The Stories of Alice Adams

by Alice Adams

  But that is how I came to spend two weeks of that November in Mexico, my first trip to Elizabeth’s house. Which in many ways changed my life.

  As though to test my stamina, even September and October, which are often the nicest months in Northern California, that year were terrible; black heavy rains, and more rains, with dangerous flooding, mudslides near the coast. Dark, relentless winds. I packed for Mexico in a state of disbelief, jamming the light cottons recommended by Elizabeth into my seabag. And I boarded the plane that dark November morning still unconvinced that weather anywhere would be welcoming, and warm.

  After seven hours that were alternately boring and turbulent (more tests!), including a frantic, high-stress changing of planes in Mexico City, in a smaller plane we flew toward a range of sharp green mountains, between perilously rocky peaks and over jungles, leveling at last toward a flat blue sea, and beaches. A white airstrip surrounded by green jungle growth.

  Getting off that plane and walking down the ramp was like entering another atmosphere; I swam into warm, moist, delicately scented air, into an embrace of warmth and flowers. I began to smile, and for most of the time that I was there I felt that smile, which was interior as well—that November, and sometimes I did think how strange that it should be indeed November, the dark, funereal month of death and sorrow and ashes, especially in Mexico.

  And—there was Elizabeth, small and lightly tanned, reaching up to kiss me on both cheeks, saying, “Ah! Minerva, how good it is that you are here. But how thin, how pale! We must work to change you—”

  I was embarrassingly close to tears, and only murmured that I was glad to see her too. I was grateful for the activity involved in stowing my bag into her improbably pink jeep. “I had not before driven a jeep, perhaps it is fortunate that it comes in so ridiculous a color,” Elizabeth laughed, very happily.

  We jolted over a deeply potholed road, through a shaded stretch of jungle, all wildly, diversely green, toward a small, shabby cluster of buildings, a town at which I barely looked, for there ahead of us was the sea: glinting, green and blue, white-waved, dancing out to a pale-blue sky. And everywhere flowers, bougainvillea, hibiscus, vines and bushes blooming in all possible shades, pinks and reds and purples, other blossoms of the smallest, most delicate yellow white. And butterflies, and birds.

  “The place where you stay may not be entirely to your taste,” Elizabeth was saying. “But you will be so little there. Mostly, it is very close to where I am.”

  She was right about my hotel, Del Sol: a cluster of bright new cottages around a pool and bar-restaurant—less than entirely to my taste. It was garish and sometimes noisy, populated as it was by young Texans and Germans. None of which mattered at all, as I was almost never there. That first day Elizabeth dropped me off with brief instructions. “You must take what time you need to collect yourself. Then walk out to the beach and turn left. Not too many yards to the end is a road leading up into the woods, and there you find my small house. It is brown, with a porch.”

  I collected myself for fifteen or twenty minutes, washing and changing to my lightest cotton dress, wrapping a bathing suit in a towel, and then I walked out to the beach and turned left. It is not too much to say that I already felt myself another person, in that air—Elizabeth’s air.

  Her house was not quite as easy to find as she had said. I hesitated in front of a couple of shacky cottages, and then I walked on up into some dark manzanita woods, the trees here and there overhung with heavy moss, thick vines. And there was Elizabeth’s house—it had to be: a small square brown structure, over half its space a generous porch, the wall that faced the sea entirely of glass.

  On the porch was a broad woven hammock on which someone obviously had slept (“Judson”?); there were rumpled pillows, a thrown-aside light blanket. Next to the hammock some big dark leather sling chairs.

  And Elizabeth, coming out to greet me. “Ah, good Minerva to have brought your bathing suit. Always we have a little swim before our drinks and dinner.”

  Going inside, I saw that a large area between the house and the beach had been cleared, giving a branch-framed picture of the sea: sand, small birds, waves and distant headlands. The other walls were filled with pictures, narrow-framed line drawings, a few photographs. A wide low sofa, Elizabeth’s bed (where sometimes she slept with Judson Venable?). Big bright wool pillows. A low tile table. Lamps.

