The Stories of Alice Adams

by Alice Adams

  “Would you like some tea? The cups are right there behind you.”

  Day sits down with her tea. In her old loose blue cotton robe, with her just-washed face, she looks even younger than she is. She says, “Well, it was really a nice lunch party?”

  What was intended as a statement has come out as a question, at which Rachel smiles. “I guess,” she says. “I wanted Jimmy to have a good time, and to feel that everyone liked him, after all. I wish that damned old car hadn’t made him so late. On the other hand …”

  She has left her thought dangling, but Day takes it up. “On the other hand, maybe just as well? Time enough?” she asks, in her clear young voice.

  “Could be. Enough of all of us. We don’t really make up for Stella.” She adds, after the smallest pause, “And I thought Baxter was especially cross. Men are so much less forgiving than women are, don’t you think?” She sighs, at this quite unintended afterthought.

  “Oh really, how do you mean?”

  Day is so eager that Rachel regrets her observation. “Well, maybe it’s not even true.”

  But Day is relentless. “What does Baxter have against Jimmy, do you think?” she pursues.

  “Well, basically just his marrying Stella. It was Stella that Baxter had it in for, so to speak.”

  Day asks, “Because of her politics, you mean?”

  “Well, that among other things. Actually, a lot of men didn’t like her, not at all. It was odd, I always thought. Men are supposed to like beautiful women.” Rachel’s voice is reedy, low and rather tired, an old thrush.

  “You mean, men fell in love with her but really didn’t like her much?” Day’s tone is that of someone zeroing in—perhaps a lawyer’s tone.

  Rachel smiles. With exhausted emphasis she says, “Exactly. That’s just what Stella said, in fact. I think it made her lonely, a lot of the time.”

  “Especially since no one would see what was going on. Oh, I can see that,” Day improvises.

  “And Jimmy liked her very much, it’s that simple,” Rachel concludes. “She said she could hardly believe it.” And she adds, as though it were irrelevant, “I think everyone is a little mad at Stella now for having died.”

  Ignoring that last (could she not have heard it? did Rachel not actually say it, only think it?), Day smiles; she is in love with this conversation. She now asks, “Did you notice Jimmy’s sweater? Those stripes?”

  “Exactly the color of Stella’s hair. I saw that too.”

  “Do you think he thought of it?” Day is very serious.

  “When he bought the sweater?” Rachel pauses before she answers. “No, I’m sure the choice was quite unconscious. But still.”

  “Yes, still. He did buy it.” And Day smiles again, as though they had, together, understood and settled everything.

  And Rachel, who feels that almost nothing has been understood, or settled, who herself does not see how she can get through the coming winter, much less the rest of her life—Rachel smiles back at her.

  Barcelona

  In the darkened, uneven cobbled square, in the old quarter of Barcelona, the Barrio Gótico, the middle-aged American couple who walk by appear to be just that: American, middle-aged. The man is tall and bald; his head shines dimly as he and his wife cross the shaft of light from an open doorway. She is smaller, with pale hair; she walks fast to keep up with her husband. She is wearing gold chains, and they, too, shine in the light. She carries a small bag in which there could be—more gold? money? some interesting pills? They pass a young Spaniard lounging in a corner whose face the man for no reason takes note of.

  Persis Fox, the woman, is a fairly successful illustrator, beginning to be sought after by New York publishers, but she sees herself as being in most ways a coward, a very fearful person; she is afraid of planes, of high bridges, she is overly worried by the illnesses of children—a rather boring list, as she thinks of it. Some years ago she was afraid that Thad, her husband, who teaches at Harvard, would take off with some student, some dark, sexily athletic type from Texas, possibly. More recently she has been frightened by accounts everywhere of muggings, robberies, rapes. She entirely believes in the likelihood of nuclear war. She can and does lie awake at night with such thoughts, for frozen hours.

