The Stories of Alice Adams

by Alice Adams

  Did Pauline once love her father? Did they have an affair, back in the forties? This thought, or question, has been slowly forming in Nell’s mind. Nell’s mother and her friends talk a lot about people having affairs, which Nell takes to mean making out with someone you’re not married to. She is very interested, although she herself has so far only observed other kids at parties smoking grass, making out.

  And she of course enjoys being talked to by adults, but only up to a point. She does not like it—is in fact frightened—when voices begin to slur, when eyes grow vague and at the same time wild. She now with alarm observes the onset of these symptoms in Pauline, as Pauline says, staring at Nell too intently, “If I could only get thin again, then I could work. It’s all this fat that holds me.”

  Nell can no more imagine being fat than she can being dead, and she has only the vaguest ideas about work. But she has, still, a strong sense that Pauline even semi-drunk is someone to whom she should pay attention.

  Pauline says, “The really important thing is never to marry.”

  Well, Nell had decided that for herself already, years ago.

  Just then a dark man whom Nell has not much noticed before comes into the room, and Pauline embraces him in a way that Nell has seen before: grown-ups in a kitchen (usually) lurching at each other.

  Pauline croons, “Ah, my long-lost love, why couldn’t everything last?”

  There are tears in her manic eyes that to Nell look real, but the man seems not to take them seriously. He pats her shoulder in a dismissing way; he even says, “There,” and he goes back out, looking embarrassed.

  Pauline gives Nell a sober, calculating look of complicity; was she then pretending with that man to be drunk, or much drunker than she is, in order to make fun of him? What will she do next? Nell fully believes in Pauline’s desperation.

  Now Pauline goes over to the oven, and efficiently (undrunkenly) with asbestos gloves she removes a huge steaming garlic-smelling casserole. This and the salad and the napkin-wrapped silver are placed on a wire-wheeled cart, and propelled into the living room. Nell follows at a little distance in her wake.

  People line up and help themselves. Not sure what to do, or where to be, Nell is surprised to see her father coming toward her, carrying two full plates, saying, “Come on, let’s go over there.”

  And then, when they are seated, in a tone unusual for him, with her, he says, “I hope this isn’t too bad a party for you? I didn’t know there’d be so many people. And somehow I wanted you to meet Pauline. Anyway, sometimes it’s easier to talk in the middle of a crowd, have you noticed that yet? And we haven’t had much of a chance to talk, have we? Have I seemed preoccupied? The thing is—please, you won’t mention this to anyone? I’m sure you won’t. I wanted to tell you—”

  Nell is to find that life often provides too much at once: just as her heart jumps with pleasure at her father’s telling her something important, in confidence—just at that crucial moment they both hear Pauline shouting from across the room; they see Pauline wildly waving her arms—Pauline making a scene. “Well, goodbye, one and all. I’m off for a walk. Don’t eat and run—I’ll be gone for hours. Unless—would anyone like to come along?” There is a terrible pause, especially terrible for Nell, who believes that the invitation, or summons, was for her—who is frozen in her corner. “Well, then, O.K. Sorry I asked.” A door is slammed, and Pauline is gone.

  Nell looks at her father, and she sees her own feelings apparent on his face, written across his features so similar to her own: Jason looks stricken, deeply shocked, as she is. And Nell is aware of real panic: a friend of her mother’s, a woman writer who often drank too much, committed suicide at last. What will happen to Pauline? Will she plunge drunkenly into that cold bleak ocean, that terrible Pacific?

  She looks questioningly at her father, who only says, “Well,” in an exhausted way.

  Unable not to, Nell asks him, “You wanted to tell me—”

  He looks at her forgetfully. “Oh, just a novel. I’ve begun one.”

  Naturally enough, people do eat and run. In a flustered way Stephen serves coffee, which everyone seems to gulp, and then there is a general movement toward cars.

  The drive home, to Nell, does not seem dangerous; she trusts her father’s skill at the wheel. And the scenery is extraordinary: once they have left the beach, and the now golden glimpses of the sea, they climb steeply into what could be a rain forest, dense variegated vegetation, trees, giant ferns—into what must have been the view from Pauline’s kitchen, and Nell remembers what Pauline said about its being a country for mountain lions. It smells of bay leaves.

