The Stories of Alice Adams

by Alice Adams

  Nothing earthshaking for either of them, solvable problems, just annoying. Alison called and canceled her appointments, told her assistant to reschedule, and she finally put a very excited Jennifer on the plane. And Sheila called Triple-A for rescue, and in the meantime got a cab to her office.

  But now, with the wine, Sheila’s phrase about great sex begins to reverberate in Alison’s brain. She has not been “seeing” anyone for at least a couple of years, and perhaps for that reason her mind returns to three instances of sex that was the greatest.

  “Holy screwing,” was how her first lover used to put it; he was a grad student at Berkeley, in mathematics; they smoked a great deal of pot together and made love effortlessly, wonderfully. Later, somehow, their connection fell apart, and he went East to a teaching job.

  After that, graduated, Alison worked at part-time gallery jobs in San Francisco, and tried for journalism assignments. In that uncertain period of her life she fell in love with an older (twenty years older than she was) sculptor, semifamous, and with him too the sex was—great. An earthquake, with deeper aftershocks.

  Out of bed they also got on well; much talk, many small jokes, and some glorious High Sierra hikes. They moved in together and planned to marry, “sometime, when we get around to it.” But then he was killed, at the corner of Market and Franklin Streets, “senselessly,” by a hit-and-run red-light runner, who was never caught but whom Alison, even now when she is “better,” dreams of killing.

  After that, for Alison there was hard work and some slow success—publication of articles in increasingly prestigious art magazines. And scattered, occasional love affairs. Sometimes great sex, sometimes not so great. And then, all inner wisdom notwithstanding, she fell in love with a man who was married—“happily,” or at least comfortably enough, conveniently, so that he told her from the start that he could not, or would not, dislodge himself. Besides, there were three children. But with him, once more, there was holy, earthquake sex. She liked him very much, and he her. He worked in Washington, D.C., in an environmental agency, and often came to San Francisco—sometimes alone, sometimes not. Seeing each other was often difficult, but for a time they managed. Alison lived on Potrero Hill, conveniently near the freeway. And even an hour together was worth anything, they felt.

  When Alison became pregnant, Jack was sympathetic: bad luck, he saw it as, and of course she would have an abortion. Of course he would pay, and he would do everything possible, supportively.

  But Alison could not. She had had one abortion, the result of carelessness during a somewhat feckless affair. She had voted and marched for women’s right to choice. But this time she could not, not possibly. Jack quite reasonably argued that he too should have a choice, since the baby was also his—and Alison saw that this was true. Still, she had to go ahead with this pregnancy. And she did, and lovely Jennifer was born; sometimes Alison even thought that she had somehow known that this baby would be Jennifer, so beautiful, so loved.

  Sheila, her friend, just then starting in pediatrics, became their doctor.

  Now Sheila, really out of character, is still talking about great sex. And Dick, the man she no longer sees, who was an ungiving, emotionally stunted person, as Sheila had always known. “Sometimes I thought he got some sort of charge out of having a black girlfriend,” Sheila said. “A liberal credential. So correct. But there were other sides to him. Moments of kindness, generosity, and these flashes of amazing insight. Enough of all that to make me stick around. What I’m saying is, he’s not all bad.” Sheila laughs, but her dark-brown eyes are wide and serious.

  “We’re supposed to think that no one is, aren’t we?” Alison laughs too.

  The waiter brings their food; they seem to have ordered a lot.

  Somewhat later Sheila more or less continues. “I think it’s these moments of nice, of goodness, that all men have, or almost all, and that’s what keeps us around. We all think that that’s the real person. That what we’re seeing is a window into who he really is.” She adds, “I mean it’s one of the things. With really battered women of course there’s also fear, no self-esteem, and often no money.”

  “Oh, you’re right,” Alison tells her. She is struck by what sounds wise and accurate, although she herself has not experienced much meanness from men.

  “Battered women,” Sheila now says. “People think, or some people think, they hang around for sex, but it’s not that, mostly. I was always hoping that Dick would turn into the person I sometimes saw.”

