The Stories of Alice Adams

by Alice Adams

  If only she were two right now, he desperately thinks, he could change everything; he could give her a stable, loving father. Now he has a nice house on Russian Hill; he is a successful man; he could give her—anything.

  Then his mind painfully reverses itself and he thinks, But I was a loving father, most of the time. Susannah’s got no real cause to be the way she is. Lots of girls—most girls—come out all right. At that overheated moment he feels that his heart will truly break. It is more than I can stand, he thinks; why do I have to?

  Carol’s problem is simply a physical one: a headache. But she never has headaches, and this one is especially severe; for the first time she knows exactly what her mother meant by “splitting headache.” Is she going to get more and more like her mother as she herself ages? Could she be having an early menopause, beginning with migraines? She could die, the pain is so sharp. She could die, and would anyone care much, really? She’s lonely.

  Susannah is absorbed in the problem of Rose, who keeps falling down. Almost every time Susannah looks back, there is Rose, fallen in the snow. Susannah smiles at her encouragingly, and sometimes she calls back, “You’re okay?” She knows that Rose would not like it if she actually skied back to her and helped her up; Rose has that ferocious Vermont Yankee pride, difficult in a fragile frightened woman.

  It is breezier now than earlier in the morning, and somewhat cooler. Whenever Susannah stops, stands still and waits for Rose, she is aware of her own wind-chilled sweat, and she worries, thinking of Rose, of wet and cold. Last winter Rose had a terrible, prolonged bout of flu, a racking cough.

  Talking over their “relationship,” at times Susannah and Rose have (somewhat jokingly) concluded that there certainly are elements of mothering within it; in many ways Susannah takes care of Rose. She is stronger—that is simply true. Now for the first time it occurs to Susannah (wryly, her style is wry) that she is somewhat fatherly with Rose, too: the sometimes stern guardian, the protector. And she thinks, Actually, Graham wasn’t all that bad with me; I’ve been rough on him. Look at the example he set me: I work hard, and I care about my work, the way he does. And he taught me to ski, come to think of it. I should thank him, sometime, somehow, for some of it.

  Rose is falling, falling, again and again, and oh Christ, how much she hates it—hates her helplessness, hates the horrible snow, the cold wet. Drinking all that wine at lunchtime, in the pretty glade, the sunlight, she had thought that wine would make her brave; she knows her main problem to be fear—no confidence and hence no balance. But the wine, and the sun, and sheer fatigue have destroyed whatever equilibrium she had, so that all she can do is fall, fall miserably, and each time the snow is colder and it is harder for her to get up.

  Therefore, they are all extremely glad when, finally, they are out of their skis and off the trail and at last back in their house, in Alpine Meadows. It is small—two tiny, juxtaposed bedrooms—but the living room is pleasant: it looks out to steeply wooded, snowy slopes. Even more pleasant at the moment is the fact that the hot-water supply is vast; there is enough for deep baths for everyone, and then they will all have much-needed before-dinner naps.

  Carol gets the first bath, and then, in turn, the two younger women. Graham last. All three women have left a tidy room, a clean tub, he happily notices, and the steamy air smells vaguely sweet, of something perfumed, feminine. Luxuriating in his own full, hot tub, he thinks tenderly, in a general way, of women, how warm and sexual they are, more often than not, how frequently intelligent and kind. And then he wonders what he has not quite, ever, put into words before: what is it that women do, women together? What ever could they do that they couldn’t do with men, and why?

  However, these questions are much less urgent and less painful than most of his musings along those lines; he simply wonders.

  In their bedroom, disappointingly, Carol is already fast asleep. He has not seen her actually sleeping before; she is always first awake when he stays over at her place. Now she looks so drained, so entirely exhausted, with one hand protectively across her eyes, that he is touched. Carefully, so as not to wake her, he slips in beside her, and in minutes he, too, is sound asleep.

