The Stories of Alice Adams

by Alice Adams

  Miriam’s features are rather small, and her face has a curious flatness to it. A small mask. Dark eyes in shallow sockets, freckles across unprominent cheekbones. Small pointed nose, small mouth. Longish black-brown hair, which she sometimes knots up, to give herself more height.

  Miriam.

  On the day after she has her curious intimation of violence in the dusky church, Miriam and the others go out to the ruins at Monte Albán in a hired car, with a guide. Magnificently preserved flattened stone pyramids, rising up from the broad flat plain, at mystical intervals.

  On their way home, driving along the Pan-American highway, approaching the city of Oaxaca, they see an ambulance stopped just ahead of them, and a small cluster of people. Miriam begins to hold her breath.

  “A woman and a baby, both killed,” their guide mutters. He is sitting in front, next to the driver—but how did he know this, Miriam later wonders. He could see ahead? See the feet?

  The car slows down, and Miriam, who is closest to the window on the left, looks out and sees: on the ground, a white cover of some sort pulled over two human shapes, one medium-sized, one tiny. Two thin brown ankles protruding from the larger shape. Dusty brown feet. Red streams coming from underneath the cover. Blood.

  Sadness, misery on all the dark surrounding faces, the clustered onlookers. Their driver is very upset, although he goes on driving, slowly, as though in a mourning procession. To the guide, or perhaps to himself, he speaks in a low, continuous way, very softly, in Spanish.

  Miriam also speaks to herself, but inwardly, with no sound. People are killed every day, in one way or another, somewhere, she tells herself; you must not sentimentalize these two, they are out of pain now. You did not know them.

  Joan says, “That’s absolutely horrible.” Her mouth twists, and tightens.

  And Eric, in a bitter voice: “They think God will get them across highways.” He is looking anxiously at Miriam. To reassure him she smiles, and touches his hand.

  Ten or fifteen minutes later, Joan speculates, “It could have been an older sister carrying a baby. There seem to be a lot of them—older kids helping. Family support systems.”

  Eric: “Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s the mother, girls having babies at fifteen or sixteen.” Eric is in favor of zero population growth, generally. Miriam would like to have one child. Early on in their marriage she was pregnant, accidentally, and she had a miscarriage: a lot of pain, blood. She still hopes for a child, eventually, but they no longer talk about it.

  • • •

  During the rest of that day Miriam, anyway, thinks often of the family of those killed people. She imagines a small funeral parlor, too many bright flowers. People sitting around, moaning, crying. She can see it all quite clearly.

  Their ultimate destination is Ixtapa, for a rest, but they will get there by way of Puerto Escondido, a smaller, less well known resort. (It was Miriam who came up with the idea of Escondido: a young woman she knows in Seattle, a weaver with a stall in the Pike Place Market, has said it is beautiful, wonderful, undiscovered.) On maps it looked as though both those laps—Oaxaca to Escondido, Escondido to Ixtapa (skirting Acapulco)—were possible by car; their travel agent also believed that they could drive, although she cautioned them about bad roads. However, it turns out in Oaxaca that the only way to Escondido is by plane. A DC-3.

  Miriam, of course, is the nervous flier of the group. It is explained to her that although the DC-3s are small and old, from the Second World War, they are (undoubtedly) kept in very good shape; after all they make the trip every day. Russell, who was a Navy pilot, cannot resist teasing; he says, “I can’t imagine a trip on a DC-3 with no parachute. We always had parachutes.”

  Joan and Russell laugh, watching Miriam. She laughs, too, though unconvincingly.

  However, as a farewell to their Oaxaca hotel, they have Margaritas in the bar, just before departure. Miriam has two, purposefully, and she loves that plane trip.

  They fly very low over sharp green mountains that are crisscrossed with tiny, narrow perilous roads, so low that each tree is visible, and occasionally there is a small village, a scattering of shacks. Tiny people are walking around—she can even see them as they look up at the plane.

  “Oh, it’s really beautiful!” says Miriam, several times; she is a little drunk.

