The Stories of Alice Adams

by Alice Adams

  Jennifer and I have agreed that I should be the one to keep our store of wine, despite my small quarters. The bottles are stacked in silly places—all over my rooms—some under the bed, for example. When I start over to Jennifer’s house at dinnertime, I just bring along one bottle; in that way I can keep a check on Jennifer’s intake. Which is now down to a couple of glasses a day, I believe.

  It is interesting and to me a little spooky to see how entirely unchanged the Cartwright house is. Everything is just the same, but since it all looks, as always, brightly new—the fabrics on the upholstered furniture, for instance, the cushions and draperies—everything must in fact be new. Jennifer must have gone out and found duplicates to replace all the worn-out stuff—and with such precision. What trouble she must have gone to, getting everything just right, getting Nickie’s look! Including the flourishing garden, now tended by a nice Japanese couple.

  All I said was that it looked really great, what a relief it was to see so little changed—which I know must have pleased Jennifer. She would not have wanted the extreme nature of her pursuit to be mentioned.

  As I thought in Minneapolis about coming out here, one of my many conscious or semiconscious fears (worries about Jennifer’s looks and her general health naturally being foremost) was a nagging, shadowy worry that as Jennifer and I talked it would somehow come out that Nickie and Scott had been less than the happy, fair, affectionate couple I used to see, and to long for. Heaven knows we would talk a lot, endless talk, and without (probably) coming out and saying so (Jennifer is unusually discreet) she might let me know that sometimes they, like my own parents, used to have recriminatory breakfasts, silences, bitterness. Maybe, even, handsome Scott had affairs, and Nickie cried. That would be a more usual, contemporary ending to their story—and in some circles it would “explain” Jennifer.

  But from what Jennifer did say, that sad version would seem not to have taken place; according to her, the sadness was of quite another sort. “My mother was so upset when Dad died she just never got over it, never at all” is what Jennifer said. “Never even looked at anyone else, and you know how pretty she always was.”

  Well, I do remember how pretty Nickie was, and I can accept that version of her life, I guess. In fact, I would rather; it is what I thought I saw.

  “I sometimes wonder if I got married so many times to be just the opposite,” Jennifer once mused. “Not to depend on any one person in that way.”

  “Well, maybe” was all I could contribute. But then I added, “And my parents didn’t get along, so I only dared try it once?”

  “Lord, who knows?” Jennifer laughed.

  Often, as we talked, new memories would assail one or the other of us.

  “Do you remember the surprise you planned for Scott one time, on his birthday? The real surprise?” I asked Jennifer one night.

  She seemed not to, and so I told her: “You led him on into the house when he got home from work, and you told him that you’d found what he’d like better than anything in the world. You brought him to the door of the back-hall closet, and when he opened it up, there was Nickie, laughing and jumping out to hug and kiss you both.”

  “Oh yes!” cried Jennifer. “I’d forgotten that, and how could I forget? But you see what I mean, Judy, Jude? Who could ever come up with a relationship like that?”

  Who indeed? Most surely not I, I reflected.

  But mostly Jennifer and I are not so serious. Our dinners are fun. We remember school friends, boys, our teachers; we go over and over the people we knew and the times we had back then, just remembering and laughing. Not deeply, intellectually scrutinizing, as I might have with other friends, at another time.

  Jennifer subscribes to all the fashion magazines, and sometimes sitting there at dinner we may just leaf through a couple. Most of the newest styles are quite ugly, if not downright ludicrous, we are agreed. But every now and then there will be something really pretty; we will make a note to check it out in the downtown stores.

  Jennifer has not taken a newspaper for years, and since I have been out here I have not really read one, either. I find it a great relief, in fact, not to know just how awful things have become. How entirely out of control the whole terrifying world is.

  We did at first go over some of the unfortunate events of both our marriages, and in a discreet way I told her about my love affairs. I found that, recounting them to Jennifer, I could make them really funny. She liked the story about the man who always called when I was brushing my teeth, and she appreciated my version of my most recent relationship, the man and I becoming more and more polite as we liked each other less. She told me a couple of funny stories about her husbands, though I think their names are what she most likes to remember.