  Graham has planned and shopped for their dinner, which he intends to cook. He likes to cook, and does it well, but in his bachelor life he has done it less and less, perhaps because he and most of the women he meets tend to shy off from such domestic encounters. Somehow the implication of cooking for anyone has become alarming, more so than making love to them. But tonight Graham happily prepares to make pork chops with milk gravy and mashed potatoes, green peas, an apple-and-nut salad and cherry pie (from a bakery, to be heated). A down-home meal, for his girlfriend, and his daughter, and her friend.

  From the kitchen, which is at one end of the living room, he can hear the pleasant sounds of the three women’s voices, in amiable conversation, as he blends butter and flour in the pan in which he has browned the chops, and begins to add hot milk. And then he notices a change in the tone of those voices: what was gentle and soft has gone shrill, strident—the sounds of a quarrel. He hates the thought of women fighting; it is almost frightening, and, of course, he is anxious for this particular group to get along, if only for the weekend.

  He had meant, at just that moment, to go in and see if anyone wanted another glass of wine; dinner is almost ready. And so, reluctantly he does; he gets into the living room just in time to hear Rose say, in a shakily loud voice, “No one who hasn’t actually experienced rape can have the least idea what it’s like.”

  Such a desperately serious sentence could have sounded ludicrous, but it does not. Graham is horrified; he thinks, Ah, poor girl, poor Rose. Jesus, raped. It is a crime that he absolutely cannot imagine.

  In a calm, conciliatory way, Susannah says to Carol, “You see, Rose actually was raped, when she was very young, and it was terrible for her—”

  Surprisingly, Carol reacts almost with anger. “Of course it’s terrible, but you kids think you’re the only ones things happen to. I got pregnant when I was fifteen, and I had it, a girl, and I put her out for adoption.” Seeming to have just now noticed Graham, she addresses him in a low, defiant, scolding voice. “And I’m not thirty. I’m thirty-five.”

  Graham has no idea, really, of what to do, but he is aware of strong feelings that lead him to Carol. He goes over and puts his arms around her. Behind him he hears the gentle voice of Susannah, who is saying, “Oh Carol, that’s terrible. God, that’s awful.”

  Carol’s large eyes are teary, but in a friendly way she disengages herself from Graham; she even smiles as she says, “Well, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. But you see? You really can’t tell what’s happened to anyone.”

  And Susannah: “Oh, you’re right, of course you are.…”

  And Rose: “It’s true, we do get arrogant.…”

  Graham says that he thinks they should eat. The food is hot; they must be hungry. He brings the dinner to them at the table, and he serves out hot food onto the heated plates.

  Carol and Rose are talking about the towns they came from: Vallejo, California, and Manchester, Vermont.

  “It’s thirty miles from San Francisco,” Carol says. “And that’s all we talked about. The City. How to get there, and what was going on there. Vallejo was just a place we ignored, dirt under our feet.”

  “All the kids in Manchester wanted to make it to New York,” Rose says. “All but me, and I was fixated on Cambridge. Not getting into Radcliffe was terrible for me—it’s why I never went to college at all.”

  “I didn’t either,” Carol says, with a slight irony that Graham thinks may have been lost on Rose: Carol would not have expected to go to college, probably—it wasn’t what high-school kids from Vallejo did. But how does he know this?

  “I went to work instead,” says Rose, a little priggishly (thinks Graham).

  “Me too,” Carol says, with a small laugh.

  Susannah breaks in. “Dad, this is absolutely the greatest dinner
. You’re still the best cook I know. It’s good I don’t have your dinners more often.”

  “I’m glad you like it. I haven’t cooked a lot lately.”

  And Rose, and Carol: “It’s super. It’s great.”

  Warmed by praise, and just then wanting to be nice to Rose (partly because he has to admit to himself that he doesn’t much like her), Graham says to her, “Cambridge was where I wanted to go to school, too. The Harvard School of Design. Chicago seemed second-best. But I guess it’s all worked out.”

  “I guess.” Rose smiles.

