by Alice Adams
“You seem to think anyone who likes you is some kind of a freak. Or a spy, for God’s sake.”
This is so accurate, and so awful, so mentally unhealthy, as Sara knows perfectly well, that she has no answer other than her convenient old irony. “Well, maybe I’ll confront this David, and see what he has in mind, since I’m so devastating that he can’t possibly hurt me.”
“Do that. But if something comes of it just don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear about it.”
* * *
Alex too is certainly “much better.” Sara had this thought on seeing him in New York, and she thinks this increasingly as they talk, and talk. He is more his own person, is “stronger,” more defined.
Alex himself tends to attribute any changes in himself to his shrink. “She’s a most unusual woman.”
But he has also pointed out, “I’m really only okay by myself. It’s ‘relationships’ I can’t seem to handle.”
“Except by long distance,” Sara has to add.
He laughs, a little embarrassed, but then he reminds her, “It’s you who won’t let me come out there. And if you say you’re afraid of me too, I’ll know you’re lying.”
“No, it’s not that. I’m not.” I’m not quite ready to see you yet, is what Sara actually means, and is quite unable to say. For one thing, she worries about what will actually happen, what must happen, when they do see each other again. Suppose the sex is not as great as the friendship they seem to have developed?
Alex continues to talk about his Spanish studies—enthusiastically. He is now meeting every week with a group that includes a poet from Nicaragua. “In fact, it seems more or less a country of poets. I think I should have that trip pulled together in a couple of months.”
On some days, turning her back on the sea, Sara heads down the overgrown, rutted path, now never used, leading past Polly’s small house and eventually to the town (this being, among other things, the one road on which Sara has not run into David). She would never have simply dropped in on Polly, but she liked the idea of Polly’s nearness. Sara liked Polly, though she barely knew her, always smiling as she passed that house.
The inevitable day arrived, however, when Sara’s smile and her glance toward the vine-covered, stucco box encountered Polly herself, seated—or rather, sprawled—on a tattered rug, on the patchy grass. Polly apparently digging in her garden.
Sara waves, half-intending to continue, but Polly stops her. “Just stay here for one minute, which is all I’ve got. But I have something to say.”
Coming in through the broken, slatted gate, approaching Polly, Sara is not at all surprised to hear Polly’s message. Polly, with no preamble, says to Sara, “I’m more than a little worried about Celeste. You’ve got to get her to see a doctor. Make her go.”
“Really? It’s that bad?” Even an expected message can be very shocking, as this one is.
Near Polly’s sandal-shod feet is an oblong package, newspaper-wrapped. (“It looked like money, honestly, a packet of bills she’d just dug up,” Sara to Alex, later. “Talk about eccentric.” Alex: “Well, the banks aren’t doing too well, she may be quite right.”)
“She throws a few symptoms at me from time to time,” explains Polly, her pale brilliant eyes squinting up into the sun, and at Sara. “I knew what was wrong with Charles, so she overrates my diagnostic powers. He had the same thing I’d had, though, for Christ’s sake. The old big pancreatic C. And Celeste may be okay, but someone other than me has to check her out.”
Picking up her trowel then, returning to dirt, Polly further admonishes, “Well, you do what you can.”
Thus dismissed, Sara promises, “I will,” and gestures goodbye—although she would have given a good deal to stay and talk to Polly. What symptoms does Celeste now have, how serious are they?
The thought of a serious illness—well, cancer—and a terrible slow death for Celeste is entirely horrifying to Sara. Horrifying, and at the same time, along with the horror, Sara experiences a sort of rage: How could you, Celeste? I didn’t come out here to watch you die, I already did that with Emma. I love you, you have to stay around. We’ve just begun to talk, and I need you.
Continuing down the road, that day, she does not run into anyone. She does see Victor Lozano, the heavyset, dark, quite bald repairman from the local garage. Who is pushing along a battered bicycle, one of Polly’s that he must have repaired. He and Sara exchange the muted hellos of people who almost but not quite know each other, and Sara thinks, Now, there’s a really sexy-looking man. That Victor is something else.