  Alison finds herself very moved by the fact of Sheila saying all this; it is so unlike her to talk of intimate matters in this way. She is in fact more moved by Sheila herself than by what Sheila is saying, although she sees its truth. But possibly, also, Sheila is theorizing in part as a way out of pain?

  Sheila now asks Alison, “You’ve got plans for your childless weekend?”

  “I’ve got to work,” Alison grins. “Probably I should have planned more.” And indeed she should have, she now thinks. She is unused to weekends without Jennifer; it is not as though she had longed for such unfettered time.

  The somewhat antiquated or at least other-era impression made by this restaurant, with its worn white linen tablecloths, white ruffled curtains, and fake white daisies in the decorative fake-brick windows—all that is increased by the music, which is thirties and forties; at the moment Charles Trenet is singing, “Vous—qui passez sans me voir—”

  The room at this hour, about eight, is filling up. Alison, absorbed in their conversation, and then her food, has not paid much attention to the other guests.

  But she looks up just in time to see a new couple come in, a short plump woman in black, a tall thin man with familiar shoulders. They come in slowly, as though in a horror film. Alison’s own oft-imagined worst dream: Jack and his wife. At the instant in which she recognizes him he turns and sees her, and starts toward their table. As his wife, long bright blond hair swinging, goes on to a table across the room.

  Smiling widely, as Alison also is, he arrives. He bends toward her—can he have meant to exchange a social kiss? Alison extends her hand, as she says, “How nice to see you. You remember Sheila?”

  “Yes of course.” He shakes hands with Sheila too, and says, “Nice place!”

  They have been there together several times.

  “Oh, very.”

  “Well, uh, everything okay?”

  He must be asking, Is Jennifer okay? Alison nods, and then he is gone, and Alison feels the crocodile smile which has stretched her face recede.

  She looks down at all the food on her plate, says, “I can’t eat this,” and she adds, “Oddly enough,” with a very small laugh.

  “Of course not.” Understanding Sheila. “Take some deep breaths.”

  Alison does breathe deeply, managing too to glance across the room. At her. And she thinks, I’m prettier than she is. An out-of-character thought: Alison is not especially vain, nor for that matter is pretty the word for her, as she knows. She is often described as attractive, tall and thin, with an interesting, angular face. Good bones. But Jack’s wife is too old for her very bright long blond hair, and too plump for her very short black dress.

  Sheila, who has also managed a look, now whispers, “Could it be a wig?

  Alison laughs softly. “I suppose, but I doubt it.” She adds, “Jesus, the end of a perfect day.”

  Four years ago—or five by now, it must be five—when Alison was pregnant, she and Jack quarreled a lot, and each said melodramatic, bad things to the other.

  “You’re ruining your life—”

  “It’s my life, you’re completely insensitive—”

  “You’re crazy—hysterical—you have no sense—”

  “I never want to see you again—just stay away—”

  Since then, and since Jennifer’s birth, there has been a polite, somewhat stilted, occasional exchange of notes—Alison’s sent to Jack’s office, of course, as in fact her notes always were. For a while he sent money, che
cks that in her high pride Alison never cashed. Besides, by then she was doing pretty well on her own. The magazine, though tiny, paid her a good salary; its backer needed the tax loss. And she sold more and more articles.

  Jack had never asked to visit, although she assumed that he still came to San Francisco from time to time.

  Now Alison asks Sheila, “What shall we do with all this food? Would your dogs eat it?”

  “No, the bones are too small. We’ll have the waiter wrap it and we can leave it in a package for some homeless person.”

  That night Alison’s sleep is broken, very troubled. She is plagued with dreams that vanish at the slightest touch of her conscious mind. She believes that Jack has been the focus of these dreams, but she is not entirely sure; nothing is clear. And when in her waking mind she thinks of him, his image is confused, as possibly it always was. There is the sensual memory of him, his weight, his bones crushing into hers, the hot smooth skin of his back, in her clutching hands. And then there is the loud-voiced angry Jack, who insists that she have an abortion. She finds, though, still another man, Jack the kind and super-intelligent good friend, with whom for hours she discussed almost everything in life—the environment; their childhoods; Bosnia, Zaire, and Haiti; Jack’s relations with the Sierra Club and other local environmentalists; Alison’s magazine; local painters. And sometimes, even, their own connection (both disliked the word relationship). They alternated between celebration (it was so good; they cared so much for each other) and sadness (it was necessarily limited; they could not, for instance, travel together, or, more to the point, live together).

