by Alice Adams
“And speaking of names, what Southern man in his right mind would name his little girl Melanctha? A colored girl in a book by a Jewish lesbian woman, I mean I’ve got nothing against anybody in any of those groups, I truly don’t. My Esther is Jewish, you know, and I think Melanctha is a lovely name, just the sound of it. But downright inconsiderate, for a child. The teasing she’s had to take. And then to name the baby that he had with Deirdre, to name her SallyJane, that just strikes me wrong, entirely wrong.”
Derek felt that this conversation had got out of hand somehow. Jimmy was going all over the place, was talking all around Russ instead of about him. Derek began to wonder if this drink was really Jimmy’s first of the day; could he also have had a couple with lunch?
Scents of April, of fresh earth and new flowers, and juts of clear blue air were wafting into the room, on a breeze that fluttered some white lace curtains at the windows. A breeze that reminded Derek of—of what? Of some other April, now long past? How sentimental, how out of character, for him. But there he was, plagued by some nameless nostalgia, like a silly popular song. Could he be remembering the April when he lived down here, for that one year and went to the local high school (his father, a professor of botany, was at the college in Pinehill to do work on local plants), and he used to look at that impossibly beautiful girl, that Deirdre Yates?
When Jimmy spoke again, after what Derek then realized had been a considerable pause, he sounded entirely sober. “Matter of fact, and this is one big reason for not going on with this silly Manhattan Project story—I’m worried as hell about that project. It’s got to be some explosive device, like a bomb. I read this story in one of the new science-fiction magazines, and those fellows had made a bomb to end all bombs, and of course once it was made they had to test it. And the next thing after a test is use, the way I see it. They’ll explode the goddam thing. But where?—and who’ll get hurt? That’s the stuff I worry about, don’t you?”
“Indeed,” said Derek, thinking that if Jimmy was a big enough fool to believe what he read in science fiction, well—hopeless. “I have great faith in the judgment of Mr. Truman,” he said, trying to concentrate—as his mind remained drenched with the April odors.
Not having thought in a clear way at all about what he would do on leaving Jimmy Hightower’s, it still seemed logical to Derek to head from there out to Deirdre’s house, down the hard white road between the towering full green pines. Arriving at Deirdre’s sprawling mess of a house (Russ had clearly not had an orderly mind), he parked in the gravelled area that was bordered with a heavy burgeoning growth of privet. No cars around, but so far that meant nothing. On the front porch (which was more than a little rickety, he noted in passing, needing a new rail, and the steps could use a little work), he rang the bell. And then, since no one came, and he heard no sounds, he knocked, lifting the heavy brass and dropping it, several times.
At last the door slowly opened, and there before him, in blue jeans that were unbecomingly rolled to the calfs, her hair tied up in a scarf—there stood not Deirdre but Melanctha, Russ’s crazy daughter, who according to Deirdre was nothing but trouble.
He said, “I’m Derek McFall, I’m a friend of your—of Deirdre’s.”
Christ, was she blushing? Why? She said, “I know, I think we met—in Hilton?”
Oh. Fucking dance, with Cynthia Baird. He said, “I’m writing a piece about your father, about Russ.” He forced a smile.
“Yes,” Melanctha said. “You were. Do you, uh, want to come in? Deirdre? I guess she’ll be back …”
The living room, where Derek had of course been before, with Deirdre, looked even shabbier than usual. Derek somehow remembered that Ursula, the regular housekeeper, had gone up to Norfolk to see a sailor son on leave, or something. There were a few stray new-looking pieces of floral chintz (Deirdre’s choice?) that jarred with the old, the worn Victorian antiques.
They talked about the weather, Melanctha and Derek, and agreed that April was one of the nicest months, and that this present April was especially beautiful.
“One April a long time ago it snowed,” Melanctha related. “On Easter. Everyone was amazed, and they couldn’t wear their new hats.”
“It snowed a lot in April in Vermont,” Derek told her. “It was great. Spring skiing!”