  I changed into my suit in the bathroom and we went down to the beach and swam, and I was entirely enchanted. Magic water, I thought, magically light and clear, of a perfect coolness.

  I am aware, speaking of Elizabeth and of her surroundings, in San Angel, that I am presenting a possibly implausible perfection. As to Elizabeth herself, I can only say that for me she did seem that impossibility, a perfect person. To put it negatively, she was a person about whom I never felt even slightly troubled, I was never bored with her—reactions that I have experienced at one time or another with almost everyone else I have known very well (beginning, I guess, with my parents). And as for San Angel itself, and the beach there, it was at first perfect, perfectly quiet and beautiful. Later it did change considerably, but that is the later part of my story, of my return visit to Elizabeth, in her illness.

  Back in the house, while I dressed Elizabeth began several processes in the kitchen. “My good Aurelia comes later to serve our dinner,” she explained. “And Judson. He will very soon be back, I think.” She added, “I hope that you will like him, as I do.”

  Actually I did not like Judson very much, at first. That was in part because I assumed him to be Elizabeth’s young lover, and he seemed neither sufficiently young nor dashing for that role. Also, he speaks very softly, and infrequently, with an almost impenetrable Southern accent, which at the time I took to be a bad sign, suggestive of bigotry, if not downright stupidity.

  Also, Judson is more than a little odd to look at. Tall, very thin, with a big nose and big floppy-looking ears (curiously we look somewhat alike, except for the ears; mine, like my mother’s, are quite small), as he shambled up to the porch that first night I thought, Oh, surely not. I even thought, Elizabeth, how could you?

  I also distrusted Judson’s protestations as to “their” pleasure at my arrival. He said, “We’ve been most looking forward to your visit,” and the words sounded false and stilted to me: the proverbial Southern good manners. I am not notably trusting, in my reactions to people.

  Aurelia, the Mexican helper (“maid” does not seem the proper word, nor did Elizabeth ever refer to her as such), next arrived, and I did like her. She was tall and dark and beautiful, evidently deeply fond of Elizabeth; she smiled a great deal and spoke almost not at all. (It turned out later that it was through Aurelia that Elizabeth had bought the house; it was actually in Aurelia’s name, a legal necessity, for beach-front property, but also generous on Elizabeth’s part. Aurelia’s life was to be transformed.)

  The sunset that was just then commencing over the far eastern rim of the Pacific was the most splendid that I had ever seen, the wildest range of color; gorgeous, brilliant rags of color hung across the sky.

  Judson made Margaritas which he served to us out on the porch, as we watched the sunset remnants slowly fade—and then Aurelia brought out our dinner, the first of many wonderfully garlicky fish.

  But mainly, for me, there was Elizabeth’s lovely voice to listen to—although for the first time I began to wish she would not smoke so much; I don’t especially mind cigarette smoke, not outside on a porch, but it obviously made her cough a lot.

  Elizabeth and I talked and talked, and talked and laughed, and she smoked, and coughed. Judson said rather little, but I had already begun to like him a little better. He had a good, responsive smile, and his occasional laugh seemed warm.

  After dinner Elizabeth looked tired, I thought; actually I was too, and I got up to leave.

  “Ah! Then Judson will walk with you,” Elizabeth announced.

  “Oh no, how silly, it’s no distance—”


  “Minerva, there could be banditos.” Elizabeth laughed, then a tiny cough. “But I expect you back here for breakfast, which we eat all through the morning.”

  And so Judson did walk back to Del Sol with me, along the shadowy, gray-white sand, beside the black sea. In perfect silence. At my cottage door we stopped, and he touched my shoulder very lightly. Not quite looking at me (a habit of his) he said, “I’m glad you came down.” Adding, “She’s really been looking forward to you.” Long speeches, coming from Judson.

  I was smiling as I went inside to bed.

  Although I should admit to being quite as prurient as the next person, that November I did not subject the Elizabeth-Judson relationship to serious scrutiny, having to do with sex. I assumed some form of love to exist between them, and I did not concern myself with determining its exact nature. I saw that Elizabeth’s bright gray eyes were often watching Judson thoughtfully, and that when he spoke she listened with her intensely attentive semi-smile. But then she watched me too, and listened when I spoke, with extreme attention.