  Alison thinks too of what Sheila was saying, describing those windows of niceness that keep even battered women going (Did even O.J. have moments of niceness? she wonders). As she stuck around with a man who meant to and probably would stay married, for whatever responsible, guilty reasons of his own.

  She wonders, What will I do when he calls tomorrow, as he most likely will? She thinks, At least Jennifer’s out of town, I don’t have to lie about that.

  • • •

  At breakfast, raw with sleeplessness, she decides to spend as much of the day as she can on a long city walk. When Jack calls, her answering machine will pick it up, and she can do as she likes. She does walk, in the bright cool windy day, fog lingering on all the horizons of the city. Perfect for walking. She hikes down to the Embarcadero, and along all that way to the Ferry Building, past the new incongruous row of palms, and the old decaying empty wharves.

  When she gets home, having walked for a couple of hours, she finds no messages, not one on her machine. Digesting what feels like keen disappointment, not relief, she simply stands there in her kitchen for a moment, looking out to her view of the Bay Bridge, the bay, and Oakland hills. And the Embarcadero, where she just was.

  The phone rings. She hesitates, answers on the third sound.

  Jack. After a polite exchange of greetings, he says, “In a way I’m sorry about last night. I hope you weren’t as shaken up as I was. But you know, I’ve wanted to see you. To be more in touch. And Jennifer—”

  Some honest quality of pain in his voice is very moving to Alison; it was good of him to say that he was upset. She tells him, “I’m really sorry, Jennifer’s down in Santa Barbara with my mother.”

  A long pause before he says, “Could I just see you for a little? I really want to.”

  She too pauses, and then says, “In an hour. I’ve just got back from a walk. I have to take a shower.”

  As he comes into her living room, and they shake hands—again, Alison observes what she had almost forgotten: that Jack is rather shy, and his glasses tend to slip down his longish nose. He is very tall, his posture bad, and he is still too thin.

  He says, “You’re really nice to let me—”

  “Well, of course—”

  “No, not of course—”

  Both wearing their shy smiles, they sit down at opposite ends of her sofa (as they have before). Alison tells him, “Jennifer. I’m sorry she’s not here; a friend was going to Santa Barbara for the weekend, Susan, I don’t think you met her. And it seemed such a good chance for Jennifer, she likes Susan and she really loves her grandmother, and she thinks Santa Barbara is great, the beach and all—”

  She is babbling to stave off the sudden and unaccountable tears that threaten her eyes, and her voice. Alison realizes this, but she is afraid to stop. She adds, “She’s really nice—”

  Looking at her with his slow shy smile, Jack says, “Of course she is.”

  “Well, tell me how your work’s going! You’re still happy in Washington, and mad at most of the Bureau?”

  “Well, yes and no.”

  He talks for a while, and Alison does not hear a word he says, as she thinks, He’s a very nice man; he really is. It wasn’t “just sex,” whatever that means. I think we can be friends, and he can come and see Jennifer sometimes. Friends. And I’m not going to cry, and we won’t make love.

  But Alison is wrong.

  After she has made tea, Twinings English Breakfast, which they drink, and after a lot more civilized conversation, Jack gets up to go, and as, staring at her with his very dark, myopic, and beautiful hazel eyes, he starts to say good-bye, Alison distinctly hears the smallest catch in his voice, and she sees the effort at control that he makes.

  Which is just enough, at last, to set off her tears—a minute before he truly meant to leave.

  Jack puts his arms around her, intending comfort, friendliness, but it does not work out that way.

  They begin to kiss, and minutes later they have moved to Alison’s bedroom, where, on her bed, once more, they have great—the greatest sex.