  However, walking across these darkened cobbles, in the old quarter of Barcelona, toward a restaurant that Cambridge friends have recommended, she is not afraid at all, only interested in what she is seeing: just before the square, an arched and windowed walk up above the alley, now crenellated silhouettes, everywhere blackened old stones. Also, she is hungry, looking forward to the seafood for which this restaurant is famous. And she wishes that Thad would not walk so fast; by now he is about five feet ahead of her, in an alley.

  In the next instant, though, before she has seen or heard any person approaching, someone is running past her in the dark—but not past; he is beside her, a tall dark boy, grabbing at her purse, pulling its short strap. Persis’ first instinct is to let him have it, not because she is afraid—she is not, still not, afraid—but from a conditioned reflex, instructing her to give people what they want: children, her husband.

  In the following second a more primitive response sets in, and she cries out, “No!”—as she thinks, Kindergarten, some little boy pulling a toy away. And next thinks, Not kindergarten. Spain. A thief.

  He is stronger, and with a sudden sharp tug he wins; he has pulled the bag from her and run off, as Persis still yells, “No!”—and as (amazingly!) she remembers the word for thief. “LADRÓN!” she cries out. “Ladrón!”

  Then suddenly Thad is back (Persis has not exactly thought of him in those seconds), and almost before she has finished saying “He took my bag!” Thad is running toward the square, where the thief went. Thad is running, running—so tall and fast, such a sprint, as though this were a marathon, or Memorial Drive, where he usually runs. He is off into the night, as Persis yells again, “Ladrón!” and she starts out after him.

  Persis is wearing low boots (thank God), not heels, and she can hear Thad’s whistle, something he does with two fingers in his mouth, intensely shrill, useful for summoning children from ski slopes or beaches as night comes on. Persis, also running, follows the sound. She comes at last to a fairly wide, dimly lit street where Thad is standing, breathing hard.

  She touches his arm. “Thad—”

  Still intent on the chase, he hardly looks at her. He is not doing this for her; it is something between men. He says, “I think he went that way.”

  “But Thad—”

  The street down which he is pointing, and into which he now begins to stride, with Persis just following—this street’s darkness is broken at intervals by the steamy yellow windows of shabby restaurants, the narrow open door of a bar. Here and there a few people stand in doorways, watching the progress of the Americans. Thad sticks his head into the restaurants, the bar. “I don’t see him,” he reports back each time.

  Well, of course not. And of course each time Persis is glad—glad that the boy is hidden somewhere. Gone. Safe, as she and Thad are safe.

  They reach the end of the block, when from behind them a voice calls out, in English, not loudly, “Lady, this your bag?”

  Thad and Persis turn to see a dark, contemptuous young face, a tall boy standing in a doorway. Not, Thad later assures Persis, and later still their friends—not the thief, whom he saw as they first crossed the square, and would recognize. But a friend of his?

  The boy kicks his foot at something on the cobbles, which Thad walks over to pick up, and which is Persis’ bag.

  “I can’t believe it!” she cries out, aware of triteness, as Thad hands over the bag to her. But by now, now that everything is over, she is seriously frightened; inwardly she trembles.

  “Well, we got it.” Thad speaks calmly, but Persis can hear the pride in his voice, along with some nervousness. He is still breathing hard, but he has begun to walk with his purposeful stride again. “The restaurant must be down here,” he tells
her.

  Astoundingly, it is; after a couple of turns they see the name on a red neon sign, the name of the place they have been told about, where they have made a reservation.

  The kitchen seems to be in the front room, next to the bar: all steam and steel, noisy clanging. Smoke and people, glasses rattling, crashing. “I really need a drink,” Persis tells Thad, as instead they are led back to a room full of tables, people—many Americans, tourists, all loud and chattering.

  At their small table, waiting for wine, with his tight New England smile Thad asks, “Aren’t you going to check it? See what’s still there?”

  Curiously, this has not yet occurred to Persis as something to be done; she has simply clutched the bag. Now, as she looks down at the bag on her lap, it seems shabbier, a battered survivor. Obediently she unsnaps the flap. “Oh good, my passport’s here,” she tells Thad.

