Alice Adams - To See You Again - Stories

Then he turned to her; he picked up her other hand from her side, gazing intently down into her face. But it was somehow too late. Something within her had turned against him, whether from her wet foot or his worn-out collar, or sheer faulty timing, so that when he said, “You’re so lovely, you make me shy,” instead of being moved, as she might have been, Dylan thought he sounded silly (a grown man, shy?) and she stepped back a little, away from him.

He could still have kissed her, easily (she later thought), but he did not. Instead, he reached into one of the pockets of his jeans, fishing about, as he said, “… for something I wanted you to have.”

Had he brought her a present, some small valuable keepsake? Prepared to relent, Dylan then saw that he had not; what he was handing her was a cardboard square, a card, on which were printed his name and telephone number. He said, “I just got these. My mother sent them. She’s big on engraving.” He grimaced as Dylan thought, Oh, your mother really is an Iverson. “The number’s my new bachelor pad,” he told her. “It’s unlisted. Look, I really wish you’d call me. Any time. Collect. I’ll be there.” He looked away from her, for a moment out to sea, then down to the sand, where for the first time he seemed to notice her wet foot. “Oh Lord!” he exclaimed. “Will you have to change? I could run you home.…”

Not liking the fuss, and not at all liking the attention paid to those particular shoes (cheap, flimsy), somewhat coldly Dylan said no; the guests had thinned out and she was going home anyway as soon as the tables had been set up.

“Then I won’t see you?”

She gave him her widest, most falsely shining smile, and turned and started up the path ahead of him. At the top she smiled again, and was about to turn away when Whitney grasped her wrist and said, with a startling, unfamiliar scowl, “ Call me, you hear? I don’t want to lose you.”

What Dylan had said about being able to leave after setting up the tables was true; she had been told that she could then go home, which she did. The only problem, of course, was that she would earn less money; it could be a very lean, cold winter. Thinking about money, and, less clearly, about Whitney Iverson, Dylan was not quite ready for the wild-eyed Flower, who greeted her at the door: “We’re celebrating. Congratulate me! I’ve dumped Zach.”

But Dylan had heard this before, and she knew the shape of the evening that her mother’s announcement presaged: strong triumphant statements along with a festive dinner, more and more wine, then tears. Sinkingly she listened as her mother described that afternoon’s visit from Zach, how terrible he was and how firm she, Flower, had been, how final. “And we’re celebrating with a really great fish soup,” finished Flower, leading Dylan into the kitchen.

The evening did go more or less as Dylan had feared and imagined that it would. Ladling out the rich fish soup, Flower told Dylan how just plain fed up she was with men, and she repeated a line that she had recently heard and liked: “A woman without a man is like a mushroom without a bicycle.”

Dylan did not find this as terrifically funny as Flower did, but she dutifully laughed.

A little later, sopping French bread into the liquid, Flower said, “But maybe it’s just the guys I pick? I really seem to have some kind of instinct.”

Flower had said that before, and Dylan always, if silently, agreed with her: it was too obvious to repeat. And then, maybe there really weren’t any nice men around anymore, at her mother’s age? Maybe they all got mean and terrible, the way a lot of women got fat? Dylan thought then of Whitney Iverson, who was only about ten years younger than Flower was; would he, too, eventually become impossible, cruel and unfaithful?

In a way that would have seemed alarmingly telepathic if Dylan had not been used to having her thoughts read by her mother, Flower asked, “What ever happened to your new friend, Mr. Iverson? Was he really one of them ?”

“I don’t know. I guess so,” Dylan muttered, wishing that she had never mentioned Whitney to her mother.

Over salad, Flower announced that she was going on a diet. “Tomorrow. First thing. Don’t worry, I’ll still have the stuff you like around for you, but from now on no more carbohydrates for me.”

At least, this time, she didn’t cry.

At some hour in the middle of the night, or early morning, Dylan woke up—a thing she rarely did. Her ears and her mind were full of the distant sound of the sea, and she could see it as it had been in the afternoon, vastly glittering, when she had been preoccupied with her wet shoe, with Whitney’s not kissing her. And she felt a sudden closeness to him; suddenly she understood what he had not quite said. By “implications” he had meant that the time and place were wrong for them. He was shy and just then not especially happy, what with his divorce and all, but he truly cared about her. If he had felt less he probably would have kissed her, in the careless, meaningless way of a man on vacation kissing a pretty waitress and then going back to his own real life. Whitney was that rarity her mother despaired of finding: a truly nice man. On her way back to sleep Dylan imagined calling him. She could go up to see him on the bus, or he could come down, and they could go out together, nothing to do with the Lodge. Could talk, be alone.

However, Dylan woke up the next morning in quite another mood. She felt wonderful, her own person, needing no one, certainly not a man who had not bothered, really, to claim her. Looking in the mirror, she saw herself as more than pretty, as almost beautiful; it was one of her very good days.

Flower, too, at breakfast seemed cheerful, not hung over. Maybe there was something in the air? Passing buttered English muffins to Dylan, Flower took none, although she loved them. “Tomato juice and eggs and black coffee, from here on in,” she said. She did not take any pills.

Later, walking toward the Lodge, Dylan felt light-hearted, energetic. And how beautiful everything was! (Whitney Iverson had been right.) The sloping meadows, the pale clear sky, the chalky cliffs, the diamond-shining sea were all marvelous. She had a strong presentiment of luck; some good fortune would come to her at last.

At the sound of a car behind her she moved out of the way, turning then to look. She had had for a moment the crazy thought that it could be Whitney coming back for her, but of course it was not. It was a new gray Porsche, going slowly, looking for something. Walking a little faster, Dylan began to adjust her smile.

Suddenly, on a routine flight between Atlanta and Washington, D.C., a young woman who has been staring intently out of her window bursts into violent tears. No turbulence can have upset her—the air is clear and blue and calm—but in an instant her eyes clench shut, her hands fly up to cover her face and her shoulders convulse in spasms.

She is seated near the front of the plane and the seat next to hers has not been taken. No one is aware of this outburst but the two men across the aisle from her. Because she is good-looking, in a dark, rather stylish way, these men have been observing her since she got on the plane with them in Atlanta; they like the somewhat old-fashioned smooth way her hair is knotted, although, good old Southern boys at heart, they are not so sure about the look on her face, what they could see of it, before she began to cry: wide-eyed and serious, she hardly smiled. One of those women too smart for their own good, they think.

The attention of the men has in fact been divided between the young woman and the landscape below, at which they, like her, have been intently peering: pinewoods,mostly; some exposed red clay, along winding white highways; a brown river; red fall leaves. Just before the woman began to cry, one of the men observed to the other, “Say, aren’t we passing over Hilton right about now?”