“One absolutely horrible thing, of course,” says Freddy quite loudly to Edward, as in adjoining rooms they dress to go to Celeste’s for dinner, “one awful thing that must affect everyone is that every goddam cold makes you think you have it. Have AIDS.”
Curiously, perhaps, this is the first explicit mention between them of the possibility of AIDS for themselves. And the implications, none of which he has not already considered, are, to Edward, staggering. He is barely able to ask, with what he believes to be a suitable lack of concern, “You’re getting a cold?”
“Yes—no, I don’t know. I think so. I feel terrible. Probably I’m just tired.”
Edward smiles as Freddy, fully and perfectly dressed, appears. Edward says, “You don’t look tired, but then you never do. Ah, youth.”
Freddy in fact has never been more beautiful, in Edward’s view. Once a pretty boy (“that pretty boy of Edward’s”), he is now a beautiful, thoughtful, intelligent, somewhat saddened man. With his dark cat sleekness, his wry mouth and delicately pointed chin, Freddy looks simply extraordinary, Edward thinks. Even in the most conventional clothes, as tonight: black blazer, pale yellow shirt, black knit tie. “I like that blazer on you” is what Edward says.
“Yes, but do you think it’s really me?” Camping it up, Freddy laughs.
“I guess. Or at least one of you.” And Edward too laughs.
“Well, maybe it’ll cheer Celeste up just a little. She likes having a nice clean blazer around. Old Charles was famous for blazers, wasn’t he.”
“True enough.” Edward hesitates. “But tell me about your cold. You really have one? You took lots of C?”
“Darling Edward, don’t try to infect me with your New England hypochondria. We spics are tougher than you are.” He pauses. “Unless of course I do have AIDS.” But then he giggles, a fake high sound. “I can’t, though—it doesn’t start with a cold. Edward darling, is it really true that you actually sold a house today?”
“Well, yes, actually I did. In Cupertino,” Edward tells him—having entirely forgotten about this sale. “I did it in spite of myself,” he rattles on. “They loved it, despite all the drawbacks I took such pains to point out. They would not take no for an answer, and they gave me an offer I really couldn’t refuse.”
20
Mourning must indeed take a great many different forms, has been one of Dudley’s most recent conclusions; unfortunately what has emerged as her own strongest, most consistent feeling toward Sam, Sam dead, is a passionate, towering rage. She hates him now, most of the time. She wishes they had never met.
The first cause of this rage is of course the simple fact that he died, leaving her one more time. If he had not been such a drunk, and then stayed so fat, he would not have died so young—well, these days sixty-four is young.
A more legitimate source of anger, though, is the fact that he had made no recent will. Like so many people, Sam always meant to, never quite got around to it. As a result, although the house, all paid for, becomes entirely hers, the income from Sam’s stock, the good IBM, bought on a whim during Sam’s palmiest days, the high-riding early fifties—all that reverts to his rich, yuppie-lawyer daughters, theirs by an old (fifties) will. Not a lot of money, but enough to make a considerable difference in Dudley’s life—the difference in fact between enough money to live on very pleasantly, and not quite enough. If Dudley would choose to contest this obviously unfair lapse, she would
almost undoubtedly win, so her own lawyer informs her. But she does not so choose: other considerations aside, the idea of going to court against four lawyers is more than a little intimidating.
It is necessary, then, to change her life. Not entirely, but quite a lot: to spend about half what she did before Sam died, which is a little tricky since most of her fixed expenses will remain the same, unless they go up, which is highly probable, these days. Dudley will not buy any clothes—easy enough, she certainly needs none. Will not take small trips to San Francisco, and God knows not larger ones to New York, or Boston. She will eat more beans, less meat, or maybe no meat at all; in a theoretic way she has always believed in being a vegetarian. Which was out of the question with Sam, a meat-and-potatoes man.
The point is, she will waste absolutely nothing, Dudley decides, and she will try very, very hard not to waste more of her energy in rage at Sam. Poor Sam, he couldn’t help dying, he surely did not want to. (Or, on the other hand, did he?) She knows that her rage is wasteful.