What had not been much of a conversation then languished.
It was hard not to stare at Melanctha’s breasts, Derek found. They were so very large, large but somehow not sexy. Perhaps it was because it was clear that she herself did not like them, even found them shameful. She sat hunched forward, her arms clutched across her chest. Her expression was anxious.
And then quite suddenly she said, “Did you know that Hitler was dead?”
“What?” There had been certain rumors for weeks, Hitler locked into his bunker, and so the statement was not entirely preposterous; still, Derek had almost laughed.
“In his bunker. He shot himself. First he poisoned that woman, Eva Braun. I think it said he married her. Anyway, they’re both dead.”
“Christ, it’s hard to believe.” This was all that Derek could think of to say for the moment. He wasn’t thinking of Hitler, really, or of Europe, the war. He was thinking of Deirdre, the bitch, who had gone off and left him at the mercy of this neurotic young girl.
Who now said to him, in a purposeful way, “Something I’ve wondered about, I hope you don’t mind my asking?” She hesitated, as though he could answer before she asked the goddam questions.
He gave her a large false smile. “Ask away,” he told her.
This girl had beautiful skin, he had to give her that: clear, of the palest peach, with a light, light flush of pink. Boys must long to reach and touch her cheeks, not to mention those massive but probably soft great breasts. Derek thought: Good Christ, I’m too young to be a dirty old man, aren’t I? He smiled again, more falsely. “Something you wanted to know about Hitler? I’m not really an expert. Just a working journalist.”
“Oh no, no.” She barely smiled. “About that colored man, the one who was with my father on the train.”
“Edward Faulkner, from Roxbury, Mass.”
She stared at him. “Yes. But I mean, whatever happened to him?”
“He was in jail, in that little town in Texas where the train was. I can’t remember its name. But it sounds like in that town the Negro population didn’t like the whites much, and they were more numerous. By far. The Negroes were. And so they just spirited this Ed Faulkner right out of there.”
“But then what happened to him? Doesn’t anyone know?”
Derek frowned; he was not a man who liked to say that he didn’t know. Instead he took another tack. “I wouldn’t worry about him not getting caught and punished eventually if I were you. Even if they’re not entirely sure what, if anything, he did. They’re bound to catch up with him. Lucky he’d been discharged, though, so it’s not an Army case.”
To Derek’s astonishment, this crazy girl’s eyes filled with tears; she looked terrified and not at all relieved in the way that he had expected to relieve her. To further reassure her he continued, in a gently authoritative voice, “He’d never come up here, I think you can be certain of that. That’s something you must not worry about.”
Melanctha’s face contorted, her eyes began to overflow, and she seemed to choke, to find speech impossible. Then whirling back from him she tore into the depths of the house, and he heard her feet pounding up the stairs.
Leaving him standing there by himself, like a fool, in the April sunlight.
16
THE summer that everything happened, 1945, in Europe and Japan, Abigail spent in Pinehill with her mother. Thus, the two women sometimes celebrated and sometimes reeled from international events, but in truth both paid more attention to certain private concerns, connected to the very important men in both their lives: Harry Baird and Joseph Marcus, Ed Faulkner and Benny Davis, and Derek McFall. In more or less that order.
So much went on, in fact
, that almost no one noticed the weather, which was remarkably fine, though very little time was spent in talk about it. Lovely soft days followed one another, broken by an occasional and very gentle afternoon of rain, just enough to keep all the flowers beautifully blooming. In the town there were ravishing roses everywhere, climbing on arbors and fences, or else low-lying, in bountiful bushes, in every variety of color and fragrance. White or lavender wisteria grew and thrived and blossomed all over town—and out in the woods, for the most part unseen, the loveliest dogwood flowered, amid secret gigantic rhododendron clusters, near the sweet-smelling caves of honeysuckle vines.
