by Alice Adams
“Sort of.” Megan is concentrating on the food, which is mildly exotic to her. Delicious, she thinks, biting the dark sour bread, chewing, savoring.
That afternoon marks the beginning of a relationship that is, for Megan, somewhat exotic in itself; it falls into none of the categories that she has ever heard or read about. Certainly it cannot be described by any of the phrases current with college girls in those rigidly romantic times—even if Megan felt the need to describe it to anyone.
Surely one of the things that it is not is a great love affair: Simon continuously praises her in bed, he says that her body is beautiful, that he loves to look at her, as well as to touch, but he has never said that he loves her, nor ever asked her how she feels about him. He likes her, Megan is certain of that. He always behaves affectionately toward her, he even seems interested in her literary opinions. He is pleased by her enthusiasm for her poetry course, for Donne and Auden.
But: he makes no claims on her, and he does not take her out on weekends; he generally goes down to New York on Saturdays, he says. They see each other once or twice a week, on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, usually. Nor does he ask her about what she herself does, or has done, on weekends. If she goes out with anyone else, for instance: quite possibly he imagines that she does? And nothing about love, not ever.
Megan is less bothered than she is puzzled by this somewhat curious behavior; it would be interesting to discuss with someone, she thinks. However, she knows no one who would not be shocked, in some way. As a Catholic, Cathy would disapprove, probably, of sex not only with no thought of marriage, but not even with love. Lavinia would be even worse: not only sex without love, but sex with a Jew. Peg—well, she never talks about anything with Peg. Maybe Janet Cohen, but then Janet is so manifestly in love with Adam, she would probably not understand just making love, for fun.
But Adam Marr would understand, Megan suddenly thinks. Adam would understand, and his opinions on the subject would be very interesting. Probably he could explain to her just exactly what is going on, between her and Simon. But you can’t have that sort of conversation with men, Megan thinks. Or can you?
She is aware that the popular view would hold that Simon is “just out for what he can get,” the ugly phrase most applicable to their situation. But Megan knows too that those words are quite wrong, for them: inaccurate, incomplete, as well as ugly, in their implication.
In the meantime, another boy asks her out, for a Saturday night. Stanley Green. Because of their names, Greene and Green, they are seated next to each other in the 19th Century Novel course. Stanley is a small, handsome blond boy, from Atlanta. He takes her to the Buena Vista for dinner; there, imperiously, he orders frozen daiquiris and lobster salad. And then they go over to the Hasty Pudding, to dance. Stanley seems happy and proud about his membership in the Pudding; he just got in, he tells Megan.
The floor is crowded, people dancing up on the stage, couples moving in and out of the bar, still pressed together, still in motion. Once, at a distance, Megan thinks that she sees Lavinia, that disdainful blond face pressed against someone’s gold-buttoned blue blazer. Megan wonders who Lavinia is with, and if she is going to try the recommended cure for getting over Gordon (neck your head off with someone else), and if it will work. She thinks of Simon then, and she smiles; certainly Simon has been a marvelous cure for George.
Stanley Green is a good dancer, light and graceful, holding her close and sexily when the music slows. He talks quite a lot, in an easy Southern way; hardly saying anything at all, just a pleasant drawling comment on the other couples, compliments on her dancing, a few remarks about his postwar plans: he wants to go back to Georgia, to go to law school there, and maybe, eventually, go into politics.
Later, as Megan has known they would, they drive down to the river, where they park, near the Browne and Nichols boathouse, and they neck, steamily, passionately.
And that becomes Megan’s program for Saturday nights, that spring: she goes out for dinner and dancing, and necking, with Stanley Green.
She believes that everyone she knows would disapprove, on several grounds: you are not supposed to “kiss” more than one boy at a time, as it were; certainly you are not supposed to spend Thursday afternoons in bed with one boy, and Saturday nights necking with another. And, two, if you do any of those things, with anyone, you are supposed to be madly in love. While Megan feels a certain affection for both Simon and for Stanley, she is nowhere near in love with either. (She cares more for Simon, actually; he is more fun to talk to, he is smarter, and God knows love in bed is more fun than necking in cars.)
