Superior Women

by Alice Adams

  “Oh, Connie. No, of course you’d be a lovely husband. For someone. But I don’t want you for a husband. I want you to be in love with me. Forever.”

  “What a practical little romantic you are.”

  Lavinia laughs, in a light pleased way; she has just come to several more highly “practical” conclusions. “I guess I am,” she says. “More coffee?”

  The baby will be a girl; of that Lavinia is fairly sure. And she will be born sometime the following January—perhaps on Lavinia’s own birthday? A small, exquisitely beautiful dark baby girl, easy enough to pass off as slightly premature. And Henry will always love them both, Lavinia and her (his) daughter. And so, for that matter, will Potter, the putative father.

  Lying in bed, in New York, in her own apartment, Lavinia is awakened by an awareness of Potter, who is next to her, of his sharp shoulder bones and his heavy, sour breath, and she begins then to think of names. Forms of her own name, which she then sees before her, as though engraved. Mrs. Henry Stuyvesant. Lavinia Harcourt Cobb Stuyvesant, and before that, for a decent interval, Mrs. Harcourt Cobb. All wonderful names, especially the last, she thinks.

  But now there is not only Potter in her bed, to keep her awake, but from outside some unholy street sound, an ambulance, or something. More fully awake, much too awake, Lavinia stops thinking of beautiful babies, attractive new names, and she sees with absolute clarity that divorce is absolutely impossible for her. To divorce Potter and to marry Henry, no matter how long the interval between, even years, would be to admit both original error and later guilt. And worse, her (their) beautiful daughter would be exposed to ugly rumor.

  With impeccable logic Lavinia sees exactly what lies ahead for her: pregnant or not, she will stay married to Potter, and she and Henry will be lovers, forever, for years, for a very long time. Her course is perfectly clear. And so why, as she lies there in the clamorous city darkness, the rainy April night, is Lavinia overcome quite suddenly with terrible tears? She has to choke them down, in order not to wake Potter. Why does she lie there, silently weeping and sleepless until almost dawn?

  • • •

  Lavinia believes very strongly in her own prescience, and not only in regard to Henry. She always knew, she thinks, that Peg would have a lot of children, even though for a while her children seemed not to make Peg happy. (Now, however, Peg is perfectly fine, back at home with Cameron and the kids, all well, herself again. Which proves that Lavinia was right all along.) Lavinia believes too that Megan will not have children, will not bother to get married even. Very probably Megan will do something quite unusual, Lavinia admits to herself, with a certain small reluctance. However, comfortingly, whatever Megan does will not quite work out.

  When she thinks of Cathy, though, Lavinia worries, and for an apparent reason: Cathy is still in graduate school, at Stanford, and everyone says the economics department there is tops, if a little left-wing. If Cathy has a beau she has never mentioned him; however, after the disaster of Phil-Flash, she may just be keeping her love affairs to herself (as Lavinia herself certainly would, after a big mistake like that). But Lavinia senses some dark complexity in Cathy, she always has; she has always feared that finally things will go terribly wrong for Cathy.

  Across the continent, in Palo Alto, California, Cathy does indeed have a “beau,” although that would not be her word for him; in fact she has no word. But he is a man who is in love with her (insanely: he sometimes seriously thinks that he must have lost his mind). He walks through the flowery darkness of a spring night, in California, with everything in bloom, the acacia and apple trees, walnut blossoms, peach, the jonquils, ranunculus; and he is vaguely aware of flowers, some sweetness in the air, but his heart and his mind are all full of Cathy, her brown-black eyes and warm mouth and her delicately small breasts.

  Along the streets that lead toward her street he hurries, in the old part of what is still, in the early fifties, a relatively quiet town, especially in this neighborhood of large, widely spaced Spanishstyle or colonial houses, streets lined with stately palms, their fronds slightly rattling in the light spring breeze.

  Tonight, as he does on a certain day of every month, this man is carrying a bottle of chilled white Alsatian wine (Cathy’s favorite; she prefers it to champagne) to celebrate what is now eleven months of love, since the June night, which so moves him still that he can hardly bear the emotion of remembering. When they first.

