A Southern Exposure

by Alice Adams

  By the time they have said goodbye, and Oscar has hung up and gone off somewhere, the rain has stopped too, and Russ can go out. As he does so, he calls out to Ursula, “Just don’t answer the phone, all right?”

  Everything is wet: the ground, its detritus of dead leaves and dead pine needles, all soggy, and wet boughs thrust against Russ’s shoulders as he moves along the narrow path, in the woods behind and around his house. He is walking fast but aimlessly, with no special direction. The rain will soon begin again. He wants to walk as much as possible before the deluge.

  His sense of relief at Oscar’s phone call continues, and he regards this sense with wonder and curiosity. I won’t be so rich anymore, he thinks, and then he thinks, Good, I was never cut out for Cadillacs, all those fancy trimmings. I don’t ever want to cross this country again. I don’t want to leave here, this tiny little postage stamp of the South. I don’t want to see anyone I don’t already know. I want everything to be like it always was, with the children. And SallyJane. Everyone in place.

  The woods are loud now with rustlings, drippings from leaves and needles, and the sound of brave single emergent birds. The possible scurrying of small animals. Thank God Clyde isn’t here, I don’t have to shoot them, is one of the things that Russ thinks. He does not really want to see Clyde anymore, it comes to him in the wake of that hunting thought. And then he thinks, Nor Norris either (he shudders involuntarily as he thinks her name). She’s a mean woman, and crazy. A witch. Depraved.

  Somewhere in the woods ahead of him a flash of yellow sends alarm. He thinks, Could Norris—? He stops in his tracks, and is standing there halted, scowling, when Cynthia Baird walks toward him, in a yellow slicker.

  She asks, “Did I scare you? You scared me.” There is rain on her face.

  He lies, “No, I wasn’t scared, just curious.” He smiles very slowly, and the smile remains on his face.

  “You could have been some man with a gun!”

  “I don’t ever carry a gun, unless I’m forced to by some damn-fool company. Some man thinks he has to hunt.”

  “Oh.”

  Having both stopped for this encounter, automatically they now start up again, only now they move in the same direction. Russ leading, she following. Slowly.

  He turns back and says to her, “It’ll rain again soon. You want to stop and have a cigarette before it does?”

  “Oh yes, I love smoking outdoors. It tastes all different, and the smell.”

  They go through the business of his taking out cigarettes, her taking one, and his lighting it for her. Her touch on his hands is feather soft, and smooth.

  In a conversational way she says, “Odd I should run into you. I was just thinking of you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Actually I was thinking about Southern voices.” She laughs, having robbed “I was thinking of you” of romance.

  “Oh.” Of course he is disappointed, but still wants to know. “Southern voices?”

  “Yes. I guess I mean accents. Southern people all seem to have several. Dolly, for instance, has three that I’ve heard. There’s one that she uses with me, for instance, and quite another for Willard, or at parties—that’s a younger voice. And then when she talks to Odessa, or some country person in a store, there’s still another.”

  “And I? Do I have a lot of voices?”

  “Oh, you have more than anyone,” she says, her own voice full of what sounds like love. “But you must know that.”

  They look at each other for an instant, and then break the look.

  Cynthia’s slicker must be an old one of Harry’s, all belted and twice the size of her thin body, which only serves to emphasize her thinness, like a child dressed up. Her pale face is bare, washed clean; in the strange yellow stormy light she glows, her eyes wide and luminously green.

  With no warning the rain just then starts up again, pelting down noisily on the leaves, through branches. Onto the hair and faces of both Russ and Cynthia.

  “My house is nearer,” says Russ. “Come on.”

  He grasps her hand, but pulling her along behind him is impossible—there is no room for them both on the narrow path. In a few minutes, though, they have reached his house, gone in through the back door, through the kitchen, and are taking off and shaking outer garments. Laughing together. From another room somewhere they can hear Ursula and the vacuum cleaner.

  They go into the living room. His own room, suddenly unfamiliar to Russ, with Cynthia at its center. Cynthia, now in her ribbed white sweater and faded blue jeans, like a skinny sailor. He asks, “Can I make you some tea?” and he laughs, as he adds, “Ma’am?”

