The Stories of Alice Adams

by Alice Adams

  Yesterday afternoon? Last night? As Hal talked and talked on the phone Karen lay back and laughed and laughed, his voice sounded so funny to her, just killing. And his fat was so nice, so reassuring.

  After that her memory is vague, more spotty.

  Other people came to her room. All men? Karen thinks so, but just as she thinks, All men, she remembers a woman. Was that a maid, with more drinks, bottles? Ice?

  Drinking. Smoking. A lot of them smoked, a lot.

  Then something about the air conditioner not working. Too hot.

  People undressing?

  But no sex. Nothing like that.

  Or was there?

  At that moment, two things happen to Karen simultaneously. Her memory closes down. Black. Blank. And her stomach lurches, then tightens like a fist.

  In the bathroom nothing comes to her mouth but bile, thin and bitter, greenish. Her stomach contracts again, and again. More bitterness, more thin bile.

  Very clearly then, to herself Karen says, This must never happen again. Not any of it. Not ever.

  She begins to repeat, “I am an alcoholic. I am not in control of my life.”

  In San Francisco, in the heavy early-morning fog that will probably last all day, the trees around Lila’s house drip moisture, water running down pine needles, slow drops from eucalyptus leaves. And from out in the bay comes the heavy, scraping sound of foghorns.

  Lila has pulled a dark gray sweater over the silk shirt that she wore to dinner last night, with Julian, but even so she is cold as they stand there in her doorway, saying good-bye.

  “Well, in any case, tonight, okay?” asks Julian. “We’ll stay here? Do you want to make dinner, or should we go out, do you think? It might be better—”

  This tentativeness of Julian’s tells Lila that he is not at all sure what to do about Karen, who might telephone—anywhere.

  Surprising herself—she, too, had assumed this night for them together—Lila hears her own voice saying, “Well, maybe not? I mean maybe not tonight at all?” She laughs to lighten the effect of what she has said: they have never before not seen each other when they could. “Let’s talk on the phone instead.” She laughs again.

  “Well. Oh. Well, okay.” Looking hard at Lila as he says those few words, Julian too seems to strive for lightness. But then he says, “Or I could make dinner at my house? We haven’t done that for a while. I’ll bring you home early, I promise.”

  Meaning that he can’t quite let her go, not now? He needs some sort of help from Lila?

  No time for talking about it, however, and so she temporizes. “Well, let me call you later, okay?”

  They kiss, both with the thought that they will see each other that night after all. Probably.

  Julian walks over to his car, and Lila goes back inside her house, where she will clean up their few dishes before heading over to her study, ready for the day’s first patient.

  Cleaning up her room, which seemed to Karen a first step, is not quite as terrible as she imagined it would be. To start with, there are not as many sheets lying around as she thought there were. She pulls the sheets and a couple of towels into a bundle that she then thrusts out into the hall—seeing no one in the corridor, luckily.

  She empties the ashtrays into the toilet, along with the inches of booze in the several glasses. Flushes it all away. Gone. She considers washing the ashtrays and decides against it, imagining that wet-ash smell. She just stacks everything there in the bathroom and closes the door.

  Well. Already a huge improvement.

  She will call her agent and apologize; in fact she will call a lot of people, explaining, apologizing. But there is no way, not now, that she could go on to New York today, as she was meant to do.

  She will call down for some food, a tray of tea and eggs, some yogurt, all healthy stuff. Maybe that nice black man will bring it up to her, the one who brought the wine. (Wine. She will never drink wine again, or anything else.) How surprised and pleased he will be to see how she has tidied up the room! And to see her looking so much better! How surprised everyone will be when they see her.

  She very much hopes it will be the same waiter. She really liked him. If only she could remember his name.

  Earthquake Damage

  Stretching long legs to brace her boots against the bulkhead as the plane heads upward from Toronto into gray mid-October air, Lila Lewisohn, a very tall, exhausted psychiatrist—a week of meetings has almost done her in, she feels—takes note of the advantages of this seat: enough leg room, and somewhat out of the crush. Also, the seat next to hers is vacant. At least, she thinks, the trip will be comfortable; maybe I can sleep.

