The Stories of Alice Adams

by Alice Adams

  But his voice and his eyes were beautiful. I loved him.

  Actually I loved the whole town, the crazily heterogeneous architecture of the campus: cracked yellow plaster on its oldest buildings, with their ferociously clinging red Virginia creeper; and the newer brick additions, with their corny Corinthian pillars, which now, several generations later, look almost authentic. I loved my cabin in the woods, on a slope of poplars, looking out to early fall dusks, almost unpopulated hills of black, like a sea, the darkness stippled here and there with straight blue lines of smoke from other cabins, country people, mostly Negroes. The town and its surrounding hills, its woods, were exotic to me; I might have just arrived in Scotland, or East Africa. And, given my age and general inclinations, that excitement had to find a focus, a sexual object. I had to fall in love, and there was Ran, so handsome and seemingly unavailable, a man of the age I was used to choosing.

  The next day I managed to be on the road just before he came by. I thought, even hoped, that he would wave in a friendly way, but he was much too Southern to let a lady walk; he stopped, and elaborately opened the door for me, and smiled, and instantly launched into a complicated monologue about the weather.

  I soon worked out his schedule so that I could always be in his path. I would linger there in the smell of pines and leaves and dust and sunlight until I heard the sound of his car, and then I would move on briskly, until he should see me and stop. If he had passed me by, just waving, in a hurry, I would probably have died, my heart stricken and stilled then and there, and with a not pretty girl’s dark imagination I always thought that would happen, but it never did—or never until he had Gloria with him in the car, and then they would both smile and wave, and hurry on.

  Until Gloria, he would stop and open the door and I would clumsily get in; I was so dizzy, so wild with love, or lust, whatever, that I could hardly look at him. I am sure that he never noticed then, although much later, after we were lovers, of a sort, he claimed that he had always noticed everything about me. A typical Southern man’s lie.

  Now when I try to remember what we talked about, on those short important drives, I come up with nothing, The weather, the passage of time, the changing seasons. But that particular fall, I do remember, was extraordinarily beautiful, with vibrant, brilliant leaves against a vivid sky; it was more than worthy of our notice.

  One problem in the way of talk was Ran’s quite impenetrable accent. You think of a Southern accent as being slow, and lazy; Ran spoke more quickly than anyone I had ever known, and he constantly smoked—all those quick light Southern words arrived filtered through all that smoke. Half the time I hadn’t the slightest idea what he was talking about, but I was excited by his voice, as I was by everything about him, his hair and his sad dark eyes, his cigarettes; his hunting shirts, his shabby tweeds, his snappy car. At worst, you could call it a crush.

  Once in those early days he said to me, and this came out more distinctly than most of his sentences: “Lucinda never liked it here, you know. A Boston girl. She always said the woods down here were too cluttered for her taste,” and he gestured with an elegant large white hand in the direction of the piny woods through which we passed, with their bright leaves, thick undergrowth.

  For me just that luxuriance, that overplentitude of bush and wild grass and weed, was beautiful, was vaguely sexual. Still, I responded to her word, “cluttered,” with the odd emphasis that Ran had given it; he had almost made me hear her Boston voice. I liked Lucinda’s precision, and I felt a curious linkage with her, my dead rival.

  Much later, during one of our more terrible drunken fights, Ran cried out, “You might as well be Lucinda, I can’t stand it,” and I countered, “You’re just so stupid, you think all women are alike.”

  Still, he had a point; though I hadn’t known her I sensed an affinity with Lucinda, as strong as my total antipathy to Gloria.

  In early December of that year, that winter in Hilton, it suddenly snowed; one morning I woke to a white silent world, deep soft drifts everywhere, the road outside my house deeply buried in snow, the boughs of trees heavily ladened. Just after my second cup of coffee the telephone rang, and my heart leapt up, for I knew it could only be Ran.

  “Well,” he said, and I could hear the quick inhalation of smoke. “It looks like we both will be ‘hoofing it’ this morning. Nor man nor beast could budge my car. How would it suit you if I knocked at your door in fifteen minutes or so?”

  That would be the best thing in the world, I did not say. “I’ll be ready, that’s swell” is what I said.

