A Southern Exposure

by Alice Adams

  Odessa, when she comes, has wrapped a band of purple cloth around her head; with her graying hair, her large, strong-featured, and richly brown face she looks wonderful.

  But Odessa never seems to want to talk very much—or not to Cynthia. Certainly not to gossip.

  That morning Cynthia tries again. “Did you ever happen to know that Miz Emily Yates, the one who died when she was having little Graham, that brother of Deirdre Yates?”

  “Yes’m, I seen her a couple of times.” She adds, “They didn’t have no help, not usually.”

  “She must have been very beautiful, a daughter like Deirdre, and that Graham’s a handsome boy.”

  “Yes’m, I reckon.”

  Do we all look alike to Odessa, Cynthia wonders? All us rich white ladies, who don’t really work?

  It is crazy for her not to talk to Russ, she decides; if we don’t talk, it’s my fault, really. Women are better at personal conversations than men are.

  She remembers then a play of Russ’s that she once read, about some people in an unspecified country, devastated by an unspecified war. But the people themselves are not identified either; there are two men, and another person specified as Woman. Is Russ in that way a little like Odessa? Cynthia wonders. Does he see all women as Woman, so that it does not matter what particular women say? (Dear God, are all men just a little like that?) But surely he must have felt that SallyJane, the mother of all those children, was a separate, individual person. And surely Emily Yates, whom he must have loved (or did he?)—the mother of Graham, so clearly Russ’s son?

  Will Russ ever want to marry her? Cynthia wonders. And if he did, and if she accepted, however would she tell Harry, how to explain? And would friends from Connecticut come all the way down for the wedding, or would they choose to boycott it in a group?

  And then she thinks, God, I have lost my mind. And she laughs at herself. A little.

  Harry, unlike Russ, has indeed a most particular sense of her, Cynthia then decides. She is not Woman to Harry. Maybe she should always stay with Harry, as she had intended? She has had all along an odd small wish to tell him all about this thing with Russ. He would find it interesting, as she does, and he would understand what is going on, in ways that she does not. If only it were all about some other people, she could tell Harry, they could talk about it.

  “Is Emily Yates very beautiful too?”

  “Who?”

  This bit of dialogue, which is quite startling to them both, has taken place between Russ and Cynthia in Dolly Bigelow’s living room. No chance for making love there, Cynthia believes; perhaps at last they will talk. And so she began what she hopes is a serious conversation, starting with provocation. She in no way expected Russ’s genuinely blank note of surprise.

  She answers him, “Emily Yates.” Not saying, “whom you loved.” She adds, “Graham’s mother.”

  There is a long pause, during which he has obviously understood, but still he stares at her, until he says, “Deirdre is Graham’s mother. He is her son. By me.”

  Reeling at first from this new information, Cynthia then thinks, But of course. How dumb of me not to work that out. Probably everyone else in town caught on right away. Of course, Russ and beautiful Deirdre. Parents of Graham.

  Very gently Russ asks her, “You didn’t know that? I sort of thought everyone did. Just no one said.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” I’ll never understand Southerners, is one of the things that Cynthia is thinking.

  “We just worked out that story, when Deirdre’s mother died so soon after Deirdre had the boy. So she could come back here with Graham,” Russ is explaining. “I hardly knew Emily Yates, and of course she never knew it was me. The father of Graham. She thought some college boy.” He sighs. “Of course one risk was that the boy would look like me, and I guess he does. Pretty much.”

  “Yes.”

  “I had this unreal idea that if everyone was here, it would be all right. SallyJane and me and Deirdre and Graham, and all our kids. All of us in the town. Lord God, talk about unreal.”

  “It didn’t work?”

  “No.” He is silent, frowning for several moments. “Brett—SallyJane got so sick, and then that crazy doctor. Everything wrong.”

  In that case, we had better get married. I’ll handle the real parts, Cynthia thinks. She thinks this but of course does not say it, only smiles sympathetically.