  “I’d love that,” and she crosses the room to sit down on a cracked red leather sofa, crossing her bare ankles—beautifully.

  Russ is staring at her, almost immobilized as, jarringly, the telephone rings.

  Russ feels his whole heart shrink, deflate to an empty sack. He knows, as he has known all day, just who would call and what the message would be.

  He goes slowly into the next room and picks up the phone. “Yes. Hello. Yes, Clyde. Oh Jesus. Oh. Yes, I see.”

  Back in the living room he tells Cynthia, “That was Clyde Drake. It’s SallyJane. She died. In the shock.” He adds, “Her heart couldn’t stand it.”

  They stare at each other. Each empty.

  31

  The summer that follows the rainy June when SallyJane Byrd died, in shock, is later thought of in just that way: the summer SallyJane died. As though the enormity of that event had stilled most of the usual activity in Pinehill, which it indeed had done, along with the unusually heavy heat. No one gave a party, for those several months, certainly not in the circle of people who had known her best. It was too hot, and also all conversations that summer seemed to have a way of getting back to poor SallyJane. The tragedy of what had happened to her.

  Dr. Clyde Drake was much blamed, perhaps unfairly: certainly he had not meant to kill her. He had known about the slight murmur, and had seen how fat she was, but he had no doubt acted in the belief that she would be all right. That she could withstand the shock. In those pre-litigious days doctors were given the benefit of the doubt in most cases; it was not believed or perceived that they could grossly err. Still, the underlying sense in Pinehill was that Clyde Drake had caused her death, and that he should never show his face around town again. It was assumed that that was how Russ felt. Norris too was blamed, with far less reason; no one wanted to see her either. At some point the news got out and circulated that Norris had left both her husband and her children, a real scandal: a woman who would leave her children? She had run off with a man she met in a local nightclub, run off with him to Mexico. Well, if further proof was needed that a couple was crazy, there it was. Later it was ascertained that Dr. Drake had married his nurse, a Miss Effington, which on the face of it sounded like a sensible move, though for all anyone knew she was crazy too, or a drinker, or something.

  According to Jimmy Hightower, the only person to see Russ to talk to (this was easy, since the Hightowers were back in their house), Russ was working day and night, revising his Kansas pig play. Ursula was there to help him with the kids, and he could ask her all kinds of things, Kansas things. Presumably, pig things too.

  In any case, Russ wasn’t talking much, Jimmy said, and he had aged terrifically. “It’s like he’s the grandfather to those children now,” said Jimmy. “He walks slow and he speaks very soft, speaks not much at all. I’d feel better about the man if he took a drink or three, or got himself involved with some pretty girl. He’s a young man, speaking relatively, and he’s got a whole long life ahead of him, with any luck. I understand his daddy lived to be eighty-nine. And I never would have thought of Russ as a monk, would you?”

  Esther, to whom all this has been addressed, says no, she would not have. But Esther these days is preoccupied with getting her house back in order. Some of the things that the Bairds did were very nice, but still it was more their way than hers. And they were clearly
not good at gardening, though they meant well, Esther supposes.

  Dolly has been busy with their little store, now functioning downtown in a small storefront on Main Street. She is busy with that and with her boys, who were home all summer except for a week at camp. And busy with Willard, who had little to do and became demanding. All the rumors about Dolly and Clifton Lee had quieted down, along with everything else in town. And the Bigelow family was to spend three weeks at the end of the summer up in Tryon, near Asheville.

  Cynthia Baird is on the craziest schedule of anyone. Living up in Georgetown with Harry, she still came down to Pinehill every other weekend, since Abigail had chosen to stay down there for the summer, except for her time at camp; Abby did not want to leave her friends, and the Lees had invited her to stay. Cynthia always stayed in what had been their suite at the Inn, usually by herself, since Harry was always so busy in Washington with the Navy. The war. Cynthia has agreed to stay in Pinehill, in Dolly’s house, for the three weeks that they are up in Tryon.