  Half an hour later he knocked at my door—the house that he had never seen inside. “Well, I can see you’re very cozy here.” He then asked, “It doesn’t bother you, living all alone?”

  “Oh no, I love it, the privacy,” I lied.

  “I don’t love it,” he announced, with a look almost of pain. I quickly regretted having sounded so silly and glib, but I could not say, as I wanted to, Please let me move into your house with you. I’ll pay rent, or cook and sew, clean up, make love to you. Anything.

  We exchanged a small smile, and set off through the snow.

  We were becoming friends, and we continued in that process, over the winter. Occasionally we diverged from talking about the weather, noting changes in the colors and shapes of trees, leaves and underbrush, the early coming of spring in the woods that surrounded our lives, and Ran would talk about Lucinda, sadly, regretfully. I became, in a limited way, his comforter. In my life I have noticed that after a time of deep sorrow the greatest comfort may come from a person you do not know well, nor much care about. (God knows, Ran did not care much about me at that time, and you may even conclude, Ms. Heffelfinger, that he never did.) When Ran died I was comforted, a little, by a silly and very ambitious young art critic, in Westport, Connecticut, whom I did not like. Anyway, our most nearly intimate conversations were about Lucinda, her taste for Victorian novels and Elizabethan songs, her dislike of almost all Southern women. He never said what she died of, not then, and I assumed sheer misery.

  I did not see Ran at the parties that I sometimes went to, graduate student, poor instructor parties. And for the most part I avoided them myself, those forlorn attempts at conviviality. I worked hard preparing for my classes, I was available for conferences with students and I had begun in a secret way to do some work of my own with wood, small sculptures. There was so much wood around, cheaply available, and I was fascinated by the variety of grains, of possible shapes. Also, my obsession with Ran took up considerable time, those daydreaming, fantasizing hours.

  But late one night, in early April, I did see Ran at a party, at Dr. James’s. I saw him across a very smoky room, looking handsome and sad and slightly drunk, and alone. I quickly divested myself of the philosophy instructor who was about to ask if he could take me home, and in my rush toward Ran I bumped into a sharp-cornered table, which happily he could not observe. I slowed down as I got to him, and assumed an expression of mixed surprise and pleasure, the latter at least being genuine. “Well,” I said, and it occurred to me that I had begun to sound like him. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  He said, “Well, fancy,” and we both laughed again.

  In my left hand was an empty glass that I had forgotten, but Ran noticed at once, with his Southern-hospitable-drunk instincts. “Well,” he said, “you need more than a sweetening; you’ve got to have a real drink.”

  I did not—neither of us needed a drink—but of course I smiled, pleased and grateful, and I accepted a long dark glass of bourbon, barely iced. Our first drink together, and dear God, I hate to think how many others followed.

  We began to talk, and in a quick excited way Ran told me about a trip that he was taking; he was leaving for Atlanta the next day, where a newly formed orchestra was to perform an early work of his. (The sad truth, as I had learned from local gossip, was that by now all Ran’s work was “early”; for many years he had produced nothing new, beyond a short suite of songs, dedicated to Lucinda
and often performed by the music department’s chorus.) That night he looked, for the first time since I had known him, really happy, and, to me, most dazzlingly attractive. (A puzzle: did Ran ever know how handsome he was? Hard to miss, his good looks, but for such a deeply Presbyterian-Puritan it would have seemed a wicked thought. He certainly never dressed like a consciously handsome man.)

  At last he said what I had been waiting to hear since I first spotted him across the room. He said, “Well now, don’t you think it’s high time we made our escape from here? I’ve got to get up and pack, and I wouldn’t want to deprive a young woman of her necessary rest.”

  (I realize that Ran sounds silly, quoted literally, even pompous. I can only say that in his rich Southern voice, in the lightness and variety of tone, the actual effect was enchanting; certainly I was enchanted, and so was almost everyone who knew him.)

  For years I have reviewed that spring night: driving home with Ran, in the scents of honeysuckle and wisteria, in his manic speeding open car. And in my mind I try to give that night a different ending, not its humiliating true one, and quite often I succeed, only thinking of flowers and scents of night. For even in a horticultural way, my memory of that whole April seems unlikely, but there it is: I remember that for several weeks all the flowers in bloom were white, dogwood and spirea, white Japanese quince, white roses, everywhere, luminous blossoms.

