The Stories of Alice Adams

by Alice Adams

  I had not been so foolish as to take anything valuable (had I indeed owned anything of that sort of value) to a somewhat ratty resort, on a Mexican beach, and I even thought, Oh, good, now I won’t have to wash out that robe with the suntan-lotion stains.

  A pretty black girl in the uniform of the airline gave me a form to fill out, describing the suitcase, and giving my name, Janet Stone Halloran, my address and phone. She gave me a claim number, and she said, “You’ll be given twenty-five dollars for makeup and drugs, you know, for tonight.”

  Good, is what I thought again. Very good. I can take a cab home and buy some toothpaste, a brush, astringent, cream. For various reasons, mostly having to do with pride and with my new role as a single woman, I had spent too much money in Mexico, paid for too many rounds of margaritas, so I was quite conscious of even small sums of money. I assumed then that a check for twenty-five would come to me automatically, probably tomorrow.

  The truth is that I was quite broke; I needed to get a job as soon as possible, Walter not having believed in insurance, but I wasn’t dealing with that problem yet. I had dealt as best I could with Walter’s death, I had successfully gone to Mexico. I would think about money and jobs tomorrow; I would go out looking while I still was tan.

  Actually, and this did not make his death any easier, Walter and I had not liked each other much lately. We had married young, for love (well, sex, really); in our day that is what you did when strongly attracted. And as the physical intensity calmed down, diminished, all our other energies seemed to go in opposite directions. A familiar story, I guess, but that made it no easier to bear.

  Like many lonely women, I became bookish, an obsessive reader, my favorites being long Victorian novels. (Once, reading The Egoist—Meredith’s best, I thought—I started to recommend it to Walter, such a wonderfully funny book. But then I recognized that Walter would not think it was funny at all.)

  Walter’s major passion, his obsession, turned out to be cars: even after professionally he went from selling Fords to selling life insurance, he was constantly buying, selling, trading, trading in, cars. We must have averaged four or five cars a year, and last year, the year he died, we went through seven. And always terrifically fancy ones; I now have a 1935 Franklin, in mint condition, up for sale. I hated to be unsympathetic, but I found all this car business scary, something we couldn’t afford, and I sometimes said as much. But Walter, a fast-talking red-haired Irishman, a looker, a flirt, was not much of a listener, or not to me. He would frown distractedly, and go on with his dreams of cars.

  None of which helped when he died. Along with natural grief and shock, I felt guilty as hell: why couldn’t I have been nicer about a relatively harmless habit? He could have been “sleeping around,” as we used to say; well, maybe he was doing that, too. In any case, his death was a dreadful—an appalling—event.

  None of our friends knew how little money Walter and I had (no doubt misled by all those fancy cars), any more than they knew how little we liked each other. Neither fact had been something that I could ever speak of, or maybe I had long ago got used to not saying those things—a New England habit of reserve. And there was a connection between those conditions: if we had had money, especially if I had had a little of my own—that enviable condition—we could have split up; but no, we had children very early on (red-haired, all of them, of course), four children who seemed to stay young forever as we aged. Now they were all away at school, except our oldest daughter, who was married, and when I say that I had no money I mean that I had barely enough to keep them there, and not enough to live on much longer by myself. Probably we would all have to go to work. I didn’t think it would hurt us much; more New England Puritanism, I guess.

  And my choice of the Mexican beach had been connected with both of those unmentionable facts, lack of money and not getting along with Walter. It was extremely cheap, and it was where Walter and I had got along least well. I always loved it; he hated it there, and went along as a concession to my poor taste, if grudgingly. For one thing, there were no tennis courts within miles, and Walt was an impassioned tennis buff. (He died on the courts, in fact, after what I was told was a magnificent overhead smash. A good death, in that way, I guess you could call it.)

