by Alice Adams
Celeste even has said, “If you see Bill in Nicaragua, say hello. Or on second thought, don’t.”
“It’s a fairly large country,” Sara told her.
“But it does seem awfully far for you to go.” Celeste allowed herself a small frown. “You won’t mind if I worry just a little?”
An early dinner, sound sleep. As she prepared and then gulped down some coffee, closed her suitcase and went outside to wait for the airport van, Sara was surprised to find herself feeling so well. So almost carefree, only anticipating a trip full of interest. With Alex. And possibly—well, probably, love. Sex. Surely it has been in both their minds, during all those long sexy late-night conversations?
The air trip became very beautiful just a few hours out of Los Angeles: dipping blue views of the sea, with strange green shapes of land, and then range after range of great bare wrinkled mountains.
She was going to an interesting place, was what Sara thought then. Traveling with an old friend, an old lover who is himself very—well, interesting. And we may do some good. “Think of us as investigators,” Alex had put it to her. “I’ve managed to find out quite a lot here and in Washington. The point is, there’s a lot of other aid getting through to the contras. Private funds that the CIA may or may not know about.”
“But why me? Or even why us?”
“Because of what I already know. I can tell you more about it on the plane.”
“Okay.”
“And because—well, it’s something for me to do. An important action. And something to do with you, if you want the whole truth. I want us to be together.”
This line of reasoning carried Sara all the way to Mexico City. To Alex, whom she wants to be with.
They were going to have an adventure with a purpose, then. Together. They were going to the new Vietnam. To Nicaragua.
Alex, as planned, got to Mexico City before Sara did. Wrestling her way off the plane with her bulging backpack, then pushing through the surging crowd, Sara without much trouble spotted Alex. Taller and fairer than anyone in that enormous room, it was easy to see his light tangled hair.
Tired Alex, who came toward her, grasped her, and kissed her mouth.
“Oh—”
“Well—”
“Here!”
They breathed excited syllables at each other, they laughed, and turned in the direction of the main terminal.
How conspicuous we must be, Sara thought, aware of her own height, and her very North American style: short uncurled hair, un-made-up face, her dark shetland sweater, her jeans and running shoes. And taller, thinner, blond Alex, also in jeans, shetland sweater, old tweed jacket. Their sixties uniforms. Few in those gigantic, human-packed dirty spaces were dressed as they were. No others were as tall and confident, nor, quite possibly, as loony.
After some confusion it turns out that their plane does not leave for over two hours. They have all that dead time to kill. And with almost as much trouble as it took to find the proper airline windows, they locate a big bar-restaurant, and then a small corner table at which to settle, or try to, for that time.
The room is crammed with travelers, mostly Americans, with all their varieties of luggage piled near their feet: tennis rackets, diving equipment, or—alternately, black embroidered sombreros, confetti-covered donkeys. Piñatas. The spoils of travel.
They order beer and American sandwiches.
“We could just go off to some Mexican beach instead,” Sara says. She is aware as she speaks that this is just what she longs to do, if only for a week or so. And then, if they had to, they could continue to Nicaragua. They could, among other things, get used to each other again. She realizes that Alex is making her slightly uneasy. Not speaking, he is giving off messages of such intensity, he is possessed of such an urgent sense of mission.
“Maybe afterwards” is his response to Sara’s half-idle suggestion, although he does just barely smile.
And at that moment Sara understands an odd fact, which is that she herself has made no plans for what comes after this trip. I guess I’ll go back to New York and look for work, she tells herself, as though she had known all along that this would be her course. She understands too that she has committed herself in some final way to Alex. To Alex in New York.
Out of nerves, at least partly, she begins to tell him about Celeste. “It’s amazing in a way how fond of her I was—I mean, I am. I could so easily not be. All those years when Emma went on and on about how great Celeste was, I couldn’t see it. She just made me impatient. All those clothes.”
“Do I ever get to meet her?”