  We raced down the highway, and then Ran turned off on the white dirt road, our road, leading to both our houses. We drove fast between the arching pines, the scented tall bent cedars, raced past my house, as I had somehow known or hoped we would. And suddenly there we were in a broad graveled parking area, just down from a hugely looming house, all its areas of glass reflecting shadows, the fabled house that I had so far never visited.

  “Well,” said Ran, in his characteristic tone that made everything almost, not quite, a joke. “I seem to have come a little too far—I seem to have taken you out of your way.”

  I laughed lightheartedly, excitedly, imagining that now we would go inside for the obligatory nightcap that neither of us needed, and that then we would go to bed, like grownups.

  But no. Ran reached toward me, and at his touch I moved closer, and we kissed, passionately. And that is exactly how we spent the next hour or so, in kissing, like steamy adolescents, although I was close to thirty and Ran must have been almost fifty, or so. We writhed against each other, both violently aroused. Once or twice I reached for him in an explicit way—well, that’s how plain girls are, aggressively sexual—and each time he stayed my hand.

  (This amuses you, Ms. Heffelfinger? You find it hard to credit? In that case, it’s clear that you’ve never tangled with a small-town, Southern white Protestant, a Presbyterian conscience.)

  At last, in a moment of relative disengagement, Ran looked at his watch and exclaimed, “Good Lord, it’s hours past a decent time for bed. You must forgive me, I’ll take you right along home.”

  Still imagining that we were going to sleep together, as it were, I started to suggest that we stay at his house instead, my bed was so hard and narrow. Thank God I did not say that, but only smiled. I was worried about my face, which I knew at best to be unpretty, which must by now look ravaged, smeared, terrible.

  Ran started his car, turned around in the driveway and headed toward my house, and for that short distance I was as happy as I have ever been, anticipating our long night hours together. He stopped the car, I in my eagerness hurrying out before he could be his usual chivalrous self and come around for me. Together we walked up to my door, and there, with a chaste kiss on my forehead, Ran murmured good night.

  I was as horrified as I was surprised, as stricken, as frustrated. And although I may have been too upset to know what I was doing, I’m afraid I did know; in any case, I then forced a passionate kiss upon his unwilling mouth, I forced my whole body up against his as I said, “Come in with me, I want you.”

  “Well, my dear, I’m sure that would be delightful”—as though I had invited him in for cocoa—“but the fact is, it’s just terribly late, and so I will have to bid you adieu.”

  He got away; he even waved as he got into his car and drove off, as I simply stood there.

  Well, at least I didn’t run up the road after him, and pound on his door, shouting; that would have been even worse to remember, and if I had been a little older, or a little more drunk, that is precisely what I would have done, what every instinct wanted me to do. It is in fact just what some years later I did do, after one of our nights of drunken fighting, tears and threats, departures. That night, I only went into my house and went to bed, where all my crying failed to soothe my rage and pain, where I could not sleep.

  I did not see Ran for a couple of weeks after that, first because he was in Atlanta, and then, when I knew he must be back, because I avoided the time when I knew he would be driving by. However, one day either I had miscalculated or he had sought me out, for there he was, racing up from behind a few minutes after I had left my house, stopping, reaching to open the door for me.

  He began talking his head off—I might have known that the next time I saw Ran he would distance me with conversation, “Well, my dear girl, I don’t believe I’ve seen you since my recent sojourn in Atlanta.” Et cetera, on and on about Atlanta: the heat, the ugliness of the local architecture, the too many parties—“Too much bourbon would be stating the case more accurately, I fear.” The stupid hostesses who would not take no for an answer. “One of them even managed to wangle an invitation to come up here,” he told me. “Can you imagine such a thing?”

  This is the first I heard of Gloria Bingham, and I might have guessed then from Ran’s excited tone exactly how it would all work out; I might also have guessed that Gloria was small and stupid-smart, in that special Southern way, and that she was beautiful. My total opposite, my natural enemy.