  To a degree, naturally enough, my friends and children were right; it was lonely being there without even an unloved, quarrelsome Walter. And, as widows will, or anyone will just after a serious love affair, for a while I found it hard to remember anything but the good times between us, the early years when we both had jobs with conflicting schedules, his selling Fords, mine doing research for some lawyers; and so whenever we were even briefly at home together we would make love, as instantly and happily as mating birds.

  Also, as I sat alone on my terrace, watching one of those incredible tropical sunsets, the whole sky covered with bright rags of clouds, I would feel really frightened, and not unreasonably so. There was not exactly a superabundance of jobs around, and suppose I couldn’t find one, or not for years? I was well trained, I’d had occasional research jobs along the way, helping out with family money, and I knew a lot of people; still, I was quite a few years over twenty-five, or even thirty. What would I do? (I know, nowhere near the poverty level; but still a cause for concern, I thought.)

  At other times, however, down there in the balmy breezes, I would experience an exhilarating sense of adventure. I knew myself to be a strong woman: surely I could turn my life around? I was not really dependent on a middle-class support system, on certain styles of dress and entertaining, on “safe” neighborhoods. I could even, I imagined, find a big house to share with some other working women, about my age—not exactly a commune but a cooperative venture. Such prospects excited and to a degree sustained me.

  And there was always the extreme beauty of the place itself, the big horseshoe cove of lovely water, with its white, white beach and rocky promontories at either edge. The green tropical growth that rose from the outer edge of sand into hills. And the clear enormous sky, its brilliant blue, then gaudy sunsets, and, later, billions of stars. Not to mention the flowers spilling over everywhere—the profusion of bougainvillea, of every shade of pink and orange. I could feel it all seeping into me, with the stillness, the peace.

  Fortunately, in a way, the last time Walt and I were in Mexico was by far our worst. Nothing dramatic or specific—just a miasma of incommunicable depression that settled on us both. What exactly was on Walt’s mind I have no idea, just boredom and restlessness, perhaps—or he could have been having a “relationship” in San Francisco (I always at least half suspected that he was), with someone whom he missed. I myself was depressed at the changes that I saw in us, and in our bodies. Our slowing middle-aged flesh seemed to parody its former eager, quick incarnation, and I looked at the other couples, many considerably older than we were, who had come down to the tropics to warm their hardening bones—timorous people looking outward rather than toward each other, their flesh no longer joined. And I thought, Is that where we are going, Walt and I? Is the rest of our life together, if we stay together, to be such a process of attrition?

  And so, in that sense, being there without Walt was better; I could remember the good days quite as easily as the bad—in fact, more easily; I was no longer daily, hourly reminded by his presence that we no longer loved or even much liked each other. In a dignified way I could be sad about him, even. He had enjoyed his life, his tennis and skiing, parties, drinking, and, for the most part, he had enjoyed and liked our children. It was grossly unfair that he should be cut off from all that, so relatively young.

  At the beach, then, I thought my own thoughts, and swam a lot, and read, and I let the gentle beauty of the place drift through my mind. And I observed, rather than actively participating in, what social life there was.

  I saw a woman who, like myself, seemed to be traveling alone; some years older than I was, she could easily have been a widow also, or maybe divorced. And she was talking too much. I would see her with groups
on the beach, or at the bar, talking and talking. I had earlier noticed such an impulse in myself; as though to compensate for Walter’s lack, to say enough for us both, I had developed a new tendency to garrulousness. And now, in a distant, sympathetic way, I wanted to say to this woman, Please don’t, you don’t have to make up for being alone, in that way.

  I further observed a young man, also alone, but seemingly having attached himself to a group of older people. He was not really as young as he felt that he was. He would be very good with old ladies, except for a certain kind of old lady (the kind I plan to be), who will suddenly wonder why she is paying for all his drinks, and will decide that he is not quite worth it. I watched as, each time someone in the group was due to sign for drinks, that aging boy would be engaged in animated conversation somewhere else—as, still unobserved by him, the smiles around him congealed and froze.