  Her stepmother is talking about Pauline. “Well, I never saw drink hit her quite like that. She has put on weight, hasn’t she? Anyway, she always manages to put out a great lunch. Although I could have done without all those bits of seafood in the salad. I wonder why she ever married Stephen. She seems to fall in love with giants and marry pygmies. What do you suppose struck her, finally? Three ex-lovers all suddenly at the same party?”

  Nell finds all this vaguely disturbing, less vaguely unpleasant. She is still worried about Pauline; why is no one else worried?

  Her father makes a sound that for him is completely in character, that is brief and impossible to read. And Nell is suddenly aware of a rush of the most intense and private love for him.

  A month or so later Nell and her mother are sitting on the beach—Crane’s Beach, at Ipswich. A perfect beach, of fine white silk sand that squeaks underfoot. Dunes, grass. And a perfect hot still day. From time to time Nell has been thinking of Pauline. (She has gathered that nothing horrible happened to her; someone would have said.) Now she wonders if this was the way Pauline thought a beach should be, and that summers should produce this sort of day? Yes, probably, she decides, and then she experiences again a tiny pang of guilt-regret at not having gone for that walk with Pauline, Pauline leaving her own party, so furiously. Although, of course, it was impossible at the time; she was talking to her father.

  These days Nell’s mother is extremely happy, almost giddily so: a man she knows, in fact an old family friend, is getting a divorce, and he and Nell’s mother are going to get married. He works for a firm that is moving to Houston, and that is where they will all live. Houston, Texas. “We can take wonderful trips to Mexico, and New Orleans,” her mother has said, with her new young laugh. Nell wonders about parties in Houston, and what will happen to her there.

  The sea is very calm today; the barest waves, translucent, lap the sand, where at the edge, on their crazy useless-looking legs, the sandpipers skitter past. And overhead white gulls wheel and dip, as though drunk with sunlight. Pauline would love it here, is what at that moment Nell thinks. She is also thinking that there are only about four more months until Christmas, which is when she can go to visit her father again. It has been agreed that she can now go more often.

  Her mother, reading letters beside Nell on the sand, suddenly laughs. Nell has seen that this one is from her father, whose letters to his former wife do not usually make her laugh. “Well,” her mother says, “everyone seems to be breaking up these days.” (Does she mean Nell’s father? Will she have a new stepmother? This quick notion is enough to make Nell queasy for an instant as her mother reads on.) “You met Pauline Field, didn’t you, darling? Well, she’s up and left poor old Stephen, and she’s gone off to San Miguel de Allende, to study painting there.”

  Nell makes an ambiguous noise, not unlike her father’s noncommittal sound. Then she asks, “That’s probably good for her to do, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose. She was quite terrific, in her way.” Nell’s mother adds, “I never understood that marriage to Stephen. Or any of her marriages, for that matter.”

  Nell says what she has not said before: “She was sort of upset at her party that we went to. She said”—they both know that this “she” refers to Nell’s stepmother—“something about three ex-lovers at the same party. Can a husband be counted as an ex-love
r?”

  Her mother laughs a lot. “Darling, what a marvelous question. Well, actually one of them would of course have been Jason. They had a tremendous love affair, just before me. Sometimes I thought he’d never get over it, and I used to wish he’d married her. Instead of me. Maybe he would have gone on writing, or at least got her out of his system.”

  Digesting this news, which is not news at all, but something deeply known or felt before, Nell experiences a kind of gladness. Things seem to fit, or to have sorted themselves out, after all.

  And, later still, although she has been told that San Miguel is in the middle of Mexico, nowhere near the coast, and although she has not been told that her father and stepmother are separating, what she imagines is—Jason and Pauline (a Pauline brown and thin, renewed) on a bright hot windless tropical beach. For good.

  Snow

  On a trail high up in the California Sierra, between heavy smooth white snowbanks, four people on cross-country skis form a straggling line. A man and three women: Graham, dark and good-looking, a San Francisco architect, who is originally from Georgia; Carol, his girlfriend, a gray-eyed blonde, a florist; Susannah, daughter of Graham, dark and fat and now living in Venice, California; and, quite a way behind Susannah, tall thin Rose, Susannah’s friend and lover. Susannah and Rose both have film-related jobs—Graham has never been quite sure what they do.

