Alice Adams - To See You Again - Stories

Just in front of me were an elderly man and woman, both black, who seemed to be old friends accidentally encountered on this bus. They exchanged information about how they both were, their families, and then the woman said, “Well, the weekend’s coming up.” “Yep, jes one more day.” “Then you can rest.” “Say, you ever see a poor man rest?”

Recently I read an interview with a distinguished lady of letters, in which she was asked why she wrote so obsessively about the very poor, the tiredest and saddest poorest people, and that lady, a Southerner, answered, “But I myself am poor people.”

That touched me to the quick, somehow. I am too. Hortense is not, I think.

Across the aisle from me I suddenly noticed the most beautiful young man I had ever seen, sound asleep. A golden boy: gold hair and tawny skin, large beautiful hands spread loosely on his knees, long careless legs in soft pale washed-out jeans. I hardly dared look at him; some intensity in my regard might have wakened him, and then on my face he would have seen—not lust, it wasn’t that, just a vast and objectless regard for his perfection, as though he were sculptured in bronze, or gold.

I haven’t thought much about men, or noticed male beauty, actually, since my husband left, opted out of our marriage—and when I say that he left it sounds sudden, whereas it took a long and painful year.

Looking back, I now see that it began with some tiny wistful remarks, made by him, when he would come across articles in the paper about swingers, swapping, singles bars. “Well, maybe we should try some of that stuff,” he would say, with a laugh intended to prove nonseriousness. “A pretty girl like you, you’d do okay,” he would add, by which he really meant that he thought he would do okay, as indeed he has—did, does. Then came some more serious remarks to the effect that if I wanted an occasional afternoon with someone else, well, I didn’t have to tell him about it, but if I did, well, he would understand. Which was a little silly, since when I was not at my office working I was either doing some household errand or I was at home, available only to him.

The next phase included a lot of half-explained or occasionally overexplained latenesses, and a seemingly chronic at-home fatigue. By then even I had caught on, without thinking too specifically about what he must have been doing, which I could not have stood. Still, I was surprised, and worse than surprised, when he told me that he was “serious” about another woman. The beautiful Japanese nurse.

The golden boy got off at Vallejo, without our exchanging any look. Someone else I won’t see again, but who will stay in my mind, probably.

Hortense was furious, her poor fat face red, her voice almost out of control. “One hour—one hour I’ve been waiting here. Can you imagine my thoughts, in all that time?”

Well, I pretty much could. I felt terrible. I put my hand on her arm in a gesture that I meant as calming, affectionate, but she thrust it off, violently.

That was foolish, I thought, and I hoped no one had seen her. I said, “Hortense, I’m really very sorry. But it’s getting obvious that I have a problem with buses. I mix them up, so maybe you shouldn’t come and meet me anymore.”

I hadn’t known I was going to say that, but, once said, those words made sense, and I went on. “I’ll take a taxi. There’re always a couple out front.”

And just then, as we passed hurriedly through the front doors, out onto the street, there were indeed four taxis stationed, a record number, as though to prove my point. Hortense made a strangled, snorting sound.

We drove home in silence; silently, in her dining room, we ate another chef’s salad. It occurred to me to say that since our dinners were almost always cold my being late did not exactly spoil them, but I forbore. We were getting to be like some bad sitcom joke: Hortense and me, the odd couple.

The next morning, as I got in line to buy a new commuter ticket, there was the New York State girl. We exchanged mild greetings, and then she looked at the old ticket which for no reason I was clutching, and she said, “But you’ve got one ticket left.”

And she explained what turned out to be one more system that I had not quite caught on to: the driver takes the whole first page, which is why, that first day, I thought he had taken two coupons. And the back page, although another color, pink, is a coupon, too. So my first ride on the wrong bus to Vallejo and Oakland was free; I had come out ahead, in that way.

Then the girl asked, “Have you thought about a California Pass? They’re neat.” And she explained that with a California Pass, for just a few dollars more than a commuter ticket, you can go anywhere in California. You can’t travel on weekends, but who would want to, and you can go anywhere at all—Eureka, La Jolla, Santa Barbara, San Diego; you can spend the weekend there and come back on an early Monday bus. I was fascinated, enthralled by these possibilities. I bought a California Pass.

The Sacramento express was almost empty, so I told the girl that I had some work to do, which was true enough. We sat down in our separate seats and concentrated on our briefcases. I was thinking, of course, in a practical way about moving out from Hortense’s. That had to be next—and more generally I was considering the possibilities of California, which just then seemed limitless, enormous.

Actually, the Greyhound system of departure gates for buses to San Francisco is very simple; I had really been aware all along of how it worked. Gate 5 is the express, Gate 6 goes to Vallejo and Oakland before San Francisco and Gate 8 is the all-stop local, Davis, Dixon, everywhere. On my way home, I started to line up at Gate 6, my true favorite route, Vallejo and Oakland, when I realized that it was still very early, only just five, and also that I was extremely hungry. What I would really have liked was what we used to call a frappe in Binghamton, something cold and rich and thick and chocolate. Out here called a milkshake. And then I thought, Well, why not? Is there some law that says I can’t weigh more than one-ten?

I went into the station restaurant, and at the counter I ordered a double-scoop milkshake. I took it to a booth, and then, as I was sitting there, savoring my delicious drink, something remarkable happened, which was: the handsome black man who so angrily displaced me on that first trip came up to me and greeted me with a friendly smile. “Say, how you, how’re you doing this evening?”

I smiled back and said that I was fine, and he went on past with his cup of coffee, leaving me a little out of breath. And as I continued to sip and swallow (it tasted marvelous) I wondered: Is it possible that he remembers me from that incident and this is his way of apologizing? Somehow that seemed very unlikely, but it seemed even more unlikely that he was just a friendly sort who went around greeting people. He was not at all like that, I was sure. Even smiling he had a proud, fierce look.

Was it possible that something about me had struck him in just the right way, making him want to say hello?

In any case, I had to read his greeting as a very good sign. Maybe the fat young woman would get on the bus at Vallejo again. Maybe the thin one in purple. And it further occurred to me that traveling all over California on the Greyhound I could meet anyone at all.

At the end of a very long and, by normal standards, ghastly San Francisco party, its host, Josiah Dawes, an ex-alcoholic, ex-philosopher, sits on the floor with two women, Hope Dawes and Clover Baskerville, in an almost empty flat on Potrero Hill. The women are propped up on pillows on either side of Josiah, silhouetted against long black naked windows; they both face him and, indirectly, each other. In an idle, exhausted way they are discussing the party, among the inevitable debris, the dirty glasses and plates and ashes, in the still stale air. Josiah liked the party; he smiles to himself at each recounted incident.