“Well, sure. Of course.”
But when? And how remote San Sebastian already seems to Sara, and how curiously familiar the Mexico City airport. For a moment she has the fantasy that she and Alex and all the other stray, tired, mostly unhappy-looking humans in this room have been together forever. They will always be together. This is eternity.
The sandwiches are dry and terrible, tasteless. “At least the beer’s good,” Alex remarks between bites. And then, “Were we here before, do you think, on our way to Mexico that time?”
“I doubt it, don’t you? We were such political puritans in those days. So correct. I don’t think we would have killed time in a bar.”
During those several hours of waiting, in Mexico City, they only talk to each other in that scattered way. They do not discuss or elaborate on their purpose, possibly because they are already so committed to it, simply by being there.
After eating, and prolonging a second beer, the sheer weight of all the people and heavy objects in that room begins to press upon them, and so much smoke, and noise. They pay up and leave, and they then begin in an idle way to wander through the huge, crowded, filthy-floored terminal, stopping occasionally to relieve the weight of their bags, Sara’s torn backpack, Alex’s somewhat newer model. Or to look at something, some especially garish display of jewelry, for example, or some gaudy paintings executed on black velvet.
Thus, it is in front of an open stall whose shelves hold lines of pink pottery dogs, all sizes, all grime and fly-speckled, quite monstrous, really, that Sara and Alex have their only conversation having to do with their mutual project.
“It’s a small town north of Managua,” Alex tells her as Sara notices for the first time how gray his hair has got, the blond now streaked with lines of white. “A village, really,” says Alex. “Near a place called Sébaco. But the thing is, I’ve met Max Gómez in Washington, and we sort of got along.” He grins. “I saw to it that we did. So now he’ll almost have to talk to me. To us.”
“My Spanish isn’t so great,” Sara reminds him.
“Gómez was CIA.”
“Oh.”
“We spend the night in Managua and then pick up the chopper as early as we can the next day. I’ve talked to the pilot.”
“Good.” However, why should the fact that Alex has talked to the pilot be reassuring? “I’m still not crazy about the idea of a helicopter,” Sara tells him.
Alex smiles down at her. “It’ll be okay. Trust me.”
At that moment, despite gray hair and devious political intentions, Alex presents a face of such innocence, such innocent goodness, that Sara is deeply moved by him, and she understands then that this is why she is going along with him. At the same time, she realizes that she is very scared. We are not cut out for this. Neither one of us is.
* * *
Back at the airline counter, they find that their plane has been delayed again. It now leaves at four-ten, giving them another hour to get rid of, somehow.
Although they agree that they are both still a little hungry, going back to the bar where they were seems out of the question. And so after some walking about (inquiries are felt to be useless) they find another public room: darkened, with a bar and small tables, at one of which they sit down, depositing their luggage on yet another dirty floor.
No food is served in this place, and so they order margaritas. This seems both correct an
d celebratory—for what celebration they are not entirely sure. “These are so good!” they say to each other. And, “We almost never drink margaritas, delicious!”
They each have two, and by the time they finally board the plane they are both a little high.
“There’s a lot to be said for flying drunk, I think,” says Sara as the plane at last zooms upward, through the noxious gray cloud cover, the fuming waste of Mexico City. Bumpily upward to the pure clear sparkling blue sky.
“Oh, right!” says Alex.
Sara is at a window, Alex next to her on the aisle, and since the plane is half-empty they share great privacy. “Oh, this feels royal!” Sara says as they climb above fleecy gilt-edged cloud banks, as somewhere below them the sun begins its descent into the sea.
Alex pushes back the armrest between them, once the seat-belt sign goes off. Quite naturally they hold hands, and begin to kiss.
It is after an especially prolonged and passionate kiss that Alex, slightly breathless, says, “You’ll come and live with me after this, Sara, won’t you? Please. I don’t want to be without you anymore.”
