Alice Adams - To See You Again - Stories

In that good mood, having even begun to plan the menu, I drove into the city and arrived at our house on Edgewood, Gerald’s and mine. And I saw Gerald’s car parked in front of the house, although it was much too early for him to be at home.

My stomach and heart seemed simultaneously to clench tight. Not out of fear. I did not wonder what was wrong; I knew. One and only one condition would have brought Gerald home so early—a new depression. His depressions are as severe and as invariably recurrent as they are apparently incurable. “My sweet old Melancholia, my maiden aunt, my child, my baby Melancholia,” I once heard him say, babbling his way out of the shock treatment that didn’t help.

I knew what was wrong, but not why, never why, or why now—and one problem about living with someone who is depressed is that inevitably you think it has to do with you, your fault, although you are told that it is not. And I knew exactly what I would find on entering the house: heavy Gerald immobilized, immobile, on the wicker settee in the entrance hall, unable to go comfortably into the living room, or upstairs to bed. Unable to leave the house, or the marriage, as I have thought that he must, sometimes, want to do.

He has explained to me how he feels, depressed. “As heavy as boulders,” he has said. “I can’t open my mouth, it’s so heavy. Much less move.” I can feel what Gerald feels—and can do nothing about it.

And there he was, slumped down, gray-faced, barely looking up as I opened the door and then closed it behind me. I went over and placed a light kiss on his forehead—the lightest kiss—but he flinched, a little.

“I’ll call,” I told him.

Something crossed his face; some shadow of relief, perhaps. Not hope.

The phone is in the kitchen. As I dialed, I thought, How immaculate it is, this room. How sterile. Could I paint it red? Would that help?

“Dr. Abrams, please,” I said to the voice on the other end. “Right now, if I can.” And then, “Hi, Ed. It’s Laura. I’m bringing him over, okay?”

Passing Gerald in the hall, I prevented myself from touching his shoulder.

Upstairs, I packed his small bag: pajamas, toiletries, a sweater, one change of clothes.

I got him up and through the front door, and out to my car. I drove north this time, toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Marin. The small hospital in Larkspur. Yellow fog lights lined the approach to the bridge, and it was fogged in already—summer fog, gray and billowing between the dim masses of the headlands, and swirling below the bridge, obscuring the dangerous black water. Beside me, as far from me as possible, Gerald sat, heavy as cement and as unmoving.

I turned off the highway, past developments, shopping centers, schools, playing fields, jogging courses and a few small untouched areas of land—rough, with scattered small shabby houses.

Larkspur. The hospital is one-story, white, ranch style. It could be a motel, and there is even a swimming pool in back, for the more mobile, less desperate patients.

And there was Dr. Abrams, Ed, waiting, having recognized our car. Kind Ed, kind enough not to be hearty, or to pretend that this was a social occasion. He knows, too, not to touch Gerald. Gerald allowed me to help him from the car, and then for an instant Ed touched my hair; he must know that I love touching, any gesture of affection.

Although, driving over, I had not been aware of it, had not thought of weather, I now noticed that the day was still clear in Larkspur, a blue summer day, just fading.

The checking-in process was of course familiar, and minimal. We left Gerald in his room, and Ed Abrams and I walked toward my car, and although in a way we like each other, and surely wish each other well, we had little to say.

“Well, let’s hope it won’t be for very long this time,” he said.

“Yes.”

Then, remembering some prior conversation, he asked, “How was the teaching? You liked it okay?”

“It went pretty well. A couple of the students were terrific.”

“Oh, good. Well, all done with that now?”

“Yes. Done. Today was my last day.”

“Well, good.”

I backed out of the driveway and headed back toward the almost invisible bridge, and the darkened, fog-shrouded city.

In Cambridge, a long time ago, I thought Gerald was so beautiful, so dark and thin, so elegant, so elusive that I used to trail him around the Yard: me, a silly undergraduate with a crush on a future architect who was studying at the School of Design. We had met a couple of times—I had seen to that, quizzing everyone I knew who might know him, and finally coming up with a girl with a brother who knew Gerald. But Gerald hardly had time to speak to me.

But there I always was, in St. Clair’s, out of breath from following him on my bike but saying hello; and in Hayes-Bickford, or the Wursthaus. Late one afternoon I found him alone, on the steps of Widener, and with my heart in my mouth I asked him to a dance at Whitman Hall, where I lived. He came late, stayed a very short time and left, with an abstracted frown. But the next time he saw me, standing in his way, again on the steps of Widener, he asked me up for tea, in his room, at Dunster House, and instead of tea we drank a lot of gin, and fell into bed together—for me, the consummation of a major passion; for Gerald, the onset of a habit. I stayed on in Cambridge for a master’s in English literature while Gerald finished his degree, and we married; we moved out to San Francisco and we bought and remodeled the house near Twin Peaks, and we had no children. Gerald began to be a considerable success. And sometimes to be sad, then seriously depressed. Recurrently. Ed Abrams says that with age the cycle may well lengthen, and the severity of each attack will decrease. A sort of flattening out of the curve. But age could take forever; I’m not sure I have that much time.

Driving back to the city, across the bridge, I did not think in symbolic terms about my re-entry into dark and fog; I hardly had to, having made that trip from Marin so many times before. I thought about supper, a glass of wine and getting into bed to watch TV, which I don’t do with Gerald at home. And in a cautious way I wondered how long it would be this time.

As always, I made it home perfectly all right. But once I was inside, the idea of cooking anything in the impeccable kitchen was so discouraging that I just nibbled on a piece of cheese—a halfhearted graying mouse.

I even thought, in a lonely way, of calling Larry Montgomery, for a friendly conversation, God knows, not meaning to proposition him. But I am not really sure that we are friends.

I washed and got into bed. I turned on the TV, and I watched one foolish thing after another—until, at about ten, a play was announced, with an actress I liked, and so I propped myself up for that.

And then, Seth, there you were. A great deal older, of course, even older than I am now, curls all gone gray but the same narrow, unmistakable green eyes. It was absolutely extraordinary. In the play, Seth, you were a workman, a sort of handyman, which I suppose is one of the things you could become. The actress, funnily enough, was a schoolteacher. After a tremendous, wrenching love affair, you gave each other up, you and she, because you were married, and responsible. But, Seth, the resemblance was so striking that I thought, Oh, so that is how he will look: gray, slightly overweight but strong , with a brilliant smile, and those eyes.

I waited for the credits at the end of the play; for all I knew, your father could be an actor, that actor—I know so little about you—but he had another name, and besides, he looked more like you than like a possible father.

In any case, that sight of you was strangely cheering to me. I turned off the TV and contented myself with visions of my own.