by Alice Adams
Brooks looks as nonplussed, as taken aback, as Dudley has ever seen him, sitting there stiffly against the back of his chair, his mouth slightly open but soundless, his eyes small and round and blank. So that at first Dudley imagines that her “bloody” was a serious mistake; no doubt Brooks has feelings about Christmas that are strong and positive—are even religious, possibly.
However, apparently not. His set expression dissolves, and he smiles, and his posture shifts. He leans forward, his hands outstretched to Dudley’s hands on the table. He even laughs. “Bloody Christmas, that’s good. Though I have to admit I’ve used considerably stronger language, myself. I personally can’t stand Christmas. And my wife always—well, she liked it. I’m afraid I have to admit that more than once—”
He seems to find it hard to finish this admission, and so Dudley fills in, “You had fights? Maybe got drunk?”
“You guessed it, lady.” But then Brooks seems to feel that he has said the wrong thing, or his tone has been wrong: you don’t call a lady “lady,” in his lexicon. And so he shifts key. “In spite of Christmas, then, I do want you to come up to Ross. As my guest. As my—” He pauses, with a look at Dudley that she later thinks she should have been able to read, but at the time was not, did not.
“… as my fiancée,” he brings out. “Would that suit you, dearest Dudley?”
So many reactions crowd upon Dudley at once, among them a desire to cry. She is so—so grateful, so—interested. In fact, it reads like a geriatric fairy story, a rescue fantasy. Also she is touched, and utterly confused. A few tears do come, and are understandably misinterpreted by Brooks.
“My poor darling,” he murmurs.
No one, certainly, has ever used those words, that particular endearment to Dudley. Surely never wild bad Sam. And for a moment she yields to their charm. She sees herself as that, a poor darling. Even, a poor brave darling. Embarrassingly, more tears come. “Christ, this is awful,” she mutters into her handkerchief.
Contrite Brooks is saying, “Oh, I didn’t mean, I really didn’t mean to be so abrupt. We don’t even have to talk about it today. I can see you’re upset. Here, drink your wine and we’ll talk about the weather.”
And that is what they proceed to do for the rest of their lunch. In a somewhat stilted way they discuss the weather: the possibilities of rain, the relative temperatures of Ross and San Sebastian, although this second topic is hurried through with some nervousness, its implications as to future plans passed over.
It has earlier been established between them that lunch is all they are to see of each other today. Brooks has a business appointment in San Jose, midafternoon. Now, however, now that he has in that somewhat curious way “proposed,” Dudley finds herself wondering if that plan will change. Will Brooks call down to cancel the appointment, and stay with her? Will he go back to her house with her, for a spot of sex?
Well, of course he will, no one would “make an offer” and then just go off to a business date. (And, upsettingly, Dudley realizes that she does not look forward with much happiness to that bit of sex.)
But: precisely at two-thirty Brooks checks his watch, then summons the waiter for their bill and announces to Dudley, “My dear, if I don’t leave in a very few minutes I will be late, and we can’t have that, you know.” This last is somewhat self-mocking; he is laughing a little at himself, making fun of his own compulsive punctuality, in a mild and self-tolerant way. As Dudley thinks (as she may have been intended to think) how likable he is. How kind and gentle, really. Not at all as stuffy as he might seem.
During lunch, Dudley had wanted—but not wanted to ask for—another glass of wine: Brooks drinks so little, his effect on her life will be good—as Sam’s was bad?
Once at home, however, and alone, she decides that a proposal of marriage is surely cause for celebration, and she pours herself a brimming glass of chardonnay, from the bottle that she and Sara did not quite finish off the week before.
She sips, and in a mildly excited, mildly pleasurable way she thinks about marrying Brooks. She sees the happy solution to most of her major problems—namely, loneliness and lack of money. If only it would also cure her arthritis, is an inadvertent, unruly additional thought.
She thinks of the large, as yet unseen house in Ross. I can invite Celeste and Sara, and Edward up for weekends, she thinks. And Polly (and Victor?).
