Return Trips (12 page)

But even in his dream he, Baxter, is actually sitting there alone, and fully dressed. And he never saw any flesh of Stella’s beyond that revealed in a modest bathing suit. For Stella, if the truth were known, and he trusts that it is not—Stella had stood him up. There he was, expecting her, in that room, with champagne, and the next day she had the consummate gall to say, “But Baxter, darling, I can’t believe you were serious.” And that awful laugh. What a bitch, when you came right down to it—really surprising that more people didn’t see through her. He wonders if Rachel did; he has never been sure just how Rachel felt about Stella. Well, there’s no possibility of understanding women, as he has always said.

More crossly than he meant to, Baxter whispers to Day,
“Why do you think Rachel serves this damned soup so often?”

Startled, Day answers him literally. “She thinks it’s good in hot weather, I guess.” And then she says the next thing that enters her grief-dulled mind: “And it seems a more leftist sort of soup than vichyssoise.”

Baxter emits a loud cackling laugh. “Oh, very good,” he tells Day, who has not meant to be funny, especially. “A leftist soup. That’s
very good
.”

Baxter’s laugh and some words of this small exchange have caught everyone’s attention, so that it all has to be repeated several times, and explained, many of those old ears not being quite what they once were. No one seems to think “leftist soup” is quite as funny as Baxter did. (Rachel especially, in the way of wives, did not find it awfully funny. Why did she marry Baxter, she wonders. But even if she knew, it is much too late to reconsider.) However, at least a diversion was created, from so many sad thoughts of Stella, and such anxiety as how to deal with Jimmy: how will he be?

This October day is unseasonably hot; everyone has agreed on that, and commented at length. Even in this shaded glen, where usually it is cool, often cold, almost always too cold for swimming in the dark greenish pool, today it is very warm, so that swimming is at least discussed. Warm shafts of light fall dustily between the redwoods, on the thick still tessellated fronds of ferns.

Stella, of course, would have been in hours ago, flopping around like a porpoise and exhorting everyone else to come in, too. No one has remarked on this probability, but what Stella would have been doing has occurred to everyone there. They will continue to think, in other contexts, of what Stella would have done.

However, the heat is actually a relief to so many old bones; they bask and relax in it. And the warm weather seems a reprieve of sorts, to these old people. The fact is that their location, in these mountains south of San Francisco, is not an ideal spot for the retired, for the very old. They are vulnerable to such extremes of cold, and to floods, from mountain streams, as well as to spectres of isolation, loneliness, helplessness. Danger. They have all thought and talked from time to time of moving somewhere else, but where? And for them to move would seem a sort of giving up, giving in, a yielding to old age and infirmity.

This day, though, is reassuring; they are still all right, exactly where they are.

And, as no one says, and perhaps no one is really aware, it is rather a relief not to have Stella around, loudly splashing in the pool, and always urging them all to exceed themselves, somehow.

Although they were very close friends, as far as anyone knew, and were almost exactly the same age, Rachel’s and Stella’s personal styles were very different. Rachel’s low-key, toned-down quiet mode could almost have been developed in opposition to Stella’s flamboyance. All three of Rachel’s husbands, including Baxter, have affectionately compared her to a wren, a coincidence that tactful Rachel has mentioned to no one, surely not to Baxter, who despite his money and good looks is quite insecure.

Rachel is small, with neat gray-brown hair and finely lined lightly tanned skin. When Baxter came home to her that time in Connecticut, just mentioning that he had “caught a glimpse” of Stella in New York, Rachel quite accurately surmised what had happened: Baxter had made a pass, of some sort, and Stella in some way had turned him down. Curiously, at first she was a little annoyed at Stella: poor
Baxter, aging is hard on such a handsome man. But it soon came to her, causing a wry, inward smile, that after all if Stella had said yes, she, Rachel, would have been considerably more annoyed.

Standing just off from the group, near the end of the table, Day and Rachel now consult with each other, Rachel saying, “Well, I just don’t know. Jimmy’s usually so punctual,” and she frowns.

“He might feel worse if we waited,” Day offers. “Worse about everything, I mean.”

Rachel gives Day an attentive, interested look. (Rachel listens to what other people say.) “Well, of course you’re absolutely right,” she says. “Besides, it’s making everyone nervous. We’ll just go ahead with the salmon.”

“He might always call and say that he isn’t coming after all,” Day further contributes. She is thinking: Allen might call.

“Oh, right,” says Rachel.

It is true that the prolonged absence of Jimmy is nervously felt, all around. People speculate about what could have happened. Flat tires are mentioned, as well as being out of gas, or lost. What no one voices is the fear, felt by almost all of them, that he could have started drinking again. Stella was believed to have helped get him off the bottle.

Someone, more mean-spirited than the rest, has just said, “I hope our dear Jimmy hasn’t stopped off at some bar,” when fortunately Rachel and Day arrive with their platters of cold salmon, the glistening silvery pink surrounded by various shades of green—parsley and several sauces—so that everyone can exclaim over the beauty of the food.

• • •

One moment after everyone is served, there comes the sound and then a quick flashed glimpse in the driveway above of a hastily braked and parked red sports car.

What an odd car for a man whose wife has just died is what everyone instantly, simultaneously thinks—everyone but Day, who has recognized the car. It is not Jimmy’s car but Allen’s, and she begins to run back up the path that she has just come down with her platter, now going several times as fast as before: she is almost flying.

Behind her, a guest who has not yet understood that it is not Jimmy’s car after all, and who has apparently not forgotten some ancient political feud, is heard to mutter, “Perfect car for a red-haired Communist!”