  She looks almost pretty at that moment, but not quite; looking at her, Graham thinks again, If it had to be another girl, why her? But he knows this to be unfair, and, as far as that goes, why anyone for anyone, when you come to think of it? Any pairing is basically mysterious.

  Partly as a diversion from such unsettling thoughts, and also from real curiosity, he asks Carol, “But was it worth it when you got to the city?”

  She laughs, in her low, self-depreciating way. “Oh, I thought so. I really liked it. My first job was with a florist on Union Street. It was nice there then, before it got all junked up with body shops and stuff. I had a good time.”

  Some memory of that era has put a younger, musing look on Carol’s face, and Graham wonders if she is thinking of a love affair; jealously he wonders, Who? Who did you know, back then?

  “I was working for this really nice older man,” says Carol, in a higher than usual voice (as Graham thinks, Ah). “He taught me all he could. I was pretty dumb, at first. About marketing, arranging, keeping stuff fresh, all that. He lived by himself. A lonely person, I guess. He was—uh—gay, and then he died, and it turned out he’d left the store to me.” For the second time that night tears have come to her eyes. “I was so touched, and it was too late to thank him, or anything.” Then, the tears gone, her voice returns to its usual depth as she sums it up, “Well, that’s how I got my start in the business world.”

  These sudden shifts in mood, along with her absolute refusal to see herself as an object of pity, are strongly, newly attractive to Graham; he has the sense of being with an unknown, exciting woman.

  And then, in a quick, clairvoyant way, he gets a picture of Carol as a twenty-year-old girl, new in town: tall and a little awkward, working in the florist shop and worrying about her hands, her fingers scratched up from stems and wires; worrying about her darkening blond hair and then, deciding, what the hell, better dye it; worrying about money, and men, and her parents back in Vallejo—and should she have put the baby out for adoption? He feels an unfamiliar tenderness for this new Carol.

  “You guys are making me feel very boring,” says Susannah. “I always wanted to go to Berkeley, and I did, and I wanted to go to L.A. and work in films.”

  “I think you’re just more direct,” amends Rose, affectionate admiration in her voice, and in her eyes. “You just know what you’re doing. I fall into things.”

  Susannah laughs. “Well, you do all right, you’ve got to admit.” And, to Graham and Carol: “She’s only moved up twice since January. At this rate she’ll be casting something in August.”

  What Graham had earlier named discomfort he now recognizes as envy: Susannah is closer to Rose than she is to him; they are closer to each other than he is to anyone. He says, “Well, Rose, that’s really swell. That’s swell.”

  Carol glances at Graham for an instant before she says, “Well, I’ll bet your father didn’t even tell you about his most recent prize.” And she tells them about an award from the A.I.A., which Graham had indeed not mentioned to Susannah, but which had pleased him at the time of its announcement (immoderately, he told himself).

  And now Susannah and Rose join Carol in congratulations, saying how terrific, really great.

  • • •

  Dinner is over, and in a rather disorganized way they all clear the table and load the dishwasher.

  They go into the living room, where Graham lights the fire, and the three women sit down—or, rather, sprawl—Rose and Susannah at either end of the sofa, Carol in an easy chair. For dinner Carol put on velvet pants and a red silk shirt. In the bright hot firelight her gray eyes shine, and the fine line under her chin, that first age line, is just barely visible. She is very beautiful at that moment—probably more so now than she was fifteen years ago, Graham decides.

  Susannah, in clean, faded, too tight Levi’s, stretches her legs out stiffly before her. “Oh, I’m really going to feel that skiing in the morning!”

  And Carol: “Me too. I haven’t had that much exercise forever.”

  Rose says, “If I could just not fall.”

  “Oh, you won’t; tomorrow you’ll see. Tomorrow …” says everyone.

  They are all exhausted. Silly to stay up late. And so as the fire dies down, Graham covers it and they all four go off to bed, in the two separate rooms.

  Outside a strong wind has come up, creaking the walls and rattling windowpanes.

