by Alice Adams
“Yes,” Polly agrees. “That was crazy. The first night I met Bill at your house—well, it was unfair. A low blow.”
“Very unfair to me.” Celeste laughs briefly. “I think I sort of fell in love with Bill, or got a crush on him, whatever you want to call it, but it was really all about missing Charles. Just a crazy way of expressing how much I missed him. I’m not making sense, though, am I?”
“Sure you are, but there’s something missing, I think.”
Feeling prodded, Celeste still makes an effort. “I think that all my life I’ve been falling in love with men as a kind of substitute for something else. Not that I wasn’t doing other things too. But. Do you see what I mean, at all?” Celeste is highly aware of having never in her life spoken in this way, or nearly; she is not at all sure that she likes it.
“I do see,” Polly tells her, Polly with her far too intelligent eyes now concentrated on Celeste. She seems then to muse for a moment, before (so unnecessarily! Celeste later thinks) she adds, “And in a way Bill was supposed to make up for everything lacking with Charles, don’t you think? A second chance?”
“Polly, that is an absolutely meaningless remark. My life with Charles was absolutely perfect, as you of all people should know. Really, Polly, you forget yourself.”
Very strangely (but then Polly is very strange, very), Polly chooses to laugh at this. “Come off it, Celeste. Don’t talk like that to me. You know we’re friends for life. I can say whatever I want to, and I usually do. You know that.”
That much at least is true, and so Celeste too forces a laugh, and they change the subject. Polly begins to talk about her trip.
23
The room that Sara occupies in Celeste’s big sprawling house faces directly south, but east and west are also included in that broad sweep: hills, a few houses, the enormous sky, and sometimes, rarely, the sea. Waking early, on some of the perfectly clear days of October, California’s Indian summer, what Sara sees before the actual sun is, here and there, a small burnished blaze, as of copper: sunlight reflected in distant scattered windows. And the air at that time is a deep pure blue, washed clean, no clouds—only an occasional jetliner that noses slowly upward, crossing the sky and heading south for Mexico, or South America.
At those times, on those rarely beautiful mornings, Sara experiences such a deep, fulfilling sense of peace as to make her feel a rush of guilt, while from her bed she watches the lovely progress of the day, for the first time in her life not having to get up.
Sara believes that this is not what she is supposed to be doing—Sara, who has never been even nearly convinced that she is meant to be happy, in her life. But this room and this view of the dawn, the white flashing wings of sea gulls, all conspire to make her feel—well, happy, a rare contentment and tranquil joy. Which makes her at the same time very restive.
If it were not for Celeste, about whom she is seriously worried, she would leave; that is Sara’s thought, or one of them. The imperative that bids her to take care of Celeste is strongest, though. And so odd, Sara thinks: Celeste is someone whom she could quite reasonably dislike. Celeste is imperious, imperialistic (probably), materialistic (certainly that, all those clothes, that jewelry), vain—a foolish romantic. Snobbish. A poor judge of men—very poor. A political illiterate.
Why then, Sara asks herself, have I appointed myself her keeper? If she is mortally ill, why do I have to be the one to stick around and take care of her? Why not Dudley, or Polly? Or Edward? She is not exactly lacking in friends. Why me?
Sara’s belief that Celeste is ill (is almost dying) comes from hints, Celeste’s own small spoken words, rather than from any amateur medical observation on Sara’s part. Celeste, except for dry skin and a certain pallor that seems to be chronic (and is probably at least in part cosmetic), looks splendid: she stands erect; she moves, as always, with exceptional grace, with a sometimes alarming alacrity. She is hard to keep up with, for anyone.
And Celeste is even quite unsympathetic toward her more arthritic friends—namely, Dudley and Edward. Arthritis, according to Celeste, is entirely a matter of diet: she herself conquered what she felt to be incipient arthritis in herself with a regime of fresh fish and brown rice, canned tuna, and papaya (so rich in enzymes). Almost no red meat or dairy products. (There is also her curious fondness for peanut butter, to Sara an anomalous taste: elegant Celeste, eating peanut butter? Nevertheless, that is what she does, largely in her futile effort to gain a little weight—a problem for which she expects and receives no sympathy whatsoever.) She has no signs of bodily stiffness, anywhere. No visible slowing down of anything.
