Alice Adams: To See You Again: Stories

For Frances Kiernan,

with love and thanks

On a trail high up in the California Sierra, between heavy smooth white snowbanks, four people on cross-country skis form a straggling line. A man and three women: Graham, dark and good-looking, a San Francisco architect, who is originally from Georgia; Carol, his girlfriend, a gray-eyed blonde, a florist; Susannah, daughter of Graham, dark and fat and now living in Venice, California; and, quite a way behind Susannah, tall thin Rose, Susannah’s friend and lover. Susannah and Rose both have film-related jobs—Graham has never been quite sure what they do.

Graham and Carol both wear smart cross-country outfits: knickers and Norwegian wool stockings. The younger women are in jeans and heavy sweaters. And actually, despite the bright cold look of so much snow, this April day is warm, and the sky is a lovely spring blue, reflected in distant small lakes, just visible, at intervals.

Graham is by far the best skier of the four, a natural; he does anything athletic easily. He strides and glides along, hardly aware of what he is doing, except for a sense of physical well-being. However, just now he is cursing himself for having dreamed up this weekend, renting an unknown house in Alpine Meadows, near Lake Tahoe, even for bringing these women together. He had hoped for a diversion from a situation that could be tricky, difficult: a visit from Susannah, who was bringing Rose, whom he had previously been told about but had not met. Well, skiing was a diversion, but what in God’s name would they all do tonight? Or talk about? And why had he wanted to get them together anyway? He wasn’t all that serious about Carol (was he?); why introduce her to his daughter? And why did he have to meet Rose?

Carol is a fair skier, although she doesn’t like it much: it takes all her breath. At the moment, with the part of her mind that is not concentrated on skiing, she is thinking that although Graham is smarter than most of the men she knows, talented and successful, and really nice as well, she is tired of going out with men who don’t see her, don’t know who she is. That’s partly her fault, she knows; she lies about her age and dyes her hair, and she never mentions the daughter in Vallejo, put out for adoption when Carol was fifteen (she would be almost twenty now, almost as old as Graham’s girl, this unfriendly fat Susannah). But sometimes Carol would like to say to the men she knows, Look, I’m thirty-five, and in some ways my life has been terrible—being blond and pretty doesn’t save you from anything.

But, being more fair-minded than given to self-pity, next Carol thinks, Well, as far as that goes Graham didn’t tell me much about his girl, either, and for all I know mine is that way, too. So many of them are, these days.

How can he possibly be so dumb, Susannah is passionately thinking, of her father. And the fact that she has asked that question hundreds of times in her life does not diminish its intensity or the accompanying pain. He doesn’t understand anything, she wildly, silently screams. Stupid, straight blondes: a florist. Skiing. How could he think that I … that Rose …?

Then, thinking of Rose in a more immediate way, she remembers that Rose has hardly skied before—just a couple of times in Vermont, where she comes from. In the almost noon sun Susannah stops to wait for Rose, halfheartedly aware of the lakes, just now in view, and the smell of pines, as sweat collects under her heavy breasts, slides down her ribs.

Far behind them all, and terrified of everything, Rose moves along with stiffened desperation. Her ankles, her calves, her thighs, her lower back are all tight with dread. Snow is stuck to the bottoms of her skis, she knows—she can hardly move them—but she doesn’t dare stop. She will fall, break something, get lost. And everyone will hate her, even Susannah.

Suddenly, like a gift to a man in his time of need, just ahead of Graham there appears a lovely open glade, to one side of the trail. Two huge heavy trees have fallen there, at right angles to each other; at the far side of the open space runs a brook, darkly glistening over small smooth rocks. High overhead a wind sings through the pines, in the brilliant sunlight.

It is perfect, a perfect picnic place, and it is just now time for lunch. Graham is hungry; he decides that hunger is what has been unsettling him. He gets out of his skis in an instant, and he has just found a smooth, level stump for the knapsack, a natural table, when Carol skis up—out of breath, not looking happy.

But at the sight of that place she instantly smiles. She says, “Oh, how perfect! Graham, it’s beautiful.” Her gray eyes praise him, and the warmth of her voice. “Even benches to sit on. Graham, what a perfect Southern host you are.” She laughs in a pleased, cheered-up way, and bends to unclip her skis. But something is wrong, and they stick. Graham comes over to help. He gets her out easily; he takes her hand and lightly he kisses her mouth, and then they both go over and start removing food from the knapsack, spreading it out.

“Two bottles of wine. Lord, we’ll all get plastered.” Carol laughs again, as she sets up the tall green bottles in a deep patch of snow.

Graham laughs, too, just then very happy with her, although he is also feeling the familiar apprehension that any approach of his daughter brings on: will Susannah like what he has done, will she approve of him, ever? He looks at his watch and he says to Carol, “I wonder if they’re okay. Rose is pretty new on skis. I wonder …”

But there they are, Susannah and Rose. They have both taken off their skis and are walking along the side of the trail, carrying the skis on their shoulders, Susannah’s neatly together, Rose’s at a clumsy, difficult angle. There are snowflakes in Susannah’s dark-brown hair—hair like Graham’s. Rose’s hair is light, dirty blond; she is not even pretty, Graham has unkindly thought. At the moment they both look exhausted and miserable.

In a slow, tired way, not speaking, the two girls lean their skis and poles against a tree; they turn toward Graham and Carol, and then, seemingly on a single impulse, they stop and look around. And with a wide smile Susannah says, “Christ, Dad, it’s just beautiful. It’s great.”

Rose looks toward the spread of food. “Oh, roast chicken. That’s my favorite thing.” These are the first nice words she has said to Graham. (Good manners are not a strong suit of Rose’s, he has observed, in an interior, Southern voice.)

He has indeed provided a superior lunch, as well as the lovely place—his discovery. Besides the chicken, there are cherry tomatoes (called love apples where Graham comes from, in Georgia), cheese (Jack and cheddar), Triscuits and oranges and chocolate. And the nice cold dry white wine. They all eat and drink a lot, and they talk eagerly about how good it all is, how beautiful the place where they are. The sky, the trees, the running brook.

Susannah even asks Carol about her work, in a polite, interested way that Graham has not heard from her for years. “Do you have to get up early and go to the flower mart every morning?” Susannah asks.

“No, but I used to, and really that was more fun—getting out so early, all those nice fresh smells. Now there’s a boy I hire to do all that, and I’m pretty busy making arrangements.”

“Oh, arrangements,” says Rose, disparagingly.

Carol laughs. “Me, too, I hate them. I just try to make them as nice as I can, and the money I get is really good.”