  They could get married, though. She could simply stay on down here. Abigail could go to this school, as she wants to anyway. Over Christmas, or sometime, she, Cynthia, could fly out to Reno for one of those quick divorces, as several friends from Connecticut have done. And then come back and marry Russ and move into his house. And change it all around, paint everything white and reupholster all the furniture in Odessa’s wonderful colors.

  She directs strong silent messages to Russ: Please ask me to marry you. Soon. That way I will know that you love me more than anyone. More than Deirdre Yates. As she smiles and she says, “Graham’s a lovely boy.”

  Somewhat wryly (having caught none of her message), Russ agrees, “Yes, I guess he is.”

  Could she and Harry stay friends? When she thinks of this, when she asks herself this question, Cynthia is forced to answer no; she very much doubts that they would be friends. And as she tries to imagine her life with Harry nowhere present, she feels a terrifying emptiness. She thinks, I can’t lose Harry, he’s my best friend in the world. And so, only distantly aware of illogic, she concentrates on Russ. Even on Russ’s asking her to marry him. She tries not to think of Harry, even though they talk so often on the phone.

  “What do you do with yourself all day? You’re so often out.”

  “Oh, not much. I take walks. That’s probably where I am when you phone.”

  “At night?”

  “I might be. We’re having warm weather. I love these long warm evenings, and Abby keeps spending the night with friends. Harry, you won’t believe what Irene said this afternoon, she said—”

  They talk with all their old pleasure in each other’s conversation, and Harry is not suspicious, really; he is too busy to worry in that way.

  Cynthia asks Russ, “You never see Deirdre now?” She has managed to ask it lightly, but the question cost her a lot; she has spent a fair amount of time in jealous fantasies, speculations.

  He tells her, “Not since SallyJane died. It wouldn’t seem right. I don’t know.” He adds, in his honest, boyish voice, “Sometimes I phone her. To see how the boy is. All that. If she needs anything.”

  “SallyJane never knew?”

  “Christ, I hope not.”

  They never talk about Harry, but one afternoon Russ asks her, “You sort of knew Harry all your life?”

  “No, but we come from the same place. In Connecticut.”

  “I thought that. You seem like from the same place.”

  “Different parts of the same town, though. My family at first had a lot of money, and Harry’s didn’t. I think that makes more difference in Connecticut than down here. Crude cash.”

  “I guess so. It’s all family here.”

  “Is that why your parents gave you such a fancy name?”

  “Sure is. I don’t come from much, is the truth. But my mother had this book of poems, and she liked the name. This classy mouthful I’m stuck with.”

  They both laugh, and then Cynthia explains a little more. “I’d planned to go to Vassar, where my mother went. I was all accepted and everything, but then I met Harry.”

  “Don’t you ever think about going back?”

  Musingly she strokes his bare upper arm, its soft flesh. “You mean, back to that time? Be young and do it all over again, differently?”

  “No, silly. Just back to school.”

  She would not like Russ to know, actually, just how often she thinks of exactly that, although she sometimes mentions it to Harry. School. Studying something. Anything. Maybe even studying for a profession. Law school, even medical school.

  She te
ases Russ. “How’d you like it if I went back to school and got to be a doctor, or a lawyer?”

  He laughs, as she more or less meant him to. “I just said school. I didn’t say turn into some lady lawyer, with a briefcase. Or a doctor, for the love of God, with the Lord knows what on her arm.”

  The basic problem with the little store, and the conflicts that have arisen between Dolly and Cynthia all come from divergent visions: Dolly sees a small space into which a great many things for sale are crowded. Whereas Cynthia cherishes a more austere view of the same space containing far fewer but larger, higher-priced objects. But, Cynthia wonders, maybe hers is not a good theory for Pinehill, and for years just emerging from the Depression? She sometimes concedes this to herself, if not to Dolly.

  And maybe she should just wash her hands of the whole enterprise, she sometimes further thinks. Just leave it as Dolly’s store. But if she does that, still another inner voice argues, she will have almost no excuse to keep coming back to Pinehill. That is, if she goes back to Georgetown. To Harry.