  He does not know what he will do on the seventeenth of the following month, to celebrate a year.

  All those silly songs about love, to which in his life (with good reason!) he has never paid much attention now turn out to be absolutely true, this man is thinking, as he rushes through the tepid night, with his wine. Love does make you feel young; he could actually run, so light is the feeling in his feet, in all his body. He could run, he has so nearly forgotten his white hair and the fact that he is almost fifty.

  He has forgotten that he is a priest, in a black suit, with a clerical collar; and that he is on his way to commit a great sin, again and again.

  20

  In New York, Henry and Lavinia are models of circumspection, or nearly so. It is her idea that they should “save themselves” for the times in Fredericksburg, their magical house on the river. In New York, as she sees it, they should continue their “friendship”; she cannot risk many dinners with Potter at which she is still flushed, out of breath, and even slightly drunk from a winy lunch, and an afternoon in bed with Henry. Odd bruises, here, there.

  Thus Lavinia is able to have it both ways, or nearly: to have both the actual love affair and the appearance of an enviable, respectable if slightly puzzling friendship. She actually loves the occasional lunches in New York, after which they conspicuously do not go on out together; they do not go on down to Henry’s Village apartment. And Lavinia is later able to report on the lunch in full detail, to Potter. “I’m not sure that Henry is exactly cut out for the law,” she will muse.

  “Oh really? I thought he was doing quite well. I know he’s well liked in the firm.” In the way of not quite deceived husbands, Potter is always eager to hear about Henry.

  “Well, I just don’t think his heart’s quite in it.” Lavinia dreams of the State Department, at least, for Henry. How handy if he were a diplomat, always traveling about.

  Potter laughs, a little meanly. “He’s probably too busy with his crew of young divorcées to have his heart in his work.”

  “Oh, darling, I’m sure you’re right.”

  Another of Lavinia’s stated reasons for not meeting Henry for an afternoon of love, in New York, is that there is nowhere for them to go, she says. Henry laughs at this, but Lavinia insists, very seriously. “We could always be seen. Always. Even if we aren’t together. Anyone could see me leaving the Plaza at some odd hour, late some afternoon, or walking somewhere in your neighborhood, and come up with the wrong conclusion, which would actually be right, if you see what I mean.” She laughs, charmingly. “Even if you were nowhere around,” she adds. “It’s not safe, unless we go to some really sordid place, and I just couldn’t.”

  Henry is both too shy and too chivalrous to tell her that he is too busy and too poor to see her more often, and so Lavinia’s arrangements work out well for both of them.

  On an afternoon in May, however, Lavinia agrees to come up to Henry’s new apartment, on Riverside Drive—to Lavinia, a very puzzling move. “But no one lives up there,” she has protested, just not saying, No one but Jews. Although she and Henry do not talk about social issues, she suspects that he is “liberal.”

  He tells her, “Just take a cab. Honestly, Lavy, take two cabs, if you’re worried about being followed.” He laughs, and then he says, “I really want to see you.”

  Pleased by his urgency, Lavinia is also confirmed in what she sees as the correctness of her previous course: the infrequency of their hours together has made him more anxious to see her, as he is supposed to be; he should always be dying to see her.

  Thi
s afternoon will be their first together for almost a month, since the couple of days that they had together in April, in Fredericksburg. Since the night that it rained and rained.

  And Lavinia has news of her own. She is indeed pregnant, and this seems the perfect afternoon, the perfect time to tell Henry that she is. Perfect.

  The weather is lovely. Even the shabby neighborhoods that Lavinia is forced to traverse on her journey uptown (much too far uptown) look prettier; even, at one corner, Lavinia sees an old man, probably Italian, with a barrow full of flowers, narcissus and daffodils, iris, peonies, hyacinth. On an impulse, and because she would like to be a little late, Lavinia has the cab pull over and wait, while she selects a bunch of the largest, the pinkest peonies, all delicately, exquisitely petaled. She will arrive holding them, in a bridal way, against her pale gray wool suit.

