The Stories of Alice Adams

by Alice Adams

Was it my garlic breath or simply my height, my incredible size that drove him off like that? In a heavy way I wondered, as I continued to swim, all the rest of my laps, which seemed laborious. It could have been either, easily, or in fact anything about me could have turned him off, off and away, for good; I knew that he would never speak to me again. A pain which is close to and no doubt akin to lust lay heavily in my body’s lower quadrant, hurtful and implacable.

  Sex

  The atmosphere in the pool is not exactly sexy, generally, although you might think that it would be, with everyone so stripped down, wearing next to nothing, and some of the women looking really great, so slim and trim, high-breasted, in their thin brief bathing suits.

  Once, just as I was getting in I overheard what looked like the start of a romance between a young man, fairly good-looking, who was talking to a very pretty Mexican girl.

  The girl said, “You’re Brad?”

  “No. Gregory.”

  “Well, Greg, I’ll try to make it. Later.”

  But with brief smiles they then both plunged back into doing their laps, seeming not to have made any significant (sexual) contact.

  I have concluded that swimming is not a very sexual activity. I think very infrequently of sex while actually swimming. Well, all sports are supposed to take your mind off sex, aren’t they? They are supposed to make you miss it less?

  The lifeguards, during swimming hours, usually just sit up on their high wooden lifeguard chairs, looking bored. A couple of youngish, not very attractive guys. Every now and then one of the guys will walk around the pool very slowly, probably just to break his own monotony, but trying to look like a person on patrol.

  One afternoon I watched one of those guys stop at Shallow, and stare down for a long time at a little red-haired girl who was swimming there. She was a beautiful child, with narrow blue eyes and long wet red hair, a white little body, as lithe as a fish, as she laughed and slipped around. The lifeguard stared and stared, and I knew—I could tell that sex was on his mind. Could he be a potential child molester?

  I myself think of sex more often, in spite of swimming, since the day Blond Beard spoke to me, the day I’d had all that garlic for lunch. I hate to admit this.

  The Shrink

  An interesting fact that I have gradually noticed as I come to Rossi, to swim my laps, is that actually there is more variety among the men’s trunks than among the bathing suits the women wear. The men’s range from cheap, too-tight Lastex to the khaki shorts with thin blue side stripes that they advertise at Brooks, or Robert Kirk. Whereas, as I noted early on, all the women wear quite similar-looking dark suits. Do the men who are rich, or at least getting along okay in the world, not bother to hide it when they come to a cheap public pool, while the women do? A puzzle. I cannot quite work it out. Blond Beard wears new navy Lastex trunks, which might mean anything at all.

  Most people, including a lot of the men, but not Blond Beard, wear bathing caps, which makes it even harder to tell people apart, and would make it almost impossible, even, to recognize someone you knew. It is not surprising that from time to time I see someone I think I know, or have just met somewhere or other. At first, remembering the peace march kids, I imagined that I saw one or all of them, but that could have been just hope, a wishful thought. I thought I saw my old gym teacher, also from junior-high days. And one day I saw a man who looked like my father, which was a little crazy, since he split for Seattle when I was about five years old; I probably wouldn’t know him if I did see him somewhere, much less in a pool with a bathing cap on.

  But one day I saw an old woman with short white hair, swimming very fast, who I really thought was the shrink I went to once in high school, as a joke.

  Or, going to the shrink started out to be a joke. The school had a list of ones that you could go to, if you had really “serious problems,” and to me and my girlfriend, then, Betty, who was black, it seemed such a ludicrous idea, paying another person just to listen, telling them about your sex life, all like that, that we dreamed up the idea of inventing some really serious problems, and going off to some fool doctor and really putting him on, and at the same time finding out what it was like, seeing shrinks.

  Betty, who was in most ways a lot smarter than me, much faster to catch on to things, chickened out early on; but she kept saying that I should go; Betty would just help me make up some stuff to say. And we did; we spent some hilarious afternoons at Betty’s place in the project, making up lists of “serious problems”: heavy drugs, of course, and dealers. And stepfathers or even fathers doing bad sex things to you, and boys trying to get you to trick. All those things were all around Betty’s life, and I think they scared her, really, but she laughed along with me, turning it into one big joke between us.