  Jennifer does not talk about her children, except to say that she has three of them, all moved East. Three girls. Two work in New York, one lives on a farm in Vermont—no grandchildren that she has mentioned—and since she never seems to hear from her daughters I would guess that they don’t get along. But I never ask.

  By the time we have finished our dinner, our bottle of wine, we are both rather sleepy. We get up from the table, and together we walk out to the front hall. Jennifer opens the door, we say good night; we kiss, and I go outside and listen for the sound of the lock behind me.

  I walk the short, safe distance down the road to my apartment.

  If the weather is nice, a warm night, I may sit outside for a while, something I could almost never have done in Minnesota. Maybe I will have one more glass of wine. Maybe red, a good zinfandel, for sleep.

  Just sitting there, sipping my wine, I think a lot, and one of my conclusions has been that, all things considered, even living alone, I really feel better and better out here, and I think I have never been so happy in my life.

  The visitor cat must by now be on to my habits, for sometimes at these moments I will feel the sudden warm brush of his arching back against my leg. I reach to stroke him. He allows this, responding with a loud purr—and then, as suddenly as he appeared, with a quick leap out into the dark he is gone.

  Favors

  July that year is hotter, the air heavier and more sultry than is usual in Northern California, especially up in the Sierras, near Lake Tahoe. Along the Truckee River, which emanates from that lake, mosquitoes flourish in the thick green riverside bushes and grass. Even in the early mornings—most unusual—it is already warm and damp. An absolute stillness, a brooding quiet.

  “If this were Maine, there would be a thunderstorm,” remarks Maria Tresca, an elderly political activist, just released from jail. By profession she is an architect. A large-boned, heavy woman, with gray-brown hair and huge very dark eyes, she is addressing the much younger couple who are with her on the terrace of her river house. The three of them have just finished a light breakfast in the dining room, inside; they now sit on old canvas deck chairs.

  Having spoken, Maria closes her eyes, as though the effort involved in keeping them open were more than she could manage in the breezeless heat, the flat air.

  The two young people, the couple, are Danny Michaels, a small, gray-blond young man, rather lined for someone his age, serious, bookish-looking; and thin, bright-red-haired Phoebe Knowles, Danny’s very recent wife.

  “That would be wonderful, a storm,” says Phoebe, who seems a little short of breath.

  And Danny: “We sure could use the rain.”

  “Actually, I’d be quite terrified,” Maria opens her eyes to tell them. “I always used to be, in Maine. We had the most terrific summer storms.” She recloses her eyes.

  Danny has known Maria for so long (almost all the thirty-odd years of his life) that nearly all questions seem permitted; also they like and trust each other. However, so far his evident sympathetic interest in her recent experience has been balked. About Pleasanton, where the jail was, Maria has only said, not quite convincingly, “It wasn’t too bad. It’s minimum security, you know. I felt rather like a Watergate conspirator. The cl
othes they gave me were terribly uncomfortable, though. Just not fitting, and stiff.”

  Only Maria’s posture suggests discouragement, or even age. On the old rattan sofa she slumps down in a tired way among the cushions, her large hands clasped together on the knees of old corduroys.

  And goes on about Maine. “The chipmunks there were much bigger than the ones out here,” she tells Phoebe and Dan. “Or maybe they only seemed bigger because I was very small. I haven’t been back there since I was a child, you know.”

  Phoebe and Dan are in the odd position of being both Maria’s hosts and her guests: it is her house—in fact, very much her house, designed by Maria for her own use. But it was lent to Danny and Phoebe by Ralph Tresca, Maria’s son and a great friend of Danny’s. This was to be their wedding present, two weeks alone in this extraordinary, very private house. For which they had both arranged, with some trouble, to take off from their jobs. Phoebe and her best friend, Anna, run a small restaurant on Potrero Hill; Danny works in a bookstore, also on Potrero, of which he is part owner.