  Which is one reason that whenever I fell in with a group at the bar I made a point of buying more than my share of drinks.

  I looked, and thought, and observed, and I wrote down a great deal in a daybook that I had begun to keep, begun just after Walter died. Two friends had suggested this, women who did not know each other. A coincidence, possibly, but enough to make me listen—although I later concluded that they were both influenced by the fact that I write letters much more often than I telephone.

  Also, like so many women of my generation (and I would hope some men and younger women, too), I had been powerfully moved by Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. Not that I saw much connection between myself and her heroine, Anna (or with Lessing herself); still, for weeks and then months after Walter died, I made myself write everything down, like Anna in the Blue Notebook section, trying to understand.

  And it did help, quite a lot. I could see a certain progress from the rage and despair of the first entries, the nightmare scene at the funeral parlor. I had not wanted to “view” Walter; I was talked into it—shamed into it, really—by my oldest daughter, the married one, and by, of course, the funeral-parlor person. How wonderful he looks, they both murmured, though in a questioning way; he looks asleep. Having spent many hours looking at Walter asleep—he always slept well, whereas I had occasional insomnia—I thought he did not look asleep; he looked dead, very dead, dead for good. I hated myself for breaking down and crying noisily in that place.

  Well, all that was vividly in my notebook, and then there were some better days recorded, and a few more bad ones. Kind friends, insensitive friends, intuitive strangers.

  It was encouraging on those bad days to look back to worse ones, earlier on, and when I actually felt well, restored to my old self, competent and strong—with what pride I recorded that sense.

  It was not until I was in the taxi, heading home from the airport, and thinking with foolish pleasure about my check for twenty-five dollars, that I realized that my notebook was in the missing suitcase, along with the stained robe and the other things I didn’t much care about. And in that moment of understanding that my notebook could be gone forever, I did not see how I could go on with my life. Everything within me sank. It was as though my respirator, whatever essential machine had kept me breathing, was cruelly removed. This is worse than Walter’s death, I crazily thought, and then amended (I revised, as I had learned to do with crazy thoughts) so that in my mind it now read, I can deal with this less well than I did with Walter’s death.

  Arrived at my door, I paid for the taxi with several of my last vacation dollars, and I let myself into my small (though now too large) “safe” flat.

  There was a pile of letters on the floor which, since I had no bag to unpack, I immediately sat down to read. And there, among the bills and circulars, the demands, were three letters which, had I been in a more normal mood, might have made me happy: two of them from two of my scattered children, both simply nice, kind and friendly—sounding like the sort of people I would have wanted them to turn out to be—and the third from a lawyer for whom I had once worked, offering sensible job-getting advice and strong encouragement. As I say, had it not been for my missing bag and my lost notebook, it would have been a good homecoming.

  I lay awake planning phone calls.

  Toltec Airlines, as it turned out the following morning, did not have its own Lost and Found (a bad sign right there, I thought); its losses and finds were reported to another airline, Griffith International. I described my bag to a cheerfully inattentive girl: a cheap make, I said, black vinyl, with a safety pin in the zipper. Yes, it was clearly marked with my name and address.

  Had I reported its loss?

  Yes, of course. Last night.

  Well, most bags eventually turn up, she said, and I must believe that they were just as eager to return my bag to me as I was to get it.

  I could not possibly believe that, I told her severely; it was simply untrue. And then, as though it were an afterthought, I asked about the twenty-five-dollar compensation check.

  Oh, that’s only for people just stopping over, she said.

  Oh.

  She suggested that I might want to call the night person at Toltec Airlines; he comes on every night at six, she said, and she gave me a number.

  The man’s name was Dick Parker—a too simple, forgettable name, but I managed to keep it in my mind all day; in fact I thought of nothing else.

  He turned out to be both less interested and less optimistic than the morning girl. Well, sometimes bags did get stolen, he said. Nothing the airlines could do, thefts happen.

  Even old shabby bags like mine?