  “Miriam thinks that flying low is safer: it’s closer to the ground,” Eric explains to the others, who laugh. But that is just what Miriam does think, and she continues to believe it.

  The view from their hotel room is exceptionally beautiful: a long broad white beach, deserted, beside the glittering, bright blue-green sea. Some strange greenish-gray vegetation and, at the far end of the beach, some white cliffs, or dunes—high, deeply ridged.

  “Oh, how lovely,” Miriam breathes; she is feeling the Margaritas, a little.

  Behind her, Eric is saying, “This is the dirtiest room I’ve ever seen.”

  Miriam turns to see that he is right: an unmade bed, glasses with inches of dark liquid at their bottoms, floating cigarette stubs. A smeared mirror (lipstick? blood?), deep dust on the floor.

  They both are right, about the view and the condition of the room.

  It is quite a while before a maid comes in to clean it up, although Eric goes out to the desk to make a fuss.

  For whatever reasons—fatigue, drinks, the flight—Miriam has a headache as she and Eric go to bed that night. But women cannot say that anymore, she knows, when they are not in the mood to make love. “I have a headache”: a sitcom joke. And so she does not say it, and they do, happily—a happy surprise.

  Downstairs in the hotel, and outside, some sort of fiesta seems to be going on. A rock band, as well as mariachis. Amplified.

  All night.

  The hotel is up on a high bluff above the sea—as they did not quite realize the day before, on their arrival. Its broad grassy grounds stretch to an edge, a dropping off. There is a round blue swimming pool and a thatch-roofed bar. A romantic situation for the central building, which is itself romantic, with its balconies and long arched windows, its heavy growth of bougainvillea—brilliant blossoms, delicate green vines.

  However, the fiesta of the night before has left an incredible litter everywhere—piles of empty bottles: Scotch, French champagne, Mexican beer. Heaped-up ashtrays. Dirty plates.

  Observing all this, around noon, Russell severely remarks, “Do you realize that no one has touched this since last night?”

  And Joan: “Ugh. They’re probably all home sleeping off hangovers. They just don’t give a damn.”

  Perversely, Miriam finds something appealing, romantic even, in all that mess (although she does not say so, of course). So much champagne everywhere—what an incredible time they all must have had! It is how Gatsby’s lawns must have looked after one of his parties, before the servants came.

  But at that hotel, in Puerto Escondido (not West Egg), no one comes to clean up, not all day.

  The ocean water—which holds, surrounds, embraces Miriam as she swims, and dives down to explore beneath its surface—is like no other water in her life; surely not the New England ponds of her childhood, or the harsh Atlantic waves that pound the Northeastern coast. This clear and lightly cool green water seems another element—enchanted water—and, swimming there, in the gentle waves, Miriam feels herself transformed, her body as quick and light as a minnow. As small and brown.

  The others, Eric and Joan and Russell, are swimming there, too, but they are off somewhere else; Miriam hears them, distantly. She feels most splendidly, luxuriantly alone in the lovely water. And she is alone, except for a little Mexican boy, a child, who from time to time swims up to her; he smiles shyly, darkly, and as quickly disappears, another fish.

  “Miriam, come on, we’re getting out now,” she hears someone call.

  “I think I’ll stay in for a while. I’ll meet you up at the room.”

  “Well—”

  She dives down as far as she can, in the watery g
reen silence.

  Late that afternoon, they learn that there are no rental cars available, and anyway it is not allowed to drive rented cars from Escondido to Ixtapa, or even to Acapulco.

  Airplanes do not fly to Ixtapa, or to Acapulco. Only backward to Oaxaca.

  There is only the second-class bus to Acapulco, and from there they may take a first-class bus to Ixtapa. One must travel from the second- to the first-class bus station, a matter of no distance. First class is called Estrella de Oro. A good sign.

  “But, uh, couldn’t we possibly just stay on here? It’s really nice, don’t you think? And second-class busses—” It is of course Miriam who has said all this.