  She feels herself stretched between the two places, all that long sultry thick hot summer. She tries, not always successfully, to blot out the long train rides between Pinehill and D.C., the trains with their aisles full of soldiers and sailors, now often young women with babies. Although Cynthia talks to these people, listening to stories, she says very little to them about herself; for what would there be to say about her life at this moment of suspension? She feels herself distant, not seriously involved in the war, as almost everyone is, in some way.

  Nor for that matter is she seriously involved in the little store; Dolly is far more active than she.

  And Harry takes his work very seriously; at last he is doing something he cares about and respects, but since whatever he is doing is mostly secret, he does not discuss it even with Cynthia. They talk, they go to parties both in Washington and in Pinehill. They make love a lot. But they are no longer concentrated on each other in the way that they once were.

  Abigail seems visibly to strain away from her parents, if for the most part politely. At best she is willing to accept them as somewhat distant old friends. It is clear that she regards them both as over the hill, almost decrepit. On the weekends when Cynthia or both Cynthia and Harry are in Pinehill they see each other, but the visits are often cut short. Abigail has some other project or plan, and Cynthia lets her off, not wanting a guilty daughter.

  In a few weeks now, the school will start in Washington, the public school that Abigail has insisted on, but sometimes Cynthia in her suspended state has considered their staying on in Pinehill for the school year; she and Abigail could live at the Inn, and Abigail could start at the local high school with her friends, and they—or she alone, just Cynthia—could visit Harry up in Georgetown for weekends, reversing the present process. Sometimes, as she mulls over that possibility, Cynthia believes that it would be romantic, good for their marriage. At other times she thinks, That is really nuts, I’m married to Harry, I love him, and we’ve rented a whole big house in Washington. In Georgetown—so lucky to find it these days.

  Sometimes, when Abby does have another plan that means they won’t see each other, Cynthia is really hurt, and she tries hard not to be hurt. To divert herself.

  On an afternoon late in August, then, at the beginning of her three weeks at the Bigelow house, when she and Abby had planned a walk to Laurel Hill, Abby calls to say, “Mom, would you really mind? Betsy and some of the kids want to see this new movie downtown—it’s called Rebecca. Supposed to be really good.”

  But isn’t it a little sophisticated for Abby? Cynthia cannot say that to her daughter.

  “You sure you won’t mind?” asks Abby. “I’ll see you later?”

  “Sure, darling. Have a good time.”

  Cynthia decides that she will walk to Laurel Hill by herself. It’s always beautiful, and she needs the exercise. But she has walked this road so often that by now she hardly sees it; dimly her mind registers, as she looks up, the shining rich green of pine boughs against a blue sky. The white rush of the creek over shoals of pebbles. The small gray beach. The huge boulders across the water, and all the laurel there, the dark green leaves with no flowers, in this season before the fall. Growth suspended in the heat, the dead air that follows summer.

  A man is sitting on a log that has fallen there on the beach, his back to Cynthia. He is facing the small, shallow rapids in the creek, as it widens. And although he cannot hear her, probably, above the rushing, gurgling water sounds, Cynthia stops. She thinks that she has recognized Russ Byrd.

  Although that is impossible. These are not Russ’s woods; she only imagines seeing Russ because of the time that she saw him in the rain, in the woods behind his house. The day that SallyJane died. (Or, another day too, when he was with Norris Drake.) Russ would not be over here in Laurel Hill. It is only that she has thought of him all summer, and longed to see him. She has thought of him ever since they moved down to Pinehill.

  The man stands up and turns toward her. It is Russ. He smiles, and she smiles too, and they both say at once, “Oh, hello!”

  Hesitating for an instant, they then move toward each other, slowly at first, as on a single impulse, but then their bodies collide, and press together. Arms clutching, their mouths devouring. They kiss as though they had kissed before—had been interrupted in a kiss.

  “That’s why we both walked to Laurel Hill, we knew we’d meet. I must have known. Those aren’t my woods.” Some hours later Russ says this to Cynthia.