She does, though, make certain remarks that Sara has found alarming. For example: “Sara darling, since you don’t really care for jewelry, do you? I’m just leaving it all to Dudley, you won’t mind?” Or, “I suppose the best thing will be for you and Dudley to sell this house. It’s so big and impractical. So lucky that you two have become such friends.”
To Sara’s strong remonstrances “Please, Celeste, I don’t want your jewelry or your house. Besides you look wonderful, you could easily outlive me,” Celeste smiles wanly, and with no conviction agrees. “I suppose I could. You don’t take much care of yourself.”
It becomes clear to Sara, then, that Celeste for whatever reasons has decided that she will die. And soon, or fairly soon.
The only reason for her dying that makes any sense to Sara, in terms of Celeste’s true character, as Sara perceives it, would be Celeste’s suspicion (perhaps even her certainty) of mortal illness. The unspeakable: cancer.
And sometimes what Sara thinks is, I simply cannot go through all that again. For it was Sara, of course, on whom almost the total care of her mother, Emma, fell, during those last nightmare months of Emma’s illness. Sara who witnessed actively all her mother’s pain and medical indignities. (Celeste’s visits of mercy were helpful but very brief.) I can’t do all that, can’t see all that again, thinks Sara, even as she excoriates herself for those thoughts.
For of course she will. She knows perfectly well that she is committed to seeing Celeste through whatever happens.
Besides, at this point in her life, Sara further thinks, what more worthy project does she have? Just what is she doing of any remote importance to anyone?
Sometimes, during Emma’s illness, Sara even thought, and now she cruelly remembers thinking: Well, please get on with it, please just die. And at other times, and with equal strength, she silently begged her mother not to die. Not to leave her.
Much of which she feels all over again, transferred to Celeste.
On one especially blessed-seeming morning, as Sara lies half-dreaming in her bed, she is jolted by the sound of the telephone from the living room. And as she waits for Celeste to answer, as the phone continues to ring, she recalls a part of her dream. Which was of Alex, which was vividly sexual.
Celeste does not answer, and so Sara gets up and barefoot in her flannel gown she runs for the phone, thinking that of course it will stop before she gets there, thinking too: What’s wrong with Celeste, can’t she hear, can she have died?
But the phone does not stop until she picks it up and answers, a breathless “Hello.”
Alex (later Sara is to think, Well, of course it was Alex). “You never call early in the morning” is her somewhat accusatory greeting.
“It isn’t early. But listen, I do have some news. About our Bill. Mr. Priest.”
The windows of the living room face west, exposed to sunsets rather than to dawns, and thus what Sara now sees is reflected sunlight on neighboring windowpanes, on pale rocks just beginning to shine, and glitter on the sea. Perhaps it also strikes the broad light-colored horns of Dudley’s tribe of goats, Sara thinks, and she wonders where they are at just this moment.
She is watching, then, the beautiful changes in the light; she is thinking rather idly of the goats—as Alex is telling her about Bill Priest, who is indeed in Nicaragua—Managua. Almost impossible to imagine.
“
He’s in something called ISA. Intelligence Support Activity. Quite an ominous title when you think about it,” Alex tells her.
“I won’t ask how you managed to find this out.”
“Well, don’t.” Alex goes on, “The ISA is bad news. They don’t just collect intelligence, they come up with arms and supplies for their chosen causes. Guess which. They’ve done a lot of damage in El Salvador, and they’re keeping right on at it.”
“If they’re so high-level I’m surprised they took on our Priest.”
“He’s a lot more popular than he was at one time.”