Megan is forced to conclude that in a sexual way she is indeed different, not quite like other girls. Simon often tells her so, by way of high praise, and he must be right—experienced, Jewish-intellectual Simon. However, Megan knows that in her life she has never felt so well, nor has she ever looked better. She is clear-skinned, bright-eyed, is even a little thinner.
It is very hard to summon up the guilt that, in a way, she believes her sexual activities call for. After all, as she sometimes reasons, she is not hurting anyone, no, not at all.
Also, the excitement and the eventual anguish that she experienced over George Wharton have both begun to seem unreal to her. She can look back to all that as to a distant episode, and she can think: Well, if that’s being in love, I won’t do that again. I’ll settle for sex.
8
Nineteen forty-four, the springtime of romance:
“Because I’m a Jew, of course!” Janet Cohen cries out, through furious tears. “She would rather see her son dead than married to a ‘Jewess’—that’s the word she actually uses. Can you imagine, she’d rather see him dead? And probably she would, the stupid old Irish sow.”
Listening to this outburst, Megan is violently shaken. It has sometimes, recently, seemed to her that most of the people she likes best are Jews: Simon, Stanley Green, and Janet. And she has been deeply struck by the way in which Janet has said, Because I’m a Jew, her pride and despair and rage. The rage of course is directed at horrible Mrs. Marr, mother of Adam, who has announced that if they marry she will die.
Attempting lightness, Megan asks, “Do you think she possibly could? Die?”
Janet takes this question more seriously than Megan had expected. “Well, she’s a powerful woman. She just could, you know. Bring on a stroke, or something. Sheer willpower, just to show him. Actually I had an aunt who died, she actually died, because her daughter married a Catholic. Pretty funny, huh? Needless to say, it did a lot for my cousin’s marriage: they were divorced in three years, and all the relatives could say, ‘So, you see?’ ”
“I can’t believe it,” states Megan, and this is true; she can’t, none of this unfamiliar drama. How can they? she thinks, considering what is going on in the world. Hitler, concentration camps.
Janet gives her a look. “But what about your parents? Wouldn’t they act up if you married a Jew?”
“No, actually I don’t think so. So many of the people they know are Jewish, in the antique business. My father says Jews are the best at business, and my mother says they make the best husbands. And in San Francisco it does sometimes look like all the best people are Jewish, the ones who support the symphony and everything.”
Janet makes a sound of disbelief. “Well, California,” she says.
Megan laughs at her. “Maybe you and Adam should move out there. Why not?”
California is clearly too peculiar and too remote for Janet even to contemplate. “We want to go to Paris,” she says. “Adam has a fixation on Paris, the theaters there. God, can you think of anything more wonderful? Once this fucking war is over.” Her eyes fill with tears, at this splendid but distant prospect, before she sighs, “If only that old bitch doesn’t manage to stop us. If only Adam could stop listening to her.”
“What does he say?”
“Well, he’s very upset.” For a moment Janet is quiet, just sitting there. As often, they are out on the stairwell, on the to
p stair, where it is permissible to smoke. Janet now lights a new cigarette, fumbling with matches, and then she bursts out, “But sometimes he’s so fucking unfair, it’s like he’s mad at both of us, me and his mother. At women. Shit. Can I help it if I’m Jewish and his mother’s nuts?”
Megan has been somewhat taken aback by Janet’s repeated use of “fucking,” and then “shit.” But she works it out: this is how Adam talks, of course. He has a strong, a political, belief in such words; Janet has said so. And Janet will do anything for Adam, Megan understands, and she understands too that Janet’s power will win out, finally. Her sheer will to hold and keep Adam Marr.
One of the bits of popular wisdom at that time is that any girl can “get” any boy she wants, if she really wants him enough. And while to Megan this has often seemed untrue (could Peg, for example, get anyone at all?) now she seriously wonders: if she had been dedicated to George Wharton, in the sense that Janet is to Adam, could she have got him?