Cynthia had not heard from Harry for—it cannot have been more than a couple of weeks, but it seemed forever. And how she missed those jaunty, funny, often sexy letters—how she missed Harry, she now thought. Terrible song lines ran through her mind: “I’ll never smile again, Until I smile at you—” in Frank Sinatra’s heartbroken sentimental sexy voice. Or even, “This love of mine—”
She thought that Harry could have been killed, so easily, in a raid. And not “identified” yet. Or (and she had to admit that this seemed almost worse) he was off somewhere with some English girl, or not a “girl” but a bona-fide lady, maybe; Harry had always been something of a snob, she reminded herself. Or maybe just someone very young, who thought of him as a glamorous foreign hero.
She began to go through his letters, as though there might be a clue—although he would not be likely to mention a woman who had caught his fancy. Whom he fancied: was that what the English said?
“Raid … shelter … rations … proper tea … the ancient spires … raid … noise … scared shitless … I miss you! … our boys … I can’t tell you … off to the country for the weekend … Devon, beautiful country … how are you, really? We must talk … direct hit …”
Bits and pieces of Harry. Cynthia thought that phrase, and then she thought, Oh God, suppose that was literally true? Suppose she was sent a box, bits and pieces of Harry?
Was she going crazy? These were ghastly, impossible, unthinkable thoughts, and yet she continued to think them.
In a magazine that she found in the beauty parlor, Cynthia read a story about a war-widowed woman, coincidentally a green-eyed blonde, who found comfort and happiness at last, at the end of the story, which seemed long—with a much younger man, a student who had been too young for the war. In law school, Cynthia wondered, how old would most of the other students be? And then she chastised herself: how could she? Although of course she could, and in the horrible, hideous event that Harry should be killed, after proper mourning she should pull herself together, see that she was still attractive, and look toward other men. Certainly not Derek, and probably her fellow law students would indeed be too young, but someone would be around, probably.
In another issue of the same magazine, in the same beauty parlor (Cynthia was a once-a-week regular), she read an article about husbands coming home. Women must not necessarily expect things to be all perfect all at once, she was cautioned; various readjustments were highly possible—were liable to occur. Wives must be understanding, non-demanding, calm and patient, and loving. It was even possible, the article then seemed to whisper, that problems of a sexual nature could arise. And although this was not funny, certainly not, Cynthia felt an inward smile at all this—maybe a smug smile, as she thought of Harry, of the easy and reliable happiness of their sexual life.
But: on still another day, Cynthia checked more carefully on the dates of the letters, and she clearly saw that she had not had a letter from Harry in twenty-four days, exactly. Which was not “a couple of weeks,” it was more like three. This was ominous, any way you looked at it.
Abigail, who had said she was coming down in early June, called to say that she and Joseph had been offered a cabin on a lake in Maine—Sebago Lake, just north of Portland—and would Cynthia mind very much if she came in a couple of weeks? Oh, and would it be all right if Joseph came down too, for a week or so?
Neither of these plans was entirely “all right” with Cynthia; in fact, she experienced an acute pang of disappointment at the news that she would not, after all, have Abby to herself for the time that she had envisioned, and the pang was more painful since she felt it to be inadmissible, wrong: she had no right to be a demanding, possessive, and thus guilt-engendering mother.
And so she told Abigail that that was okay, fine; she would look forward to seeing Abby—and Joseph—in a couple of weeks. Enjoy Maine.
And in the meantime she kept busy gardening, doing extra cleaning and polishing in the house. She told Odessa to go up to Greensboro and stay for a while with her sister; Odessa loved this sister, and the bus trip was only a couple of hours.
Squatting in the pansy bed, trying to make sure which small green sprouts were weeds, and not the sweet William, before she pulled them, Cynthia thought that the worst mothers—and, come to think of it, the worst wives too—are the “hurt” ones. She was not sure how she had come by this piece of wisdom; she had never been accusing in that way with Harry or with Abigail—well, neither of them had ever really hurt her. So far.
Perhaps this knowledge came with some current intimation from them both: why did Abby want to go off to Maine with Joseph and then to bring him home when she came? Well, she thought she could answer both of those questions. But why hadn’t she heard from Harry?