  Cynthia finds herself overtaken by a curious passivity, though. A lassitude. It must have to do with so much making love, she thinks. Relaxed, she does not force herself toward decisions, although soon it will be time for her to go back to Georgetown. Or not.

  When she is actually with Russ, she waits for him to make some move, some speech. But she is still quite uncertain about what her response would be.

  She does not know whether Odessa agrees with her or with Dolly about the plans for merchandising in the store, and she finds no way to ask her. Almost never does Odessa say anything to Cynthia beyond a murmured “Yes’m,” or “No’m.” Cynthia thinks that Odessa doesn’t like her, and then she thinks, I’m being ridiculous. Odessa just does not have conversations with white ladies. I must be as mysterious, as opaque to her as she is to me. One difference being that Odessa probably does not give it a lot of thought. She takes things as they are, being helpless to change them.

  Helplessly, hopelessly, Cynthia tries too hard with Odessa. She tries to be friends, even just to communicate. She truly likes her, she genuinely admires Odessa’s work, the marvelous multicolored bolts of fabric that Odessa has woven and dyed, but when she tries to praise this work she sounds silly—even insincere—to her own ears. “Oh, Odessa, what an absolutely heavenly shade of purple, it’s just divine, I adore it!” What idiotic speech! She feels trapped in her own language, stupidly floundering in schoolgirl exaggeration.

  Russ still makes his joke about feeling sixteen with Cynthia, and she always laughs and agrees. For her, though, this “joke” has taken on a slightly new meaning, in that she feels that he is indeed less experienced in love than she is. And how can that be, for the truth of it is that her only real (only all-the-way) experiences have been with Harry, years and years of making love with Harry. Whereas with Russ, besides SallyJane, there has been Deirdre Yates, and Norris Drake, and God knows who in Hollywood, or anywhere. But the point is that Russ makes love in a very boyish, straightforward way. A fair amount of kissing and touching, first, and then he enters her. He moves about inside her quite vigorously, and she comes (or sometimes not; Russ thinks she always does, and he never asks), he comes, and everything is over for a while. None of the variations on that theme, the delicious delays, the intensifying side trips, so to speak, that she and Harry took such delight in. Harry, she guesses, is a real sexual adventurer, who has led her on and on.

  If she and Russ marry, Cynthia imagines that she will teach him all those things—or sometimes she imagines this. At other times she thinks, Oh no, he’d be shocked to death if I put my tongue or even my finger there (and she longs to do just that, to tongue and finger him everywhere). Or, at other, worse times, she thinks, I could never do that with anyone but Harry.

  But she wants Russ to ask her to marry him. If he does not, it will mean that he doesn’t love her, that what they are doing is not serious. Although she knows that for both of them it is highly serious.

  He says, “I am thinking of you all the time. I mean that literally. No moment that isn’t you. If I think I’m working, I’m really just kidding myself.” Russ is scowling as he says this, his high white brow deeply furrowed, and his voice is angry. “I have to get over this,” he says.

  Looking at him then, Cynthia suddenly and completely understands that when he does decide to marry her, and he will decide that quite soon, it will be in order to end his obsession with her. He will marry her to free himself. Marry in order to be no longer madly in love.

  But she still does not know how she will answer him.

  He says, “If we have a child—I guess I mean if we had a child—I think it would be a beautiful blonde girl. Green-eyed. Like you.”

  She laughs at him. “And a skinny Yankee, to boot. Oh, Russ, I’m too old even to think about more children.”

  Very seriously he tells her, “No, you’re not. You could even have a couple more, if you want to.”

  In a literal sense he is right, she is not close to forty yet, and women have children even past that age.

  He says, “A woman like you, you could manage a couple of kids and take a few courses at the college too.”

  Is this his version of a marriage proposal? Not quite, Cynthia decides. It is more like a warning signal: Look, this is what I have in mind, I think you should know.

