Alice Adams: To See You Again: Stories

Hope, Josiah’s small, blond and very rich newlywed wife, during the noisy hours of the party has been wondering if she should kill herself. Her mania for Josiah surpasses love—has, really, nothing to do with love; it is more like an insatiable greed, an addiction or perhaps a religious fervor. She has just begun to wonder whether they moved to San Francisco to be near this other woman, with her silly name—Clover. This is Hope’s question: if she killed herself, jumped off one of the bridges, maybe, would Josiah fall in love with Clover all over again? marry her? or would her death keep them guiltily apart?

Clover, a former lover of Josiah’s, of some years back, is a large, dark carelessly beautiful woman, with heavy dark hair, a successfully eccentric taste in clothes. In the intervals between her major love affairs, or marriages, she has minor loves, and spends time with friends, a course that was recommended by Colette, she thinks. This is such an interval, since Josiah who was once a major love is now a friend, and maybe Hope is too; she can’t tell yet.

Josiah’s very erect posture, as he looks from one woman to the other, and back again, suggests that he is somehow judging between them, or keeping them in balance. He is handsome, in a way, with his drained look of saintliness, his sad pale eyes. His hair and his beard, even his skin and all his clothes, are gray.

Josiah and Hope have just moved to San Francisco and taken this flat; thus the lack of furniture. Also, one of Josiah’s somewhat eccentric theories about parties is that people should be uncomfortable, like prisoners; they are more apt to reveal themselves.

This group consisted of some old Berkeley connections of Josiah’s, and a few new friends introduced by Clover. For various reasons many people drank too much, which, along with the physical discomfort of sitting on the floor, led to quite a few of the revealing scenes of which Josiah is so fond. One drunk man announced that he would kill his wife if she didn’t come along home; in fact he might kill her anyway. A drunk woman accused Clover of lusting after her husband, although Clover was welcome to him if she wanted that slob, said the wife. Another man said that he was gay and proud of it but he was goddamned if he was going to come out of any closet.

Although she laughs, going over all this with Josiah and Hope, these episodes really made Clover more than a little unhappy, and she is slightly uncomfortable with them both. She senses that something is going on that she does not quite understand. She would much rather be having an overwhelming love affair, and she wonders if she ever will again.

Certain conventions, or rules, have been established for this new three-way friendship. One rule is that all Clover’s lovers, past and present, are to be considered hilarious, as fair game for jokes (except of course for Josiah). Their number too is exaggerated. That this picture is not entirely accurate is one of the things that is making Clover uncomfortable, but she enjoys the intimacy of the relationship; the three of them see each other almost every day, and she and Josiah talk for hours on the phone. It almost makes up for the lack of a serious love. Clover has small capacity for being alone, and so for the moment she goes along with the gag; she presents all her lovers as being figures of fun, and herself as being far more promiscuous than she is.

Explicit sexual details are out; they are all far too fastidious for that, especially Josiah, who sets the tone. However, Clover has been unable to resist telling them that Nicholas, the publicist who brought her to this party, and who, being married to someone else, left early—Nicholas shaves his chest. And now, in an exhausted, end-of-party way, they are laughing over Nicholas.

“Think how much more time getting dressed must take him than it does most people,” suddenly says Hope, who is a practical person.

At this Josiah and Clover look at each other and burst into near-hysterics. Clover’s laugh is deep, a sexy laugh; Josiah’s is almost silent, but his whole body shakes with it, his face is convulsed. Hope watches both of them seriously as she thinks, My God, it’s like watching them make love, in fact more intimate, really; their laughing is unique.

“Yes,” Josiah says, in his calm, still-professorial voice. “A ‘shave and a shower’ would have an entirely different meaning for poor Nicholas.”

Clover laughs again, and then she says, “Oh Lord, I’m so tired. I’m getting old.”

“We all are,” says Josiah. “Except for Hope, who will always look about ten years old. My pocket-sized wife. Any day I expect to get picked up for child-molesting.”

Hope giggles, as she imagines he expects her to, but she wonders: Is that a compliment? Does he like having such a small wife, or does he long to be with big dark Clover again? All he said to her, by way of describing Clover before they met, was “You two certainly don’t look much alike. No one can accuse me of being partial to a type,” with his ambiguous laugh.

Now Clover, in her loose dark flowered silk, pulls herself to her feet. Hope and Josiah get up too. They all say good night to each other, without touching; somehow either kissing or shaking hands would be all wrong.

And Clover goes home, by herself.

Since Clover and Josiah drank so much when they were in love, when he was an alcoholic and a philosopher, teaching at Berkeley, it is hard for Clover to remember, really, what it was like, what Josiah was like, back then. She just remembers a lot of drinking, with vague intervals of sleep and love, against a backdrop of Berkeley Hills, San Francisco restaurants and bars.

But almost everything that happened between Clover and Josiah is vividly clear to Hope; what Josiah left out her avid imagination readily supplies. On her way to sleep, in the giant bed where she feels a little cold, and lost (Josiah is huddled on the other side), after their party, what Hope sees is: Clover and Josiah propped up in a warm plain double bed, a turmoil of white sheets, the two of them drinking California champagne, and laughing their heads off. Clover: dark and young, even more beautiful than now. And Josiah: beardless, dark hair just graying, his face flushed (not gray) with drink and love and so much laughing, all the time. Or, she sees them on the old ferry, crossing to Oakland; they are standing on the prow, salt wind blowing their hair. They are drinking from a pint bottle of bourbon, they are feeding the sea gulls some peanuts which they have soaked in booze. They are getting the sea gulls drunk—they are laughing, laughing, laughing.

These days Josiah doesn’t drink at all, and thanks to Hope’s money he doesn’t have to work.

How she wishes that he still drank!

It is easy to imagine Clover naked—a Maillol, a Henry Moore.

It is often very hard for Hope to sleep.

Clover supports herself as she always has, in a borderline way, with commercial art. Just now she has a better job than usual, with a gallery, doing promotional brochures, with a more than generous budget and an employer who seems quite civilized, for a welcome change, although he is bald and fat. Gregory Rovensky, a dark Russian-Israeli, an ebullient, enthusiastic type; he sometimes reminds Clover of a balloon, or several balloons, bouncing about in a room. A kindly person, he even tells her that she undercharges, and he ups her fee. “Money is not something for you to be foolishly genteel about,” he says. “In a commercial society it’s a mistake to undervalue yourself.”

This seems sensible advice—and how good it would be if she could earn enough money not to worry! Clover has always lived rather well, and dressed well, on the whole, but the cost in anxiety has been tremendous.

In a grateful way she confides in Gregory some of her unease about her friends, Josiah and Hope. “Sometimes I think I’m not quite catching on. Something is happening that I don’t understand,” she says.