She knows too that what she is going into is hardly poverty; she is not going out on the streets—but she has to tell herself just that, from time to time.
However, she is indeed very angry, and given her own private irrevocable principles, she can say almost nothing of what she feels to anyone, which naturally makes her feel worse. She can certainly not tell Edward, perhaps least of all Edward, as New England in principles as she, albeit her oldest, possibly closest friend. Nor to Celeste, nor Polly (and Dudley is interested to note that Polly of them all seems the strongest possibility for such confidences).
At night, most nights, she sits alone in the creaking wooden ark that is her house. She sips her diet Coke, she watches (sometimes) educational TV, she tries to read. She remembers every bad time with Sam that ever happened. Contrary to the received view, which holds that after people die you remember only the good, Dudley remembers only the bad, the worst.
She has, then, these terrible nighttime lonely reveries, and during the day, or at social occasions with friends, she has to speak mournfully, even sanctimoniously, of Sam.
And in the privacy of her mind she wonders: Did Celeste ever rage at Charles? Was she ever angry at Charles after he died? Certainly she never seemed so.
Brooks Burgess has called Dudley several times in the past few months. They have had brief, rather stilted conversations, in which almost nothing is said beyond the politest, most vacant inquiries as to each other’s health. Hanging up, Dudley always wonders why he called. But she also observes in herself a sort of pained affection for that deep but tentative, almost disembodied voice on the telephone. He would like to see her but he doesn’t quite dare ask, has been one of her conclusions. And she acknowledges that she would miss his calls at least a little if he stopped.
One night, though, he calls somewhat later than usual, and he seems more in a mood for conversation—as Dudley fleetingly thinks, Oh dear, does he drink too?
He even asks, conversationally, “It takes some getting used to, this living alone, don’t you think?”
“Indeed. But I think I may get to like it.” Actually Dudley has not thought just this before; she is simply cheered by the fact of this conversation.
He laughs very briefly. “I suppose we may. And then we’ll feel really guilty, right?”
This unlikely (Dudley believes) remark from Brooks has the effect of making her like him more, and she simply says, “I’d love to see you sometime, if you’re ever around.”
“Well—” It turns out that one of the reasons he called was that Brooks has to make a trip to Santa Cruz, he has a daughter there. And could she possibly—is there somewhere they could meet for lunch?
Dudley, one of those fated to promptness (a considerable problem with Sam, whose habits were very Southern, in that way: always late)—Dudley arrives at the appointed hour on the chosen day for their lunch. And then proceeds to wonder if she somehow got both wrong, if she wrote down twelve-thirty instead of one, or the wrong day in July, Thursday when he clearly said Tuesday.
David has seated her at the nicest window table in the diner (her choice for lunch). She sits facing the billowing green hills, with their lacing of live oaks at intervals. A peaceful sky.
David has asked Dudley if she would like some Perrier, or anything, and she has so far refused (at the same time wondering: What is it that is so very irritating about David’s friendliness?).
Sitting there, trying to concentrate on filling herself with the peaceful beauty of this view, it seems to Dudley that this is crazy, what she is doing is nuts: she is waiting for someone who is driving down from Marin, all that way, and expecting him to be anywhere near on time. Anything, anything at all could happen to delay or to prevent the trip entirely.
A yuppie-looking couple (the blonde, fashionably casual young woman a reminder to Dudley of Sam’s oldest, least-liked daughter) with four young children have taken the table across the room from Dudley. The children are restless and noisy, and totally indulged by their tired, ineffectual parents, a few admonitions do nothing to quiet anyone. Watching them irritably, Dudley feels that their noise, their very commotion, is somehow preventing the arrival of Brooks.
Crazy. Truly nuts.
But just then out in the parking area she sees a car pull in that must be his, and it is, and there he is: closing his door, rushing into the restaurant. Small, dapper, anxious-looking Brooks, now hurrying toward her (will they kiss?—shake hands?) smiling and saying, “Oh, you’re here! How great, I was so afraid I’d got it wrong. The wrong day, and now I’m so late—”
“Oh, not really.”