  I made the appointment through the guidance office, with a Dr. Sheinbaum, and I went to the address, on Steiner Street. And that is where the joke stopped being a joke.

  A nice-looking white-haired lady (a surprise right there; I had expected some man) led me into a really nice-looking living room, all books and pictures and big soft comfortable leather furniture. And the lady, the doctor, asked me to sit down, to try to tell her about some of the things that upset me.

  I sat down in a soft pale-colored chair, and all of the funny made-up stuff went totally out of my mind—and I burst into tears. It was horrible, great wracking sobs that I absolutely could not stop. Every now and then I would look up at the doctor, and see that gentle face, that intelligent look of caring, and for some reason that made me cry much harder, even.

  Of course I did not tell Betty—or anyone—about crying like that. All I said about going to the shrink was that it was all right, no big deal. And I said about the good-looking furniture. Betty was interested in things like that.

  But could the fast-swimming older woman be that shrink? Well, she could be; it seemed the kind of thing that she might do, not caring what anyone thought, or who might see her. But she would never remember or recognize me—or would she?

  Looking for Work

  The job search is something that I try not to think about, along with sex, general deprivation. It is what I should be doing, naturally; and in theory that is what I do all day, look for work. However, these days I seldom get much further than the want ads in the paper, those columns and columns of people saying they want secretaries, or sales people. And no one, not in a million years, would think of hiring me for either of those slots. Secretaries are all about the same size, very trim and tidy-looking, very normal, and so are people in sales—just ask my mother.

  Sometimes an ad for a waitress sounds possible, and that is something I’ve done; I had a part-time waitress job the summer I got out of Washington High. But in those days I was thinner, and just now my confidence is pretty low. In my imagination, prospective employers, restaurant owners take one look at me and they start to sneer: “We don’t even have the space for a person your size,” or some such snub.

  Instead I swim, and swim, swim—for as long as I can, every day. I can feel my muscles stretching, pulling, getting longer, in the warm strong water.

  Hello

  An odd coincidence: on a Tuesday afternoon—short Rec. hours, one-thirty to three—both Blond Beard and the big black woman who told me to swim closer to the side, so crossly—both those people on that same day said Hello to me, very pleasantly.

  First, I had just jumped down into the pool, the shallow end of the lap section, when Blond Beard swam up and stood beside me for a minute. Looking up at me, he said Hello, and he smiled. However, his small pale eyes were vague; very likely he did not remember that we sort of talked before (hopefully, he did not remember the garlic).

  I concentrated on not making too much of that encounter.

  Later, when I had finished swimming and was drying off and dressing in the locker room, I was half aware that someone else was in there, too, on the other side of a row of lockers. Hurrying, not wanting to see anyone (or anyone to see me!), I was about to rush ou
t of the room when at the exit door I almost bumped into the big black woman. In fact, it was a little funny, we are so nearly the exact same size. We both smiled; maybe she saw the humor in it, too? And then she said, “Say, your stroke’s coming along real good.”

  “Oh. Uh, thanks.”

  “You’re a real speeder these days.”

  I felt a deep pleasure in my chest. It was like praise from a teacher, someone in charge. We walked out of the building together, the black woman going up across the playground, where the peace marches gathered, maybe toward Geary Boulevard. And I walked down Arguello, out into the avenues. Home.

  Warmth

  The water in the pool is warm. In our cold apartment, where my mother screams over the higher and higher utility bills and keeps the heat down, I only have to think about that receiving warmness, touching all my skin, to force myself out into the cold and rain, to walk the long blocks to Rossi Pool, where quickly undressed I will slip down into it.

  And swim.