  Graham and Carol both wear smart cross-country outfits: knickers and Norwegian wool stockings. The younger women are in jeans and heavy sweaters. And actually, despite the bright cold look of so much snow, this April day is warm, and the sky is a lovely spring blue, reflected in distant small lakes, just visible, at intervals.

  Graham is by far the best skier of the four, a natural; he does anything athletic easily. He strides and glides along, hardly aware of what he is doing, except for a sense of physical well-being. However, just now he is cursing himself for having dreamed up this weekend, renting an unknown house in Alpine Meadows, near Lake Tahoe, even for bringing these women together. He had hoped for a diversion from a situation that could be tricky, difficult: a visit from Susannah, who was bringing Rose, whom he had previously been told about but had not met. Well, skiing was a diversion, but what in God’s name would they all do tonight? Or talk about? And why had he wanted to get them together anyway? He wasn’t all that serious about Carol (was he?); why introduce her to his daughter? And why did he have to meet Rose?

  Carol is a fair skier, although she doesn’t like it much: it takes all her breath. At the moment, with the part of her mind that is not concentrated on skiing, she is thinking that although Graham is smarter than most of the men she knows, talented and successful, and really nice as well, she is tired of going out with men who don’t see her, don’t know who she is. That’s partly her fault, she knows; she lies about her age and dyes her hair, and she never mentions the daughter in Vallejo, put out for adoption when Carol was fifteen (she would be almost twenty now, almost as old as Graham’s girl, this unfriendly fat Susannah). But sometimes Carol would like to say to the men she knows, Look, I’m thirty-five, and in some ways my life has been terrible—being blond and pretty doesn’t save you from anything.

  But, being more fair-minded than given to self-pity, next Carol thinks, Well, as far as that goes Graham didn’t tell me much about his girl, either, and for all I know mine is that way, too. So many of them are, these days.

  How can he possibly be so dumb, Susannah is passionately thinking, of her father. And the fact that she has asked that question hundreds of times in her life does not diminish its intensity or the accompanying pain. He doesn’t understand anything, she wildly, silently screams. Stupid, straight blondes: a florist. Skiing. How could he think that I … that Rose …?

  Then, thinking of Rose in a more immediate way, she remembers that Rose has hardly skied before—just a couple of times in Vermont, where she comes from. In the almost noon sun Susannah stops to wait for Rose, halfheartedly aware of the lakes, just now in view, and the smell of pines, as sweat collects under her heavy breasts, slides down her ribs.

  Far behind them all, and terrified of everything, Rose moves along with stiffened desperation. Her ankles, her calves, her thighs, her lower back are all tight with dread. Snow is stuck to the bottoms of her skis, she knows—she can hardly move them—but she doesn’t dare stop. She will fall, break something, get lost. And everyone will hate her, even Susannah.

  Suddenly, like a gift to a man in his time of need, just ahead of Graham there appears a lovely open glade, to one side of the trail. Two huge heavy trees have fallen there, at right angles to each other; at the far side of the open space runs a brook, darkly glistening over small smooth rocks. High overhead a wind sings through the pines, in the brilliant sunlight.

  It is perfect, a perfect picnic place, and it is just now time for lunch. Graham is hungry; he decides that hunger is what has been unsettling him. He gets out of his skis in an instant, and he has just found a smooth, level stump for the knapsack, a natural table, when Carol skis up—out of breath, not looking happy.

  But at the sight of that place she instantly smiles. She says, “Oh, how perfect! Graham, it’s beautiful.” Her gray eyes praise him, and the warmth of her voice. “Even benches to sit on. Graham, what a perfect Southern host you are.” She laughs in a pleased, cheered-up way, and bends to unclip her skis. But something is wrong, and they stick. Graham comes over to help. He gets her out easily; he takes her hand and lightly he kisses her mouth, and then they both go over and start removing food from the knapsack, spreading it out.

  “Two bottles of wine. Lord, we’ll all get plastered.” Carol laughs again, as she sets up the tall green bottles in a deep patch of snow.