“Yes, of course I will. I want to too.”
They begin to kiss again, as Sara with a part of her mind understands that this is all along what she intended. I have always loved Alex, she thinks. We can really make a good life, probably. Maybe even have a child together? Would that be crazy for me, at forty? Lots of women do, these days. “Alex, I do love you truly” is what she says to him. As she wonders, But is it too late?
“Me too,” he tells her.
Below them before too long are the rich green shadowed hills of jungle, endless growth. Mysterious depths of forest, hiding animals, villages. Impenetrable.
As they sail on through the sky.
“We should try to get some sleep,” says Sara, too late: they are beginning their descent. Down to Nicaragua.
Sara thinks, Oh dear, I’ve drunk so much. I’ll never get to sleep tonight.
28
In January rain arrives, a savage, continuous deluge, ravaging the coast and flooding rivers, and a terrible cold sets in, so that Celeste and Dudley and Edward are not able to take what they have spoken of as their New Year’s walk (Dudley and Edward, recalling the year before, have initiated this phrase) until the middle of the month. And at that time, suddenly for a few days the weather shifts, the storms are all blown out to sea and they are treated to dazzling clear blue skies. Healing weather for three elderly people in need of balm, though this is a judgment that none of the three would dare to make, self-pity being for them a known and dangerous enemy. But they have been severely battered, these three, indeed as though by storms, by dreadful and most unanticipated blows.
Of them all, it is Celeste whose loss has been most severe. Sara was killed (along with Alex and the pilot) in a helicopter crash, the day after she arrived in Nicaragua, and for Celeste her death has been close to unbearable. For such a very young person to be uselessly killed seems particularly horrible: Sara at forty was on the threshold of her life. And Celeste deeply loved Sara. Sara would have been a friend for the rest of my life, is how she puts it to herself, by which she means, in part, that it should have been Sara who would live on to absorb the blow of Celeste’s own death. Of the two of them, it was surely Celeste who was slated to go first.
Edward’s anguish has been over Freddy, who a month ago (dear Lord, it was on a Christmas note) sent the following: “I do in fact have AIDS, as I thought last spring that I did. Please do not come here. I love you, I will love you wherever I go, eternal. But I am not now any more your pretty boy, and I do not wish you to see me. Also you must go and take the test.”
As though he too were mortally ill, Edward stayed in bed for four or five days (he later cannot remember this time clearly, this blur of pain), pretending to his friends that he was down with the flu. He could not read; his only activity was the occasional opening and heating of a can of soup. And writing to Freddy, the first of the letters that were to become his chief—and at times his only—occupation.
He knew that he should go and take the blood test for AIDS, but he knew too that it would be negative. After all, he and Freddy had not—not done anything of that nature (even to himself Edward has trouble with the words), not for years. Nor anyone else (he is somehow sure that the boy at Celeste’s crazy yellow party didn’t count).
And he is right. He takes the test: negative. Which, horribly, seems almost a further rejection by Freddy, in the sense that at worst Edward almost wishes that he were carrying the virus. Perhaps he instead of Freddy? After a time, though, he recognizes the sheer insanity of that line of thought: If that is how I feel, I might as well get on with suicide, he says to himself. Which he quite simply decides not to do.
The alternative that suggests itself, after a couple of weeks, is what his mother would have called “something constructive.” He gets in touch with the Shanti Project in San Francisco, and learns that in many cases just visiting would be much appreciated. Somewhat hesitantly he tells them, “I could read aloud. I’m rather good at that, if anyone would like it.”
And that is what Edward has begun to do. On Monday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons he drives to certain addresses, mostly in his own area, in Gilroy and Cupertino, Salinas, Watsonville. He knocks at doors, he is shown to certain rooms, sickrooms, and there, sometimes in the presence of another person—a mother, a lover, once a wife—but more often alone, he talks to and often reads to the frail, dying man who is the inhabitant of that room. The stand-in for Freddy.