  One afternoon, more or less at Russ’s insistence, they walk out again to Laurel Hill. Late September, just before Dolly’s return. The sky is a pure deep blue, with a few tiny fluffy, cottony clouds at the horizon, and the air is warm but threaded through with lines of cooler air, just the barest suggestion of cool, like the slightest murmuring sound of leaves, or of wind, that signifies fall. The end of summer.

  Thinking this, and thinking of autumn, Cynthia further thinks: The end of us, too. She and Russ could never marry—Good Lord, of course not. She sees that now, and sees too that he should be married, he needs a wife. And so it has to be over between them, she thinks, with a sharp-edged, painful thrust to her heart. And at the same time she is aware that she is being sentimental, she must stop this.

  But it is Russ, the poet, who says to her, “Does autumn make you sad?—the end of summer? It does me, every time.”

  “Despite all the mists and mellow fruitfulness.”

  “Yep, despite all that.”

  Looking over, she sees that he is smiling, but then the smile stops, and Russ stops too, stops walking and turns to her, first grasping her arm, then taking her into his arms. He says, “I love you too much, I think of you too much. I want us to get married.”

  So that he will love her less, and think of her less often? Cynthia later decides that he did mean just that; he wants a diminishing of intensity, an end to such an extreme of passion (although he may not have known exactly what he was saying, or meaning). But at the moment, despite better judgment, she thrills to his words: Russell Byrd is asking her to be his wife (later she is to examine that phrase, and to find some interesting implications therein). Her silly, vain heart thrills, even as, intelligently, she is saying, “But, Russ, we can’t. I love you too, but it wouldn’t work out as a marriage. Not ever.”

  He almost too quickly agrees. “I guess you’re right.”

  “But we’ll still see each other. I’ll come down to see you all the time. There’s the store for an excuse. We’ll see each other a lot.” Cynthia says all this with a rapid-fire desperation, knowing even as she speaks that it is not quite true. They will not see each other a lot, much less “all the time.” And she is instantly filled with the most terrific and almost unbearable sadness, as though she will be leaving and losing not only Russ but this whole most intricately lovely little town, with its special scents and weathers, its hard white rutted sidewalks and desiccated old brick houses. She is losing Pinehill.

  All this passes through her mind, a quick vision of loss, as she also thinks, And Russ will marry someone else. He’ll have to.

  Part Two

  32
/>
  The day in June, the first June of World War II, on which Deirdre Yates and Russ Byrd are married, is a pale blue day, hung with intricate, filmy, and delicate clouds, like white lace. Amazing clouds, as almost everyone remarked; no one had ever seen their like before. The clouds drift through that pale blue sky, above the wedding reception, which takes place in Russ’s garden. Now Russ and Deirdre’s garden.

  “It’s like the day was made to go with Deirdre’s blue dress, now wouldn’t you say?”

  “Well, yes indeed. The loveliest day I ever did see.”

  “And the loveliest bride, or almost. Surely one of them. Those eyes.”

  “Sort of funny, her not wearing a real white bride dress, don’t you think?”

  “Not funny at all, it’s like she’s saying—”

  “Well, what is she saying? After all, it’s her first—”

  “Isn’t it wonderful that Harry and Cynthia made it just in time?”

  “Just barely, though. I declare, those two are busy as busy in D.C.”

  “And down here. Their house. Deirdre’s old house.”

  “Cynthia looks absolutely lovely. And so happy.”

  “Maybe a little too happy?”

  “Whatever do you mean by that?”

  “You hear they’re putting in a swimming pool, the Bairds are, out in back of Deirdre’s house?”

  “You mean Cynthia’s house.”

  “I guess. Got three colored men out there digging.”

  “I heard five.”

  “Where’s Abigail Baird?”

  “She and Betsy were over there, I just saw them.”

  “Can you believe these clouds?”

  “How many years is it now since SallyJane died?”

  “Two, or is it three? I’m so terrible with dates.”

  “And then there’s the war. So much to keep straight.”

  “How old is Abby by now?”

  “Well, I can’t keep that straight either. She must be thirteen, or is it fourteen?”