She did not know.
She missed Odessa a lot; Cynthia recognized this fact with a little surprise, but then she thought, Of course I miss Odessa. It was not that they talked a great deal in an intimate way, which they did not, but Cynthia was used to the warm human presence of Odessa, to the small sounds she made as she moved about the house, or the garden (Odessa made an almost humming sound, very soft, with no particular tune), and the clean, fresh, slightly sweet smell of Odessa. And actually she did depend on Odessa for certain crucial advice, relating usually to what to wear, what color with what. “Do you think, Odessa, with this dark green skirt, the pink silk shirt would be good?” “Well, you could do that, ma’am, but seems to me like that navy-blue silk shirt be better, but I don’t know.” She did know, though; the navy and green were elegant together. Odessa was a genius at color, Cynthia thought. She wished she could somehow tell Odessa not to call her “ma’am,” but that seemed not the thing to do. She worried that Odessa wasn’t doing any more sewing these days, what with wartime fabric shortages. Well, after the war. But what would she wear for Harry when he came home? Which most of the time she was quite sure that he would, maybe someday soon.
She was actually out in the pansy bed again when the phone rang and she ran in, out of breath, to hear Harry say, “Baby, guess where I am? Well, almost next door. I just flew in to D.C. and there’s an Army transport plane going down to Durham—Camp Buttner, I guess—in half an hour. Can you meet me at four-twenty-three?” He laughed. “Give or take a few minutes.”
After two years’ absence, she is supposed to meet him in a couple of hours? Cynthia gasped, “But, Harry, I can hardly—”
“Christ, Cynthia. Pull yourself together. I’m tired.” He added, “I want to see you,” almost angrily.
At least I’m clean; that was one of Cynthia’s ludicrous thoughts as she drove toward Durham, and tried not to think of what she had left undone. Well, the bed like herself was clean, she had just had time to change the sheets; she had meant but forgotten to take a steak from the freezer; had not had time to do her nails or iron a nightgown; she had fortunately bought salad things and a cake from the curb market yesterday.
It was probably about midnight when Harry said, his voice a little too loud in the dark, silent room, “I’m sorry, I guess I’m a little out of practice.”
“Oh, so’m I!” Cynthia fervently lied. “But the great thing is, you’re home! We have all this time.”
Lowering his voice, Harry muttered, “I guess I’m tired.”
“Oh, darling, of course you are. There, just go to sleep. Harry—darling.”
The
next day Harry spent mostly in his study, and Cynthia stayed in the garden, working on weeds and improving her tan, and trying to recall and to adjust to various magazine prescriptions: patience, kindness and affection, understanding. Those were the words that she remembered, and surely she could—? But, a small inner voice insisted, what about her own purely sensual feelings, her disappointed arousal? There was, she supposed, an obvious answer to that one, but she had never done that before, that “forbidden solitary vice,” as she thought the sex books from her girlhood termed it. It seemed an odd time to start.
In any case, why should just one night be so worrying? They would have hundreds—thousands, even—of nights to make up for lost time. (But why was that thought so discouraging?)
The next night was not much better.
Nor was the next. It could be said that Harry was able to perform, but Cynthia was not, and even under these special circumstances she did not want to lie, to fake it.
Of course all over town there were welcoming parties: Harry was home—and the war in Europe was over.
“Harry Baird, if you’re not a sight for sore eyes! You’re just the handsomest thing! now isn’t he, Cynthia? And you’re looking mighty pretty yourself, Miss Cynthia—sure does perk up a lady when her lord and master comes home to roost, now doesn’t it though? Harry, we want to hear every single thing about your time in London. With all those bombs, weren’t you scared, not one little bit? And isn’t Cynthia looking just as pretty as a picture? You-all must be celebrating up a storm. No, no one would blame you if you left this party real early, you must want to get home to your bed. Well, pardon me for saying it. I just meant they must need some sleep.”