It is at least half an hour before she understands that she can never marry Brooks. She doesn’t even like him, really, and she doesn’t have to marry a man she doesn’t like. Things are bad with her, she admits that to herself. But not that bad. She is broke, but not desperate. And she is often lonely, but she still has good friends, quite nearby.
And as for arthritis, aspirin works as well as anything she has so far found.
Still, it is nice to have been asked, she thinks, regretting that there is no one she can tell.
26
The hotel in San Sebastián (both Polly and Victor think of this city as the real San Sebastian) in which they are staying is perched back from and above the winding concrete walk that borders the sea. And the beach. The building is massive, a crumbling, white-turreted turn-of-the-century birthday cake of a hotel. And their once-elegant large room, its creaking windows opened to the view, once housed royalty.
It also once before housed Polly, long ago in the forties, who then, as now, was alone and waiting—at that time for Charles Timberlake. This is one of those coincidences that seem bizarre, outlandish to anyone who is not very old. To the old such circumstances are an ordinary plague, a commonplace.
The shape of the land at that point on Spain’s northern Atlantic coast, next to France, is just slightly indented, so that the hotel faces partly west, as well as north. And it is to the west, with its dying sunlight, that Polly now looks, less for aesthetic reasons than because Bilbao lies about ninety-nine kilometers west of San Sebastián, and that is where Victor is, presumably. Unless, as she hopes, he is already on his way back to her. The sunset was minor; the horizon is now shrouded with queerly bright, grayish clouds.
Their trip together so far has been very good. Polly, not given to superlatives, would not think “marvelous” or even simply “beautiful” appropriate, although both words have crossed her mind, repeatedly.
Madrid, then Barcelona: in both cities she experienced deep stirs of recognition, seeing once more remembered majesty. The ramblas, certain buildings. Along with a happy regreeting of timeless restaurants, eternal small dark cafés.
From Barcelona by way of Zaragoza they drove north, stopping the night before at Olite, at the great stone castle-posada there, with its hard beds, far too narrow for love. Past Olite, the dramatically beautiful (for scenery, Polly finds the word permissible), always changing shapes of land. Broad avenues becoming steep declivities, bordered by impossibly steeper pastures. And lovely globe-shaped pines, brilliant yellow-to-amber poplars. All to Polly piercingly familiar, and quite possibly to Victor also, though neither of them mentioned this sense. In fact, as they drove (Victor drove) they spoke very little, neither wanting (probably) to reveal so much emotion. Nostalgia, Polly has thought, is extremely dangerous at our age.
Below the balcony on which Polly at this moment stands is the concrete walk, and then the broad flat beach, and the calm gray dull-sheened sea. Both the walk and the beach are populated mostly by dogs; leashed dogs, of all sizes, make their promenade with their people in tow, the stately couples, or single very old women, in various states of vigor. On the sand, with what look to be considerably younger people, of all sexes and sizes, in garbs of all sorts, the free dogs run and race, and chase nonexistent waves, stray decrepit sea-birds, who barely escape.
It is the same scene of almost forty years back. Same elderly and young. Same dogs. Flat water. Birds.
But as Polly turns she realizes that it is not after all the same room in which she once waited for Charles. The same hotel, yes, but since it was she who made the reservation, was this “coincidence” quit
e innocent? Had she truly forgotten the name, forgotten the “Hotel Londres e Inglaterra”? Not likely. However, this is not the same room; Polly firmly decides that it is not.
Waiting for Charles, back then, was a torment. If he does not come within the next minute I will die, all my nerves will explode, is how Polly might have described her feelings at that time. She even longed for that explosion, that death, for any end to such extreme, excruciating anxiety, amounting to illness.
I am extremely ill, she had begun to think, in that room—whatever room it was—at that time. And she had wondered, not quite for the first time: Is “ill” the same as “in love”? Is what I now experience “love”? If so, thought Polly—who was very young—if so, I will never go through this again.
Which is not to say that she succeeded at that moment in falling out of love with Charles. However, she began then to fight back, as it were, to work against what she had recognized as an illness.