  In January, though, the weather got suddenly warmer. The temperature in the pool also seemed to have suddenly changed; it was suddenly cooler. Distrustful, as I guess I tend to be regarding my perceptions, I wondered if the water only seemed cooler. Or, had they turned it down because of the warmer weather, economizing, as my mother does? In any case it was disappointing, and the pool was much less welcoming, no matter how falsely spring-like the outside air had turned.

  “Do you think the water’s colder?” It was Blond Beard who asked this of me one day; we were standing momentarily in the shallow end. But although I was the person he had chosen to ask, I was still sure that for him I was no one; he remembers nothing of me from one tiny, minor contact to another. I am a large non-person.

  I told him, “Yes, it seems a little colder to me” (not wanting to say too much—again).

  “They must have turned it down.”

  Swimming

  Since the pool is 100 feet long, a half mile is 26 lengths, which is what I try to do every day. “I swim three miles a week,” would sound terrific, to anyone, or even, “I swim a little over two miles a week.” Anyone would be impressed, except my mother.

  On some days, though, I have to trick myself into swimming the whole 26. “I’m tired, didn’t sleep too well, 16 lengths is perfectly okay, respectable,” I tell myself. And then, having done the 16, I will say (to myself) that I might as well do a couple more, or four more. And if you get to 20 you might as well go on to 26, as I almost always do.

  On other, better days I can almost forget what I am doing; that is, I forget to count. I am only aware of a long strong body (mine) pulling through the water, of marvelous muscles, a strong back, and long, long legs.

  The Neighborhood

  Sometimes, walking around the neighborhood, I see swimmers from the pool—or, people I think I have seen in swimming; in regular clothes it is hard to be sure.

  Once, passing a restaurant out on Clement Street I was almost sure that the waitress with her back to the window was the big black woman, formerly cross but now friendly and supportive. Of course I could go in and check it out, even say Hello, but I didn’t want to do that, really. But I was pleased with just the idea that she might be there, with a waitress job in such a nice loose-seeming coffee place. I even reasoned that if they hired that woman, big as she is, mightn’t someone hire me, about the same size? (I think swimming is making me more optimistic, somehow.) Maybe I should look harder, not be so shy about applying for waitress jobs?

  However, one day in late June, there is no mistaking Blond Beard, who comes up to me on Arguello, near Clement: I am just coming out of the croissant place where I treated myself to a cup of hot chocolate. I am celebrating, in a way: the day before I had pulled all my courage together and went out to a new “rehabilitation place” for old people, out in the Sunset, and they really seemed to like me. I am almost hired, I think. They would give me a place to live—I could leave home!

  “Hey! I know you from swimming, don’t I? In Rossi?” Blond Beard has come up close to me; he is grinning confidently up into my face. His clothes are very sharp, all clean and new, like from a window at Sears.

  “You look so good, all that swimming’s really trimmed you down,” he tells me. And then, “This is a coincidence, running into you like this when I was needing a cup of coffee. Come on back in and keep me company. My treat.”

  He is breathing hard up into my face, standing there in the soft new sunlight. I am overwhelmed by the smell of Juicy Fruit—so much, much worse than garlic, I suddenly decide. And I hate sharp clothes.

  Stepping back I say, “Thanks, but I have to go home now,” and I move as smoothly as though through water.

  I leave him standing there.

  I swim away.

  Waiting for Stella

  Actually it is Jimmy, Stella’s fourth and final husband (Stella died a month ago), for whom everyone is waiting, all these old people, in this large sunny clearing in a grove of ancient redwoods. It is high noon, on a bright October day, and time for lunch, but Rachel, the hostess, has delayed serving the food, because of Jimmy’s lateness. This will be everyone’s first sight of him since Stella’s death; he took off for Santa Barbara just afterward to visit a sister there, and presumably to recuperate, traveling in Stella’s old car. Perhaps the car is making him late this morning? The guests, old friends, sip nervously at tomato juice or club soda, while a few of the hardier ones have white wine; they are all in their seventies or eighties, except for a young dark, vividly pretty girl, Day, a visiting friend of Rachel’s, who will help with lunch.