“I have never agreed with the sentiments of Mr. Eliot. That business about the last temptation being the greatest treason, doing the right deed for the wrong reason. Poor Thomas Becket, remember? Even if you do something mildly useful for a silly or crazy or even a quite crass reason, it’s still something mildly useful that you’ve done.” Edward said all that to Dudley, as a sort of postscript to telling her what he was doing. “Scratch an old New Englander and you find an obnoxious do-gooder,” he added, as if in apology.
“Not me, I don’t think,” Dudley told him. “But, Edward, what you’re doing is really good.”
The rumor that Edward had sold his house to a Chinese doctor turned out to be inaccurate, the truth being that Edward, as realtor, sold a house in Aptos to such a person, a scholar-doctor whose avocation is translating medieval French poetry. In the course of property negotiations he and Edward became quite friendly. Edward also likes the doctor’s wife, a painter, a very pretty young woman, in Edward’s view. Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Tan.
Also, the house involved was expensive, thus Edward’s commission was sizable. Making him for the moment relatively solvent.
As gently as he could, he told Celeste that he simply did not believe their living together would work out well. But maybe in a year or so they should consider it again.
He gathers that Celeste has had more or less the same conversations with Dudley, who, like himself, seems to prefer living alone. Still. For the moment.
Dudley herself has not undergone severe personal tragedy since the death of Sam—as though that were not enough, she has said to herself. But in quite a different way she also cared enormously for Sara, who was just becoming an important, even a necessary friend. And she cares about Freddy, whom she has known for so many years, whom she loves.
So awful that you can’t use the word “gay” anymore, Dudley thinks; Freddy was—well, he is genuinely gay. Warmhearted. Fun. A generous, good person. And so attractive. And of course she also feels Edward’s pain, as well as Celeste’s.
She still sees Brooks Burgess, though less. Christmas came and went, and she did not go up to Ross, surely not as Brooks’s fiancée, nor as his “friend.” And Dudley has come to understand that Brooks is actually quite content with things as they are between the two of them. He does not really want to be married again, any more than Dudley does, really. He simply wants the appearance of wanting to be married. He likes the idea of himself as a suitor, laying sie
ge. And so it is only necessary for Dudley to tell him from time to time, very gently, that she doesn’t think she wants to marry again. She misses Sam.
She is still negotiating the trip to Ireland with her magazine, along with a couple of more practical, more immediate articles. And sometimes she considers asking Brooks to come along to Ireland; at other times she thinks she will ask Celeste. I really have more fun with Celeste, she thinks. And maybe Edward too? Well, why not?
Walking along, that January day, the three of them form a rather straggling line. Celeste, much the smallest of the three, walks fastest, in the lead. Then comes Dudley, whose arthritis has recently afflicted one knee, so that she limps a little. And then Edward, who has the least breath, who huffs and puffs along.
It is finally Edward who says, “Ladies! Shouldn’t we have a short rest?”
Halted, Celeste breathes hard, unable for several moments to speak, and Edward too is literally out of breath.
Dudley, though, seems quite all right, in terms of breath, and so it is she who first speaks. “Edward, you remember this time last year? Oh, it seems so long ago, but it’s gone like, like nothing.”
“We went for a walk?” Edward frowns, not quite remembering.
“Of course we did, and we talked about—well, we were talking about you, dear Celeste.”
Still breathing hard, Celeste smiles up at her friends. “I can quite imagine that you were. That was my crazy period. Bill.”
“Well, you were giving that party. None of us had met him yet,” admits Dudley.
Celeste’s great brown-black eyes can be seen to fill. “Nor poor Sara.”
Dudley’s eyes tear too as she simply says, “No, she wasn’t here yet.”
But Celeste is programmatically opposed to even small moments of mourning: such a waste, such expenditure of spirit. Very briskly she tells them, “He’s back in the CIA, Bill is. Or still there. Living in McLean.”