Authors: Alice Adams
However, what Polly almost immediately says is (so like her, no preamble): “One thing I wanted to tell you, Celeste, is that I’m planning a trip to Spain.”
And oh, how like Polly to make a stern lecture out of such news, to make a pronouncement of what is so pleasant, such innocent fun! Celeste thinks all this even as she is saying to Polly, “But, darling Pol, that’s really wonderful, you haven’t been back there forever.” Not since you and Charles were lovers, she does not say. But she has the sudden and quite enormous thought that Polly knows, Polly knows that she knows—and somehow over the years they have got past all that; it no longer matters much who did what to and with whom.
“Not since 1948” is Polly’s very succinct summation. “Almost forty years.” She smiles a little grimly, and then continues, “The point is, dear Celeste, it’s not just me going. I mean, I’m going with a friend.” A tiny pause. “A man I know.”
Can Polly be blushing? Quite surely she is. She looks heated, and her pale eyes are paler than ever. They
shine
.
“But, Pol, how really lovely, and how cozy you are, going out and meeting someone and getting all involved without any of us having the slightest notion.” As Celeste says all this, though, a tiny, very recent memory surfaces (what they say is true; the most recent past
is really the first to go): someone seeing Polly with someone, someone “inappropriate,” but that memory refuses to come into focus. “You must let me have you both to dinner, a sort of little pre-farewell party for you both.”
Polly begins then to laugh, her old big full helpless laugh that Celeste always wishes were happening somewhere else. “You already know him,” Polly tells Celeste. “It’s Victor Lozano, the man at the garage.”
“Oh.”
“He’s Spanish,” Polly adds, quite unnecessarily.
For of course Celeste knows who Victor is, everyone knows Victor, and knows him to be Spanish. As well as bald and fat and poor and married and a Catholic, probably. For an instant Celeste wonders if this could be some sort of joke of Polly’s, what young people call “putting you on.” If Polly simply said that she was going to Spain with Victor (of course implying considerably more, much more, that must have already taken place between them)—if Polly said that just to see what she, Celeste, would say? But she next decides that this is not so: it is simply not Polly’s sort of joke.
And so it must be true. Polly and Victor. A fact. A couple.
Well
. Celeste with scarcely a thought decides not to give Polly the joy of any show of shock, on her part. “I think your trip should be wonderful,” says Celeste. “Divine. Going with someone who can speak the language.”
In a knowing way Polly chuckles, but she only says, “I think it will be, as you say, divine. I’m very much looking forward.” And then, in an entirely different voice, she says, “Now, Celeste, about your symptoms. This bleeding you’ve mentioned.”
“Oh, that was nothing. And anyway it’s almost stopped,” Celeste gets out, in a rush.
“Almost?” Polly pushes.
“Well, yes. Really not at all now. And, Polly, honestly, what a thing for us to talk about.”
It was you who asked me about it in the first place: Polly’s pale, severe eyes say this to Celeste, no need for the spoken words. What Polly does say is “I think you’re acting very foolishly. There’s a doctor I want you to go to. He’s young, and it’d be less embarrassing for you with someone new. Is that right?”
“Well—” Of course this is quite true: one of Celeste’s large dreads has been the description of such unpleasant (disgusting!) symptoms to dear old Dr. McGillvaray, whom she has known forever, ever since she and Charles first came to California.
“He’s just over in Santa Cruz. Very smart, young but not too young. John Bascomb. Here, I wrote it down for you. Please, Celeste, just go and talk to him.”
To her own considerable surprise Celeste finds this idea appealing. If this doctor is young, even she, hopelessly old and old-fashioned Celeste, can talk to him “openly”: isn’t openness a specialty of the young, along with “sharing”? Well, she will openly share her conviction that she has cancer; she will explain that she is going to die, and he can tell her certain facts that she needs to know—how much time she has, what the last few months of her life are liable to be like. How soon, that is, she should think about taking some pills. Though of course she will not tell any doctor about that plan. “Very well, Polly, I’ll go see him.” Celeste laughs, to herself an unpleasantly artificial sound. “Will that make you happy?”
“Moderately.” Polly smiles.
Partly to change the subject, Celeste now says, “So odd about that young man who used to work here. Did you meet him at my party? Called David. Sara took the most violent dislike to him, really on sight. Anyway, he seems to be gone. So odd.”