  But a few minutes into the air the plane is gripped and shaken. Turbulence rattles everything, as passengers clutch their armrests, or neighboring human arms, if they are traveling with friends or lovers. Lila, for whom this is a rather isolated period, instead grips her own knees, and grits her teeth, and prays—to no one, or perhaps to a very odd bunch: to God, in whom she does not believe; to Freud, about whom she has serious doubts; to her old shrink, who is dead; to her mother, also dead, and whom she mostly did not like. And to her former (she supposes it is now former) lover, Julian Brownfield, also a shrink.

  Lila and Julian, in training together in Boston, plunged more or less inadvertently from a collegial friendship into heady adulterous love—a love (and a friendship) that for many years worked, sustaining them both through problematic marriages. But in the five or six years since the dissolutions of those marriages a certain troubled imbalance has set in. Most recently, Julian has taken back his ex-wife, Karen, an alcoholic pianist who is not doing well with recovery and has just violently separated from another husband. Sheltering might be Julian’s word for what he is doing for Karen—Lila would call it harboring, or worse: if Karen behaved well, she might stay on forever there with Julian, Lila at least half believes. She has so far refused to see Julian, with Karen there.

  In any case, Lila now prays to all those on her list, and especially to Julian, to whom she says, I’m just not up to all this; I’m really running on empty. Please.

  Her meetings, held in the new Harbourfront section of Toronto, in an excellent hotel with lovely, wide lake views, were no more than routinely tiring, actually; Lila was forced to admit to herself that it was the theme of the conference that afflicted her with a variety of troubled feelings. It was a psychiatric conference on the contemporary state of being single, though of course certain newspaper articles vulgarized it into “A New Look at Singles,” “Singles: Shrinks Say the New Minority.” Whereas in fact the hours of papers and discussion had ranged about—had included the guilt that many people feel over their single state; social ostracism, subtle and overt; myths of singleness; the couple as conspiracy; plus practical problems, demographics, and perceived changes over the last several generations. And Lila found that she overreacted—she was reached, touched, shaken by much that was said. She had trouble sleeping, despite long lap swims in the hotel’s glassed-in pool, with its views of Canadian skies across Lake Ontario.

  Now, very tired, she braces herself against the turbulence, and against certain strong old demons in her mind. And then, as though one of those to whom she has prayed were indeed in charge, the turbulence ends. The huge plane zooms peacefully through a clear gray dusk. Westward, toward San Francisco. A direct flight.

  Lila must have fallen asleep, for she is startled awake by the too loud voice of the pilot, over the intercom: “Sorry, folks. We’ve just had news of a very mild earthquake in the San Francisco area, very mild but a little damage to the airport, so we’ll be heading back to Toronto.”

  An instant of silence is followed by loud groans from the rows and rows of seats behind Lila’s bulkhead. Groans and exclamations: Oh no, Jesus Christ, all we need, an earthquake. Turning, she sees that a great many people are standing up, moving about, as if there were anything to do. One man, though—trench-coated, lean, dark blond, almost handsome—makes for the telephone up on
the wall near Lila’s seat. Seizing it, he begins to dial, and dial and dial. Lila gestures that he can sit down in the empty seat, and he does so, with a twisting grimace. Then, “Can’t get through, damn,” he says. “My family’s down on the Peninsula.” He dials again, says, “Damn,” again, then asks Lila, “Yours?”

  “Oh. Uh, San Francisco.”

  “Well, San Francisco’s better. Guy with a radio said the epicenter’s in Hollister.”

  “I wonder about that ‘mild.’ ” Lila leans toward him to whisper.

  “No way it could be mild. They’re not closing down the airport for any mild earthquake.”

  Which is pretty much what Lila had already thought.

  “Well, I guess I better let someone else try to phone.”

  “There’s one on the other side,” Lila tells him, having noticed this symmetrical arrangement on entering the plane.