  “But my darling, I don’t think there’s a vase in the place,” says Henry, after their first long kiss, in his front entrance hall, once the door is firmly closed behind them.

  “You must have a pitcher or something, a cocktail shaker, milk bottle?”

  But they then begin to kiss, again, and somehow the forgotten flowers are left on the long hall table, and Lavinia and Henry move toward the bedroom, which has, Lavinia notes in passing, a perfectly nice view of the river.

  An hour or so later, they both are dressed again, and washed, and seated in Henry’s small living room. He has even made tea—touchingly, in the tiny kitchen. Handing Lavinia her cup, he says, “I’m really glad you’d come here today. I wanted you to see this place, and I wanted to tell you something, not over the phone.”

  Lavinia, who was herself about to speak, smiles expectantly, but her heart has chilled just slightly: what could he possibly tell her that would rival her great news? But she continues to smile, as she remarks, in a mock-scolding way, “Well, I hope your news will explain this eccentric move of yours. Not that I don’t love it here. The nice view.”

  “Well, in a way it does explain it,” Henry begins. “For one thing, the rent here is about half what I was paying downtown.”

  “Oh?” Lavinia has experienced further premonitory chills, at that unpleasant admission; she and Henry never talk about money, the cost of anything.

  “It’s just this,” says Henry, with the most radiant smile that Lavinia has ever seen on his face, a transforming smile. “I’m going back to graduate school, to study history. You noticed how close I am to Columbia?”

  Lavinia had not; never having been near Columbia, how could she have recognized it? Which she does not say; she only murmurs, in a noncommittal but encouraging way—while her heart seems to freeze.

  “Eventually—does this come as a surprise to you, Lavy darling?—I’d like to go into politics. Or if that doesn’t work out, to teach.”

  More surprised than Henry could possibly imagine, Lavinia at once decides that this is not the day to tell him that she is pregnant.

  On the way home, in her taxi, controlling tears, Lavinia considers the incredible egocentricity of men.

  Everything that we have always been told is quite true, she thinks: when it comes to women, only one thing really interests them, and that only on their own terms.

  21

  The Prettyware Party, to which Cameron, for some reason, has urged Peg to go, is in a new house which is very like their new house; both houses are “antebellum,” although brand-new, in Midland, Texas. (Moving to a new house is one of the things that they have done since Peg’s illness, along with a maid to help Peg, Cornelia, a Negro.) The floor plan of this house is identical to that of Peg’s house, in fact, but just going into the two houses no one would know that.

  This party house is Early American, all bright maple and bright chintz and ruffles and polished brass, everywhere there is something going on, everything shining and sparkling. Peg has never seen such a lively house, but probably that is because she feels a little tired; she did not especially feel like going out, only felt that she should, and was urged to.

  Peg’s house is all dark and heavy, with all those antiques from her mother, and from Cameron’s mother, old furniture that now the children have battered with their tricycles and trucks. Her heavy dark house is a weight in Peg’s mind; even with Cornelia to help her, it is such a mess. Especially now that she is sitting here at a Prettyware Party, in such a pretty light bright Early American room. (Is Early American a little too early for antebellum? Peg believes that it is, just as Victorian must be a little late?)

  The hostess, whom Peg has not quite met before (Cameron knows her husband, who is also in oil) is Cindy, and she too is light and bright and cute, very small, with big yellow curls and small blue eyes, and a matching blue sweater and skirt, all twirly. “As cute as a button,” Peg’s mother would probably say, approvingly, if she should see Cindy, but her mother would not like this house. Peg’s mother does not like for anything to be new, and even if it is new it must look as though you have always had it, like clothes—especially clothes. But Cindy is certainly cute, and her house is so, so gay; no wonder it was chosen for the Prettyware Party.

  Cindy is the hostess, it is her house, but the girl who is running the party, the Prettyware person, is named Patsy. “Prettyware Patsy,” she said, laughing, as she introduced herself. She has black hair that curls up at the ends, on her shoulders, a dark red mouth and a white sweater, and the most pointed, sticking-out breasts that Peg has ever seen. It is hard not to look at Patsy’s breasts, they are so sharp and high up on her chest, so much more visible than her eyes, where of course you are supposed to be looking.

