Alice Adams - To See You Again - Stories

Exactly what Mr. Iverson did for a living was not clear; he mentioned the Peace Corps and VISTA, and then he said that he was writing; not novels—articles. His wife was divorcing him and she was making a lot of trouble about money, he said: a blow, he hadn’t thought she was like that. (But how could he have enough money for anyone to make trouble about, Dylan wondered.) He had brought down a carload of books. When he wasn’t reading in his room, or working on whatever he was writing, he took long, long walks, every day, miles over the meadows, back and forth to what there was of a town. Glimpsing him through a window as she set up tables, Dylan noted his stride, his strong shoulders. Sometimes he climbed down the steep perilous banks to the edge of the sea, to the narrow strip of coarse gray sand that passed for a beach. Perfectly safe, he said, if you checked the tides. Unlike Dylan, he was crazy about this landscape; he found the sea and the stretching hills of grass and rock, the acres of sky, all marvelous; even the billowing fog that threatened all summer he saw as lovely, something amazing.

Sometimes Dylan tried to see the local scenery with Whitney Iverson’s eyes, and sometimes, remarkably, this worked. She was able to imagine herself a sojourner in this area, as he was, and then she could succumb to the sharp blue beauty of that wild Pacific, the dark-green, wind-bent feathery cypresses, and the sheer cliffs going down to the water, with their crevices of moss and tiny brilliant wild flowers.

But usually she just looked around in a dull, hating way. Usually she was miserably bored and hopelessly despondent.

They had moved down here to the seaside, to this tiny nothing town, Dylan and Flower, so that Flower could concentrate on making jewelry, which was her profession. Actually, the move was the idea of Zachery, Flower’s boyfriend. Flower would make the jewelry and Zach would take it up to San Francisco to sell; someday he might even try L.A. And Zach would bring back new materials for Flower to use— gold and silver and pearls. Flower, who was several months behind in her rent, had agreed to this plan. Also, as Dylan saw it, Flower was totally dominated by Zach, who was big and dark and roughly handsome, and sometimes mean. Dylan further suspected that Zach wanted them out of town, wanted to see less of Flower, and the summer had borne out her theory: instead of his living with them and making occasional forays to the city, as Flower had imagined, it was just the other way around. Zach made occasional visits to them, and the rest of the time, when she wasn’t working or trying to work on some earrings or a necklace, Flower sat sipping the harsh, local red wine and reading the used paperbacks that Zach brought down in big cartons along with the jewelry materials—“to keep you out of mischief,” he had said.

Flower wore her graying blond hair long, in the non-style of her whole adult life, and she was putting on weight. When she wanted to work she took an upper, another commodity supplied by Zach, but this didn’t do much to keep her weight down, just kept her “wired,” as she sometimes said. Dylan alternated between impatience and the most tender sympathy for her mother, who was in some ways more like a friend; it was often clear to Dylan that actually she had to be the stronger person, the one in charge. But Flower was so nice, really, a wonderful cook and generous to her friends, and she could be funny. Some of the jewelry she made was beautiful—recently, a necklace of silver and stones that Zach said were real opals. Flower had talent, originality. If she could just dump Zach for good, Dylan thought, and then not replace him with someone worse, as she usually did. Always some mean jerk. If she could just not drink, not take speed.

From the start Flower had been genuinely sympathetic about Dylan’s awful job. “Honey, I can hardly stand to think about it,” she would say, and her eyes would fill. She had been a waitress several times herself. “You and those heavy trays, and the mess. Look, why don’t you just quit? Honestly, we’ll get by like we always have. I’ll just tell Zach he’s got to bring more stuff down, and sell more, too. And you can help me.”

This seemed a dangerous plan to Dylan, possibly because it relied on Zach, who Dylan was sure would end up in jail, or worse. She stubbornly stuck with her job, and on her two days off (Mondays and Tuesdays, of all useless days) she stayed in bed a lot, and read, and allowed her mother to “spoil” her, with breakfast trays (“Well, after all, who deserves her own tray more than you do, baby?”) and her favorite salads for lunch, with every available fresh vegetable and sometimes shrimp.

When she wasn’t talking to her mother or helping out with household chores, Dylan was reading a book that Mr. Iverson had lent her— The Eustace Diamonds , by Trollope. This had come about because one afternoon, meeting him in the library, Dylan had explained the old Vogues , the House Beautifuls scattered near her lap, saying that she was too tired just then to read, and that she missed television. The winter before, she had loved The Pallisers , she said, and, before that, Upstairs, Downstairs . Mr. Iverson had recommended The Eustace Diamonds . “It’s really my favorite of the Palliser novels,” he said, and he went to get it for her—running all the way up to his room and back, apparently; he was out of breath as he handed her the book.

But why was he so eager to please her? She knew that she was pretty, but she wasn’t all that pretty, in her own estimation; she was highly conscious of the two crooked front teeth, although she had perfected a radiant, slightly false smile that almost hid them.

“I wonder if he could be one of the Iversons,” Flower mused, informed by Dylan one Monday of the source of her book.

“The Iversons?” In Flower’s voice it had sounded like the Pallisers.

“One of the really terrific, old San Francisco families. You know, Huntingtons, Floods, Crockers, Iversons. What does he look like, your Mr. Iverson?”

Dylan found this hard to answer, although usually with Flower she spoke very easily, they were so used to each other. “Well.” She hesitated. “He’s sort of blond, with nice blue eyes and a small nose. He has this birthmark on his neck, but it’s not really noticeable.”

Flower laughed. “In that case, he’s not a real Iverson. They’ve all got dark hair and the most aristocratic beaky noses. And none of them could possibly have a birthmark—they’d drown it at birth.”

Dylan laughed, too, although she felt an obscure disloyalty to Mr. Iverson.

And, looking at Flower, Dylan thought, as she had before, that Flower could change her life, take charge of herself. She was basically strong. But in the next moment Dylan decided, as she also had before, more frequently, that probably Flower wouldn’t change; in her brief experience people didn’t, or not much. Zach would go to jail and Flower would find somebody worse, and get grayer and fatter. And she, Dylan, had better forget about anything as childish as being adopted by rich old people; she must concentrate on marrying someone who really had money . Resolution made her feel suddenly adult.

“Honey,” asked Flower, “are you sure you won’t have a glass of wine?”

“My mother wonders if you’re a real Iverson.” Dylan had not quite meant to say this; the sentence spoke itself, leaving her slightly embarrassed, as she sat with Whitney Iverson on a small sofa in the library. It was her afternoon break; she was tired, and she told herself that she didn’t know what she was saying.

Mr. Iverson, whose intense blue eyes had been staring into hers, now turned away, so that Dylan was more aware of the mark on his neck than she had been before. Or could it have deepened to a darker mulberry stain?