by Alice Adams
“I haven’t heard from Dad for a while, but I guess he’s okay. Sometimes I think about sneaking aboard some boat to get over to London to see him, but don’t worry, I won’t do that (probably).
“Benny Davis is supposed to come down to see me, or he might come to New York at Thanksgiving. He seems to be changing his mind about medical school. He’s not sure what he wants to do. Me neither! The Marcuses have a lot of Negro friends, Susan told me, so it would be okay about Benny coming. A lot of their friends are Communists, Susan said, but they never want to join, and now after the Hitler-Stalin pact they’re glad they didn’t. You don’t hear a lot of stuff like that in Pinehill, do you?”
All that, so much in Abby’s voice—and then not another sound from her for a month or so. Sometimes Cynthia had to practically sit on her hands to keep from telephoning—or she called someone else, some hyper-chatty person like Dolly Bigelow, who she knew would keep her on the phone for at least an hour, at the end of which the temptation to call Abigail will be gone.
Or to call Derek. Although at times she thinks, Why shouldn’t I call him? Why is it that women have to wait to be called? It isn’t fair, I’m a person, just as much as he is. Even if he is more famous and busier. I don’t see why I can’t call.
However, whenever she did give in to that impulse to telephone Derek, he was usually not available. Or if he was, his tone was discouraging, polite—though sometimes barely so, and certainly surprised, but never truly pleased.
But: Abigail and Benny Davis, old friends reunited as adolescents? It would be so like Abby to fall in love with—to marry a Negro boy, with no thought of certain later trouble, places they couldn’t go, and children—
Derek interrupted this alarming line of thought with a surprising question: “Over in Pinehill, do you by any chance know a woman called Deirdre Yates Byrd? She must be related to that poet. She wrote to me and said she remembered me from high school, that solitary year I spent in Pinehill—”
“Deirdre? Of course I know her, and she’s married now to Russ Byrd. But before that she had this little boy, Graham, and she tried to pass him off as her brother but he was the dead spit of Russ, honestly—”
“Oh, that Deirdre.” Derek laughed at her, gently. “I do think I remember her. A knockout drop-dead beauty, right? So beautiful I had to avoid looking at her. In her letter she accuses me of never speaking to her. Jesus, if she’d had any idea how I felt. The lone Yankee, I could hardly stand it. Does she still look like that?”
Aware of a flash of jealousy, Cynthia told him, “Well, not exactly. She’s put on a little weight, of course—” And then, judiciously, “She still has the most ravishing skin, and those eyes. She and Russ have a darling little baby, named Sally-Jane, that was Russ’s first wife’s name, and the weird thing is that this baby looks just like her. Like the first SallyJane, I mean.”
“Cynthia, please, my dear, don’t give me this Southern Gothic stuff. I’m strictly literal. I keep telling you that.”
But Cynthia had suddenly and completely fallen asleep, into a dream of Pinehill, and Russ. And Harry.
So that she did not hear Derek, who said in a speculative way, “I should see her again, that Deirdre—”
• • •
Earlier, as they stood on the outer edge of the party at the Deke House, watching those much younger people, all so excessive—in their drinking, their smoking, their extreme good looks (most of them) and good clothes, their intense lusts for each other—Cynthia had been feeling very old, dry and remote. And she had thought then, in a rarely objective, distant way, Why don’t they all just pair off and go and make love somewhere? Just do it a few times, and then maybe all change partners, and do it some more. Slake all that excruciating desire, and learn that none of it really matters (does it?). Go ahead and fuck, she thought (she who had never in her life used that word aloud), get it over with. Instead of heading out to cars and parking somewhere and torturing yourselves, with frustration, and shame, and worry. And mess—one way or another you’ll get home all messed up.
She saw so many perfectly beautiful girls, with their lovely pure skin, translucent young eyes, their shining smooth long hair just perfectly curled at the ends. Their soft loose pastel cashmere sweaters. Perfect pearls.
