Alice Adams - To See You Again - Stories

“It sounds as though you were quite necessary to them,” says Gregory.

Clover ponders the wisdom of this, although at first it sounded unreasonable. Surely Hope and Josiah like each other? Hope is crazy about Josiah, Clover feels that—and Josiah has always been diffident, nonexpressive of feelings, she remembers that much.

Clover and Gregory are drinking tea, which Clover too likes Russian-style, very strong and lemony, in Clover’s crowded North Beach living room, across town and as far removed in its effect from Josiah’s and Hope’s still-barren space. Generous Clover is the sort of person whom people like to give things to; her rooms are crowded with presents, paintings and drawings and small sculptures from artists she knows, ferns and straw flowers and records and books, hundreds of books, from years of friends. She is unable to throw things away; she almost never breaks off with a friend, or with a lover, finally.

She works at home. In one corner of the room is a huge slanted table, as littered as is every other space in that apartment. It is hard to imagine how she works there, but she does work, much better and harder than her rather languid manner would suggest. She is very good; most of her friends, and Gregory, and a few others among her more generous employers tell her this. For herself, she is not quite sure.

Now both she and Gregory seem to feel that their small conversation about Hope and Josiah is over; perhaps Gregory has said the final word, that they need her, for whatever purposes of their own? In any case, since it is most unlikely that he will ever meet them, Clover sees little point in going on about what at times she feels to be a problem.

Soon Gregory, who has come by to drop off some proofs, takes his leave. In an exaggeratedly “Russian” way, he kisses her hand, a gesture made funnier by both his girth and his baldness.

Alone, with a small sigh, Clover moves toward her bedroom to begin the ritual of bathing and dressing to go out to dinner, with a man whom she does not much care about. At times, many times, she feels that there is something radically wrong with the way she conducts her life, but she does not quite see what to do about it.

Spring can and often does arrive crazily in San Francisco: sometimes in January there are balmy days, blossoming trees and bright green grass. On one such day Clover and Josiah and Hope decide to go on a picnic—or, rather, Clover and Josiah make the plan, on the phone. They will go to a beach that they used to frequent during Berkeley days, near Inverness. And that is what they do; they drive to Inverness, and arrive to find that they have the small beach to themselves. No one else has been so venturesome, in the midst of what is actually winter.

Clover eagerly peels off the sweater and skirt that she has worn over her bathing suit. Like many large women of a certain type—big bones, firm flesh—she looks even better naked than she does in clothes; sometimes clothes make her look constrained. But in the sleek brown bathing suit, a just-darker shade than her skin, she looks naked and wonderful, in the unseasonal hot sun, and she feels terrific.

She and Hope and Josiah spread their blanket on the sand; they eat cracked crab and sourdough French bread and tomatoes, and the two women drink a lot of white wine. Josiah drinks Calistoga water, which he has just discovered: quite as good as Perrier, and much cheaper.

Josiah and Hope have both told Clover how great she looks and Hope takes a lot of snapshots, smiling at Clover even as she squints behind the lens.

It is a successful day. Clover basks in the sun and in the intense admiring affection of her friends. She has been wrong about them: Hope and Josiah are really fond of her, as she is of them; they are all good friends, and nothing strange or untoward is going on. She even feels their friendship is something unusual, a triumph of goodwill and sophistication over more primitive and sometimes stronger emotions. And, curiously, this confirms, at least momentarily, her sometimes-wavering faith in her own work, her artistic skill: if she is so much cared for, by such friends, perhaps after all she is a talented, worthwhile person?

However, it really is January, and by midafternoon the nearly invisible sun sheds no warmth. This has happened quite abruptly, or so it seems to Clover, who, suddenly shivering, wraps herself in the heavy old sweater, out at the elbows, in which she no longer feels beautiful.

“You girls have really put down a lot of wine,” observes Josiah. The “you girls” is a tease; he knows they both dislike that appellation, but perhaps this afternoon he is also anxious to link them? he wants them to be friends?

As though at his suggestion, Clover begins to feel the wine, not as an intoxicant but as a weight in her head, a heavy dull ache.

Collecting possessions, bundling garbage into a bag, seems to take much longer than it should. The sky has gone gray at the edges, the sea is gray and cold and they are all slightly chilled.

However, finally at home, and lounging in her deep warm scented bath, Clover still thinks of the day and their picnic as a success. It was love that she felt from Hope and Josiah, intensely, from both of them.

“Clover is promiscuous for precisely the same reason that I am not,” Josiah once remarked to Hope. “Because sex is not important to her.” Cold with terror, Hope sees the truth of this, at least in regard to Josiah. He has attachments to women that are worse than sexual, from Hope’s point of view. She has even thought what a relief it would be to have a simple ordinary husband who chased girls into motel rooms, out of her sight. But no: with Josiah there is always another woman, but Hope has to be there too.

In New York there was Isabel, a lonely cellist, a gaunt dark girl. (They never look like me, Hope has noted; does he secretly hate blondes?) Josiah and Hope were always with Isabel, concerts, plays, the ballet. Hope despairingly thought that Isabel was with them for life; eventually there would be trips to Europe with Isabel, finally hospitals and death with Isabel. She even considered hiring someone to murder Isabel, but she had no idea how you would find such a person. And then she had her inspiration: “Wouldn’t it be funny if Isabel married Walter?” she remarked to Josiah, and Josiah (how gratifying!) fell apart laughing; it was the best idea Hope had ever had. And so, insofar as it is possible, Hope and Josiah arranged that marriage, from introductions to flattering confidences (“Isabel said she thought you were exceptionally sensitive , Walter”) to weekends at Hope’s family’s house, in Newport—to the gift of a wedding reception. Tall, talented, formerly lonely Isabel, and Walter, a crippled, mildly alcoholic cornetist, out of work. Very funny.

Maybe Clover could marry someone?

“Do you think Clover will ever remarry?” Hope asked Josiah.

“Oh, I doubt it. She’ll more likely kill herself, in a couple of years. That’s what happens when a woman of her sort runs out of affairs.”

Hope isn’t sure that she can wait for a couple of years.

Then another inspiration reaches Hope. “I wonder,” she says to Josiah, in a tellingly idle way. “Do you suppose Clover ever runs into several of her lovers at the same party, some of them with their wives?”

Josiah looks at her for a long moment of speculation, and then he bursts into a laugh of pure delight, which to Hope has the sound of sacred music. “Fantastic,” he says. “My dearest Hope, you are invaluable. I will have to keep you forever.”

“I think a party sounds terrific,” says Clover to Hope, on the phone. “February is such a depressing month, neither one thing nor the other.”

“ Really ,” Hope agrees.