  Danny and Ralph have been friends since kindergarten, and thus Danny has known Maria for all that time. He and Phoebe have known each other for less than four months; theirs was a passionate, somewhat hasty marriage, indeed precipitated by Ralph’s offer of the house. Danny called Ralph in Los Angeles, where Ralph is a sometime screenwriter, to say that he had met a girl about whom he was really serious. “I think we might get married.” To which Ralph responded, “Well, if you do it this summer you can have the house for two weeks at the end of July. It’s rented for most of the rest.”

  Not the reason, surely, but an impetus. Danny has always loved the beautiful, not entirely practical house, at which he has often been a guest. A wonderfully auspicious beginning to their marriage, Danny believed those weeks would be.

  But after the first week of their time at the house had passed, there was suddenly the phone call from Ralph, asking if it would be all right for Maria to come up and stay with them; Maria was about to be released, after fourteen days in jail. Danny had known about Maria’s sentencing; he and Phoebe had talked about it, early on—so severe for an antinuclear protest, and for a woman of Maria’s age. But they had not been entirely clear as to when Maria started to serve, nor when she was to get out. And it had certainly not occurred to Danny that Maria might want to come from jail to her house on the Truckee River. However: Of course, he told Ralph.

  Hanging up the phone, which is in the kitchen, and walking across the long living room toward their bedroom, where he and Phoebe had been taking a semi-nap, Danny considered how he would put it to Phoebe, this quite unforeseen interruption to their time. Danny knows that he is crazy about Phoebe, but also acknowledges (to himself) some slight fear; he suspects that she is perceptibly stronger than he is. Also, it was he who insisted on marriage and finally talked her into it, mentioning their ages (“we’re not exactly kids”) plus the bribe of the house. But the real truth was that Danny feared losing her—he had indecisively lost a couple of other really nice women; now he wanted to settle down. In any case, although he feels himself loved by Phoebe, feels glad of their marriage, he worries perhaps unduly about her reactions.

  “You see, it was such a great favor that I couldn’t not do it” was one of the things he decided to say to Phoebe, approaching their room. “All that time in jail, a much longer sentence than anyone thought she would get. I think her old protest history worked against her. I know it was supposed to be our house for these two weeks, Ralph kept saying that. He really felt bad, asking me to do this,” Danny meant to add.

  What he did not mean to say to Phoebe, in part because he did not know quite how to phrase it, was his own sense that if Maria were to come up to them, Ralph should come too. Ralph’s presence would make a better balance. Also, Ralph’s frenetic nervous energy, his offbeat wit—both qualities that made Danny smile, just to think about—would have lightened the atmosphere, which so far has been more than a little heavy, what with the weather and Maria’s silences, her clearly sagging spirits.

  However, Dan had barely mentioned to Phoebe that Maria was getting out of jail on July 19 when Phoebe broke in, “Oh, then she must come right up. Do you think we should leave, or stay on and sort of take care of her? I could cook a lot, prison food has to be horrible. Tell Ralph not to worry, it’ll be fine.” All of which led Danny to think that he does not know Phoebe well at all.

  Phoebe herself has had certain odd new problems on this trip: trouble eating, for one thing; she who generally eats more than her envious friends can believe, scrawny Phoebe of the miraculous metabolism now barely manages a scant first helping of the good cold rice salads, the various special dishes she planned and made for this first leisurely time alone with Dan. And she is sometimes short of breath. Also, despite long happy nights of love, she has trouble sleeping. All these problems clearly have to do with the altitude, six thousand feet, Phoebe knows that perfectly well; still, does it possibly have something to do with being married—married in haste, as the old phrase used to go?

  By far her worst problem, though, is sheer discomfort from the heat, so much heavy sun all day. Like many redheads, Phoebe does not do well in very warm weather, the affliction being an inability to perspire. Instead, out in the sun her skin seems to wither and burn, both within and without. Very likely, she thinks, if it cooled off even a little, all her troubles would disappear; she could eat and sleep again, and enjoy being married to Dan.