“Ah.” Polly smiles again. “It’s wonderful not to be young, don’t you think so, really, Celeste?”
“Well,” Celeste concedes. “On some days I do.”
“Do you want more coffee? There’s one more thing I really want to ask you.”
Whatever it is, Celeste is sure that she does not care to hear the question, nor assuredly to answer it. But she says, “Oh, yes, I’d love more—the coffee’s so good here, don’t you think?” she flutters.
Polly asks sternly, “Celeste, what’s this about Bill’s being in South America.”
Oh
. “Well, that’s where he is, I’m pretty sure. I’m not sure doing what exactly. He’s sounding rather mysterious about it all. The way Charles used to, sometimes.”
“Interesting” is Polly’s comment. But then, as Celeste might have known she would, she probes further, pushing in. “What I really want
to know is how you feel about him these days. What was all that about, anyway? Do you know?”
“Oh, Polly, dear Polly. If I knew I’d tell you, really. I would.” And Celeste sighs, almost painfully.
“You could try.” Gentle but very firm, implacable Polly.
“Well.” She might as well try to tell Polly, Celeste decides. There has never been the slightest point in any pretense, with her. “Well,” she begins, “I simply know that it had more to do with Charles than with Bill. You know, beginning with that really uncanny resemblance.”
“Yes,” Polly agrees. “That was crazy. The first night I met Bill at your house—well, it was unfair. A low blow.”
“Very unfair to me.” Celeste laughs briefly. “I think I sort of fell in love with Bill, or got a crush on him, whatever you want to call it, but it was really all about missing Charles. Just a crazy way of expressing how much I missed him. I’m not making sense, though, am I?”
“Sure you are, but there’s something missing, I think.”
Feeling prodded, Celeste still makes an effort. “I think that all my life I’ve been falling in love with men as a kind of substitute for something else. Not that I wasn’t doing other things too. But. Do you see what I mean, at all?” Celeste is highly aware of having never in her life spoken in this way, or nearly; she is not at all sure that she likes it.
“I do see,” Polly tells her, Polly with her far too intelligent eyes now concentrated on Celeste. She seems then to muse for a moment, before (so unnecessarily! Celeste later thinks) she adds, “And in a way Bill was supposed to make up for everything lacking with Charles, don’t you think? A second chance?”
“Polly, that is an absolutely meaningless remark. My life with Charles was absolutely perfect, as you of all people should know. Really, Polly, you forget yourself.”
Very strangely (but then Polly is very strange,
very
), Polly chooses to laugh at this. “Come off it, Celeste. Don’t talk like that to me. You know we’re friends for life. I can say whatever I want to, and I usually do. You know that.”
That much at least is true, and so Celeste too forces a laugh, and they change the subject. Polly begins to talk about her trip.
The room that Sara occupies in Celeste’s big sprawling house faces directly south, but east and west are also included in that broad sweep: hills, a few houses, the enormous sky, and sometimes, rarely, the sea. Waking early, on some of the perfectly clear days of October, California’s Indian summer, what Sara sees before the actual sun is, here and there, a small burnished blaze, as of copper: sunlight reflected in distant scattered windows. And the air at that time is a deep pure blue, washed clean, no clouds—only an occasional jetliner that noses slowly upward, crossing the sky and heading south for Mexico, or South America.
At those times, on those rarely beautiful mornings, Sara experiences such a deep, fulfilling sense of peace as to make her feel a rush of guilt, while from her bed she watches the lovely progress of the day, for the first time in her life not having to get up.
Sara believes that this is not what she is supposed to be doing—Sara, who has never been even nearly convinced that she is meant to be happy, in her life. But this room and this view of the dawn, the white flashing wings of sea gulls, all conspire to make her feel—well,
happy
, a rare contentment and tranquil joy. Which makes her at the same time very restive.
If it were not for Celeste, about whom she is seriously worried, she would leave; that is Sara’s thought, or one of them. The imperative that bids her to take care of Celeste is strongest, though. And so odd, Sara thinks: Celeste is someone whom she could quite reasonably dislike. Celeste is imperious, imperialistic (probably), materialistic (certainly that, all those clothes, that jewelry), vain—a foolish
romantic. Snobbish. A poor judge of men—very poor. A political illiterate.
