Alice Adams - To See You Again - Stories

He said, “Well, I am and I’m not, actually. I think of them as my parents and I grew up with them, in the Atherton house, but actually I’m adopted.”

“Really?” Two girls Dylan knew at Mission High had got pregnant and had given up their babies to be adopted. His real mother, then, could have been an ordinary high-school girl? The idea made her uncomfortable, as though he had suddenly moved closer to her.

“I believe they were very aware of it, my not being really theirs,” Whitney Iverson said, again looking away from her. “Especially when I messed up in some way, like choosing Reed, instead of Stanford. Then graduate school …”

As he talked on, seeming to search for new words for the feelings engendered in him by his adoptive parents, Dylan felt herself involuntarily retreat. No one had ever talked to her in quite that way, and she was uneasy. She looked through the long leaded windows to the wavering sunlight beyond; she stared at the dust-moted shafts of light in the dingy room where they were.

In fact, for Dylan, Whitney’s very niceness was somehow against him; his kindness, his willingness to talk, ran against the rather austere grain of her fantasies.

Apparently sensing what she felt, or some of it, Whitney stopped short, and he laughed in a self-conscious way. “Well, there you have the poor-adopted-kid self-pity trip of the month,” he said. “ ‘Poor,’ Christ, they’ve drowned me in money.”

Feeling that this last was not really addressed to her (and thinking of Flower’s phrase about the birthmark, “drowned at birth”), Dylan said nothing. She stared at his hands, which were strong and brown, long-fingered, and she suddenly, sharply, wished that he would touch her. Touch, instead of all this awkward talk.

Later, considering that conversation, Dylan found herself moved, in spite of herself. How terrible to feel not only that you did not really belong with your parents but that they were disappointed in you. Whitney Iverson hadn’t said anything about it, of course, but they must have minded about the birthmark, along with college and graduate school.

She and Flower were so clearly mother and daughter—obviously, irrevocably so; her green eyes were Flower’s, even her crooked front teeth. Also, Flower had always thought she was wonderful. “My daughter Dylan,” she would say, in her strongest, proudest voice.

But what had he possibly meant about “drowned in money”? Was he really rich, or had that been a joke? His car was an old VW convertible, and his button-down shirts were frayed, his baggy jackets shabby. Would a rich person drive a car like that, or wear those clothes? Probably not, thought Dylan; on the other hand, he did not seem a man to say that he was rich if he was not.

In any case, Dylan decided that she was giving him too much thought, since she had no real reason to think that he cared about her. Maybe he was an Iverson, and a snob, and did not want anything to do with a waitress. If he had wanted to see her, he could have suggested dinner, a movie or driving down to Santa Cruz on one of her days off. Probably she would have said yes, and on the way home, maybe on a bluff overlooking the sea, he could have parked the car, have turned to her.

So far, Dylan had had little experience of ambiguity; its emerging presence made her both impatient and confused. She did not know what to do or how to think about the contradictions in Whitney Iverson.

Although over the summer Dylan and Whitney had met almost every day in the library, this was never a stated arrangement, and if either of them missed a day, as they each sometimes did, nothing was said. This calculated diffidence seemed to suit them; they were like children who could not quite admit to seeking each other out.

One day, when Dylan had already decided that he would not come, and not caring really—she was too tired to care, what with extra guests and heavier trays—after she had been in the library for almost half an hour, she heard running steps, his, and then Whitney Iverson burst in, quite out of breath. “Oh … I’m glad you’re still here,” he got out, and he sat down heavily beside her. “I had some terrific news.” But then on the verge of telling her, he stopped, and laughed, and said, “But I’m afraid it won’t sound all that terrific to you.”

Unhelpfully she looked at him.

“The Yale Review ,” he said. “They’ve taken an article I sent them. I’m really pleased.”

He had been right, in that the Yale Review was meaningless to Dylan, but his sense of triumph was real and visible to her. She felt his success, and she thought just then that he looked wonderful.

September, once Labor Day was past, was much clearer and warmer, the sea a more brilliant blue, than during the summer. Under a light, fleece-clouded sky the water shimmered, all diamonds and gold, and the rocky cliffs in full sunlight were as pale as ivory. Even Dylan admitted to herself that it was beautiful; sometimes she felt herself penetrated by that scenery, her consciousness filled with it.

Whitney Iverson was leaving on the fifteenth; he had told Dylan so, naming the day as they sat together in the library. And then he said, “Would it be okay if I called you at home, sometime?”

The truth was, they didn’t have a phone. Flower had been in so much trouble with the phone company that she didn’t want to get into all that again. And so now Dylan blushed, and lied. “Well, maybe not. My mother’s really strict.”

He blushed, too, the birthmark darkening. “Well, I’ll have to come back to see you,” he said. “But will you still be here?”

How could she know, especially since he didn’t even name a time when he would come? With a careless lack of tact she answered, “I hope not,” and then she laughed.

Very seriously he asked, “Well, could we at least go for a walk or something before I go? I could show you the beach.” He gave a small laugh, indicating that the beach was really nothing much to see, and then he said, “Dylan, I’ve wanted so much to see you, I care so much for you—but here, there would have been … implications … you know …”

She didn’t know; she refused to understand what he meant, unless he was confirming her old suspicion of snobbery: his not wanting to be seen with a waitress. She frowned slightly, and said, “Of course,” and thought that she would not, after all, see him again. So much for Whitney Iverson.

But the next afternoon, during her break, in the brilliant September weather the library looked to her unbearably dingy, and all those magazines were so old. She stepped outside through the door at the end of the porch, and there was Mr. Iverson, just coming out through another door.

He smiled widely, said, “Perfect! We can just make it before the tide.”

Wanting to say that she hadn’t meant to go for a walk with him—she was just getting some air, and her shoes were wrong, canvas sandals—Dylan said neither of those things, but followed along, across the yellowing grass, toward the bluff.

He led her to a place that she hadn’t known was there, a dip in the headland, from which the beach was only a few yards down, by a not steep, narrow path. Whitney went ahead, first turning back to reach for her hand, which she gave him. Making her way just behind, Dylan was more aware of his touch, of their firmly joined warm hands, than of anything else in the day: the sunlight, the sea, her poorly shod feet.

But as they reached the narrow strip of land, instead of turning to embrace her, although he still held her hand, Whitney cried out, “See? Isn’t it fantastic?”

A small wave hit Dylan’s left foot, soaking the fabric of her sandal. Unkissed, she stared at the back of his shirt collar, which was more frayed even than his usual shirts, below his slightly too long red-blond hair.