that she must break up this highly unpleasant exchange. And so mysterious: doesn’t Sara know that that is how waiters talk these days? Maybe she never goes to restaurants. “Could you tell us what you have?” Celeste asks David.

  The young man, who now uncomfortably blushes, begins to reel off names of dishes. Vegetables, pastas. Cheeses, salads, omelettes.

  “Oh, California purism,” Sara snarls.

  “Well, uh, yes. You could put it like that. We are vegetarians.”

  Anxiety and a strong desire to get it all over with and to leave have combined to deafen Celeste to the list of foods. She orders the last thing she is sure she heard on the list, or almost sure: a cheese omelette. Sara orders the same.

  “I gathered you didn’t like him.” Celeste hears her own dry voice, dry and very stiff. It is, she fears, a way that she often sounds.

  Sara sighs. “I don’t seem to like many people these days” is her comment. “And he did seem such a type. I hate friendly people.”

  Oh dear, is the strongest inner complaint that Celeste allows herself as, later that afternoon, she lies at last across her own bed. Their bed, hers and Charles’s. The large window faces west, faces just now into what may be a wonderful sunset; these late-winter or early-spring skies are often amazing, rare luminescent colors. But Celeste is quite simply much too tired to look, and she lies there with her eyes closed. And tries hard not to think of Sara.

  Mantra. Mantra. Mantra. She repeats and repeats this word, rhythmically, meaninglessly. Again and again. Because (this is one of her secrets) the word “mantra” is her mantra. Celeste enjoys the small private joke of this.

  But it doesn’t work. Or not quite. Sara, who is presumably asleep, or resting in the guest room down the hall, still forcibly intrudes.

  After the entire failure of their lunch (Sara’s unabating rudeness, then her silence), Celeste had to fight off sheer despair as they drove home together. Toward Celeste’s house. She will hate it, Celeste was thinking. Probably she always has, every time she visited. And what is worse, she will say so, loud and clear.

  She was thinking all this as they rounded the last curve in the pale green hills.

  But, “Celeste, it’s so beautiful! I never thought—Celeste, your house is just like you!” was Sara’s exclamation. “That yellow, I forgot how wonderful!” and there seemed to be actual tears in her eyes.

  “It’s rather Florentine, actually,” Celeste, very moved, informed her guest.

  How strange she is, Celeste now thinks, in the privacy of her room, behind her closed eyes. How contradictory. How very like her mother. She sounds like Emma. Even the smells of Emma. Soap and astringent. Lemon.

  But everything will be fine, Celeste assures herself before returning to her mantras. It will all be fine, she says firmly to herself, before sleep.

  13

  In February, shortly after the arrival of Sara at Celeste’s, the wind and cold, the winter rains returned to San Sebastian, and the two events, Sara and winter, were not unconnected in the minds of certain friends of Celeste’s, at that time. In a practical sense, it was the weather that kept everyone close to home for those weeks—not entirely at home; they all went out for normal shopping errands, including certain essential visits to their doctors, lawyers, accountants. But by tacit mutual agreement it was established that any real social contact was in abeyance.

  Thus no one really saw Sara for a while, and though it seemed eminently reasonable that they should not, still it was also felt as slightly odd.

  Dudley especially thought it strange, although she knew better, knew it was actually not strange at all. Of course, she said to herself, given Celeste’s very high regard for formality even among her closest friends, Celeste would not simply come by with Sara along. She would not just call up and say, “Sara and I have an errand in the village. If we came by about five, would you give us a cup of tea?”

  No, Celeste would not do that; she would want some ceremony attached to their first visit—or, rather, revisit—with Sara. After all, Dudley had met both Sara and her mother, Emma, years ago in New York.

  A skinny, tall, very dark and extremely defiant child, with her small pretty yellow-haired mother—that was Sara then. Their total dissimilarity to each other, physically, suggested that not looking like Emma was Sara’s first act of rebellion—along with other, darker possibilities.

