Alice Adams - To See You Again - Stories

Quite unused to being greeted in that way—book reviewers do not gather a lot of fans, Walker has learned—he tries to readjust his normally diffident manner, but it comes out stiffly as he says, “You’re too kind.”

Undeterred, Mrs. Engstrom smiles yet more warmly as she says, “Oh yes, you seem to have such a different feeling for what you read. Most reviewers—they’re so—small-minded.”

Walker murmurs in what he hopes is a helpful, assenting way, but she needs, apparently, no help.

With a small frown she tells him next, “I’m so glad you’re here, but I have been worried. How you’d feel about how we’ve changed your house.” And she begins to lead him down the hall, which is now lined, he notes, with blown-up cartoons by an artist that he himself very much likes.

He is not prepared, however, for the turnabout of the living room: all the stark built-in furniture—those bleak narrow banquettes, ceiling-high bookcases and the trapezoidal central coffee table—has been taken out, and replaced with much more ordinary things: a big overstuffed, faded, flowered sofa, some cracked leather club chairs and low bookcases that overflow with old and a few new books, and some magazines—including, Walker observes, the one for which he most frequently writes (and, out of his old suspicious nature, there comes the pleased thought: Oh, she wasn’t lying. She does read my reviews).

But he has hardly time to react to all this, for there, coming toward him, is a man who must be Mr. Engstrom. He bears, in fact, a striking resemblance to his wife, both being large and fair and square in shape—a phenomenon that Walker has noted with certain very compatible couples. (He and Timothy do not look in the least alike.)

Mr. Engstrom, in a deeper voice, says almost exactly what his wife has just said. “So glad you’re here, but we have worried how you’d feel about the ways we’ve changed your house. Well, what can I get you to drink?”

Knowing himself to be already too stimulated for drink, Walker opts for club soda, which is produced, and the three of them settle down to small talk—surprisingly easy, for Walker, with these strangers.

Most of his mind, however, and his vision are absorbed in taking in that familiarly shaped and vastly changed room, a change that he would not have believed possible: if it has become a little dowdy, it also has been made—Christ! the impossible— comfortable .

Not sure that he will be believed, he tries to say as much to the Engstroms. “Actually,” he says, “I quite like what you’ve done. It was always so cold.”

As they are responding, in a pleased, accepting way (“Well yes, it was a little chilly, those lake winds”), a fantastic thought comes to Walker, suddenly, which is: these are the people, the parents, he dreamed of and longed for, as a cold child, in this house, in his galley bedroom, all those years ago. It is as though once more Lucienne has responded to an unspoken dream, or wish, and he is flooded with gratitude for the magic and the kindness of her intuition.

Somewhere in the house, even, there is music playing— not Althea’s despairing, brilliantly unresolved chords, but what must be a record, or an FM station: a Mozart quintet. The music stops, and at that moment steps are heard in the hallway.

“Our son Paul.” Mrs. Engstrom beams as a tall, somewhat stooped but good-looking, bearded blond young man comes in.

Weak-kneed, Walker rises to be introduced. Smiling, Paul Engstrom says, “I guess I’m sleeping in the room that used to be yours? A sort of ship’s galley?”

In a diffident New York way, Walker shakes Paul’s hand, and he smiles and says, “Well, actually I guess you are,” as, for the second time in his life, in that same room, his whole silly trusting heart rushes out, toward Paul, with love.

Like so many acutely dreaded moments, this one arrived and passed in an unanticipated fashion: the moment after which I would not again see my most brilliant and beautiful student, Seth. I looked up from the group of girl students—ironically, the ones I had least liked—who were asking me silly questions; I looked toward his seat, and was confronted with his absence, his absolute loss.

Considerably older than these kids, and especially, cruelly, older than Seth, I had envisioned quite another scene: I had imagined and feared a moment at which the students would recognize, collectively, that it was over, that this was my last class, the end of my temporary and quite accidental presence in their lives. They would never see me again, any of them. At that instant of recognition, I thought, I would have to smile and say something like “Well, it’s been very nice knowing all of you. I’ve enjoyed this time at Cornford.”

(Of course I would look at Seth as I spoke, but could I do it with no break in my voice, no catch?)

And what would they all do, my students, including Seth, I had wondered: would they smile back and maybe clap? What sort of expression would Seth wear, on that most entrancing face?

But that is not how it went at all. The class—it was in freshman composition—simply ended as it had every day of my time there. Across the campus some clear bells chimed; in the classroom books were gathered from the floor; slowly the kids began to get up and move toward the door. And some of the silliest, noisiest girls gathered at my desk, not to say goodbye or anything so formal, just to be told again what they already knew: that their final papers were to be collected from the English office. And then I looked up to the total absence of Seth.

One of the things I first thought was: If I ever see him again he’ll be older. Still handsome, probably, but he won’t look quite like that .

Seth: red-gold curls, a wild never-combed tangle, curls that shadowed remarkably white unfreckled skin. Narrow green eyes; a small childish nose; and a wide, somehow unformed mouth—a young mouth. And an incongruous, scruffy reddish beard. Just a messy red-haired kid was how someone else might have seen him. Whereas to me: perfect poignant beauty. And what he wrote was extraordinary—weird wild flashes of poetry, flaming through the dullest assignments. At times I considered the possibility that he was in some way crazy, at others the possibility of genius. But how can you tell with anyone so young? He might be, or might become, anything at all. Anything, in his case, except ugly or ordinary.

Not quite anguished—I had had worse losses in my life (I have them still)—but considerably worse than “let down” was how I felt as I began the drive from Cornford west to San Francisco. To my house, and Gerald, my sad fat husband, a distinguished architect—and my most precariously balanced, laboriously achieved “good life.”

Cornford is about forty miles east of San Francisco, near Vallejo, in the tawny, oak-shadowed foothills. It is on Interstate 80, the main east-west thoroughfare; after Vallejo and Cornford, the highway continues past Sacramento to Tahoe, Reno, Salt Lake City, the East. Going anywhere in that direction, and Gerald and I often spend time at Tahoe, we will pass right by Cornford, again and again. Next fall Seth will be there, after a summer of hitchhiking in Spain. How will it feel, I wonder, to drive right past where Seth is, in the fall and following winter?

Or suppose he should move to San Francisco. Kids do, all the time. Just what would I do with him? What, really, do I want of him? I have asked myself that question, repeatedly, at terrible sleepless predawn hours, and have come up with no answer. The obvious ones do not apply.

Meaning that it is nowhere near as simple as sex (Christ! as if sex were ever simple). If my strong feelings in his direction do have an object, it is not the act of love—I find the very idea both terrifying and embarrassing, and oh! how horrified he would be if he knew that I had even, ever, considered that. How old I must seem to him! Revolting, really, although I am in very good shape “for my age.” But to him revolting—as I sometimes am to myself; as often I feel that I am to Gerald.