  Everyone, including Rachel and her husband, Baxter, and Day, the visiting girl, is seated at a long bandanna-cloth-covered table, on benches. Not far from the table is a small oval concrete swimming pool, its unused murky water now flat and still. Here and there in the grove are clumps of huge thick-fronded ferns, a dusty gray green, quite motionless, in the moted sunlight.

  They are all waiting for Jimmy, of course, but it is Stella whose lively absence dominates the mood, so that several people, especially Rachel and Baxter, have to remind themselves that they are waiting for Jimmy, not for Stella.

  Rachel and Baxter’s house is up on a knoll, invisible from the pool, among tall thick eucalyptus trees, gray thickets of manzanita. It is a big house, though cheaply and somewhat flimsily constructed of clapboard, now nicely weathered to silver. It was a great bargain forty years ago when Rachel and her first husband had it built. Now it is probably worth a lot of money, as she and Baxter wryly say to each other from time to time, and they add, “but only if we sell it.” (Baxter is Rachel’s third husband, and surely her last, she thinks.) Near the house, a little way down toward the pool, is the guest cabin, slatted, green.

  All the houses in this small enclave, in the Santa Cruz Mountains, are somewhat similar, as, not quite accidentally, are their owners; friends, they all were professional people, “liberals,” mildly intellectual. Rachel was a doctor, a professor of medicine, rather distinguished; Baxter, although he inherited money, was an art critic. Stella was a painter.

  What once were vacation homes now house their retirements.

  In those younger, summer days, feelings sometimes ran high: dissensions occurred over love affairs, real or imagined; opposing political views split their ranks. But now old feuds are quieted, if not forgotten—especially today, as in an almost unified way they think about Stella, the first of them to die, and they think about Jimmy, who is very late.

  Now, conferring with Day, Rachel decides to go ahead and serve the first course, a gazpacho, which has already been brought down and is sitting there on the table, in its huge green-glazed tureen. And so Rachel ladles out the soup, and Day takes the bowls around to everyone.

  Actually, Stella has always been a sort of unifying principle for this group, in that they have generally been united in opposition to whatever she was doing. Not actual opposition to her views, but Stella always, somehow, went too far. Wonderful of her to march in
Selma at already sixty-odd, but did she have to get arrested, so purposefully, and spend a week in that jail? Or, more recently, was it necessary, really, that she scale the fence at Diablo Canyon, protesting nuclear power? Not to mention the fact that she often drank too much, and almost always talked too much, with her proud white tooth-flashing grin; she had too many husbands and lovers (though fortunately, it was sometimes remarked, no children).

  Her final marriage to Jimmy Scott, a former alcoholic, former film director (not important), was hard to understand, the other husbands having been, in their ways, almost predictable: Jack, a Communist, and Jewish (this was daring, in 1922, for a New England girl of “good”—Republican, Unitarian—family); Horace, a black longshoreman; and Yosh, a Japanese painter, whom she married just after Pearl Harbor (of course). But—Jimmy?

  During the illness preceding Stella’s death, however, the mercifully short three months, Jimmy’s behavior toward her was observed to be exemplary. It was hardly a time when anyone would have behaved badly, but still his patience was remarkable. He searched for out-of-print books that Stella mentioned wanting to reread, for out-of-season flowers for her bedroom (they were not rich people, not at all), for special delicate foods, rare fruits to tempt her waning appetite.

  In the last awful month of her life, although she stayed at home, in the house up the road from Rachel and Baxter’s, Stella refused (through Jimmy, of course) to let anyone visit her; not even Rachel, a doctor, was allowed to see her then, which no one quite understood, except, just possibly, Rachel.

  Of the dozen people there—thirteen, counting Day—only Day is not thinking in a concentrated way about Stella. Day is thinking painfully, obsessively of Allen, the lover whom she came to California to see, but with whom things did not work out; they just broke up in San Francisco, where Allen lives. Scenes and quarrels, all terrible to recall. Passing breadsticks, Day considers the phrase “to break up.” It is odd, she thinks, that people always say “break up with,” since the whole point of breaking up is that you are no longer with but alone.