But Cynthia would like to say to them, to all those girls: Wash all the pancake makeup off your beautiful faces, it isn’t good for your skin, no matter what Max Factor says about it. And your lipstick’s too dark, it looks black in this light, and those stiletto-heeled shoes, with such sharp pointed toes—you’ll ruin your legs, and your feet. (Oh, how ridiculous she was becoming! Is this some terrible jealous inner voice?) Who do you think you are? she asked herself; some teenage advice columnist? The only person you could possibly say these things to is Abby, and she doesn’t dress like that, or do all that to her face—and if I did she’d answer, Do you think you’re a lawyer?
Telepathically, perhaps, in any case it is startling—Derek chose that moment to ask, above all that noise, “Why didn’t you go to law school, after all? After being accepted—Georgetown, wasn’t it?”
A question to which there was either no answer at all—or one that was extremely long, rambling, and introspective. Neither literal nor historical. And so Cynthia chose the first alternative, and told Derek, “I just don’t know.” And she added, with a very bright smile—oddly, remembering at just that moment that she too was wearing pancake and very dark lipstick—“I may yet.” And then thought, Oh God, now I’ll sort of have to.
The boys, for the most part, looked even younger than the girls did, in their dressed-up dark gray flannel suits, white shirts, and ties—except for the ones in uniform, which somehow had a certain aging, sobering effect. Cynthia stared at a very tall, fair boy in Navy dress, a very confident, very attractive boy, who was probably twenty years old—and who was probably, Cynthia realized with a certain wry despair, the dead spit of Derek at that age. And at my age, she thought—am I on the verge of a phase of younger men? And her terrible next thought was, To these boys I’m a middle-aged woman, and they’re right, I am middle-aged, this is probably the middle of my life, and I’d really better find—something. Thinking then, But I have Harry, and Abby, and, for the moment, Derek.
Just beyond the tall fair boy, the young Derek, was a dark girl who looked even younger than the rest. A girl with long thick curly dark hair; a thin girl, with oversized, out-of-proportion breasts. Who must be, who was Melanctha Byrd, with a boy whom Cynthia also thought she recognized. Had they seen her? She moved a little farther from Derek, farther into the crowd, which might hide her—but just as she did so a large man walked up to where Melanctha stood, lurching a little; clearly drunk, he bent over Melanctha in what seemed to Cynthia a threatening way.
She whispered to Derek, “That girl over there, see? The one with the bosom? That’s Melanctha Byrd, Russ Byrd’s daughter, and that drunk old man’s scaring her. Can’t you sort of haul him off her?”
Derek peered, and turned back to Cynthia, his smile ironic. “That drunk is Bobby Higgenbottom, big tobacco man. He’s married to a Reynolds, and they’re our sponsors. Christ, all I need is an altercation—”
They were both staring across the room, in time to see Mr. Higgenbottom suddenly fall forward, across Melanctha, and then fall down to the floor. The crowd around them moved back, and then a few of them surged forward to help, Derek now among them.
Cynthia, standing back and watching, saw Melanctha clumsily embraced by that boy she was with, who was Archer Bigelow, one of Dolly’s boys; that’s who it was, of course.
“… doctor? Is there a doctor?” Several people called that out, and then apparently there was a doctor, and then the old tobacco man, the drunk (and the sponsor!), was being carried out.
Derek, back at Cynthia’s side, grabbed her arm (less gently than he could have, Cynthia felt), and began to propel her ahead of him, hurrying through the crowd—people just coming in, some from another post-game party, in another hou
se, some already formally dressed for the dance, and others who were also leaving. “Coffee shop,” Derek was muttering. “Infirmary’s just across the street. I’ll leave you there while I check it out and make a couple of calls.”
“In the infirmary?”
Witheringly: “Of course not. In the coffee shop. You can start eating while I go up to the room and call, and then I’ll join you. After I go to the infirmary.”
The cafeteria—coffee shop was crowded too. Everywhere, that night of the big Homecoming Game, was crowded. But Cynthia recognized no one as having also been at the Deke House party—especially not Melanctha. Unreasonably, Cynthia had feared a closer encounter. This group was a combination of the dateless-on-Saturday-night solitaries, with their books and glasses, their pride and their wistfulness (some of the girls were extremely pretty, which they did not yet know), and other kids from other parties. Most of them had drunk too much, somewhere, and the harsh cafeteria lights were cruel on over-made-up, imperfect skin.