  Older, shabbier ones got ripped off. For all the thieves knew, there were diamonds inside, he picturesquely said.

  After a long pause, during which I tried to digest his gloomy and irrefutable logic, I asked about compensation.

  The airline pays three hundred dollars after two weeks, he said.

  Oh.

  The young woman who answered the Lost and Found number the next morning sounded Mexican, I thought, which I found irrationally cheering, as though national pride would encourage more strenuous efforts on her part. I again described my bag, and again she went off to look. Only later did it occur to me that she might—she should have had that description already filed.

  No, she announced on her return; my bag was not there, I should immediately call Mr. Playa, Pablo Playa, who was in charge of Toltec Airlines, and she gave me a number.

  This was encouraging—someone in charge—and I was charmed by the name Pablo Playa. The numbers that I dialed, however, felt familiar; just as Mr. Playa answered, I realized that it was the number of Dick Parker: Pablo Playa was the daytime Dick Parker.

  But he had a mellifluous Latin voice, Pablo Playa did, and his tone was the most, if not the only, sympathetic official voice that I had heard. Of course I was upset, he said, and everything would be done to find my bag. I must believe him, the bag would be returned to me within days. And also, at the very worst, the airline paid five hundred dollars for lost bags, within fifteen days.

  For a few minutes I felt vastly cheered—my automatic response to warmth and charm, to promises—and then, with a characteristic reversal, certain grim and obvious truths appeared, to rebuke my foolish optimism. First, none of those people knew what the others were doing; there was no one in charge. Second, there was no fixed policy about compensation. Third, there was no concentrated or even directed effort to retrieve my bag.

  That night I again called Dick Parker, who instantly confirmed all those suspicions. How long had it been since I lost my bag, he wanted to know.

  It was not I who had lost the bag, I reminded him; it was them. And maybe they should coordinate their files, as well as their efforts.

  Thank you for telling me how to do my job, he said, in a furious way.

  I think we both hung up at the same moment.

  Over the long haul of my life, I have noticed that even the most upsetting things get better with the simple passage of time; even deaths become less painful. But it was not so with my missing bag;
it was, in many ways, like the aftermath of a robbery. Once, Walter and I had been burglarized, and for weeks I kept discovering more things that were not there: a set of silver grapefruit spoons, some pretty cocktail napkins, all the Beethoven quartets (a tasteful ripper-offer, that one was). And now, having thought everything but my notebook valueless, I began to remember a nice old pink cotton shirt, inexplicably becoming; some big white beads (cheap, from Cost Plus, but where would I find them again).

  Far worse was my deranged sense of being crippled without my notebook, my notes; and my awareness that it made no sense was not much help. I considered, and discarded, the obvious theory that this was a substitute mourning for Walter, that it was actually Walter whom I could not live without; that explanation simply did not grip me in the way that a true insight invariably does. I also asked myself if the lost notebook was an excuse for postponing other tasks at hand, like scrubbing the open kitchen shelves. Looking for a job.

  The next day, as though to refute that thought, I did scrub the shelves. I’ve read somewhere that all women have a least favorite household task, and that is mine: the irritation of putting those little spice jars and bottles somewhere else, displacing the adorable little keepsakes, spilling the cleaning stuff on the floor. Et cetera.

  And then, like a reward, it came to me, something that probably anyone else would have thought of days before: I would go out and buy another notebook, I would write down all that I could remember from the former entries and then I would start in again. Obviously, I had become addicted to writing things down; that was the core of my problem.

  A wonderful idea, a solution—but in the stationery store I hesitated. The lost notebook, whose duplicate was right there on the shelf before me, had been rather expensive, seven dollars, now up to eight-fifty. (I could measure the time since Walter’s death by the rate of inflation, I thought.) Maybe I would get the old notebook back? In that mood, I compromised on a much smaller, though matching, book; its spine was also stamped RECORD, and it cost two-fifty.