  My parents (the shrinks) would have said and probably did say that I had fallen into an ideal—or rather, an idealized situation: I was the loved child of loving parents, whose sexual lives I did not think about.

  Another explanation for my relative lack of curiosity about them is that I was simply too happy there in Mexico, during that beautifully, caressingly warm November stay, for serious thoughts about other people’s lives. (An extreme of happiness can make you just as self-absorbed as misery can; witness people happily in love.) With Elizabeth and sometimes with Judson too I swam three or four times a day, in the marvelous, buoyant water; we walked, and walked and walked along the beach, in the direction of the tiny town, San Angel, or sometimes, more adventurously, we took the other direction: a walk that involved scrambling across small cliffs of sheer sharp rock, clutching in our passage at thin manzanita boughs, until we reached another beach, where we swam and sometimes picnicked.

  An abundance of sheer physical exertion, then, was clearly contributing to my new and entire well-being, but I think quite as significant was the extraordinary beauty of the place, the white, white beach with its background of wild, brilliant jungle growth, interspersed with bright flowers. And the foreground of a brighter, greener sea.

  And Elizabeth.

  And Judson, whom I continued increasingly to like. I even began to think him good enough for Elizabeth, almost. I began to see the attractiveness of his long slow supple legs, as he ambled along the sand, or swam, or led the way across the difficult stretch of rocks, often waiting to extend a hand to me, or to Elizabeth, who lagged behind. As she sometimes said (perhaps too often?) she simply could not keep up with young folks such as we. She was in fact quite often out of breath; she required a lot of rest, which at the time I put down simply to her age, and to smoking so much. But I thought Judson was very good to her.

  One of the pleasures of those first, enchanted November weeks in Mexico (as opposed to my second visit, four years later)—a considerable joy for Elizabeth and for me was our shopping from the occasional vendors: Indian-looking, mostly, both men and women of all ages, sometimes with small children. They would hold out bright flimsy dresses to us, trays of silver and jade; they smiled at our greed, and our inability to make up our minds. And at our very faulty Spanish, Elizabeth’s considerably better than mine. Judson watched, and smiled, and seemed to enjoy the spectacle.

  Elizabeth bought a long dark blue dress, the blue unusually rich and deep; I bought something white, long and lacy, and we both wore our new dresses that night at dinner.

  In those idle, happy ways our days ran past. Sunsets succeeded each other, each brilliant panoply of clouds seemed new, original and splendid. We watched those displays each night as we drank our salty-sweet Margaritas, served by Judson with his particular Southern ceremoniousness, his semi-bow as he handed either of us our glass. Later, in the near-dark shadows, we had our dinner. Later still, in the true dark, the heavy tropical night, Judson would walk down to my cottage with me. Sometimes we talked a little, more often not. He would say good night, perhaps with a quick touch to my arm, or my shoulder; I would go inside, get ready for bed, and read for a little while. And Judson would hurry back to Elizabeth—or so I for the most part imagined.

  On my next-to-last night there, the end of my November weeks, at my door Judson turned to me; he took my shoulders in his hands and then, quite simply, we kissed. Or, not simply; it was a complicated kiss, containing as it did so much unspoken between us. In the next instant, that of our separation, I felt dizzied, almost unreal.

  Judson touched my face. “You’re lovely.”

  “But—” Meaning, as he knew, But what about you and Elizabeth?

  “I think you’ve got things a little wrong,” was all he said. So like him; talk about minimalism.

  One of the things I had wrong was the time of Judson’s departure, which took place quite early the next day; he was gone by the time I arrived for breakfast.

  Actually I was glad, happier to have a final day alone with Elizabeth, and I did not want to face possible complications with Judson. I wanted to thank Elizabeth, to say how happy my time there had made me. And that is how it went; Elizabeth and I talked and talked all day, she in her lovely, amazing voice. And she listened as I talked, with her wide, calm, amused gray eyes.

  And the next day I went back to California.

