To See You Again

245 Pages·2016·1.07 MB·English

by  Adams Alice

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
Copyright © 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982 by Alice Adams
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the
United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
“An Unscheduled Stop,” “At the Beach,” “Berkeley House,” “By the Sea,” “The Girl Across the Roam,”
“Greyhound People,” “Lost Luggage,” “Snow,” and “To See You Again” were originally published in
The New Yorker.
“The Party-Givers” was originally published in Epoch.
Other stories have been published in The Atlantic Monthly, Cosmopolitan, Shenandoah, and The
Virginia Quarterly.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Adams, Alice [date]
To see you again. I. Title.
PS3551.D324T6 813’.54 81-15621
eISBN: 978-0-30779829-9 AACR2
v3.1
For Frances Kiernan,
with love and thanks
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Snow
Greyhound People
The Party-Givers
By the Sea
An Unscheduled Stop
The Girl Across the Room
Lost Luggage
Berkeley House
A Wonderful Woman
Legends
Related Histories
The Break-In
A Southern Spelling Bee
True Colors
At the Beach
Truth or Consequences
Teresa
At First Sight
To See You Again
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
Snow
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.”
Both Rose and Susannah regard Carol in an agreeing, respectful way.
For a moment Graham is surprised: these kids respecting money? Then
he remembers that this is the Seventies: women are supposed to earn
money, it’s good for them.
The main thing, though, is what a good time they all have together.
Graham even finds Rose looking at him with a small, shy smile. He offers
her more wine, which she accepts—another smile as he pours it out for
her. And he thinks, Well, of course it’s tough on her, too, meeting me.
Poor girl, I’m sure she’s doing the best she can.
“You all really like it down there in Hollywood?” he asks the two girls,
and he notes that his voice is much more Southern than usual; maybe
the wine.
“Universal City,” Susannah corrects him, but she gives a serious
answer. “I love it. There’s this neat woman in the cutting room, and she
knows I’m interested, so she lets me come in and look at the rushes, and
hear them talk about what has to go. I’m really learning. It’s great.”
And Rose: “There’s so many really exciting people around.”
At that moment they both look so young, so enviably involved in their
work, so happy, that Graham thinks, Well, really, why not?
Occasionally the wind will move a branch from a nearby tree and
some snow will sift down, through sunlight. The sky seems a deeper blue