That night, back then, as Polly watched a shadowed moon above the flat black sea, at a surge of dangerous words, a cry: If Charles doesn’t come tonight, I will die. And in answer, another voice informed her that she would not die. She would simply go to sleep alone; she was not going to die over Charles.
Which she did: she went to bed and even managed a fairly good night’s sleep. And the next day there was a telegram from Charles: “IMPOSSIBLY DELAYED SEE YOU PARIS ALL LOVE.”
After that she continued to see Charles, when he could see her. She even continued to be in love, but with a certain difference. She had stepped back and taken a long look at what was going on between them, and she had seen something fairly trite, and unedifying: a romantic young woman and an attractive somewhat older man, both highly sexual beings, both eager to exploit the drama of their situation. She loved Charles still, for quite some time, and she literally “thrilled to his touch.” But a new voice had spoken within her.
The same, sane second voice spoke to Polly again on her next great occasion for anxiety, the worst since Charles, and much worse than Charles since it was, so to speak, more real: her cancer fear. Or first the fear and then the actuality, the diagnosis: Yes, in your pancreas, yes, there is some malignancy. We’ll do our best to get it all.
And at that time the voice spoke again, telling Polly: You won’t die. Not of this. Not now.
How brave you are, is what all Polly’s friends and even her doctors said at that time. Which is not at all how Polly saw it. What choice did I have? was her question. I either go on as I am, which is viewed as behaving well. Or I collapse into tears, moans, total helplessness. Which would obviously make me and everyone else feel much worse.
* * *
Still: Victor has gone to Bilbao to look up a cousin who is involved with Basque terrorists there—the ETA, Victor thinks. A dangerous, very Victorlike thing to do.
And if, as the phrase goes, something happens to Victor, Polly will be—well, very upset. Still.
The night before—or, rather, late afternoon, soon after their arrival, Polly and Victor went down to the bar of this hotel, in a sort of basement. An ordinary room, much plainer, less decorated than the character of the hotel itself would suggest. And the most striking aspect of this barroom was the fact that it was populated almost entirely by women.
Tired from the drive, and at the same time elated at having arrived, actually at last in the real San Sebastián, and absorbed in each other, Polly and Victor did not at first take note of this odd preponderance of women. But gradually they did, and certain other facts about the women themselves emerged.
They were clearly not there to meet men, these Spanish women. Polly explained that to Victor, who after a cursory look around had suggested that it could be the local body shop. “They aren’t dressed that way,” Polly told him. “Look. They’re just in comfortable clothes. Mostly jeans. Young women get all gussied up when they go to pickup bars. Still.”
And Victor laughed at her, and agreed. “I’ve noticed that,” he said. “In San Francisco, all these beautiful girls in fern bars.”
“Beautiful and extremely uncomfortable, most of them” was Polly’s observation.
“But are these women, as we now say, gay?” is Victor’s question.
“I don’t know, there’s really no way to tell. But I don’t think so. Anyway, not all of them.”
What was clearest about these women, really, was how much they were enjoying their conversations. In groups of three or four or five, or two, seriously or with a lot of laughing, they all talked, and talked, and listened to each other. Interested. Involved. Having a very good time.
“Such a change,” Polly remarked to Victor as they sipped at the last of their drinks, getting hungry for dinner. “Years ago, seeing women in a restaurant or anywhere by themselves, almost automatically you’d feel sorry for them. And now, now you really don’t.”
“About these particular women you are surely right,” agreed Victor. “Not even a bad macho Spaniard such as I could look upon them and pronounce that what they need is some men.”
Polly and Victor laughed companionably at this familiar small joke, the truth being that Victor is by no means a macho Spaniard. His regard for women, generally, is full of a sort of affectionate respect. Women have a much harder time of it than men do, has been Victor’s observation. They survive. They are obviously stronger than men are.
In the hotel restaurant, to which next they repaired for dinner, Victor asked their waiter about the bar. “So many women there, I wondered. Is there a convention of some sort that goes on just now, in your San Sebastián?”