  “I know. And I came all the way to Pinehill to meet you.”

  “Should I believe that?”

  “Oh, you should. It’s true.”

  They both laugh; they have to, to break the tension between them. Although what they are saying actually is true: they both feel that their lives have led them to this moment, to this lying naked together in Cynthia’s wide bed. Cynthia and Russ.

  Abby fortuitously has called to say that she would like to have supper and spend the night at Betsy Lee’s, if that’s all right. “Of course it is, darling.”

  The idea of what she is doing, the fact of it, is almost as exciting as the act itself. Or, acts: they have greedily made love several times. As he enters her, each time she thinks his name. Even, somewhere in her mind, poems of Russ’s flutter down to rest as an interior voice repeats: In bed with Russell Byrd, making love with Russ.

  “I feel like I’m sixteen,” at some point he says to her. “Except at sixteen I sure wasn’t doing anything like this. What a wasted life.”

  “You were an innocent boy?”

  “Very innocent. For years.”

  The small patch of hair on his chest is dark brown silk, and his lower hair is dark, and silk. She asks, “Do you wish we’d known each other then?”

  “Lord, no, I’d have been terrified of you. I almost am now.”

  “Oh no, you can’t be.” She pauses, then asks him, “Have you had a lot of, uh, affairs?”

  From his instant of hesitation she understands that he will be scrupulous. “Only one that counts,” he tells her. “The other was nothing important, just something crazy.” (She knows that he must mean Norris Drake.) “Just those two,” he says.

  And the important one must have been with Emily Yates, the mother of Graham and of Deirdre? Cynthia wonders if he will ever tell her. Or if she will ask.

  “I wish you could stay all night,” she says to him, nestling close.

  “No, I’m so reliable they’d all worry. Besides,” he says, “I don’t think I could make love to you again.”

  But, having said that, he lets his mouth find hers, perhaps intending a tender parting kiss, and everything flares between them again. Tongues thrashing, limbs violently entwined. He inside her.

  “Now I do have to go.”

  “Yes—”

  “But tomorrow—”

  “Yes. Tomorrow.”

  The next day they arrange to meet at Cynthia’s store; Russ can park in back, no one will notice him there. And
since it is a Sunday, no one will come to the store.

  In the back is a very small room, just a studio couch, a couple of beaten chairs, a cluttered desk. Cynthia, insofar as she had thought at all, had imagined that they would talk there, in that room. In an almost businesslike way they could sort things out between them. Make some kind of plans.

  But even as she waits for the sound that will be his knock on the door, Cynthia feels the wings of a panicked excitement within her chest; she is too excited for speech, for conversation. Minutes pass. He is late. Five minutes. Ten. She believes that her heart will burst. And suppose it did, suppose she had a stroke and died right there, who would find her? Russ has no key. He would knock and knock and think she had gone away, changed her mind, gone back to Washington, to Harry. Odessa would find her, but not until tomorrow, when she comes with some bright new bolts of material.

  When Russ at last knocks at the door, Cynthia jumps violently at the unexpected sound.

  She opens the door, and he comes in, jaunty and grinning, so that in the instant before they kiss she thinks, I am making him young again—already. He is wearing a plaid cotton shirt that smells of smoke, and his mouth tastes of smoke, tobacco.

  She tells him, “Oh, I’ve missed you,” and she laughs, they both laugh. It is too ridiculous, at their age. Too ridiculous that in another minute they are making love again, on the narrow battered studio couch.

  Do they make love so much precisely to avoid any conversation? Cynthia wonders this, as, the next day, she waits for Odessa in that same small room. (She has sponged off the couch, but still she wonders if anyone could see or smell anything, any trace of her passage there with Russ.) So much of what they might discuss, things that must be on both their minds, hers and Russ’s, are excluded. What could either of them say about SallyJane, or for that matter about Harry? This lack of talk tends to make their contact, in retrospect, somewhat unreal: did she really do all that, with Russ Byrd, in this very room? What actually happened between them could as well have been a dream, or one of her old Russ Byrd fantasies, thinks Cynthia.