by Alice Adams
She divorced poor, dear Tommy in Reno, and continued to San Francisco, where, with some money from a grandmother who providentially died around that time, she bought a small house in an alley on Telegraph Hill—with such a view! And she got a job on the Examiner.
There then followed for Lucretia many happy years. Telegraph Hill and, indeed, the whole city were seemingly full of the relatively young and unmarried. There was great cheap Italian food and wine in North Beach restaurants, and great cheap Chinese along Grant Avenue, Chinatown, with wonderful jazz at the Blackhawk, the Jazz Workshop. And good bars all over the place. Not to mention the prettily romantic city itself, a perfect backdrop. Lucretia had quite a few very pleasant but not serious love affairs; to herself, she thought, Well, good, I’m beginning to take sex not quite so seriously; it’s just very good, very affectionate fun.
Sometimes, though, she was assailed by much darker thoughts, one of which persistently was: I’m really too old for all this silliness; my friends are doing serious things like bringing up children. (In those days thirty-five was viewed as too old for almost anything, including love affairs and certainly children.) Also, the fact was that she still did take sex seriously. Her affairs were never so casual as she tried to make herself believe; she sometimes suffered extreme pangs of missing whoever was just gone. Pangs of longing to hear from someone who did not phone. (In those days women were not supposed to telephone men.)
In those blacker moods Lucretia tended to forget her own considerable professional success. She was extremely good at her work; she had won citations and prizes, along with the occasional raise. And she liked it very much, especially the interviews, which she was more and more frequently assigned. She liked the work and mostly she liked her fellow reporters. But as she waited for her phone to ring, waited for him to call, she forgot all that.
Jason was first described by Lucretia to her friends as “this terribly nice man who lives next door.” A tall, skinny young (her age) architect from Tennessee, Jason had a serious girlfriend, Sally, who was not around much. Jason and Lucretia went to movies at the Palace and to the New Pisa for long, half-drunken dinners together; when she broke up with whomever, Jason was always comforting. And she was nice to him, making homey meals and listening a lot when he broke up with Sally, although by then Lucretia was seeing someone else.
By the time they fell in love and decided to marry, Jason and Lucretia had been friends for several years. So sometimes she wondered, Why didn’t I know all along how I felt about Jason? Why did we waste all that time?
In both earlier marriages, to Jim and then to Tommy, sex had been the greatest bond. Especially with Tommy, a true sexual explorer, an inspired and tender lover—when sober. But then, he was so often drunk. With Jason, after the early raptures of mutual discovery, when in effect they both said, “You’ve been here all along, and I didn’t know?—after some months of that, the sexual energy between them seemed to taper off to a twice-a-week nice treat. Lucretia often felt that she was more enthusiastic than Jason was, that perhaps she was basically a sexier person, which she found a little embarrassing, although she still liked Jason better than anyone in the world. And for the three years of their marriage they were mostly happy, both busy with separate work, and enjoying vacation trips together.
Then, cruelly, Jason, who was still a relatively young man, was diagnosed with colon cancer. Invasive. Inoperable. But he took a long time dying, poor darling; near the end Lucretia moved him down to the living room, where he could see the friends he still wanted to see, and she could more easily bring him trays. He complained sometimes about sleeping down there alone, and so Lucretia would cuddle against him, there on the couch.
Unhappily, that is what she most clearly recalled of Jason, his dying. How pitifully thin he was, his eyes so huge and needful. His bony hands. She remembered less of his good jokes and general good sense. Their trips. Lovely Italian wine and, at times, good sex.
Mourning Jason, a truly loved and irreplaceable friend, Lucretia mourned, too, what she felt to be the end of love in her life. By that time she was in her early fifties; even to think of love affairs was ridiculous, despite what she read here and there. And so she did something very ridiculous, or worse: she fell violently in love with a man almost twenty years younger than she was, a beautiful Italian, Silvio. Not only twenty years younger but married, and a Catholic, of course.