  Graham laughs, too, just then very happy with her, although he is also feeling the familiar apprehension that any approach of his daughter brings on: will Susannah like what he has done, will she approve of him, ever? He looks at his watch and he says to Carol, “I wonder if they’re okay. Rose is pretty new on skis. I wonder …”

  But there they are, Susannah and Rose. They have both taken off their skis and are walking along the side of the trail, carrying the skis on their shoulders, Susannah’s neatly together, Rose’s at a clumsy, difficult angle. There are snowflakes in Susannah’s dark-brown hair—hair like Graham’s. Rose’s hair is light, dirty blond; she is not even pretty, Graham has unkindly thought. At the moment they both look exhausted and miserable.

  In a slow, tired way, not speaking, the two girls lean their skis and poles against a tree; they turn toward Graham and Carol, and then, seemingly on a single impulse, they stop and look around. And with a wide smile Susannah says, “Christ, Dad, it’s just beautiful. It’s great.”

  Rose looks toward the spread of food. “Oh, roast chicken. That’s my favorite thing.” These are the first nice words she has said to Graham. (Good manners are not a strong suit of Rose’s, he has observed, in an interior, Southern voice.)

  He has indeed provided a superior lunch, as well as the lovely place—his discovery. Besides the chicken, there are cherry tomatoes (called love apples where Graham comes from, in Georgia), cheese (Jack and cheddar), Triscuits and oranges and chocolate. And the nice cold dry white wine. They all eat and drink a lot, and they talk eagerly about how good it all is, how beautiful the place where they are. The sky, the trees, the running brook.

  Susannah even asks Carol about her work, in a polite, interested way that Graham has not heard from her for years. “Do you have to get up early and go to the flower mart every morning?” Susannah asks.

  “No, but I used to, and really that was more fun—getting out so early, all those nice fresh smells. Now there’s a boy I hire to do all that, and I’m pretty busy making arrangements.”

  “Oh, arrangements,” says Rose, disparagingly.

  Carol laughs. “Me, too, I hate them. I just try to make them as nice as I can, and the money I get is really good.”

  Both Rose and Susannah regard Carol in an agreeing, res
pectful way. For a moment Graham is surprised: these kids respecting money? Then he remembers that this is the seventies: women are supposed to earn money, it’s good for them.

  The main thing, though, is what a good time they all have together. Graham even finds Rose looking at him with a small, shy smile. He offers her more wine, which she accepts—another smile as he pours it out for her. And he thinks, Well, of course it’s tough on her, too, meeting me. Poor girl, I’m sure she’s doing the best she can.

  “You all really like it down there in Hollywood?” he asks the two girls, and he notes that his voice is much more Southern than usual; maybe the wine.

  “Universal City,” Susannah corrects him, but she gives a serious answer. “I love it. There’s this neat woman in the cutting room, and she knows I’m interested, so she lets me come in and look at the rushes, and hear them talk about what has to go. I’m really learning. It’s great.”

  And Rose: “There’s so many really exciting people around.”

  At that moment they both look so young, so enviably involved in their work, so happy, that Graham thinks, Well, really, why not?

  Occasionally the wind will move a branch from a nearby tree and some snow will sift down, through sunlight. The sky seems a deeper blue than when they first came to this glade, a pure azure. The brook gurgles more loudly, and the sun is very hot.

  And then they are all through with lunch; they have finished off the wine, and it is time to go.

  They put on their skis, and they set off again, in the same order in which they began the day.

  For no good reason, as he glides along, striding through snow in the early California afternoon, the heat, Graham is suddenly, sharply visited by a painful memory of the childhood of Susannah. He remembers a ferociously hot summer night in Atlanta, when he and his former wife, mother of Susannah, had quarreled all through suppertime, and had finally got Susannah off to bed; she must have been about two. But she kept getting up again, screaming for her bottle, her Teddy bear, a sandwich. Her mother and Graham took turns going in to her, and then finally, about three in the morning, Graham picked her up and smacked her bottom, very hard; he can remember the sting on his hand—and good Christ, what a thing to do to a little baby. No wonder she is as she is; he probably frightened her right then, for good. Not to mention all the other times he got mad and just yelled at her—or his love affairs, the move to San Francisco, the divorce, more love affairs.