It is as though, at that moment, both the dawn and the sea and the invisible goats disappear from Sara’s mind, and she is back in her more customary inner landscape: bloody deaths in teeming, fetid jungles; small straw villages bombed and burning; children maimed and screaming, screaming. Men and women screaming, weeping, moaning. Her own total helplessness, rage. “Jesus Christ,” is what she says, thinking less of Bill Priest, an unimportant person, really, than of the others, the big-money people in New York and Washington. The power brokers, manipulators, with their cold, cold blood, their discreet paunches, withered genitals.
This is what Sara has seen and felt for what now seems forever, as though there had been no lapse, no gap between Vietnam and Nicaragua.
“You aren’t listening,” Alex tells her. “Still asleep?”
“No. Yes.”
Alex continues, going on about the odd career of Bill Jones Priest: fag-bashing in Hollywood, in the days when this was an approved activity. (Somehow this is not much of a surprise.) The FBI in Berkeley, the IRS in San Francisco. CIA. ISA. Nicaragua.
Sara listens, her mind or part of her mind recording all that he says—but actually she is considering the dull, implacable familiarity of it all, the terrible predictability of contemporary evil. It is as though all the people you most dislike turn out to be related to each other, is one way to think of it.
Alex is saying, “You know, I’d really like to see you.”
“Oh, Alex, me too. But I’m almost scared to. I don’t want to risk—oh, you know.” She almost says, We’re getting along so well the way we are.
“Sure, I know. Or I guess I do.”
As Sara hangs up, she is thinking that, really, neither of them knows anything at all about the other. “Knows” in the sense of being able to predict the behavior of. But does anyone, in that sense, ever know another person? Sara has no idea.
Sara goes back to her dream.
A long time ago when Alex and Sara made love, acid-high or stoned on grass or even straight, their two bodies seemed sometimes to become submarine aquatic plants, all wet and wavering together. No more private shapes, or parts. Even what Sara had experienced as his extreme blond beauty, as opposed to her own heavy darkness—all that was lost in their merging.
She remembers this, she thinks of it now, recalling the sensations, the very aura of sex with Alex, far more vividly than people are supposed to be able to remember sex.
And she knows that one of the reasons she puts him off is her fear that they will fail—will have tried, as of course they must, for repetition, and not made it. That now they can only come up with an ordinary sexual exchange.
And Sara lacerates herself for this fear of sexual failure. What a coward she is, after all!
Or, she also thinks, I am really worse than Celeste could possibly be. Talk about a stupid, a totally retro-romantic.
* * *
Missing Freddy, Edward is genuinely frightened by the intensity of his feelings: such a heavy, pressing vacancy within himself, such real derangement. He misses Freddy so badly, is so wholly caught up in Freddy’s absence, his lack, that the smallest decisions for himself have become impossible: which tie to put on in the morning, whether to have a piece of fish or a chop for dinner. Whether to go upstairs and lie down or to read the paper in the living room.
The problem is, he really doesn’t want to do anything, for nothing that he does will bring about Freddy’s return.
Remembering Freddy is as constant in his life as breathing is. Thirty years of Freddy’s face, his mouth, his walk. His most intimate smells. All that is as close to Edward as his own breath, as much a part of him.
Plus which, Edward is running out of money. He has done nothing with real estate (could not bring himself even to think of it) for many months, and in ways that he cannot focus on his investments have all gone bad. When he is able to think at all in that direction, Edward believes that a crash is coming, that the economic world as rich people like himself have known it is coming to an end. And he simply could not care less.
In a year or so he will probably have to sell his house, Edward thinks, and then live God knows where. Be a street person, like those he has seen all over San Francisco, these days.
And who cares? Who gives a flying fig or a doughnut hole what happens to a silly old queer, who is almost dead, who is felled by the loss of his love?
Victor says, “But, my dear, my most esteemed Polly, quite naturally everyone knew.”
“But, Victor—oh, my God! How incredibly embarrassing! What a total fool I feel.”
“You should not feel a fool. They all respected you deeply, and they felt most grateful for all the good that you did. So much money! To find it carefully on one’s doorstep. Your reasons for doing it as you did are your own, no single person of our town would presume to question your right to do as you did.”