Oddly enough, it was he who loved first. Or he who said it first, pressing her fingers as they held a wineglass, at lunch, in Fiesole. Looking up at him, she saw him laugh in a slightly embarrassed way as he said, “You mustn’t laugh, although it is a little funny. But I find myself seriously in love with you.”
She did not laugh, but she smiled as she said, “Oh Silvio, come on—” even as her heart began to race, her blood to surge forward.
She was aware that they looked a little alike, she and Silvio, a northern blond; some people must think them mother and son. Many people must think that.
Lucretia was staying at a small hotel on the Arno, not far from Harry’s Bar; she had a penthouse room, with a lovely view of the river. From her balcony, in early evenings, she observed the long ovals formed by the bridges and their reflections in the water. She and Silvio had drinks there the first night he came to call, quite properly, to take her to Harry’s for dinner. He was the friend of a friend; his wife and children were off at Viareggio. After they became lovers, they had drinks on that terrace every night.
“You have the most marvelous skin in the world,” he told her. “Your back, and here. Like hot velvet.” He laughed. “My poor English. I sound like the TV.”
“Your English is fine.”
“You are fine. However can I let you go?”
But he did. They let each other go at the end of Lucretia’s two weeks: a week of exploratory friendship, another of perfect love. Or, vividly recalled by Lucretia in San Francisco, that is what it seemed, all perfect. Beautiful, sexy Silvio made love to her repeatedly, over and over, at night, and then again in the morning, before driving off to his own house across the river. Just love and sex; they never spoke of anything foolish and alien, like divorce. Only, once or twice Silvio asked her, “If I should come to San Francisco, you will remember?”
She laughed at him. “Always, my darling.” She feared that that would indeed be true. And she thought, Suppose he calls when I’m really old, too old to see him again, although I still remember? (She forgot that at that time he, too, would be much older.)
In her pretty Telegraph Hill cottage, then, with the doleful sound of foghorns strained through her dreams, Lucretia often woke to a painful lack of Silvio, a missing of him that was especially sexual. And none of the obvious solutions to this crying need appealed to her at all. Only Silvio would do, and at times, at the worst and most painful predawn hours, she thought of flying back to Italy. To Florence, where she would say to Silvio what seemed at the moment to be true: I can’t live without you.
Of course, she could and did live without him, and all the prescribed cures worked. She joined a health club and exercised fiercely; she walked whenever and for as long as she could. She intensified her efforts at work; she took on more assignments. And she thought, Well, that will have to be that. Enough of sex and love. I’ve surely had my share, and maybe more. Except that every now and then she would read some tantalizing, romantic account of a woman even older than she was falling in love, getting married. Or an article about the sexual needs and activities of the old, “Geriatric Sex.” Lucretia’s very blood would warm and flare, and she would think, Well, maybe. Even as a more sensible voice within would warn her, Oh, come on.
“He’s not exactly your type, but he’s nice,” said a friend, by way of introducing Burt McElroy into her life. “He’s dying to meet you.”
“Good Lord, why?”
“Oh, don’t be like that. You’re sort of famous here, and he likes blonds. His wife was blond.”
“Old blonds.”
“His wife
was older than you. They were married forever.”
“I just don’t feel like meeting anyone. I’ve given up all that stuff. Or maybe it’s given me up.”
“Well, just come for dinner. I won’t lock you up in a closet together or anything.” She added, “He was a trial lawyer. Now retired.”
The lawyer, Burt McElroy, was a very large man, at least six three, and heavy. Thick white hair and small bright-blue eyes, a big white beard. Jolly, at first glance, but on second not jolly at all—in fact, somewhat severe. Censorious. And a little sad.
At dinner that first night, at the house of the friend, Burt talked considerably about his wife, and a music foundation that he was establishing in her honor; apparently she had been a noted cellist. As he spoke of this dead woman, this Laura, Burt often looked at Lucretia, and she understood that he was announcing his feelings: I will never be really untrue to Laura.