  In the middle of the night, in what has become a storm—lashing snow and violent wind—Rose wakes up, terrified. From the depths of bad dreams, she has no idea where she is, what time it is, what day. With whom she is. She struggles for clues, her wide eyes scouring the dark, her tentative hands reaching out, encountering Susannah’s familiar, fleshy back. Everything comes into focus for her; she knows where she is. She breathes out softly, “Oh, thank God it’s you,” moving closer to her friend.

  Greyhound People

  As soon as I got on the bus, in the Greyhound station in Sacramento, I had a frightened sense of being in the wrong place. I had asked several people in the line at Gate 6 if this was the express to San Francisco, and they all said yes, but later, reviewing those assenting faces, I saw that in truth they all wore a look of people answering a question they have not entirely understood. Because of my anxiety and fear, I took a seat at the very front of the bus, across from and slightly behind the driver. There nothing very bad could happen to me, I thought.

  What did happen, immediately, was that a tall black man, with a big mustache, angry and very handsome, stepped up into the bus and looked at me and said, “That’s my seat. You in my seat. I got to have that seat.” He was staring me straight in the eye, his flashing black into my scared pale blue.

  There was nothing of his on the seat, no way I could have known that it belonged to him, and so that is what I said: “I didn’t know it was your seat.” But even as I was saying that, muttering, having ceased to meet his eye, I was also getting up and moving backward, to a seat two rows behind him.

  Seated, apprehensively watching as the bus filled up, I saw that across the aisle from the black man were two women who seemed to be friends of his. No longer angry, he was sitting in the aisle seat so as to be near them; they were all talking and having a good time, glad to be together.

  No one sat beside me, probably because I had put my large briefcase in that seat; it is stiff and forbidding-looking.

  I thought again that I must be on the wrong bus, but just as I had that thought the driver got on, a big black man; he looked down the aisle for a second and then swung the door shut. He started up the engine as I wondered, What about tickets? Will they be collected in San Francisco? I had something called a commuter ticket, a book of ten coupons, and that morning, leaving San Francisco, I’d thought the driver took too much of my ticket, two coupons; maybe this was some mysterious repayment? We lurched out of the station and were on our way to San Francisco—or wherever.

  Behind me, a child began to shout loud but not quite coherent questions: “Mom is that a river we’re crossing? Mom do you see that tree? Mom is this a bus we’re riding on?” He was making so much noise and his questions were all so crazy—senseless, really—that I did not see how I could stand it, all the hour and forty minutes to San Francisco, assuming that I was on the right bus, the express.

  One of the women in the front seat, the friends of the man who had displaced me, also seemed unable to stand the child, and she began to s
hout back at him. “You the noisiest traveler I ever heard; in fact you ain’t a traveler, you an observer.”

  “Mom does she mean me? Mom who is that?”

  “Yeah, I means you. You the one that’s talking.”

  “Mom who is that lady?” The child sounded more and more excited, and the black woman angrier. It was a terrible dialogue to hear.

  And then I saw a very large white woman struggling up the aisle of the bus, toward the black women in the front, whom she at last reached and addressed: “Listen, my son’s retarded and that’s how he tests reality, asking questions. You mustn’t make fun of him like that.” She turned and headed back toward her seat, to her noisy retarded son.

  The black women muttered to each other, and the boy began to renew his questions. “Mom see that cow?”

  And then I heard one of the black women say, very loudly, having the last word: “And I got a daughter wears a hearing aid.”

  I smiled to myself, although I suppose it wasn’t funny, but something about the black defiant voice was so appealing. And, as I dared for a moment to look around the bus, I saw that most of the passengers were black: a puzzle.

  The scenery, on which I tried to concentrate, was very beautiful: smooth blond hills, gently rising, and here and there crevasses of shadow; and sometimes a valley with a bright white farmhouse, white fences, green space. And everywhere the dark shapes of live oaks, a black drift of lace against the hills or darkly clustered in the valleys, near the farms.