Cynthia got up, she asked for and found the ladies’ room, where despite the crush she managed scrupulously to clean her own face, to re-makeup.
When she got back to her booth, fifteen or twenty minutes later, there was the club sandwich that she had ordered; it had seemed safe, she had forgotten how soggy toast could be.
And, a couple of minutes later, there was Derek, who said, “He’s dead. Higgenbottom. Christ, poor old jerk.” He laughed. “They said they didn’t know I was a reporter anymore.”
“Poor Melanctha.”
“Who? Oh, that girl with the bosom.” He grinned, and then, possibly in response to a sensed stiffness in Cynthia, he said soberly, “Scary for her, I’d imagine.” And then he said, “Okay with you if we check out the dance for a minute? One whirl around the floor?”
“Not in these clothes—”
But with another, much more personal grin, Derek was already saying, “Of course I’d much rather go right off to bed.”
Then why don’t we? Cynthia did not say.
All the girls at the dance seemed to wear chiffon, they floated in layers of chiffon, some dresses enhanced with ostrich plumes, softly waving in the vibrations of music, of everyone dancing.
She caught a tiny glimpse of poor Melanctha, somewhere far off, in a terrible aqua taffeta dress. Looking drunk.
She shivered, said to Derek, “Why don’t we go back to the Inn, and go to bed?”
Which was finally what they did.
4
THE Marcuses, Susan and her parents, Dan and Sylvia, and her brother, Joseph, went off to a benefit concert, something to do with Russia—and so Abigail and Benny Davis sat alone, somewhat stiffly, in the Marcus living room, brightly facing West Eleventh Street, the relatively quiet Village traffic, bare trees, and a wan November sun. Abby, somewhat shy by nature, was feeling exceptionally so: Benny, her old—her oldest—friend had become an entirely new, almost adult person, no longer a boy but a man, and so handsome that Abby was not quite sure they could still be friends. Her father was the only good-looking man she knew whom she really liked, and beside Benny he would be, well, nothing; just an okay-looking middle-aged middle-sized white man. But Benny—Benny was like a sculpture, a dark bronze statue, so tall and muscular, his face so perfectly molded, with that smooth high brown forehead, huge very dark eyes with those sweeping lashes. And his smooth strong mouth. Looking like that, could he also be interesting and intelligent? Abby was dubious. With scant experience to go on, she had already concluded that superior men were not the handsomest ones, unless you counted Mr. Roosevelt, and he was so old, and could never have been as movie-star drop-dead handsome as Benny was. Benny was better than a movie star, really: Clark Gable was ugly, with those big flapping ears. And not the kind of ugly that Abigail liked; she liked Susan Marcus’s brother, Joseph, who was skinny and thin-haired, nearsighted, with glasses and bad posture, and looked brilliant, which he was, everyone said so: a sophomore at Swarthmore, a physics major with plans to go to MIT—if the Army didn’t want him; he thought they would not.
Still, though bedazzled by and mistrustful of his looks, Abby tried to get back to being old good friends with Benny—without resorting to anything obvious like “Remember when …” (Although she would have liked to remind him of the time they switched around all the compounds in the chem lab, in their Connecticut school, because they hated the teacher, Mr. Martindale—just before Abby and her parents moved down to Pinehill.)
The room in which they sat, the living room, was crowded with souvenirs of Mexico; Susan’s parents had often travelled there, and the whole house was jammed with trophies from those trips, gaudy baskets and silver masks, painted pottery and puppets, skeletons and dancers—and pictures, oils and watercolors of bright fruit and dim cathedrals, of women in lace and flowers, of men either bare-chested, sweaty, or wearing various uniforms.
Looking around, after one of their several conversational pauses, Benny said, “I don’t know, sometimes I don’t much think I want to go to Mexico.”
Abby laughed, feeling easier. “I know what you mean, but there must be some stuff to do there, other than shop?”