And the waiter, with a narrow, unhappy smile, informed them that there was no convention at the moment, his look implying certainly not a convention of women.
“Our bar is simply known in the town of San Sebastián and in all its vicinity as a place where unaccompanied women are welcome.” A set speech, delivered with maximum disapproval.
Now, waiting for Victor, it occurs to Polly that she could simply go downstairs to that bar. Right now. She could even fall in with a group of women at the bar itself, even at her age and despite her scarves and her obvious nationality. They could talk about almost anything: feminism in Spain, Spain after Franco, the ETA, terrorism.
And though she makes no move to leave the room just now, she continues to imagine those conversations.
She even imagines telling them about her five cats, which, back in the other San Sebastian, Celeste is looking after.
The night before, after dinner, as they lay against each other in the regally broad and very lumpy bed, Polly thought about the extreme affections of the flesh, her skin against Victor’s warm skin as Victor began to snore. (Victor, like all the men of Polly’s experience, always fell asleep first.) Polly imagined their skins pulsing separately, their bodies entirely joined. Not violently, as in sex, but absolutely. Wedded flesh.
And it would be this, this simple—but not simple: infinitely complex—this warmth of the skin that she would badly miss if Victor should not come back.
I’m not ready for that lack. I can stand it, but please don’t make me, Polly prays. To no one.
As, at that most unlikely moment, in the corridor she hears first the lively footsteps, unmistakable, and then the voice of Victor. His knock. “Let me quickly come in, I have much to tell you.”
27
Midnight in Managua. In the pitch-black, crowded, fetid, deathly still air, Sara, between coarse damp sheets, can hardly breathe, much less think or even possibly sleep. The night is filled with traffic, fumes. And animals. Indistinguishable machines emit strange lights, at intervals. Something, someone shrieks: birds, or cats? Dogs? Humans?
Sara believes that she will be awake for the rest of her life.
Somewhere near her, Alex breathes, too hot to touch, his shoulder a ghost-white shrouded hump. In the corner of the room are shapes of furniture, what could be chairs, a table, a dresser. Or anything: guards with guns. Dead tigers.
Whatever we are doing here I don’t
want to do it, Sara thinks. I’ll be killed. Tortured. Before this, always the worst thing in my mind has been the Mexican jail. This is worse. Much worse.
I don’t want to go north. Or anywhere. I’m too afraid.
The most immediate smell in the room is that of sex, the once-familiar sea-bog scent, slightly stale. And at first, at this post-midnight, pre-dawn time of pure horrors, Sara thinks, Oh, disgusting. Dirty sheets. Until she remembers that it was she and Alex who made love here. Incredibly, after those hours of excruciating travel. In this awful hotel, this room, this bed. This murderous, murdered city. She and Alex, now perhaps three hours ago, maybe only two, fell upon each other like high-school kids. Tearing at clothes. Ravenous, devouring. Until they lay apart, more like disaster victims than fallen lovers.
And now the terrifying day lies ahead of them. In wait for them, a jungle of hours, impenetrable, alien. A sleeping assassin.
* * *
The day that appears now to have lasted forever began for Sara in San Sebastian, in total darkness, but with for her a curious lightness of the heart, as though she were only meeting Alex in Mexico City for vacationing. For some tropical touring, in this dark December weather. In innocent southern climes.
She had slept well, enough sleep despite the punishing early hour, after a happily casual dinner with Celeste. Both Edward and Dudley had been invited, but Dudley was off dining with her beau, as Celeste liked to put it, and Edward was nursing a very bad cold.
Was Celeste glad to get rid of her? That thought occurred to Sara, first to be dismissed, and then rephrased: she may simply feel that we have spent enough time together, is what Sara came up with. Celeste is eminently a realist, and our being together has served its purposes for us both. I am rested and much less frightened, ready now to make some other life. And Celeste is apparently recovered from whatever fears were plaguing her. And from Bill, the Bill Priest episode.