  She is answered by a chorus: “Oh Miriam, of course not, we have reservations, Ixtapa …”

  Because they get there early, well before nine in the morning, they all have good seats on the bus, Miriam and Eric across the aisle from Joan and Russell, the two women at the windows.

  They are the only North Americans on the bus.

  The Mexicans who crowd into the other seats, and who, at the first and all subsequent stops, begin to fill the aisles, are not the poorest Mexicans—after all, they are traveling second class, not third—but they are considerably less rich than the four norte-americanos. Their clothes, the Mexicans’, are bright and cheap and new, possibly bought for this trip, in some cases, whereas the North Americans wear old jeans and old cotton shirts; their leather bags are hidden in the luggage compartment, under the bus.

  Miriam wishes that she were wearing something else. In these circumstances the jeans seem an affectation, besides being too hot. In a bright cotton dress, for instance (there are several in her suitcase, old summer favorites), she could look like any other passenger. She feels not liked by the Mexicans.

  In addition to stops at all the small villages for new passengers, the bus is often forced to stop for sheep and cattle, or goats that appear in small herds or scattered at roadsides, evidently just emerged from the rich green tropical growth that lines the way. At moments, through the thick palm trunks, a portion of the sea is visible, sharp blue, as quickly gone; mostly the road wanders up small hills and down into dried-out creek beds. A burdened beast, the heavy, packed bus lumbers and creaks over potholes as large as moon craters.

  At the village stops the windows are opened, things to eat and drink passed back and forth; shouts, laughter, money exchanged. To Miriam it all looks very good: the fruit, dark meats, strange pastries. But no one, not her husband or friends, would approve of such exotic fare; she knows this perfectly well.

  Joan has brought some soda crackers in a package, from some restaurant; she passes them across to Miriam and Eric. Miriam is actually quite hungry, and the crackers help a little, although they are stale.

  The bus is supposed to arrive at Acapulco at three, but it does not—not until four—and so the six-hour trip has taken seven.

  “Seven hours on a second-class bus! No one will believe this story,” Russell says, once they have got out and are standing there, stretching, breathing in the hot, murky city air. But he is laughing; Miriam can tell that it will be a good story for him, later on. They will all laugh about it on later trips together—probably.

  They are standing in an incredible area of broken paving, refuse, dirt, over which hordes of shabby people are rushing with their battered luggage, packages.

  Now they pick up their own suitcases (easy to recognize) from the pile outside their bus; they head for the street, where taxis can be seen cruising by. At some distance, in another direction, they can also see a large building, which is probably the station. And Miriam cannot resist saying, “We’d probably do just as well to get on another bus right here.”

  “Miriam, you’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Another second-class bus? Come on.”

  However, as soon as they have piled into a taxi and told the driver that they want the first-class station, Estrella de Oro, to Ixtapa, he tells them that they will have much trouble. Many crowds, he says gloomily; they may not get to Ixtapa.

  They all look at each other. “But we have to get to Ixtapa,” Eric mutters. “We have reservations for tonight.”

  • • •

  Downstairs in the Estrella de Oro station a large crowd surrounds the ticket counter that is marked Zihuatanejo-Ixtapa—all kinds of people, mostly Mexican. It seems impossible that so many people would want to go in just that direction at that moment, but there they are.

  “I suppose some people live and work there,” Miriam suggests.

  The waiting rooms and restaurant are on the second floor. “Why don’t you girls go back upstairs? No point in all of us waiting in line,” Eric says.

  By now, it is six o’clock, and there is, in theory, a bus that leaves at seven-thirty. But will there be room on it for all these people, plus four North Americans? Quite possibly not.

  The upstairs restaurant is closed, it seems, for repairs, and so Miriam and Joan simply wander about, in an idle though nervous way.

  At one point they go out to the front entrance and stand there, observing the garish, tropical, and infinitely dirty scene, the broken-down cars and the beggars, dark withered women with sleeping children in their arms. “I think Acapulco is the bottom of the world.” Miriam shudders as she says this, in the thick infested heat.

  “Oh, I’ve seen worse,” Joan says. She has recently been to India—a medical conference—which is presumably what she means.