The thought is strangely appealing, and for a wild moment she considers a letter to George; after all, she never answered the wedding announcement card. You’re making a big mistake, she could write to him. Before you do anything final, let’s go down for a weekend in New York together. A weekend in bed, in some hotel. You don’t even know how terrific that would be, George Wharton.
Instructed by Simon, so to speak, Megan herself does know; she can imagine it all quite vividly. And she thinks, Oh George, how could you have let me go? The intensity of that inner cry is odd; these days George is rarely in her consciousness at all.
Janet is still talking about Mrs. Marr. “With Adam’s politics, I don’t see how he can even listen to his mother,” she now says. “Jesus, she sounds like a fucking Nazi.”
Megan agrees, “She sure does.” She has just imagined Mrs. Marr as a female Dr. Göring: shouting, bursting out of her ugly Nazi uniform.
“Shit,” says Janet. “I’ve got a chem lab in half an hour. Of course the old bitch is also dead against Adam marrying a doctor. Garbage about competition. How I’d hurt his career.”
“A lot of mothers would think it was terrific, your being a doctor.”
“Yeah, Jewish mothers, probably. But I don’t like Jewish boys. I never have.”
“Janet”
“Well, it’s the truth. You know that line from your favorite Mr. Auden, ‘You are not free whom you may choose to love?’ Well, it’s true, we’re not.”
“I guess.”
Peg has a date.
This at first unannounced fact has emerged in the course of the day, a Saturday. Momentous news: the date is for that night, dinner and dancing.
The first clue is that Peg shows up for lunch, in the dorm, with her hair in pin curls. It is all neatly tied in a scarf; still, this is unlike her. And so Lavinia demands, “Peglet, what is that—self-improvement day?”
“I just washed it.” But Peg blushes, earning a long, speculative look from Lavinia.
The food that day is especially bad, heavy and soggy. Fastidious Lavinia barely touches hers, and about halfway through lunch she lights a cigarette and announces, “Well, I can see that I’ll need more sustenance to get me through this day. Anyone for tea at the Window Shop? About three, if I can hold out that long.”
Megan says, “I’d better not.” at the same time that Cathy has said, “I don’t think so.”
“Well, okay for you two girls,” Lavinia scolds. “Big Peg and I will have to eat your share. How about it, Pegeen?”
Another blush. “Well, I really don’t think so.”
And so Lavinia attacks. “Peg, what on earth are you up to? You’re hiding something from me, I can tell.”
“Well, actually I have this date, I was going to do my nails.”
“Oh, a date? Well, that’s terrific! My, how cozy you are, not a word. But Peg, who is he? Now you have to tell.”
Megan and Cathy stare uncomfortably, as Lavinia is speaking.
And, in an embarrassed, hesitant way, Peg gets it out: the date is with someone named Cameron Sinclair. She has known him a long time. Well, not actually seen him for quite a while. He goes to Yale. And then, after a lot of steady, not wholly unkind probing from Lavinia, the true facts emerge: Cameron Sinclair is the son of old friends of Peg’s parents; they met a couple of times as little children, at Rehoboth Beach. They have not seen each other since. He wrote (very likely his mother’s idea, Peg supposes) and said that he was coming up to Cambridge this weekend; he wanted to look over the law school, and maybe Peg would like to have dinner? He is picking her up at seven.
Having triumphed, found out everything she wanted to know, and that Peg was reluctant to tell, Lavinia then can afford to be kind. “Oh, what’re you going to wear, Pegeen? We’ll have to work out something really good. And I’ll do the manicure, great manicures are one of my true specialties.”
Thus it works out that getting Peg ready for her date is a group project. With a variety of emotions that includes both genuine kindness and an incredulous condescension (Peg, on a date? what will he think when he sees her, no matter what she has on?), the three friends, her “best friends,” gather in her room; they watch and they make suggestions, helpful and otherwise. They make silly jokes. Megan and Cathy and Lavinia, all concentrated on poor Peg.