  Peg herself has been meaning to get some new bras, she then remembers. Although it is hard to think of everything.

  Peg got here on time, seven thirty, and for a few minutes it was difficult, introducing herself, being introduced to Patsy, having all the Prettyware Prizes pointed out, all that. But quite soon the doorbell rang—it tinkled; it is chimes—and there were two more girls, and then more chimes tinkling, more girls, and now the room is full of girls, who all seem to have been there before. All smiling. Friends.

  Patsy is standing by the table in the front of the room, where the Prettyware Prizes are all spread out, pink cannisters and yellow bowls. Not the most fortunate color combination, Peg hears herself thinking, in her mother’s voice. (“It is perfectly normal to think in your mother’s voice, even your father’s,” her doctor told Peg, but then he seemed to think that everything she thought was the craziest was perfectly normal. He seemed actually pleased when she once dreamed that her mother died. Only hostile dreams against your husband and children are bad.)

  The picture window is framed in crisp sheer white ruffles, whereas the same window in Peg’s house is draped in dark red velvet, from the attic of her family house in Plainfield. Perfectly good velvet, perfectly normal to have it there.

  Cindy passes out pieces of paper and pencils to everyone, as Peg wonders what there will be to eat, later on. Surely, refreshments? Since her illness she is so hungry, so often, but at the same time she has trouble with eating.

  Patsy explains the rules of the game they are going to play, in order to win the Prettyware Prizes. “Now, girls,” she begins, in a mock-severe way, and then she laughs. Everyone laughs too, Peg among them, although she was a little late getting it out.

  “Now, girls,” repeats Patsy, “I want you to be ab-so-lute-ly honest. Anyone who cheats will get none of the delicious goodies that little Cindy has made for us.”

  Peg quails at that, as though she has already cheated and been deprived of delicious goodies.

  “Now,” says Patsy, with a lift of her chest so that her breasts point up even higher. “I’m going to ask you girls some questions that you will answer with a number. It’s really very simple, simple arithmetic.”

  Peg feels an instant of sheer terror, which she knows to be unreasonable, not right, not perfectly normal. (What her doctor would have called “inappropriate,” which is the opposite of “perfectly normal.” But
she can’t help it, although that is something else that she is not supposed to say, or think, or feel. “Yes, Peg, of course you can help it, you can,” the doctor said to her, quite frequently. The nurses said it too.) But she really is afraid of questions, and of numbers, adding, subtracting. She thinks of the nightmare of her checkbook (until she discovered that Cornelia is a whiz with numbers, oh, wonderful Cornelia). But now Peg wonders: if she does cheat, how will they know?

  “Now, here goes with the first question. And remember, all these questions apply to this week only. We’re not delving into your pasts tonight, girls.” Patsy rolls her eyes, and everyone laughs. Peg laughs too, but was it too loud, her laugh?

  “All right: have you ironed your husband’s shirts this week? If you have, write the number ten on your paper. If you haven’t, just don’t write anything. See? I promised this was easy.”

  Most of the people—most of the girls seem to be writing something down, but several of them do not. Those who are not writing giggle. One of them, sitting near Peg, says, “Do I get a five for good intentions? I really meant to iron Larry’s shirts.”

  Laughs all around.

  Relieved, Peg decides that it is okay not to have ironed Cameron’s shirts, to be writing nothing on her paper. Other people didn’t either.

  The next two questions involve waxing the kitchen floor and cleaning out the oven. It is Cornelia who is supposed to wax the floor and clean out the oven, of course, although come to think of it, Cornelia hasn’t done any of those things either, not for quite a while. But Cornelia looks so tired, and she moves so slowly, so saggingly around the house; Peg thinks Cornelia must be unhappy, and often tells her not to bother. She worries about Cornelia. And besides, really, what is the point of a perfectly clean kitchen floor, with four children in the house? And poor Cornelia: why should she be doing those things? She looks as though she had troubles of her own.