Alice Adams - To See You Again - Stories

“I have the perfect situation for a painter, absolutely perfect,” Charles once somewhat drunkenly declared. “Big house, perfect studio, money for travel, money to keep the kids away at school. A wonderful kind strong wife. Christ, I even own two galleries. Perfect. I begin to see that the only thing lacking is talent,” and he gave a terrible laugh.

How could you leave a man in such despair?

Waking slowly, her head still swollen with sleep, from the tone of the light Felicia guesses that it must be about midafternoon. Eventually she will have to order something to eat, tea or boiled eggs, something sustaining.

Then, with a flash of pain, Martin comes into her mind, and she begins to think.

She simply doesn’t know him, that’s half the problem, “know” in this instance meaning able to predict the behavior of, really, to trust. Maybe he went to another party and met another available lady, maybe someone rather young, young-fleshed and never sick or tired? (She knows that this could be true, but still it doesn’t sound quite right, as little as she knows him.)

But what does FEW DAYS mean to Martin? To some people a week would be a few days, CRAZY DELAY is deliberately ambiguous. Either of those phrases could mean anything at all.

Sinkingly, despairingly, she tells herself that it is sick to have fantasies about the rest of your life that revolve around a man you have only known for a couple of months.

Perfectly possibly he won’t come to San Francisco at all, she thinks, and then: I hate this city.

When the bellboy comes in with her supper tray, Felicia realizes for the first time that he is a dwarf; odd that she didn’t see that before. His grin now looks malign, contemptuous, even, as though he recognizes her for what she now is: an abandoned woman, of more than a certain age.

As he leaves she shivers, wishing she had brought along a “sensible” robe, practical clothes, instead of all this mocking silk and lace. Looking quickly into the mirror, and then away, she thinks, I look like an old circus monkey.

She sleeps through the night. One day gone, out of whatever “few days” are.

When she calls to order breakfast the next morning, the manager (manageress: a woman with a strong, harsh Midwestern accent) suggests firmly that a doctor should be called. She knows of one.

Refusing that suggestion, as firmly, politely as she can, Felicia knows that she reacted to hostility rather than to concern. The manageress is afraid that Felicia will get really sick and die; what a mess to have on their hands, an unknown dead old woman.

But Felicia too is a little afraid.

Come to think of it, Felicia says to herself, half-waking at what must be the middle of the afternoon, I once spent some time in another San Francisco hotel, waiting for Felipe, in another part of town. After the abortion.

She and Felipe met when he had a show at one of Charles’s galleries; they had, at first tipsily, fallen into bed, in Felipe’s motel (Charles had “gone to sleep”) after the reception; then soberly, both passionately serious, they fell in love. Felipe’s paintings were touring the country, Felipe with them, and from time to time, in various cities, Felicia followed him. Her excuse to Charles was a survey of possible markets for her pots, and visits to other potters, which, conscientiously, she also accomplished.

Felipe was as macho as he was radical, and he loved her in his own macho way, violently, with all his dangerous strength. She must leave Charles, Charles must never touch her again, he said. (Well, Charles drank so much that that was hardly an issue.) She must come with him to Paris, to a new life. All her children were by then either grown or off in schools—why not?

When they learned that she was pregnant he desperately wanted their child, he said, but agreed that a child was not possible for them. And he remembered the Brazilian chiropractor that he had heard about, from relatives in San Francisco.

The doctor seemingly did a good job, for Felicia suffered no later ill effects. Felipe was kind and tender with her; he said that her courage had moved him terribly. Felicia felt that her courage, if you wanted to call it that, had somewhat unnerved him; he was a little afraid of her now.

However, they celebrated being together in San Francisco, where Felipe had not been before. He loved the beautiful city, and they toasted each other, and their mutual passion, with Mexican beer or red wine, in their Lombard Street motel. Then one afternoon Felipe went off alone to visit a family of his relatives, in San Jose, and Felicia waited for him. He returned to her very late, and in tears: a grown man, broad-backed, terrifically strong, with springing thick black hair and powerful arms, crying out to her, “I cannot—I cannot go on with you, with our life. They have told me of my wife, all day she cries, and at night she screams and wakes the children. I must go to her.”

Well, of course you must, said Felicia, in effect. If she’s screaming that’s where you belong. And she thought, Well, so much for my Latin love affair.

And she went home.

And now she thinks, Martin at least will not come to me in tears.

Martin Voort. At the end of her week in Duxbury, her visit to the old school friend, Martin, whom in one way or another she had seen every day, asked her to marry him, as soon as possible. “Oh, I know we’re both over the hill,” he said, and then exploded in a laugh, as she did too. “But suppose we’re freaks who live to be a hundred? We might as well have fun on the way. I like you a lot. I want to be with you.”

Felicia laughed again. She was secretly pleased that he hadn’t said she was wonderful, but she thought he was a little crazy.

He followed her home with telegrams: WHEN OH WHEN WILL YOU MARRY ME AND ARRIVING IN YOUR TOWN THIS FRIDAY PREPARE.

And now, suppose she never sees him again? For the first time in many months (actually, since Charles died) Felicia begins to cry, at the possible loss of such a rare, eccentric and infinitely valuable man.

But in the midst of her sorrow at that terrible possibility, the permanent lack of Martin—who could be very sick, could have had a stroke: at his age, their age, that is entirely possible—though grieving, Felicia realizes that she can stand it, after all, as she has stood other losses, other sorrows in her life. She can live without Martin.

She realizes too that she herself has just been genuinely ill, somewhat frighteningly so; what she had was a real fever, from whatever cause. Perhaps she should have seen a doctor.

However, the very thought of a doctor, a doctor’s office, is enough to make her well, she dislikes them so; all those years of children, children’s illnesses and accidents, made her terribly tired of medical treatment. Instead she will get dressed and go out for dinner, by herself.

And that is what she does. In her best clothes she takes a cab to what has always been her favorite San Francisco restaurant, Sam’s. It is quite early, the place uncrowded. Felicia is given a pleasant side table, and the venerable waiters are kind to her. The seafood is marvelous. Felicia drinks a half-bottle of wine with her dinner and she thinks: Oh, so this is what it will be like. Well, it’s really not so bad.

Returned to the hotel, however, once inside her room she experiences an acute pang of disappointment, and she understands that she had half consciously expected Martin to be there; Martin was to be her reward for realizing that she could live without him, for being “sensible,” for bravely going out to dinner by herself.

She goes quickly to bed, feeling weak and childish, and approving neither her weakness nor her childishness, not at all.

Sometime in the middle of the night she awakes from a sound sleep, and from a vivid dream; someone, a man, has knocked on the door of her room, this room. She answers, and he comes in and they embrace, and she is wildly glad to see him. But who is he? She can’t tell: is it her husband, Charles, or one of her sons? Felipe? Is it Martin? It could even be a man she doesn’t know. But, fully awake, as she considers the dream she is saddened by it, and it is quite a while before she sleeps again.