by Alice Adams
Henry of course knows that Jackson once lived in Hawaii, and he has undoubtedly worked it out that it was Jackson with whom Megan “went to bed,” as she told him, after she had confronted him with Lavinia. And he has very likely concluded that since he no longer “sees” Lavinia, Megan and Jackson no longer make love either. Megan would not do what he himself would not, is how Henry would think. Probably.
Megan has had more than an occasional flash of guilt, at even fantasizing a betrayal of such trust. Henry and Jackson are even friends, in their way. Would it be worse to betray your lover with his friend, or with an enemy (Lavinia)? Megan is not sure.
In the meantime Megan has her strong fantasies.
• • •
This day, which belongs to Florence, is wonderfully warm, clear, and blue; it seems the first day of summer, after all the cold, the cruel rains of that preceding spring (some of the women whom Megan will pick up tomorrow are flood victims, still out of their homes and without possessions. Uninsured, of course, since they were poor to begin with).
“Florence, you really lucked out on the weather,” Peg has told her. “God must really like you. But of course we all know you would have served us salads anyway.”
“Of course I would have,” Florence tells Peg—she tells them all. “We could right now be eating cold salad in the rain, right out here on this porch.”
(Florence will live forever, they all think, and hope.)
“Florence darling, I’ll bet you’ve never looked better in your life.” It is Biff who says this, but it would have been any one of them.
“You just won’t believe I was ever young and cute,” Florence challenges.
“Oh, I do,” Biff assures her. “But in a way, don’t you feel a lot better now?”
“Of course I don’t, dummy. I creak and I forget most things. But in most ways I do feel pretty good.”
Megan’s attention has wandered over to Rex, across the table, and she wonders, as she has before, just how Peg feels about this handsome, awful boy.
Which leads her to wonder, too, about children she herself might have had. By Henry, or by Jackson—or both? She has read somewhere about multiple insemination, and observed its results in litters of kittens, but she does not know whether this is possible with humans. How very embarrassing, if it should happen. Although both these men, in their separate ways, are quite superior.
Years ago, very young, Megan used to think of having a child by Jackson, a tall beautiful tawny girl, she thought, with Jackson’s wide-set liquid eyes. However, more often, more realistically, she was in a state of panic at the thought that she could be pregnant. Now she does not regret not having had children—too many people do, quite obviously.
Peg is thinking of Rex, as she watches him barely eating, and frowning, disapproving of everyone there. His extreme handsomeness is harder to explain than his difficult character is, Peg believes. His black hair and dark blue eyes and his graceful body seem an aberration, a mockery of herself, and of Cameron. She sighs, and thinks then that at least her other kids are all right. Even Candy has come out of her trouble; she is at Davis, studying to be an assistant to a vet. She is living with a man whom she only describes as “really nice.” Peg hopes he is.
And she hopes that Vera will never leave her, never find a younger, prettier woman to love. Or a man.
And she wonders why (oh, why!) she can never take anyone or anything for granted. All winter, when it snowed so much and hail came down like bullets, and the creek kept flooding over, Peg desperately feared for herself; she began to feel that she did not deserve to own such a beautiful house, and that it would be taken. She wonders: is the “virtuous” use to which they have put it a propitiation, of sorts?
Henry Stuyvesant, curiously, is still thinking of Cathy, the only one of the group of four friends whom he never met. He wonders if she sounded as much like the others as those three do to each other, in terms of inflection. He would never tell Megan how much she reminds him of Lavinia, when she speaks. In fact if it were not for Megan he would almost never think of Lavinia, whose beauty he now remembers with a tiny sigh. He sighs too for her extreme intelligence, and her remarkably shoddy values.
Henry hopes that Jackson Clay will soon move on, that Megan is right about his plans. An old jazz buff, Henry tells himself that he misses Jackson’s music, and, as a friend, he is sure that Jackson would be much happier, playing. But he also wonders if Jackson and Megan still make love sometimes—or if they ever will again.
And he hopes very much that his own new book will do well, at least some good reviews: a history of the American political left, 1925-1975, being published by the Press at Chapel Hill, in 1984. Good God, Henry thinks: 1984.
Henry would of course help her carry in the dessert soufflé, not let her drop it, Megan is thinking, as she looks over at Henry, next to her. There in the sun, in the heat of that day, she can actually smell his warm clean familiar skin. He is wearing a striped cotton shirt, blue and white, that she likes very much; it is so old, has so often been laundered, that its texture is silky. She now very lightly touches his sleeve, his arm, and they exchange a small smile, of the most intense affection.
The drinks at that lunch provide a curious study in contrasts. Biff, whose tastes have always been rather grand, and who is now rich enough to indulge them, has generously provided a case of champagne. (“Such a practical drink,” he has said. “You can drink it with anything.”)
However, both Jackson and Rex Sinclair, for quite different reasons, stick to milk. (“Booze is for assholes like my old man,” Rex has said.) Vera never drinks. Nor does Florence. “I’m too old, it makes me dizzy.” Which leaves a lot of champagne for Peg and Megan, Henry, Biff.
The overflowing, heavy, fragrant wisteria provides some shelter from the sun for Megan and the others on that side of the table; still, all the warmth and the wine combine to produce a certain blurriness in her mind.
Which is probably at least in part why she has this thought, of which she is later ashamed; she thinks, Why do we have to be a shelter? Why keep driving to Atlanta, to Washington, for all those people? We could all just live here together, we could keep busy. Especially after Jackson goes. Just Peg and Vera, and Florence. Henry and me. We’d be fine.
However, dismissing that not-even-practical idea (what else would they actually do, with all their time and space?), Megan recognizes that she is experiencing her familiar apprehension; as always, she is dreading the drive, the new people.
And she recognizes too that that is precisely what she is going to do, as always: she will get up early and take the van to be checked at the local garage, in Edenborough; by nine thirty or ten at the latest she will be off, down the white, red-clay-lined highways, past the pale green summery meadows, and over still-swollen rushing brown muddy creeks, past densely leafed-out woods—to the city, Atlanta, where nine women who need a place to stay are waiting for her.
Henry and Jackson are clearing off the table now. Rising, Biff offers to help, but he is turned down. “No help from temporary guests,” he is told.
In a few minutes Megan, who has decided to do it by herself, will get up and go in to get the frozen soufflé. Her mother’s birthday cake. With the 8 and the 3 on top. June 1983.
Books by Alice Adams
Careless Love
Families and Survivors
Listening to Billie
Beautiful Girl (stories)
Rich Rewards
To See You Again (stories)
Superior Women
Return Trips (stories)
After You’ve Gone (stories)
Caroline’s Daughters
Mexico: Some Travels and Travelers There
Almost Perfect
A Southern Exposure
Medicine Men
The Last Lovely City (stories)
After the War
The Stories of Alice Adams
A Note About the Author
Alice Adams was born in Virginia an
d graduated from Radcliffe College. She was the recipient of an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She lived in San Francisco until her death in 1999.