  Gloria was “petite,” dark-haired; a more just God, I thought, would have given her small dark eyes to match, but no, her eyes were exceptionally large and blue, unfairly brilliant. And her voice was remarkably low, for such a little person. “I’m so very glad to meet you; Ran’s talked so much about his artistic neighbor,” she told me, the first time we met. She managed, in the special way she pronounced “artistic,” to combine awe with insult, a famous Southern-lady trick, at which Gloria was especially adept.

  By the beginning of that summer two things were clear to me: first, that Gloria and Ran were embarked on a serious love affair, she would be coming up for lots of visits, if not to stay; and second, that I could not stand it, I really couldn’t. I couldn’t stand knowing that she was there, just up the road, with Ran, and I alone with my ugly, rampant fantasies—nor when they drove by, both waving, friendly and happy. Nor was it bearable to feel her presence in Ran’s mind, the few times I saw him alone after the advent of Gloria.

  Out of sheer desperation I did what I had sworn never to do: I telephoned my banker-father, in Milwaukee, and said that I had to have some money for a year in Italy. We had quarreled badly ten years back, when I had first mentioned art school, so that now he was so startled at hearing from me at all, and maybe even a little pleased, stonehearted bastard that he was, that he gave in after almost perfunctory resistance—just a few mutterings about my extravagance, which we both knew to be trumped up; I had always been the soul of thrift. There were also a few stern warnings about the dangers of Italy under Mussolini, about which he was not very well informed either.

  Next I went to Dr. James; I asked for and was granted a year’s leave of absence.

  In early July I sailed for Genoa, on a cheap, rather small Greek freighter, during the course of which voyage I had an affair with a Greek sailor, who was very handsome, and I thought about Ran, obsessively.

  In Italy I reverted to my old bad habit of affairs with married men, dark fat middle-aged Italians who spent pious afternoons in the museums, on the prowl for silly American girls; but these affairs were less lonely than their American counterparts; Ital
ian men had more free time, their wives at home being more docile, less questioning. Among other things I learned to say “I love you” in Italian: Ti voglio bene, I wish you well. I thought considerably about the difference between that sentiment and what I felt for Ran, whom God knows I did not wish well—I often wished him dead—or, better still, painfully dying. I was obsessed with him in an ugly, violent way that seemed to preclude other softer, gentler feelings.

  The most significant experience of my Italian year, by far, was that there for the first time I saw real Michelangelos, and it was as though I had never seen sculpture before. Later I said this to Ran, and he told me about the first time he heard a Beethoven symphony performed: he was very young, of course, and it was inevitably the Fifth, but he remembered thinking, Ah, so that’s what music is. In the Bargello, in Florence, I was tremendously moved by the great unfinished marbles, the huge figures just emerging from the stone, and later, at the monumental sculptures in Rome, in the Vatican, I felt the most extraordinary excitement, exhilaration.

  I had not in Hilton made any friendships that would warrant a correspondence; therefore, on the boat that took me back from Genoa to New York, a voyage on which I had no affairs with sailors, I did not know what to expect on my return. The strongest possibility was that by now Ran and Gloria would be married, given the extremely conventional habits of everyone involved. While I faintly hoped that they would have decided to live in Atlanta—maybe Gloria would have a family house down there, a “showplace”—I was also braced for their proximity in Hilton; I even thought that occasional views of Ran, yoked to such a fatuous woman, might diminish him in my mind; I might recover from my crazed preoccupation, my ugly lust.

  But no. On my first afternoon in Hilton, back in my small house in the woods, the tender bright green June trees that were leafed out all over the landscape, Dr. James informed me on the telephone, other business being out of the way, that a terrible misfortune had befallen my neighbor Randolph Caldwell: Ran had been engaged to marry Gloria Bingham, their wedding had been imminent; indeed it was on a shopping trip to New York for wedding and honeymoon clothes that Gloria had met a younger, much richer man, with whom she had run off out West. Phoenix, Tucson, some place like that. Poor Ran was in bad shape; he was said to be drinking too much, up there in his big glass house, all alone. Maybe, once I got settled, in a neighborly way I could call on him? I could tell him about my year in Italy? Ran had been there on his wedding trip with Lucinda, and later on a concert tour; he loved to talk about Italy, Dr. James assured me.