“Oh—”
“And everyone—most especially myself, I should tell you—appreciated the dangers in which you placed yourself on those nights.”
“Oh, Victor, dear God!”
“However, my dearest, it is no longer necessary that you carry out your wishes in a fashion quite so extreme. And so dangerous to yourself. I can most easily leave an envelope or a package beneath any door or upon any steps that you should specify to me. And in such a way that what I have done will be known to no one.”
“Victor, I have never in my life felt such an ass.”
At this Victor looks so shocked that Polly wonders if her Spanish has been at fault. He only says, however, “We must not think of it in this way. There is no reason for shame.”
Polly sighs against his naked chest. “Maybe we could just turn out the light.”
“If you wish. I had wanted though to speak further of our trip. I think that from Barcelona we go by train to Zaragoza, do you agree?”
24
“I want to be sure that you understand absolutely everything,” the young doctor tells Celeste, who is not listening, really, to a word he says. Not listening to the words themselves, that is, but quite clearly hearing a voice and seeing a person: Dr. John Bascomb. A small wiry man with the nervous look of a tennis player. Very crinkled (well, kinky) short red hair, darting light blue eyes. So much like Celeste’s very early husband, Bix Finnerty, who must be dead by now; he could be Bix’s son, and of course is not.
But it is odd, this recurrence of physical types in one’s life, Celeste has thought. First Charles comes back as Bill, and now here is Bix again, or almost, as Dr. Bascomb. Who at least is trying to be considerably nicer than Bix was.
“It’s not exactly a complicated procedure, Celeste,” this doctor continues. “But it could make you a little uncomfortable. That’s why we give you something intravenously.”
“What?” asks Celeste, who in her hospital gown, back opening, is perched on the edge of the examining table. Under these conditions, and since he seems to insist on using her first name, and especially in the light of all the extremely ugly things she has told him—Celeste now sees no point in verbal formalities. “What, intravenously?” she asks.
“Ah, Valium, probably. It won’t put you out, I need you to be awake so that you can follow certain directions. And any discomfort you’ll share with me right away.”
“I’d be delighted.”
This small joke does not especially amuse either one of them; uneasily, distrustfully they regard each
other. Doctor and patient. John Bascomb and Celeste.
To regain control, perhaps, he goes on talking. “As I’ve tried to explain, I find nothing intrinsically alarming in your symptoms. Nine times out of ten, just an innocent polyp. Of course our President was not so lucky, but then he’s done remarkably well ever since. Remarkably.”
“To think that I would turn out to have something in common with our President.” Celeste widens her eyes in a way that would have signaled heavy irony to any of her friends, had any friend been present.
“Well, my hunch is that you don’t. My educated guess is that—well, we’ll just see. Of course we plan to do a biopsy on whatever we find up there—”
At his “up there” Celeste involuntarily shudders, controlling the small spasm as best she can—and quite stops listening.
She has become extremely calm, she observes of herself. The calm of death, or almost. Her true idea, though, is that this examination, which the doctor continues to describe in such detail (he must at some point have been instructed to “share” with patients, to let them in on things, not to be just an inhuman doctor), including the horrifying preparations that Celeste must begin (if she is to make them at all) tomorrow—all this will very likely kill her off right away. And this idea has served to banish her ancient fears of malignancy: it won’t matter at all (to her) what it was; she will be safely dead.
“… anything you’d like to ask?” Poor anxious Dr. Bascomb, who is visibly not enjoying this either, who never chose this role of explainer, teacher.
“Do you lose many patients in this process?”
“Lose?” He looks stricken. “Oh, no, never lost one yet.” He has quickly recovered. “Not doing a colonoscopy. Angiograms, now, they can be a little dangerous.”
“I suppose there’s always a first time,” Celeste tells him, unhelpfully.
In a way she was right, Celeste thinks: she is much too old and too fragile, really, to have withstood such treatment—nevertheless, withstand it she did, and the bed in which she lies is her own. Her own bed, own room, own beautiful and familiar home.