  “Oh, well then.” But after a few minutes, muttering, he gets up and goes back to his seat, as Lila realizes that she wishes he had stuck around—not that she was especially drawn to him; she simply wanted someone there.

  People are by now crowding around the two phones, pressing into the passageway between the aisles. A man has managed to get through to his sister-in-law, in Sacramento, and soon everyone has his news: it is a major quake. Many dead. The bridge down.

  At that last piece of news, about the bridge, Lila’s tired heart is drenched with cold, as she thinks: Julian, Julian, who lives in Mill Valley and practices in San Francisco, could be on the bridge at any time. Especially now, just after five in San Francisco. Commuter time.

  On the other hand, almost anyone could have been on the bridge, especially anyone who lives in Marin County. Fighting panic, Lila says this firmly to herself: anyone does not mean Julian, necessarily. A major disaster involving the bridge does not necessarily involve Julian Brown-field. Not necessarily. She is gripping her knees, as during the turbulence; with an effort she unclenches her fingers and clasps her hands together on her lap, too tightly.

  “How about the game?” someone near her is saying.

  “No stadium damage, I heard.”

  “Lucky it wasn’t a little later. People leaving, going back to Oakland.”

  As, very slowly, these sentences penetrate Lila’s miasma of anxiety, she understands: they are talking about the Bay Bridge. The Bay Bridge was damaged, not the Golden Gate. Traffic to the East Bay, not to Marin, Mill Valley.

  What Lila feels then, along with extreme relief, is an increase of exhaustion; her nerves sag. And she has, too, the cold new thought that Julian, an unlikely fan, could well have gone to the game. (Taken Karen to the game?) Could have left early, and been overtaken by the earthquake, anywhere at all.

  Rising from her seat, intending to walk about, she sees that everyone else is also trying to move. They all seem to protest the event, and their situations, with restless, random motion. Strangers confront and query each other along the packed aisles: Where’re you from? Remember the quake last August? The one in ’72? In ’57? How long were you in Toronto? Like it there? But not enough to make you want to go back right away, right?

  At last they begin the descent into Toronto, strapped in, looking down, and no one notices the turbulence that they pass through.

  In Julian’s house, high up on the wooded crest above Mill Valley, there is total chaos: in the front hall, two large suitcases lie open and overflowing—a crazy tangle of dresses and blouses, sweaters, silk nightgowns, pantyhose, and shoes thrown all over.

  “Anyone coming in,” Julian comments from a doorway, “anyone would think the earthquake, whereas actually—”

  “Well, in a way it is the fucking earthquake,” Karen unnecessarily tells him, in her furious, choppy way. “Closing the fucking airport.”

  “Whereas, really, we were lucky,” Julian continues, more or less to himself. He is tall and too thin, gray-haired. His skin, too, now looks gray: three weeks of Karen have almost done him in, he thinks. In character, she has alternated her wish to leave with a passionate desire to stay with Julian—forever. Only a day ago she had decided firmly (it seemed) to leave. And now, on the verge of her departure, an earthquake. “The airport might open in a couple of hours,” Julian tells Karen, and he is thinking of Lila, the exact hour of whose return he is uncertain about. Perhaps she is already here? “Or tomorrow,” he says to Karen, hopefully.

  “But how would we know, with the phone out?” Karen complains. “It might be a couple of weeks.” She is visibly at the end of her rope, which is short at the best of times. “A couple of weeks with no lights or electricity!”

  It is clear to Julian that whatever controls Karen has managed to place on herself for the course of her stay are now wavering, if not completely gone. She has not behaved badly; she has not, that is, got drunk. He himself, at this moment, acutely longs for a drink. An odd longing: Julian is generally abstemious, a tennis player, always in shape. And he wonders, is he catching Karen’s own longing, her alcoholic impulse? Karen, opposing A.A. (she did not like it there), believes that alcoholics can cut down, citing herself as an example—every night she has one, and only one, vodka martini.

  Karen is very beautiful, still. All that booze has in no way afflicted the fine white skin. Her face shows no tracks of pain, nor shadows. Her wide, dark-blue eyes are clear; looking into those eyes, one might imagine that her head resounds only with Mozart, or Brahms—and perhaps in a way it still does.