  “That’s great.” He is genuinely pleased with himself—and why should he not be, having behaved with such courage? Then he frowns. “He got all your money?”

  “Well no, actually there wasn’t any money. I keep it in my pocket. Always, when I go to New York, that’s what I do.”

  Why does Thad look so confused just then? A confusion of emotions is spread across his fair, lined face. He is disappointed, somehow? Upset that he ran after a thief who had stolen a bag containing so little? Upset that Persis, who now goes down to New York on publishing business by herself, has tricks for self-preservation?

  Sipping wine, and almost instantly dizzy, light in her head, Persis tries to explain herself. “Men are such dopes,” she heedlessly starts. “They always think that women carry everything they own in their bags. Thieves think that, I mean. So I just shove money and credit cards into some pocket. There’s only makeup in my bags.”

  “And your passport.” Stern, judicious Thad.

  “Oh yes, of course,” Persis babbles. “That would have been terrible. We could have spent days in offices.”

  Gratified, sipping at his wine, Thad says, “I wonder why he didn’t take it, actually.”

  Persis does not say, “Because it’s hidden inside my address book”—although quite possibly that was the case. Instead, she says what is also surely true: “Because you scared him. The last thing he expected was someone running after him, and that whistle.”

  Thad smiles, and his face settles into a familiar expression: that of a generally secure, intelligent man, a lucky person, for whom things happen more or less as he would expect them to.

  Persis is thinking, and not for the first time, how terrible it must be to be a man, how terrifying. Men are always running, chasing something. And if you are rich and successful, like Thad, you have to hunt down anyone who wants to take away your possessions. Or if you’re poor, down on your luck, you might be tempted to chase after a shabby bag that holds nothing of any real value, to snatch such a bag from a foreign woman who is wearing false gold chains that shine and glimmer in the dark.

  Separate Planes

  In the Mexico City airport, in the upstairs bar adjacent to the waiting room for planes to various Mexican cities—Oaxaca, Ixtapa, Mérida—three highly conspicuous Americans are having a drink together, attracting considerable attention from other, mostly Mexican travelers. They are a young man and a somewhat older married couple; in some indefinable way the couple look long married, which they are. The young man, who is actually in early middle age, still appreciably younger than the other two—this man is the most conventionally dressed of the three: khaki pants, navy blazer, white shirt. Sheer physical beauty is what draws so many looks to him, especially in Mexico, among dark people: his sleek flat blond hair shines, even in this ill-lit room; his narrow eyes are intensely blue, his teeth of a dazzling whiteness. He is a tennis instructor at a small college in Southern California, and he is going from Oaxaca, where all three of these people just have been, on to Ixtapa, where there is to be a tournament at the Club Med. His name is Hugh Cornelisen.

  Of the older two, who are headed for Mérida, the man is the more flamboyant, as to costume. Tall, excessively thin, with thinning, grayish hair and a reddish face, he is wearing a pink linen suit, an ascot of darker pink silk. His gestures are slightly overanimated. Behind heavy hornrimmed glasses his dark eyes blink a lot. His face is deeply furrowed; deep lines run down his cheeks and across his forehead—perhaps from a lifetime of serious thought, deep contemplation, and possibly more than his share of conflicts, sharp torments of the heart. He is Allen Rodgers, a lawyer, from New Haven.

  His wife, Alexandra, is a woman of considerable size—a wonderful size, actually; her height and her general massiveness convey strength and power. She is unaware, though, of the impression she makes—she wishes she were smaller. She has great dark, golden eyes, and black, gray-streaked hair pulled into a knot. A long time ago, in the forties, she was studying Greek literature at Yale; she and Allen met at various New Haven parties—an older (ten years) man, a tall, uneasy girl. And actually she looks better now than she did as a very young woman; then she was awkward with her size, shy, and overeager in her mania for knowledge, her greed for love. Now, especially in her brown, loosely woven dress, with her big purple beads, big gold earrings, Alexandra looks majestic—but at this moment she is thinking that she would give everything she has if she could be young again, even for just a couple of days; then, just possibly, she would be going off to Ixtapa with Hugh, instead of to Mérida with Allen. At this moment she does not see how she can bear the rest of her life with Hugh’s face absent from it.

