Alice Adams - To See You Again - Stories

He had meant, at just that moment, to go in and see if anyone wanted another glass of wine; dinner is almost ready. And so, reluctantly he does; he gets into the living room just in time to hear Rose say, in a shakily loud voice, “No one who hasn’t actually experienced rape can have the least idea what it’s like.”

Such a desperately serious sentence could have sounded ludicrous, but it does not. Graham is horrified; he thinks, Ah, poor girl, poor Rose. Jesus, raped. It is a crime that he absolutely cannot imagine.

In a calm, conciliatory way, Susannah says to Carol, “You see, Rose actually was raped, when she was very young, and it was terrible for her—”

Surprisingly, Carol reacts almost with anger. “Of course it’s terrible, but you kids think you’re the only ones things happen to. I got pregnant when I was fifteen, and I had it, a girl, and I put her out for adoption.” Seeming to have just now noticed Graham, she addresses him in a low, defiant, scolding voice. “And I’m not thirty. I’m thirty-five.”

Graham has no idea, really, of what to do, but he is aware of strong feelings that lead him to Carol. He goes over and puts his arms around her. Behind him he hears the gentle voice of Susannah, who is saying, “Oh Carol, that’s terrible. God, that’s awful. ”

Carol’s large eyes are teary, but in a friendly way she disengages herself from Graham; she even smiles as she says, “Well, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. But you see? You really can’t tell what’s happened to anyone.”

And Susannah: “Oh, you’re right, of course you are.…”

And Rose: “It’s true, we do get arrogant.…”

Graham says that he thinks they should eat. The food is hot; they must be hungry. He brings the dinner to them at the table, and he serves out hot food onto the heated plates.

Carol and Rose are talking about the towns they came from: Vallejo, California, and Manchester, Vermont.

“It’s thirty miles from San Francisco,” Carol says. “And that’s all we talked about. The City. How to get there, and what was going on there. Vallejo was just a place we ignored, dirt under our feet.”

“All the kids in Manchester wanted to make it to New York,” Rose says. “All but me, and I was fixated on Cambridge. Not getting into Radcliffe was terrible for me—it’s why I never went to college at all.”

“I didn’t either,” Carol says, with a slight irony that Graham thinks may have been lost on Rose: Carol would not have expected to go to college, probably—it wasn’t what high-school kids from Vallejo did. But how does he know this?

“I went to work instead,” says Rose, a little priggishly (thinks Graham).

“Me too,” Carol says, with a small laugh.

Susannah breaks in. “Dad, this is absolutely the greatest dinner. You’re still the best cook I know. It’s good I don’t have your dinners more often.”

“I’m glad you like it. I haven’t cooked a lot lately.”

And Rose, and Carol: “It’s super. It’s great.”

Warmed by praise, and just then wanting to be nice to Rose (partly because he has to admit to himself that he doesn’t much like her), Graham says to her, “Cambridge was where I wanted to go to school, too. The Harvard School of Design. Chicago seemed second-best. But I guess it’s all worked out.”

“I guess.” Rose smiles.

She looks almost pretty at that moment, but not quite; looking at her, Graham thinks again, If it had to be another girl, why her? But he knows this to be unfair, and, as far as that goes, why anyone for anyone, when you come to think of it? Any pairing is basically mysterious.

Partly as a diversion from such unsettling thoughts, and also from real curiosity, he asks Carol, “But was it worth it when you got to the city?”

She laughs, in her low, self-depreciating way. “Oh, I thought so. I really liked it. My first job was with a florist on Union Street. It was nice there then, before it got all junked up with body shops and stuff. I had a good time.”

Some memory of that era has put a younger, musing look on Carol’s face, and Graham wonders if she is thinking of a love affair; jealously he wonders, Who? Who did you know, back then?

“I was working for this really nice older man,” says Carol, in a higher than usual voice (as Graham thinks, Ah ). “He taught me all he could. I was pretty dumb, at first. About marketing, arranging, keeping stuff fresh, all that. He lived by himself. A lonely person, I guess. He was—uh—gay, and then he died, and it turned out he’d left the store to me.” For the second time that night tears have come to her eyes. “I was so touched, and it was too late to thank him, or any thing.” Then, the tears gone, her voice returns to its usual depth as she sums it up, “Well, that’s how I got my start in the business world.”

These sudden shifts in mood, along with her absolute refusal to see herself as an object of pity, are strongly, newly attractive to Graham; he has the sense of being with an unknown, exciting woman.

And then, in a quick, clairvoyant way, he gets a picture of Carol as a twenty-year-old girl, new in town: tall and a little awkward, working in the florist shop and worrying about her hands, her fingers scratched up from stems and wires; worrying about her darkening blond hair and then, deciding, what the hell, better dye it; worrying about money, and men, and her parents back in Vallejo—and should she have put the baby out for adoption? He feels an unfamiliar tenderness for this new Carol.

“You guys are making me feel very boring,” says Susannah. “I always wanted to go to Berkeley, and I did, and I wanted to go to L.A. and work in films.”

“I think you’re just more direct,” amends Rose, affectionate admiration in her voice, and in her eyes. “You just know what you’re doing. I fall into things.”

Susannah laughs. “Well, you do all right, you’ve got to admit.” And, to Graham and Carol: “She’s only moved up twice since January. At this rate she’ll be casting something in August.”

What Graham had earlier named discomfort he now recognizes as envy: Susannah is closer to Rose than she is to him; they are closer to each other than he is to anyone. He says, “Well, Rose, that’s really swell. That’s swell .”

Carol glances at Graham for an instant before she says, “Well, I’ll bet your father didn’t even tell you about his most recent prize.” And she tells them about an award from the A.I.A., which Graham had indeed not mentioned to Susannah, but which had pleased him at the time of its announcement (immoderately, he told himself).

And now Susannah and Rose join Carol in congratulations, saying how terrific, really great.

Dinner is over, and in a rather disorganized way they all clear the table and load the dishwasher.

They go into the living room, where Graham lights the fire, and the three women sit down—or, rather, sprawl—Rose and Susannah at either end of the sofa, Carol in an easy chair. For dinner Carol put on velvet pants and a red silk shirt. In the bright hot firelight her gray eyes shine, and the fine line under her chin, that first age line, is just barely visible. She is very beautiful at that moment—probably more so now than she was fifteen years ago, Graham decides.

Susannah, in clean, faded, too tight Levi’s, stretches her legs out stiffly before her. “Oh, I’m really going to feel that skiing in the morning!”

And Carol: “Me too. I haven’t had that much exercise forever.”

Rose says, “If I could just not fall.”

“Oh, you won’t; tomorrow you’ll see. Tomorrow …” says everyone.

They are all exhausted. Silly to stay up late. And so as the fire dies down, Graham covers it and they all four go off to bed, in the two separate rooms.