Alice Adams - To See You Again - Stories

Aurelia arrived in a large American car recently purchased by Francisco. (“He will never pay for it,” Aurelia muttered. “We will all go to jail.”) She brought a large pot of fish soup and some tortillas, a basket of tomatoes and a large bunch of bananas. And she offered to drive Teresa to the jail.

At the jail’s front door there was a thin young soldier with a very large gun held across his chest. At first he did not seem to understand whom they wanted to see, but then when they explained he said, “Oh, the young boy,” and with some large keys he opened a heavy door. “You can go in there,” he said, and once they were inside he closed the door behind them.

In the middle of that room, on the floor, sat a very old man with no legs, on a tattered blanket; he grinned and stared at Teresa in an evil way, so that she shuddered and held to the arm of Aurelia. And the room was so crowded with persons, mostly men, but also some young women, one of them holding a baby, that at first Teresa and Aurelia could not find Felipe. Also it was so dark, no windows at all and one single light bulb, very dim, that hung from the ceiling.

They found him in a small room just off the main one. He had been sitting on the floor, but he got up as they came in—still really a boy, not very tall. He embraced his mother, who despite herself was crying, and then his cousin, who also wept.

Then for the three of them, standing in that place, there was not much to say. Teresa asked how he was, and he said that he was all right; his leg did not hurt much. But even in that bad light she could see how pale he was. Fortunately, Aurelia found more things to say; she asked about food, what they could bring to him. She asked if they were ever taken out for air, and she told Felipe what of course he already knew: that the beach and the ocean were only a few yards away from where they all at that moment were standing. How unfortunate that there was not at least a small window so that they could have more air, and could see the beautiful waves, and the clouds and the sun.

Teresa listened gratefully to all this chatter of Aurelia’s. She felt that everyone in the room was staring at them, at her: the legless man and other men with pale, pale faces and crazy eyes. And she had the terrible thought that they too might have to stay there, she and Aurelia; some confusion might occur, making it impossible to explain that they were in the jail as visitors.

And, looking at Felipe, she noticed what she had never seen before: how very much he resembled herself. Always she had thought him so like Ernesto, but now, pale and isolated, she saw her own frightened eyes staring back at her. However, the way he stood, so straight, his neck a little stiff, was the way Ernesto had always held himself.

After that first visit, and then a second, a third—visits that differed from each other only in the composition of the other prisoners, who came and went—Teresa began to feel that a part of herself had indeed been kept on in the jail; all night, every night, she thought of that terrible room, the terrible men and women who inhabited it, along with Felipe. She thought of the unspeakable dangers to which her son was always exposed.

Aurelia tried to get in to see the Comandante, in his office across from the jail, but he was very busy, smoking his fat cigar, and very unpleasant. At one time a guard, a nice-looking boy, told Teresa that really she had nothing to fear; Felipe would soon be sent to a special place for young boys, he would not even have to stand trial. But Teresa was not truly comforted; the guard himself was so young, he could have been wrong. Besides, where was this special jail for boys? Was it in a place where she could ever find Felipe?

And, no matter where Felipe was sent, she knew, more surely than any other knowledge, that eventually, finally, the brothers or cousins or friends of Señor Krupp would find him: a boy with no money, the son of a plantation worker, could not kill a rich and powerful man, and live.

Felipe was in fact killed in what was described as a prison fight, although the police could not say how it had started nor who else was involved. Felipe had never before got into fights. When one of the same policemen who had taken Felipe away arrived at Teresa’s house and told her of this, she began to scream, and to cry out to God, as would the mother of any murdered son. Her daughters and some neighboring women gathered around to comfort her; among themselves they were saying, Aie, poor Teresa, she has had more to stand in her life than any human woman would be able to stand. Aie, poor Teresa.

And what they said was the truth; Teresa had withstood more than was possible for her. Perhaps for that reason, even as she wept and made much noise, in another part of her mind new words were beginning to form, new ideas and sentences; she began to think, Now I have no more to fear; now everything has befallen me that possibly could, and for the rest of my days I am safe. I can go to sleep without fear, I could even walk among North Americans, fearing nothing. Now it will be possible for me to work in the great hotel, maybe even to work for Aurelia, in her restaurant. With my daughters I will find a small beach hut to live in, away from these coconut palms that rattle so fiercely in the windy nights. We will live there together, by the sea, and grow old and be safe forever.

Two people, just meeting, do not necessarily react in identical or even in similar ways to each other: a long time ago, in the early Forties, war years, a little boy was introduced to a small blond woman, a new grown-up, at one of his parents’ parties, in their spectacular lakeshore house—and that boy’s whole heart rushed out to the older woman. He wished that he were grown and could marry her, or, he wished that she were his mother. Much later in life, during some bad times, he felt that he was being punished for those wishes, the second of which had in a sense come true; by then she was his stepmother. Posey, originally from Dallas.

In any case, at that first moment, what young Walker Conway saw was a woman not a great deal taller than himself, with curly short fair hair, a light-blue dress that shone like glass, like her light-blue excited eyes. Almost all the other women in the room wore black dresses, and they all seemed much larger and darker than this Posey, Mrs. McElroy—especially his mother, Althea, a pianist, who was larger and darker than anyone.

“And this is my son Walker. Walker, this is Mrs. McElroy,” big John Conway had just said. An architect, he was the designer of this innovative (for the Midwest, at that time) and impossibly uncomfortable house, in one of whose curiously tight corners (the room was trapezoidal) the three of them were standing.

Taking everything in, perhaps especially this gorgeous “modern” house, and her host, so big and blond, with a beard, like someone in a story—and the little boy, still in short pants, for which he was too tall, with those skinny knees—Mrs. McElroy said, in her soft but penetrating voice, “Most everybody calls me Posey.”

Although he had not been addressed, Walker asked, “How do you spell Posey, with an ‘i-e’ or ‘e-y’?” Just beginning school, and already the best speller, he was proud of new skills.

“Well, if you aren’t the smartest little thing! I’ll bet you can spell lots longer words than my silly old name.” And Posey laughed, looking up into the child’s father’s face. Her teeth were very small, and shiningly white.

Having taken her at her word, a habit that he was slow to break, in life, Walker glowed. “Well, actually I can. Last week I learned to spell ‘Massachusetts’ and ‘committee.’ ”

“Well, those two are going to come in mighty handy. What a lucky boy!”