  Looking up at Joan, who is visibly tired, her light hair straggling down, her face dirt-streaked, lipstick gone, Miriam hopelessly thinks that Joan is still very beautiful, and then she wonders (not for the first time), But does Joan like me, really?

  And then (a new thought), Oh, I just don’t care!

  After a while, they go back downstairs to see what has happened to Eric and Russell.

  What has happened is that they have been given numbers and moved to another line.

  “It’s like a lottery?” asks Miriam.

  Eric frowns. “Jesus, I hope not.”

  • • •

  By about eight it is clear that they have missed the seven-thirty bus, but it is said that there is another at ten. Everything is shouted in Spanish, though, which they only partially understand, and they never actually see the busses as they come in or depart.

  “Miriam was absolutely right,” Eric concedes, in a rueful way. “We should have just gone into the second-class station and got on another bus.”

  Miriam does not quite remember having said that, but she supposes that she did.

  Clear information comes through at ten-fifteen: they have indeed missed the ten-o’clock bus, but there is another at eleven. However, there are still many people who wait for the bus; that is evident.

  “Eleven. Jesus, that gets us to Ixtapa about three, or four.” Russell fumes.

  “Terrific, that’s what we really need right now. Five more hours on a bus. Even if it is first class.” Eric is muttering, as though to himself.

  In a low, very reasonable voice, Joan asks, “Do we have a choice, though? We’d never get into a hotel. Or could we?”

  At which Miriam cries out, “Oh, no, God, not a hotel here—it’s so horrible! Why not just take a bus back to Escondido?”

  She has spoken heedlessly, an outburst; still, she is unprepared for the silent, stony rage on those three so similar faces, looking down at her from their impressive heights. Joan’s mouth is taut; Russell’s eyes are wild, they glare as he says, “That’s crazy.”

  At which Eric turns from Miriam to Russell, as he says, very quietly and furiously, “That’s enough, now, Russ. Just shut up, will you?”

  As though they had always hated each other, the two men glare at each other for a moment that lasts forever, in the throbbing, crowded, filthy alien room, in Acapulco.

  At eleven, having hardly spoken, any of them, for the past forty-five minutes, in a blind exhausted way the four of them pile into the bus that has mysteriously appeared, out of the n
ight. There are, strangely, just enough seats for everyone.

  Miriam has stumbled into a window seat, on the left of the bus, next to the ocean, as they wind northward, up the coast. If anything were to be seen, through the heavy darkness—if there were a view, hers would be the best, and she feels a miserable guilt over even that nonexistent advantage. She also (miserably) feels responsible for their quarrel. Eric and Russell never fight.

  The road seems very smooth, on this stretch of the coast. No potholes, but there are curves, which the driver takes at top speed, so that several passengers, Miriam among them, gasp aloud. Miriam thinks it quite possible that he could be drunk. Why not, at this dangerous, unreal hour? They will all be killed, she thinks, and then, so total is her discomfort, so deep her unhappiness, she further thinks that she does not care if they are. But please don’t let me be the sole survivor, she earnestly prays, to someone.

  Most people have fallen instantly, noisily asleep, despite the danger, Beside Miriam, Eric sleeps lightly, restlessly.

  The dawn is dirty, yellowish, menacing. In the coconut-palm plantations, just now barely, grayly visible, the heavy fronds are too still, and the ocean, glimpsed at intervals, is flat and black, dangerous-looking.

  “Does it ever storm down here?” Russell has leaned across the aisle to ask this question of Eric, just awake.

  Miriam watches Eric as he frowns and speaks impatiently. “I don’t know. Probably.”

  If any of them spoke Spanish it would all have been different, Miriam thinks. They would have understood what was being said in the station about the busses, and even, maybe, have grasped a little more about the terrible accident on the road: how the guide knew so quickly what had happened, and what their driver was saying to himself—so sadly, so brokenly.

  She will study Spanish, she then swiftly decides. There is a night course at the library branch at which she works; she will sign up as soon as they get home.