  Raccoons

  Every evening, despairingly, Mary Alexander, a former actress, puts out tin bowls of food for Linda, her cat, who is lost: stolen, starving somewhere, locked in a strange garage—maybe dead. In any case, gone. And every morning, on the deck of her small house in Larkspur, California, Mary examines the bowls and sees that nothing is gone, and her heart seems to shrink within her, her blood to chill. Out there among all the pots of luxuriant roses, bright geraniums, and climbing, profusely flowering bougainvillea, Mary looks blindly at all that color, that bloom, and at her pretty house, in the rare fine August sunlight, and she mourns for Linda; she is inhabited, permeated with loss. She takes in the plates and washes them off; she makes and eats her own breakfast, and then goes out for a walk. She spends the day in an effort to pull herself together, as she looks and looks, and calls and calls for Linda. And then at night she puts out the food again, and she waits, and hopes. For lovely Linda, who is as beautiful and as shy as a little fox.

  This is very neurotic, Mary lectures herself, rather in the voice of her very helpful former shrink, a gentle, kindly, and most courteous man from Louisiana, who spoke in those attractive accents, and whose sternest chiding was, “That’s just plain neurotic.” And he would smile, acknowledging that they both already knew she was neurotic; that very likely most people are, including himself.

  For comfort, Mary sometimes thinks of a man she considers the least neurotic among her friends: Bill, a biologist. Internationally known, he goes to conferences all over; he does a lot of work in Africa on AIDS. Bill is absolutely devoted to Alison, his wife, herself a distinguished watercolorist. Bill is also intensely attached to Henry, their cat. Once, in fact (this is the memory from which Mary takes comfort), Henry was reported missing by their housesitter; Bill and Alison were on a rare vacation in Paris. Many transatlantic phone calls ensued; Bill was almost on the plane to come back from Paris, to walk every block of their San Francisco neighborhood—when, of course, Henry strolled into their house, insouciant and dirty. But Bill, this internationally famous scientist, had been poised to cut short a trip with his much-loved wife, to come home from Paris to look for Henry, his cat. All of which now makes Mary feel a little less crazy, less “neurotic,” but no less sad.

  Mary’s own life, viewed by any friend or acquaintance, w
ould be judged comparatively rich, and in many ways successful. Early days in New York included occasional Broadway parts, some off-Broadway, and mostly good reviews. Too little money, usually, and too many (but generally good) love affairs. Then the move to San Francisco, the Actors Workshop, and ACT, plus some TV ad work, boring but well paid. More love affairs, some of which became rewarding friendships. Even now, at what she herself considers an advanced age, there is a man with whom she sometimes sleeps (Mary much dislikes the phrase to have sex, but they do), a man of whom she is most extremely fond (which surely beats being in love, has been Mary’s conclusion). They would see each other more, except that he has a very mean, vindictive lawyer wife; it is not all perfect, but then, what is? In any case, Mary’s life does not fit the stereotype of the lonely old woman whose only companion is her cat.

  Mary was never beautiful; as a very young woman she was too thin, almost gaunt, with a long thin nose, a wide and sensual mouth. But she was both intelligent and talented, capable of projecting passion, irony, and humor, qualities that she could be said to contain within herself. Her friends, including fellow actors, generally liked her, and several men loved her extremely.

  Aging is easier, somewhat, for a not-beautiful actress, Mary has thought; critics are less apt to point out that you are not as young as formerly. But this must be true for all women, not only those in her own narcissistic profession? You do not suddenly observe that heads are not turning, if few or any ever did. These days Mary could have more TV ad work than she does, if she would accept more happy-grandmother shots. The problem is that her capacity for tolerating boredom has diminished, she finds. She can no longer endure certain endless hours before hot cameras—as she can no longer listen raptly at dull dinner parties. She cannot escape into steamy trash fiction as she once did, in dressing rooms, awaiting calls. (She has lately been rereading Colette, and has recently discovered Carl Hiassen, who makes her laugh aloud.) The move from San Francisco up to Larkspur constituted a sort of retirement; she lives mostly on residuals, a little stock. She believes that she lives fairly well, with Linda.