  Not quite predictably (I myself would not have predicted it) things went well with me, over the next months and then years that followed that November visit to Elizabeth. I was on an unusually even keel, for me. I had no major love affairs, nothing marvelous, but then no disasters either, just a couple of pleasant “relationships” with very nice men. I switched law firms, moving to a new one, still in Oakland, but a firm with a feminist-public good orientation.

  Elizabeth and I wrote many letters to each other; I’m afraid mine were mostly about myself (Ah, the joys of a good correspondent as a captive audience!). Elizabeth wrote about everything except herself—or Judson, for that matter.

  This went on until what must have been a couple of years later, when I got a letter from her that seemed more than a little alarming, though it was couched in Elizabeth’s habitual gentle language. First, the good news that she had stopped smoking. And then this sentence: “Judson was here for a visit, and as I had not seen him for some time I fear he was alarmed by my not-so-good health.”

  Violently alarmed myself, I immediately telephoned Elizabeth; she was out at first, it was hours before I could reach her, and then, in character, she apologized for having upset me. “It is just this emphysema that I have,” she said, but I could hear her labored breath. “Nature’s punishment for heavy smokers.” She tried to laugh, and gasped, and coughed.

  After that I wrote to her much more often, and I tried to think of presents for her—not an easy task with elegant, apparently self-sufficient Elizabeth, but sometimes I succeeded, I think. I understood that she would write more briefly now, and less often, and that was true; she sent notes and postcards, thanking me for my letters, for whatever book or small Berkeley trophy I had sent (a paper cat, some Mexican-looking straw flowers). She said very little about how she was, but when I pressed her in a specific way (“Please tell me how you are”) she admitted to not feeling very well. “I have so little strength, much discomfort. At times it seems cruel and unusual, at other times deserved.” She would spend the winter in Mexico. “I hope there to breathe more easily.”

  This was the period I mentioned at the start, during which I believed, or perhaps succeeded in convincing myself that my frequent letters and small attentions were more beneficial than an actual visit from me would be.

  And that was the theory broken by Judson’s phone call, from Iowa, telling me that I should go to Mexico. “It’s simple, Minerva. If you don’t, you won’t see her again.”

  “Will you go too?”

  “If I can.”

  Those were the firs
t sentences to pass between us since the night of that kiss, I later thought.

  Of course I would go, and of course for every reason I did not want to. I made reservations, plane tickets and a cottage at Del Sol. Since Elizabeth had no phone down there I tried calling Del Sol myself, remembering that she received an occasional message through them. At last I reached a person who seemed to know that a Señora Loewenstein lived nearby, but I had no faith in the message, and I wrote to her too.

  It was only as I boarded the plane, early one foggy, chilly morning at the San Francisco airport, that it occurred to me that this too was the month of November, that an almost exact four years had passed since my first visit.

  However, disembarking at San Angel, the air was as moist, as caressing and fragrant as I remembered, and I began to think or hope that this trip might be all right.

  I was surprised to find Aurelia in the terminal waiting room—tall, beautifully smiling Aurelia, who in answer to my quick question told me that Elizabeth was not well at all. “She lay down, she not get up,” Aurelia said.

  My first strong and confused reaction to this shocking news was anger: how could Elizabeth be so ill and not say so? Or, really, how could Elizabeth be so ill?

  In Elizabeth’s old pink jeep Aurelia drove me through the turbulent, violent green jungle, to the glittering sea, waves dancing in the bright mid-afternoon sunlight—to my cottage at Del Sol. I threw my bag onto the bed, threw water on my face and combed my hair, and ran back out to Aurelia, in the jeep.

  How like Elizabeth (as Judson and I said later) to have arranged that my first sight of her should be reassuring. She lay on her hammock (Judson’s hammock, as I thought of it), Elizabeth, in something pale blue, gauzy, very pretty. At my approach she half sat up, she reached out her hands to me. “Ah! Minerva. How good that you have come.” And she smiled, and said all the rest with her eyes.

  I bent or rather knelt to kiss her cheeks, thinking, How could I have blamed her for her illness? as I fought back tears. I asked, “You don’t feel so well?”