  This was during the bad period when Dudley and Sam were “not seeing” each other, times when Dudley was aware of very little outside her own pain. Horrible: at those times, perversely, her ravaged mind remembered only the best of Sam: Sam’s voice, his face, his jokes. His body, Sam in bed. Not the swollen-faced drunk, the stranger who hated her and whom she hated back (she too being pretty drunk, usually). The Sam whom she had told to leave her life. Recalling only the good Sam, and unable not to think of him, desperate Dudley had had her hair streaked blonde, a great unsuccess. (In an effort to be a woman Sam had never even met? She was never sure.) She continued, mostly, to drink too much, she sometimes fell into bed with other men, too often (oh Christ, the ultimate sordid humiliation) weeping in bed with strangers. She had hardly dared mention his name, Sam’s name, not even to Celeste.

  It was during one of those frightful times (dear God, to have had more than one of them, and still survived) that Celeste called and asked Dudley to come and meet her friend from California, Emma. And Emma’s young daughter, Sara. Sara, whose birth Dudley so clearly remembered, since it occurred the day she met Sam. In 1945.

  Though, really, she was in no mood for either an old friend or a child. Or even Celeste, who surely meant well, intending distraction. (She must have known or had some idea how Dudley felt.) But still.

  Now remembering mostly the pain of that time (how vivid it is, remains), all that pain over Sam (people are quite wrong to say you can’t remember pain, Dudley thinks), Dudley now can recall very little of Emma beyond that California shock of straw-colored hair, and a surprisingly deep gruff voice from such a small woman. And a sense that Emma was somewhat subdued by being with Celeste. (Celeste sometimes had that effect, probably unintended.) And that Emma was afraid of her daughter, somehow guilty toward her daughter, perhaps for providing her with no father? Dudley remembers that Sara made a terrible scene about something. What to wear? Where to go? And that she, Dudley, felt a strange sympathy for the child. How enviable to be able to say, as Sara did say to her mother, “I absolutely will not go. There is no way you can make me.”

  Something like that is what Dudley should have said to Sam, she thought then; she should have said, No, no, you can’t drink that much, you can’t keep drunkenly rushing out of my house as though you hated me, you can’t say the things that you do say when you’re drunk. What she did say, under those circumstances, and always in her crisp New England voice, was “I simply don’t want to see you again.” Instead of a passionate, childish tantrum. Like Sara’s.

  Now, with the bad, unexpected weather, which is linked to Sara (in Dudley’s mind, at least), during a short respite from the rain Dudley watches stray sea gulls wheel and soar, as though seeking to lose themselves in clouds. Silently, standing still and alone in the big wooden room, their bedroom, she watches until the rain starts again. A heavy, punitive gray downpour, bleak, imprisoning.


  Later that afternoon over tea with Sam, she tells him, “I can honestly see why people move to Florida, or Arizona. The older you are, the worse bad weather seems. Have you noticed?”

  “Not yet. Maybe next year, though.” Sam smiles, referring to an old joke: the fact that Dudley is almost precisely one year older than he is.

  But his smile is a surface smile, involving only the automatic muscles of his mouth, and Dudley sees the sadness in his eyes. And she knows its focus, its source, which is his present inability to work, to paint. That is what aging means to Sam: not painting. Which is not a fit subject for jokes. Dudley has even caught herself pretending similar problems; she has not yet told Sam, for instance, about a recent offer from a travel magazine that would like to send her to Ireland.

  “Poor Sara, though, coming out to visit in this weather,” she brightly essays. “Or, rather, poor Celeste, all cooped up with her.”

  “Celeste must like her, though?”

  “Well, but it’s been such a distant liking. It’s quite another thing to have someone under your roof.” Can this conversation be of any interest to Sam, though, possibly? It seems to Dudley familiar; they have had this same talk before—but on the whole even talking redundantly seems preferable to not talking at all.

  “She’s going to change our lives quite a lot,” Sam suddenly pronounces. Sam, who rarely pronounces, who is rarely portentous.

  A thrill of sheer interest seizes Dudley; of course, he must be right. “Whatever do you mean?” she asks him.

  He retreats—of course he retreats, how like him! “Well, I probably don’t really know what I mean,” he tells her. “And very likely I’m wrong.” Saying this, Sam sounds much more like himself: mildly ironic, vaguely self-deprecatory. Evasive.

  “You must have an idea, though?” Dudley pursues, somewhat aggressive.

  “No, I was just talking to hear myself.” His familiar bad-boy grin is nevertheless of some cheer to Dudley, and she thinks, as she sometimes does, How fond we are of each other, after all. No wonder we’re still together, malgré tout. (At other times, she still is capable of thinking, Oh, how could I not have left him for good, long ago?)