And so she laughed, and was flirtatious with him; she, in her way, was saying, “Look, don’t worry, I’ll never be serious about you either.”
A few days later he called and asked her out to dinner. They went, and again he talked a lot about Laura and his children. At her door he said, “You know, you’re really a knockout lady. As we said in my youth, ‘I could really go for you.’ ”
“Oh, don’t do that.” She laughed up at him.
Later, thinking over the evening, Lucretia saw that she did not like him very much, despite his good qualities. He talked nonstop and rather self-importantly, a man accustomed to having the floor. To delivering opinions. And he did not listen well; in fact, he showed very little curiosity about her or anyone else. In short, he bored her; it was true, he was not her type at all. Except for being tall.
But she recognized, too, with some shame, a certain sexual pull in his direction. She looked forward to when he would kiss her. She put this down to sheer sexual starvation—it had been a long time since she had kissed anyone.
Their next dinner was less boring for Lucretia, because of the kissing that she now looked forward to. Just that, kissing, for the moment.
They went from a good-night kiss at the door to some very enthusiastic kissing on the sofa, and then, because such adolescent necking seemed ridiculous at their age, they went to bed.
Where, after several long, futile minutes of strenuous efforts on his part, and some effort on hers, Burt said, “I’m sorry. I had this prostate surgery, and I was afraid, but I had hoped—”
He was breathing hard, from exertion rather than from lust, Lucretia felt, as she thought, Poor guy, how embarrassing this must be. And depressing.
“Here,” he said, “Let me—” He moved heavily, laboriously, down her body, positioning himself.
This is not something he usually does, Lucretia thought. Oral sex was not on the regular menu with Laura, the wife. Though, of course, Lucretia could have been wrong.
Feeling sorry for him, she pretended more pleasure than she actually felt; also, she wanted him to stop.
He moved up to lie beside her; he whispered into her ear, “It’s wonderful to give you pleasure. You’re wonderful.”
Without spelling things out, without saying, “Look, I’m sorry, but I just don’t like you very much. And sexually, I know it’s not your fault and I’m sorry you have this problem, but it just doesn’t work for me. I’m sorry I pretended,” Lucretia hoped he would somehow understand. It did not occur to her until later that she could just have not seen him again, without apology.
Because he did not understand; he seemed now to want to see her all the time.
He took her to a banquet at which he was the guest of honor, long tables at the Fairmont Hotel, important political people. Men whose names, at least, she knew.
Lucretia, in her proper, “appropriate” black dress and her proper pearls, felt fraudulent; she wanted almost to announce: I’m not his lady friend, we are not, not, not getting married.
Burt’s friends were roughly the same age as Lucretia was, like Burt himself, but they all seemed considerably older. She thought this could be delusional on her part, a delusion of youth, although she knew that she was generally a realist in that way. Vain, perhaps, she surely was that, caring too much about how she looked. But not kidding herself that she was a kid anymore.
She was not quite sure what this “older” quality consisted of; the best she could do was to describe it as a sort of settled heaviness, in both minds and bodies. They all looked pleasantly invulnerable, these people, Burt and his friends. No longer subject to much change. Or to passion. They did not much mind being overweight. Or that their expensive clothes were out of style.
Lucretia was not exactly smug about looking younger, and better; she knew it was largely accidental. She had been born pretty, and most of it had lasted. She ate almost what she wanted to, and nevertheless stayed fairly thin. She exercised, but not immoderately. She had not had anything “done” to herself in a surgical way, although she had thought about it.
“You’re the sexiest woman I ever met. I’m crazy for you,” Burt breathed into her ear.
“But—”
“Maybe a little cruise somewhere? Alaska, maybe, or Baja.”
“Cruises—”
“Look, forget you’re a travel writer. Just come along. Enjoy.”
At the time of the cruise conversation (she had been on a number of cruises and very much disliked them all) Lucretia was much involved in writing a series of articles on shelters for battered women. She tried to tell Burt just how involved she was, how she cared about this particular piece.