  However, she reminds herself, there would still be the house. Danny talked about it often; he tried to describe Maria’s house, and Phoebe gathered that it was beautiful—impressive, even. Still, she was unprepared for what seems to her somewhat stark: such bare structural bones, exposed textures of pine and fir, such very high, vaulted ceilings. Phoebe has never been in a house with so definite a tone, a stamp. In fact, both the house’s unfamiliarity and the strength of its character have been more than a little intimidating. (Phoebe is from a small town in New Hampshire of entirely conventional, rather small-scale architecture.)

  Even the bookcases have yielded up to Phoebe few clues of a personal nature, containing as they do a large, clearly much used collection of various field guides, to birds, wildflowers, trees, and rocks; some yellowed, thumbed-through Grade-B detective fiction; and a large, highly eclectic shelf of poetry—Rilke, Auden, Yeats, plus a great many small volumes of women poets. Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Bogan, Katha Pollitt, Amy Clampitt. Clues, but to Ralph or to Maria? Ralph’s father, Maria’s husband, died young, Dan has said; he has spoken admiringly of Maria’s uncompromising professionalism, her courage—never a shopping center or a sleazy tract. The poetry, then, might belong to them both? There are no inscriptions.

  Thus, occupying the house of two very strong, individualistic people, neither of whom she has met, fills Phoebe with some unease, even a sort of loneliness.

  The site of the house, though, is so very beautiful—magical, even: that very private stretch of clear brown river, rushing over its smoothly rounded, wonderfully tinted rocks. And the surrounding woods of pine and fir and shimmering gray-green aspens, and the lovely sky, and clouds. The very air smells of summer, and earth, and trees. In such a place, Phoebe thinks, how can she not feel perfectly well, not be absolutely happy?

  Indeed (she has admitted this to herself, though not to Dan), she welcomed Maria at least in part as a diversion.

  Though since her arrival Maria has seemed neither especially diverting, as Phoebe had hoped, nor heroic—as they both had believed.

  “It would be a lot better if Ralph were here too, I know that,” Dan tells Phoebe, later that morning, as, barefoot, they pick their way back across the meadow to the house; they have been swimming in the river—or, rather, wading and ducking down into the water, which is disappointingly shallow, slow-moving, not the icy rush that Danny remembers from previous visits.

  Phoebe, though, seems to feel considerably better; she walks along surefootedly, a little
ahead of Dan, and her tone is reassuring as she says, “It’s all right. I think Maria’s just really tired. I’m doing a vitello tonnato for lunch, though. Remember, from the restaurant? Maybe she’ll like that. God, I just wish I could eat!”

  Avoiding sharp pinecones and sticks and skirting jagged rocks requires attention, and so they are quiet for a while as they walk along. But then, although he is in fact looking where he is going, Dan’s foot hits something terrible and sharp, and he cries out, “Damn!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My foot, I think a stone.”

  “Oh dear.” Phoebe has stopped and turned to ask, “Shall I look?”

  “No, it’s okay, nothing,” Dan mutters, striding on past her.

  But he is thinking, Well, really, how like Ralph to saddle me with his mother on my honeymoon. And with Maria just out of jail, for God’s sake. So politically correct that I couldn’t possibly object. Damn Ralph, anyway.

  Never having met Ralph, who has been in Los Angeles for all the time that Dan and Phoebe have known each other (the long, not long four months), Phoebe has no clear view of him, although Dan talks about him often. What has mostly come across to Phoebe is the strength of the two men’s affection for each other; so rare, in her experience, such open fondness between men. She has even briefly wondered if they could have been lovers, ever, and concluded that they were not. They are simply close, as she and her friend-partner, Anna, are close. Danny would do almost anything for Ralph, including taking in his mother at a not entirely convenient time.

  In fact, his strong, evident affections are among the qualities Phoebe values in Dan—and perhaps Ralph is more or less like that? His closeness to his mother has had that effect? Although so far Maria herself has not come across as an especially warm or “giving” person.