And not one of them has the slightest idea of what is going on in Peg’s mind. In close physical proximity to her, looking at her and talking, not one of them recognizes what is actually a serious anxiety attack; they do not feel Peg’s genuine panic.
What Peg is mostly thinking is: Suppose he is shorter than I am?
She has been scouring her memories of Rehoboth Beach, desperately, searching for a little boy, with whom she supposedly played. She thinks he was blond. But what size little boy? And at the same time she realizes that even if she could remember his size, back then, it would not signify: a remembered tall little boy could, at eighteen, be a rather small almost-man, in fact he could be several inches shorter than she is—oh, dear Lord, please not. Just as blond hair could darken. She herself, big dark Peg, was once a blond little girl, described as cute.
And even aside from height, that problem, what does Cameron Sinclair imagine that she, Peg, now looks like? Suppose—oh, Lord!—suppose he is expecting a girl who looks like Lavinia?
At that moment Peg is struck by the fact that, really, she does not have to go out on this date; precisely because he has not seen her, grown up, and does not know what she looks like, she could get out of it. “Lavy,” she says, and she tries to laugh, as though she were about to say something funny. “Lavy, I’ve got this great idea: why don’t you go out with him tonight? Wouldn’t that be funny? Just pretend you’re me, I can fill you in on a few things. He’d never know. I just don’t really feel—”
Lavinia frowns, in her most serious, scolding way. “Now Peglet, none of that. You are going out on this date and you are going to have a very good time. And as a matter of fact I’m seeing Potter tonight.”
• • •
By 7:09, when the buzzer on the top floor of Barnard Hall announces that there is a caller for Peg, she is in a state of extreme exhaustion; exhaustion has almost replaced anxiety. Like an automaton, a zombie, she makes her way down the four flights of stairs. Only when she is a couple of steps from the bottom does she think that she could so easily have fallen, broken her neck, or at least an arm, or a leg. She could have avoided this whole impossible situation.
But there he is, standing at the bell desk. It must be he, Cameron Sinclair. Extremely tall, maybe six five or six, with a large red raw-looking face, red hair, so that what Peg actually thinks is, Good, we sort of look alike.
She immediately perceives that he is much more nervous about this occasion than she is even. Which helps to soothe her. A natural comforter, Peg is given something to do by his discomfort; she will concentrate on putting him at ease (this is always a recommended course for girls, and one that Peg takes to instinctively). Never mind how she herself feels, about
anything.
Outside the door, Cameron tells her that Cambridge is “absolutely unfamiliar territory” to him, and he feels pretty much at a loss without his car.
For such a large man his voice is rather high, but this could be sheer nerves, Peg instructs herself.
Just how do they go about getting in to Boston? he asks her. And maybe they could stop off somewhere for a quick drink first?
Helpful Peg tells him that the subway at Harvard Square is an easy walk, and then just ten minutes in to Boston. And if he would really like a drink on the way, well, there’s a very nice bar in the basement of the Continental Hotel, which is right on the way to the Square.
In the pleasant, dark leathery bar, Cameron seems visibly to relax. “I suppose they know how to make a really dry martini?” he asks, in a deeper voice than he has used before. “It’s an okay place, I like it.”
Pleased by his approval of her choice, Peg says that they make quite good martinis, she believes (she and Lavinia used to come here, in the early days of mourning Gordon Shaughnessey).
They have two double martinis each, which is more than Peg wants or is used to, but it is her vague feeling that a girl should go along with a man’s drinking habits when out on a date.
They discuss his courses at Yale, his summer plans, and his chances of going to Harvard Law. A few perfunctory remarks about their families are thrown in for good measure.
“Well, how about getting in to Boston, getting some chow?” asks Cameron, during a pause. “I could use some grub about now.”
Peg sees that this is indeed quite true. He should eat something very soon, or else he’ll be drunk; Peg’s father “drinks,” she knows a thing or two about that problem. “Actually we don’t have to go all the way into Boston,” she says. “There’s a very nice place near here, good steaks. Italian things. The Buena Vista. We could walk there in five or ten minutes.” And get some fresh air on the way, she is thinking.