  On second thought, though, she does not really wish that she could go to Ixtapa with Hugh—complications, embarrassments. She would only like him to kiss her, preferably in the dark, where she is invisible.

  Alexandra’s quest for love did not end after her marriage to Allen, although she had hoped (they both hoped) that she would change. At first there were just a few excited flurries, kitchen kisses, some passionate gropings in cars, after summer parties in Vermont, where they and many of their friends had lakeside cottages. Then there was a serious, real affair with a younger colleague of Allen’s, cautiously, rather guardedly begun as a summer romance but continued with frenzied meetings in New York hotels, in motels along the turnpike. This left everyone involved raw and shaken (Alexandra had been forced or felt herself forced to tell Allen almost all about it). After that she “drifted into,” as she put it to herself, a couple of not very serious dalliances; she found the very contrast between these connections and the high seriousness of her first affair depressing, and she resolved not to do that again. But then she did. All of which was at least suspected by Allen, if unclearly.

  Her Greek studies have more or less lapsed, although she still tries an occasional translation; some of her translated poems have been published in literary journals.

  In what Allen describes as his own “declining years” he has experienced a series of critically painful “crushes” on young women, usually students, always beautiful. Analysis of these feelings has been a source of further pain, a scalpel applied to a wound, but he has achieved a certain understanding of his feelings: he has come to understand that all he wants of these young women is sometimes to see them, but “want” is an imprecise word for his wild craving, his need.

  The most recent object of this “surely most unwanted affection,” as Allen might say, were he able to talk about it—the most recent “crush” has been on a tall, pale red-haired girl, Mona, from Colorado. Mona, with milk-white, unfreckled skin, wide light-blue eyes, and endless legs, which she carelessly, restlessly crossed and recrossed, all summer long, in her white tennis shorts. Mona was in New Haven visiting the daughter of friends, making everything worse, more “social.” A feminist, she planned to go to law school, and she liked to talk to Allen about law. “I think she has a sort of crush on you,” Alexandra imperceptively remarked, at the start of summer. “Well, feminists get crushes too,” he limply countered.

  Later, seeming to catch some hint of his actual feelin
gs, Alexandra stopped mentioning Mona altogether.

  Alexandra and Allen met Hugh because they were all staying in the same hotel in Oaxaca—a beautiful converted convent, with open courtyards full of flowers, lovely long cloisters, and everywhere birds. Arriving there on an early-morning plane from Mexico City, registering at the desk, as they were led toward their room, Alexandra and Allen exchanged smiles of pure pleasure at the beauty of it all, the sweet freshness of the air, such a contrast to Mexico City or New Haven. They liked their room, which was white-plastered, very clean, with a low slant ceiling, a window looking out to an ancient well, of soft gray stone. As they stood there just within the doorway, taking everything in, a young blond American in khaki walking shorts passed by; he looked in, smiled quickly in their direction.

  After a little unpacking Alexandra and Allen walked up to the neighboring church, whose annex was a museum of costumes and artifacts, and there was the blond young man again, before a display of ferocious armaments, feathered headdresses. Seeing them, he gave another smile; they all smiled, acknowledging the coincidence.

  At lunch, in the sunny, vine-hung courtyard, a haven for butterflies and hummingbirds, there he was again, but at a table some distance from theirs. More smiles.

  And late in the afternoon, after more walking about, a little shopping, sightseeing, the blond young man was just across the pool, sunning himself, as he glanced through a magazine. He waved in their direction; they returned the gesture.

  “Odd that he’s alone,” Alexandra murmured. “He’s really quite beau.”

  “Oh, he’s probably saving himself for something. He looks athletic.”

  “I wonder what.”

  Allen speculated. “Well, something graceful. Something not, as the kids say, gross. Golf? Maybe tennis?”