Alice Adams - To See You Again - Stories

Natalie, like Amanda, like everyone there, is fascinated by the Farquhars—especially that woman’s skin, which is remarkable, so fine and smooth and white. Natalie wishes she knew what kind of sun block that woman uses.

And she wonders about their marriage, the Farquhars’: have they always been married to each other, and got along as well as they now apparently do? Natalie and Herbert were actually separated at the time that he died, a fact known to none of their traveling friends, so that Natalie has been cast, by them, in a role that does not precisely suit her, that of Herbert’s beloved, bereaved wife. But she is just as glad that none of them knew about the girl.

Did those old people ever quarrel and get back together? Would Herbert have come back, had he lived? Would he have tired of that girl? Natalie sighs, afraid that she will never have an answer to anything.

The bougainvillea, in that place, blooms with a wild extravagance; there is every shade of pink, of red, even violet and purple. Vines cling to the steep hillside, from which the gaudy blossoms foam. Brilliant colors lurk between the low white plaster buildings of the hotel; everywhere there are sudden bursts of flowers—on the way to the dining room, or going up to the bar, and flowers bloom all around the porch-balconies of the rooms. Just beyond the porch that Amanda and Richard share with the Farquhars (except for the intervening filagree) there is a bush of yellow angel’s trumpets, and beside the bush a strangely branched small tree, reddish blossoms among its crooked limbs. Hummingbirds are drawn to the tree’s red flowers, while among the trumpet flowers there often appear small yellow butterflies, almost indistinguishable from the yellow petals.

By their fourth day Amanda is acutely aware of just that: four days gone, only three remain. Less than half their time. And the four days seem to have passed as one, she feels. Just as the years of her life race faster and faster. Soon she will be middle-aged, then irretrievably old. In a discouraged way she looks around the beach, at so much exposed and aging flesh, the sags and wrinkles that painstakingly acquired suntans do not conceal.

Richard, though, is simply a darker shade of gold. The small fine patch of hair on his chest and the hairs on his arms and legs are all bleached out, pale, almost invisible. No wrinkles, anywhere. Amanda sighs, thinking of what they—or, rather, she—will be going back to: at work, days on the phone or at the computer, people either impatient or angry with her, or both, and most nights spent alone, either not hearing from Richard or hearing, via a hurried call, that they cannot meet, after all, wherever they had planned to.

For reassurance, or perhaps to answer some unformed question, she turns toward the elderly couple, who are resting beneath their small thatched shelter. He is lying back in his chair, his eyes closed against the sun and his mouth slightly open. But she, her white skin shaded by the lace-brimmed hat, sits intently forward; she is looking, looking—but at what? Following the direction of her gaze, Amanda sees, in the foreground, a small outcropping of rocks, spattered with a little white moss. Then sand, and then the water, bright and clear and green, rippling out in the dancing, dazzling sunlight, as far as the horizon. And the hot flat blue endless sky.

Further sadness for Amanda: after four days she and that couple, whose name she still does not know, are no closer to speaking or even nodding terms than they were on her arrival. They have never even seen her, Amanda believes.

That afternoon, after their siesta, Amanda goes up to the hotel desk to mail some postcards. Rounding a corner, she is confronted with a trailing vine, a cloud of peach-pink bougainvillea; she sees it against the soft blue midafternoon sky —she has never seen that particular color before.

Reaching the desk, she is surprised to find Lisa standing there, in a skirt and blouse, black pumps. Lisa looking older than usual, and tired. The change in her is so marked that Amanda assumes she is leaving for good, and she cries out, “Oh, Lisa, you’re not going away?”—as though everything, lacking Lisa, would fall apart.

Lisa smiles, but her blue eyes remain worried. “I only go to Mexico City,” she says. “Probably I return tomorrow. I go each other week.”

“Oh. Well.”

Several other people, Americans, come up to the desk just then, followed by two Mexican boys who carry the American luggage—unfortunately they are not the Chicago group, Amanda notes. The airport bus arrives, and they all get in, including Lisa.

Feeling abandoned, Amanda buys her stamps, and she sends off the cards to her friends; on all the cards she has written, “This is paradise!”

From the plane, on which Lisa and some of the former guests are flying to Mexico City, they can see, as it gains altitude, the whole great horseshoe cove: the white curve of beach, abrupt green jungle at the edge of the sand and even the clearing where the hotel is. Then the plane veers and heads directly inland, up over the huge sharp jungle-green mountains that are sometimes briefly, darkly shadowed with clouds.

Lisa is simply going to Mexico City on hotel business, but the prospect always unbalances her a little. Never married, a childless but strongly maternal Polish woman (nationality being her common bond with Carlotta Farquhar), she loves her work, finds it deeply satisfying.

She is genuinely concerned about the well-being of all the guests, and especially that of the Farquhars: she grew up on the romantic legend of Carlotta, who left the stage so relatively young. And she has worked it out that despite appearances the Farquhars do not have a great deal of money. She daringly hopes, on this trip, to persuade the owner of the hotel to give them a special rate, as long-term guests. In the meantime, she reminds herself to do their errands: a scientific magazine, in German, for Mr. Farquhar; for her a French cosmetic.

The next night, which is Amanda’s and Richard’s fifth, they decide to return to the bar for after-dinner drinks; once there, they are dismayed to find the Chicago people, who obviously have had the same impulse. But, feeling that they have not much choice, there being not much else to do, really, at nine-thirty, Amanda and Richard sit down anyway.

Early in the afternoon Richard spent a long time on the phone with his wife, or so Amanda believes; he only said that he had to go up to the desk. Unable to read, she lay waiting for him, all that time not doing anything—not knowing, wondering, what they could be saying to each other. For all she knew Richard could be telling his wife that he is bored at his “sales conference” and can’t wait to see her again. It is harrowing to her, Amanda, not to know, and she feels that it is forbidden to ask; she would sound suspicious. When at last he came back to the room Richard looked cross, but that could have meant anything at all. At dinner he was pleasantly noncommittal: his usual self. But Amanda still feels anxious, vaguely apprehensive.

At the bar she is seated next to a woman whom she had not seen in that group: a surprisingly pleasant-looking woman, with short gray hair and a pretty dress. Amanda wonders why she has not noticed her before.

Natalie Barnes.

The two women exchange faint smiles of mutual approval.

Although the night is as clear and dazzlingly starred as all the nights have been, there are also, tonight, a few small drifting gray-white clouds, mysterious rags. Tattered ghosts.

Natalie, who will be at the resort with that group for another five days, has hitherto felt that since they invited her along, in spite of her widowed status, she was in some sense their guest. But just now, perhaps fortified by dinner, and some wine, she recognizes the untruth, even the unfairness of this theory: she is not their guest; she pays her own way. And she further thinks, Luther does not have to leave a cigar burning in the ashtray, constantly. Bracing herself, and trying for a pleasant voice, she says, “Luther, couldn’t you please put those damn things out when you’re not smoking them?”