Which did not go over well with Burt. “You should throw your weight around more,” he told her. “Such as it is,” and he laughed at his own mild joke. He often teased her about being what he called “underweight.” “You’ve been there long enough and won enough prizes,” he scolded. “You should be calling the shots. Not taking these really tough assignments.”
I’m trying my best to call the shots with you, she thought, but did not say. And I like writing this piece; I like these women.
It was Burt’s mouth that gave his face its severity, she decided. A small mouth, set and firm, made smaller-seeming by the surrounding beard. Had someone long ago said that small mouths were a bad sign, that they meant an ungiving, stingy nature? Actually, Burt was somewhat stingy, she had come to see; “careful” would be the kinder word, but he was super-careful, hyperconcerned with prices, costs, and he was surprised and somewhat annoyed by her ignorance of these things.
“It’s not that I don’t care what things cost,” she tried to explain. “It’s just that I get confused. I’m not good with numbers.”
She tried going to bed with him a few more times, deeply knowing this to be a mistake but saying to herself that this time it might work; she might feel the pleasure she pretended (and she knew her pretense to be a serious error, politically incorrect). But, because of what he referred to as his “problem,” Lucretia found it hard to put him off entirely; she understood how much his pride was involved, and she was reluctant to hurt that pride, and his feelings.
When he said, as he sometimes gloomily did, that if they broke up she would be the last woman in his life, she also understood that this had less to do with the great love that he professed for her than with his secret, his “problem.” Lucretia, the only person privy to that secret, had to be the last in line.
In the women’s shelter Lucretia felt herself stretched between extreme emotions: between pity and fear, admiration, sometimes disgust. And occasionally sheer boredom: encouraged by her questions, some of these women would have talked for hours, not always coherently. But many of them were coherent, many interesting, some even funny. A marvelous elderly black woman—from Montana, of all places. A shriveled Mexican-Jewish woman from L.A., with raucous, horrifying tales of endless boyfriends.
Lucretia’s story in four installments ran in the Sunday paper, and most of her friends called to say how good it was, congratulations. Edwin, the editor and her old friend (the donor
of the white-framed mirror), was highly pleased. Lucretia noted with interest that Burt was among those who did not call.
But Simon did call. Simon Coyne, at that time a voice from her remote past, from Jim and Cambridge days, law school. Although Simon had not been in law school. Eccentrically, everyone felt at the time, he was getting his doctorate in philosophy. Lucretia had heard that he married a Boston girl, and that broke up, and he married someone else. He taught in several small schools around the South. She had not really heard of him for years now, although when he called she realized that he had remained a romantic image in her mind: so tall and fair, with his pipe and tweeds and slightly odd way of speech. He was from Toronto, originally, Lucretia remembered, but he seemed rather “English” than Canadian. More distant than Canadians generally were. More impeccably, remotely courteous.
He was teaching in Berkeley now, Simon said, and yes, he liked it very much. He had found a nice house up on Euclid. His cats liked it, too; he had three. No, he was not married, but two of his three sons were living close by, as it happened.
Why didn’t you call me before? Lucretia wanted to ask him. And, When can we see each other? Are you busy tonight? But she managed simply to say, “I’d love to see you; could you come over for supper sometime soon?”
He was terribly busy, as he was sure that she was, too, and besides, he insisted on taking her out to dinner. He would call.
And then she didn’t hear from him for a couple of weeks, during which she saw Burt more than she had meant to. She did manage at last to say, “Look, Burt, we can have dinner sometimes if you’d like to, but we can’t, uh, go to bed.”
His whole face tightened. “I can hardly blame you for that. With my problem.”
“It’s not that. Honestly.” And honestly it was not, not his impotence but his whole severe, self-centered, somewhat hostile character. She would have liked to say, I just don’t like you very much, but she said instead, “My heart just isn’t in it. I’m sorry.”