Without having touched her at all in greeting, Brooks sits down across from Dudley and they both laugh, out of sheer pleasure, and some mutual shyness. And they begin to talk about the weather.
It is almost always nice in the summer up in Ross, where he lives, Brooks tells Dudley, and Dudley tells him about what he must already be aware of, the usual prevalence of coastal fog down here. The unusualness of today, with all this sunshine. They do not, however, allow themselves to make anything of this; they do not attach significance to the golden weather—no assumptions of good fortune on their own parts.
Dudley, though, does not find herself disappointed by this silly exchange. They need time; she knows that they are playing for time. Neither of them, neither constitutionally nor at this particular point in their lives, could rush into anything, even assuming that there is anything to rush into. In the meantime Dudley is simply aware of liking him (or perhaps not simply at all).
Observing in herself this renewal of positive feeling toward Brooks (even his eyes look less close together today)—Brooks, whom at Celeste’s last party she did not seem to like at all—Dudley thinks of an old formulation of her own, one worked out years back, which is, roughly speaking, that first impressions, first reactions (if not necessarily in any sense “correct”), are the ones to which she returns. Simply, she liked Brooks at first, and then did not, and now she does like him—again.
(But how about Sam, whom she much disliked on sight, she can still remember thinking him such a vain, handsome man, such a green-eyed charmer, with that deep-Southern softness to his voice. Oh, a terrible man, and half-drunk besides! All of which, though “correct,” was quickly blurred by sheer lust, and later by “love,” and then forgotten, almost, in the long complexity of their life together. However, now that Sam is dead and she has begun to think of him with such anger, could that anger be considered a return to first impressions? Well, it hardly matters, Dudley decides.)
David comes over to take their order, and possibly because he is busy, or conceivably because he has caught some less than friendly message from Dudley, he spares them his spiel of specials, and allows them both to order what they want: seafood salads and iced coffee.
Neither of them seems to know what to talk about next, though. Instead they exchange a flutter of small smiles as both begin to eat. And Dudley thinks, How adolescent we are! Teenagers on a
date, but in our case we reverse the adolescent process: we began with all that wild necking, and now we’re tongue-tied. And she thinks, Well, obviously it’s up to me; and she braces herself for social effort.
“How do you feel about living alone these days?” she asks him. “Are you getting to like it, do you think?”
To which she gains an unusual response. “Well, I seem to have a problem that I didn’t know about,” Brooks tells her after just the slightest pause, after deeply furrowing his brow. “It’s just, just that I really don’t like men very much. I mean, I don’t much like talking to them or really being with men. Doing things with other men.” He looks away, momentarily (visibly) much embarrassed.
Gently Dudley laughs. “You mean you’d rather go out to lunch or have dinner with a woman.”
Eagerly, “Exactly! Women are just, oh, more fun to be with. For me.” But then he says, “I guess this probably makes me some kind of a, uh, queer.”
Somewhat less gently Dudley laughs at him. “Well, hardly. Not liking men is not exactly a sign of that. Or I don’t think it is.”
At which he too laughs. “Well, I guess really not. But you see what I mean. In my situation, my new situation, it is sort of a problem. People expect—”
“They think you’ll play golf with the boys, or watch sports on TV. With other men.”
“Well, yes, they do seem to expect that. But the thing is, I really like just being around women. They’re easier to talk to, for me. Better listeners.”
What he means is, in part, that he misses his wife, Dudley understands. He misses being married, having her around. And she herself—Dudley is of course finding him more and more sympathetic. We could turn into really good friends, is what at least a part of her mind is thinking.
In another part, though, she wonders if they will ever go to bed together, and if so, just what would they do there? More teenage necking? And how could this ever come about?
Not, she imagines, in either of their houses; it would almost have to be somewhere else, some ghost-free motel. In San Francisco? Tahoe? Mendocino? And how, actually, would we ever get into bed, Dudley wonders. What would have to be first said, to establish what they were doing?