  “Well, come on, Julian, let’s find some candles. You know perfectly well that this is the cocktail hour,” she says to her former husband, and she laughs.

  Down on the ground in Toronto, disembarked, all the passengers from the flight to San Francisco are herded into a room where, they are assured, they will be given instructions. And in that large, bare room rumors quickly begin to circulate, as people gather and mutter questions to each other.

  No one is sitting or standing alone, Lila notices, although surely there were other solitary travelers on that plane. And she finds that she, too, begins to attach herself to groups, one after another. Is she seeking information, or simple creature comfort, animal reassurance? She is not sure.

  Three businessmen in overcoats, with lavish attaché cases, having spoken to the pilot, inform Lila that it may be several days before the San Francisco airport opens. And that the reason for not going on to L.A., or even to Reno or Salt Lake City, has to do with flight regulations—since theirs was a Canadian carrier, they had to return to Canada.

  In an automatic way she looks across to the man in the trench coat, at the same time wondering why: Why has she more or less chosen him to lead her? She very much doubts that it is because he is almost handsome, and she hopes that it is not simply that he is a man. He looks decisive, she more or less concludes, and then is shaken by a powerful memory of Julian, who is neither handsome nor decisive, and whom she has loved for all those years.

  The trench-coated man seems indeed to have a definite group of his own, of which he is in charge. Lila reads this from the posture of the four people whom she now approaches, leaving the didactic businessmen. But before Lila can ask anything, the loudspeaker comes on, and a voice says that they are all to be housed in the Toronto Hilton, which is very near, and that the airline will do everything possible to get them to their destination tomorrow. A van will pick them up downstairs to take them to the hotel. Names will be called, vouchers given.

  Lila has barely joined her chosen group when she hears her name called; they must be doing it by rows, she decides. She is instructed to go through a hall and down some stairs, go outside, and meet the Hilton van there.

  And after a couple of wrong turns Lila indeed finds herself outside in the semidark, next to a dimly lit, low-ceilinged traffic tunnel, where a van soon does arrive. But it is for the Ramada Inn, not the Hilton.

  And that is the last vehicle of any nature to show up for the next ten or twelve minutes, during which time no people show up, either. No one.

  Sev
eral taxis are parked some yards down from where Lila has been standing, pacing, in her boots, by her carry-on bag. Drivers are lounging on the seats inside. Should she take a cab to the Hilton? On the other hand, maybe by now everything has been changed, and no one is going to the Hilton after all.

  It is very cold, standing there in the dark tunnel, and seemingly darker and dingier all the time. Across the black, wide car lanes are some glassed-in offices, closed and black, reflecting nothing. Behind Lila is the last room through which she came. It is still lit, and empty.

  Something clearly is wrong; things cannot be going as planned. Or, she is in the wrong place. Then, dimly, at the end of the tunnel, she sees a van moving toward her. It will not be a Hilton van, she thinks, and she is right: HOLIDAY INN, its sign reads. It passes her slowly, an empty van, its driver barely looking out.

  Lila is later to think of this period of time as the worst of the earthquake for her—a time in which she feels most utterly alone, quite possibly abandoned. It is so bad that she has forgotten about the earthquake itself almost entirely; she is too immediately frightened and uncomfortable to think of distant disaster.

  After perhaps another five minutes, during which everything gets worse—the cold and the darkness, Lila’s anxiety and her growing hunger—she hears voices from the room behind her. Turning, she sees what she thinks of as her group: the trench-coated man and his charges, followed by the other passengers, all coming out to where Lila stands, shifting her feet in boots that no longer seem to fit.

  As though they were old friends, Lila hurries toward him. “Where’ve you been? What happened?”

  “Bureaucratic foul-up,” he tells her. “Some stuff about whether or not the airline would spring for the hotel. Who cares? And some confusion about whose flights originated in Toronto.” With a semismile he adds, “You were really lucky to get out first.”

  “Was I? I don’t know.”