Why then, Sara asks herself, have I appointed myself her keeper? If she is mortally ill, why do I have to be the one to stick around and take care of her? Why not Dudley, or Polly? Or Edward? She is not exactly lacking in friends. Why me?
Sara’s belief that Celeste is ill (is almost dying) comes from hints, Celeste’s own small spoken words, rather than from any amateur medical observation on Sara’s part. Celeste, except for dry skin and a certain pallor that seems to be chronic (and is probably at least in part cosmetic), looks splendid: she stands erect; she moves, as always, with exceptional grace, with a sometimes alarming alacrity. She is hard to keep up with, for anyone.
And Celeste is even quite unsympathetic toward her more arthritic friends—namely, Dudley and Edward. Arthritis, according to Celeste, is entirely a matter of diet: she herself conquered what she felt to be incipient arthritis in herself with a regime of fresh fish and brown rice, canned tuna, and papaya (so rich in enzymes). Almost no red meat or dairy products. (There is also her curious fondness for peanut butter, to Sara an anomalous taste: elegant Celeste, eating peanut butter? Nevertheless, that is what she does, largely in her futile effort to gain a little weight—a problem for which she expects and receives no sympathy whatsoever.) She has no signs of bodily stiffness, anywhere. No visible slowing down of anything.
She does, though, make certain remarks that Sara has found alarming. For example: “Sara darling, since you don’t really care for jewelry, do you? I’m just leaving it all to Dudley, you won’t mind?” Or, “I suppose the best thing will be for you and Dudley to sell this house. It’s so big and impractical. So lucky that you two have become such friends.”
To Sara’s strong remonstrances “
Please
, Celeste, I don’t want your jewelry or your house. Besides you look wonderful, you could easily outlive me,” Celeste smiles wanly, and with no conviction agrees. “I suppose I could. You don’t take much care of yourself.”
It becomes clear to Sara, then, that Celeste for whatever reasons has decided that she will die. And soon, or fairly soon.
The only reason for her dying that makes any sense to Sara, in terms of Celeste’s true character, as Sara perceives it, would be Celeste’s suspicion (perhaps even her certainty) of mortal illness. The unspeakable: cancer.
And sometimes what Sara thinks is, I simply cannot go through all that again. For it was Sara, of course, on whom almost the total care of her mother, Emma, fell, during those last nightmare months of Emma’s illness. Sara who witnessed actively all her mother’s pain and medical indignities. (Celeste’s visits of mercy were helpful but very brief.) I can’t do all that, can’t
see
all that again, thinks Sara, even as she excoriates herself for those thoughts.
For of course she will. She knows perfectly well that she is committed to seeing Celeste through whatever happens.
Besides, at this point in her life, Sara further thinks, what more worthy project does she have? Just what is she doing of any remote importance to anyone?
Sometimes, during Emma’s illness, Sara even thought, and now she cruelly remembers thinking: Well, please get on with it, please just die. And at other times, and with equal strength, she silently begged her mother not to die. Not to leave her.
Much of which she feels all over again, transferred to Celeste.
On one especially blessed-seeming morning, as Sara lies half-dreaming in her bed, she is jolted by the sound of the telephone from the living room. And as she waits for Celeste to answer, as the phone continues to ring, she recalls a part of her dream. Which was of Alex, which was vividly sexual.
Celeste does not answer, and so Sara gets up and barefoot in her flannel gown she runs for the phone, thinking that of course it will stop before she gets there, thinking too: What’s wrong with Celeste, can’t she hear, can she have died?
But the phone does not stop until she picks it up and answers, a breathless “Hello.”
Alex (later Sara is to think, Well, of course it was Alex). “You never call early in the morning” is her somewhat accusatory greeting.
“It isn’t early. But listen, I do have some news. About our Bill. Mr. Priest.”
The windows of the living room face west, exposed to sunsets rather than to dawns, and thus what Sara now sees is reflected sunlight on neighboring windowpanes, on pale rocks just beginning to shine, and glitter on the sea. Perhaps it also strikes the broad light-colored horns of Dudley’s tribe of goats, Sara thinks, and she wonders where they are at just this moment.
She is watching, then, the beautiful changes in the light; she is thinking rather idly of the goats—as Alex is telling her about Bill Priest, who is indeed in Nicaragua—Managua. Almost impossible to imagine.