He laughed too. “It doesn’t look like it, does it? I wonder what was here before.”
“I can’t imagine. I don’t know where else they’ve been. They travel a lot, I think. Or they did before the war.”
“You and Susan are friends down at Swarthmore?”
“Yes, I hadn’t met her family before. She’s talked about them a lot, of course.” She added, “I’d really wanted to meet them. I had sort of met Joseph, at college. But the parents, they sounded so—so not like mine. Or anyone in Pinehill.” She asked, “Your parents are still in Connecticut?”
“Yes.” He hesitated, then told her, “It’s interesting, and sort of ironic, what happened to them. My father’s father, my granddad, was a slave, and came North by the Underground Railroad, and got work as a blacksmith. I guess he was good at it. Anyway, it seems like he saved some money, and he bought a plot of land. About an acre. One of the first Negro men to own land in Connecticut—you can imagine how proud he was. And my dad was too. So, all the time he was working as a janitor, and if you remember we were not exactly rich, my dad hung on to his land. Even during the Depression. And then it turned out that my dad’s little acre was exactly where the Navy wanted to build a base. My dad said no, even when they offered him a lot of money, and then they offered more, and more and more. They probably thought he was this terrific businessman, when he was really an innocent. A sentimental, stubborn old colored man. But at last they offered him this pension, with the money. A pretty good income for life, and then if he dies it goes to my mother, plus enough cash for a house. So my mom worked on him too—and there you have the story of my folks, this sad little colored couple. My dad still thinks he made a big mistake—selling out, he calls it—and they argue. In their little vine-covered Connecticut cottage.”
“What a wonderful story!” Abby added, “They must be really pleased with you?”
“They’re not so pleased about me not going to med school.” Benny made a grimace that Abby remembered: his bad face. He added, “You know, to them a teacher isn’t much. They knew too many in the public schools. They don’t see much between that and a college professor, which is where I’ll probably end up.”
Abby had been intensely interested both in what Benny said, this good story about his parents, and in watching his face as he spoke. Despite the extreme good looks of this tall man that Benny had become, the boy that she once knew and had liked so much and felt so comfortable with—that boy seemed to emerge, and Abby began to feel some of the old ease and comfort, and the sheer pleasure of being with Benny. She was smiling as she asked him, “What turned you against med school, finally?”
“Oh, a lot of stuff, really. The time it would take, for one thing. Plus the money.”
“I’ve been sort of thinking about med school for myself,” Abby told him. Astounding! This was a distant, unfo
rmed plan that she had barely voiced to herself, and certainly not to any other person.
“I’m really impressed,” Benny told her, and then he smiled. “Think you can manage all those chem labs? You won’t mix up the compounds?”
They both laughed, remembering Mr. Martindale, their hated old chemistry teacher and their youthful trick.
Feeling so easy and familiar with him then, Abby was sorry that the Marcuses were getting back at any minute, that they were all to go out to dinner. With so many people, she and Benny wouldn’t get to talk much anymore. In a hurried way she asked him, “You never got around to seeing my friend Melanctha, did you?”
“No, actually I thought I’d call her next week. You know, after I’d seen you.”
“Well, there’s this problem. I mean, she’s not there anymore. Something terrible happened to her up there. She won’t even tell me, and then she came down and she went to a dance over in Hilton, and some old man was trying to talk to her, and then he had a heart attack, right there in the Deke House, and he died. I don’t know—” Abby paused for an instant as she wondered, Why am I going on like this to Benny, who’ll probably never even meet Melanctha? And then she answered her own question: I’m telling Benny (Benny? Or is it Ben these days?) because he’s so easy for me to talk to, he listens with his eyes.
And so she went on. “It’s alarming in Melanctha, because of her mother, SallyJane. She had these terrible depressions and they gave her shock treatment and it killed her.”
“Jesus.” Ben’s whole face was concentrated in distress as he listened.
“She was going to this terrible psychiatrist,” Abby continued. “A real dumb Southern jerk. My mother couldn’t stand him.” She added musingly, “I could be a psychiatrist, couldn’t I?”