Half an hour later (still no sign of Jimmy), a few people are on their second helpings of salmon. Rachel keeps an experienced-hostess eye on all the plates; she is hoping for not much left over, Baxter not being overly fond of salmon (hard to think what he does like, really), and she cannot bear waste. It is sad, she thinks, the loss of appetite suffered by the old, and she remembers her own gnawing hungers as a scrawny Brooklyn girl. It is far worse than the diminution of sexual appetite, one’s lessening interest in food. After all, most people eat three times a day, most not truly poor Americans.

She is allowing her mind to wander foolishly. Rachel looks across the table at Day and Allen, who appear to be absolutely, heedlessly absorbed in each other. She looks at her watch, unobtrusively, she hopes, and frowns.

It is so strange, Day is thinking, her feelings on being with Allen. Now. He is so near that she can smell him, his known scents of clean skin and recent soap, clean cotton work shirt
just slightly perspired on. He is so near, so known and loved (she supposes) and still so strange, unreal to her. Their quarrels, too, are unreal, all suddenly dissolved. “Whatever was that all about?” Allen asked her, after their long greeting kiss, as hand in hand they walked down to the shaded dell together, and Day said, “Oh, I don’t
know
.”

Now, though, it is as if she had known all along that Allen would come to her here; she has been waiting for Allen, as everyone else waited for Jimmy, and thought about Stella.

But, most curiously, she is aware in some depth of herself of the faintest disappointment that he has come, after all. She feels the lack of her recent misery; weirdly, she misses its bite; the very sharpness of that anguish seems a loss.

Then quite suddenly everything that is happening is interrupted, all the eating and serving and clearing, all the intense thoughts of everyone there, all rudely broken into by the sharp repeated blast of a horn, the country sound of a very old Ford. Stella’s car: it is Jimmy at last, of course.

Straining to look up through the immense, thick trees, enormous trunks of the venerable redwoods, the smaller eucalyptus, manzanitas, they can just see the old rattletrap that Stella always drove, as shabby and dusty as though she drove it still. The door slams three, then four times (it is remembered that Stella never could get that door shut), and from way up there comes the jaunty sound of Jimmy calling, “Hallooo, hallooo!”

“Oh dear, he must be drunk,” someone says.

“Oh, I hope not,” says Baxter eagerly, clearly hoping that he is.

“He is not drunk,” Rachel fiercely tells them both.

What Day first sees of Jimmy, and maybe the others, too, is the bright stripes of the sweater he is wearing, a brilliant orangy red, on a darker background. What Day thinks is:
How amazing, his sweater is striped with the color of Stella’s hair.

In a curious way, Jimmy looks both smaller and livelier than usual. He fairly runs down the path toward them all.

Watching him, as everyone is, several people seem to decide that perhaps so much attention paid to his arrival will be awkward, and small attempts are made at conversation, here and there. However, none succeed, and by the time Jimmy, quite out of breath, arrives at the end of the table, Rachel’s end, they are all staring, and smiling welcomes in his direction.

“Well,” Jimmy at last gets out, “you all look like you’d been waiting for somebody more important. Or bigger, anyway,” and with an odd quirky smile he actually turns to look behind him, as though the larger, more important person had followed him down the path.

“Jimmy dear, don’t be silly,” Rachel chides him. “But what ever happened? You’re so late.”

“Well, it’s that damned old car of Stell’s, of course. Damned old thing wouldn’t start, and then I had to wait for the tow truck.”

“Well, fortunately everything s cold, and there’s lots left. Here’s a plate, just sit right here by me.” A small catch can be heard in Rachel’s voice, as she speaks to Jimmy, and tears are seen in her eyes. But since all these people are so old, and given to emotional moments, no one wonders why at this particular moment of first seeing Jimmy Rachel should be so moved.

Across the table from Rachel and Jimmy, Baxter has been struck by a new thought, one that makes him very happy. Alcoholics are almost always impotent, he thinks; that fellow Jimmy very likely never had her, either, the poor dumb sod.

Vastly cheered (and quite wrong: Stella and Jimmy enjoyed
a spirited sexual rapport), Baxter thinks again of Stella, her often imagined, forever inaccessible flesh—ah, no one now! And he smiles in a warm, comradely way in Jimmy’s direction.

Jimmy is talking about his labors with Stella’s papers. “So much!” he tells everyone, with a pixieish widening of his old bright blue eyes. “So many papers! She wrote to everyone, you know, and they always wrote her back, and she kept everything. Even foolish letters from me. I was proud to come upon them.” With a look of surprise he beams at his audience, then stops for a bite of salmon.

They are all regarding Jimmy as though he were a brand-new person, some visitor of charm and distinction. (It is Baxter who makes this observation to himself, and quite without pleasure.)

“It’s going to take me a good ten years to get through it all,” announces Jimmy (as though he could count on living ten more years). Everyone smiles at him with happy approval (as though they, too, could live that long).

Almost from one moment to the next, the day that seemed so unseasonably warm has turned cool—a sudden chill in the air, and a breeze, reminding everyone that the season is actually autumn, that summery warmth at noon was delusional. And they are none of them as young as they once were.

“I could go up and get some sweaters,” Rachel offers. “Day and I—”

But they all decline. They have all been there long enough, they almost say.

It is somehow assumed that when everyone leaves Rachel will have some time alone with Jimmy, which they no doubt need—they will want to talk about Stella—and that Day
will go off with that fellow, that young Allen (well, off to bed). And that Baxter will take a nap, by himself.

All these things do take place, but not quite as anyone would have expected.

In bed, after a brief interval of love, Day and Allen take up their argument again.

Allen believes that they should marry. In a fast-disintegrating world, a personal commitment is almost all that is left, he thinks. Let us love one another or die, he says. Ah, love, let us be true. Besides, he is making a lot of money in San Francisco, in real estate.

Well, Day does not see marriage as an ultimate commitment. She does love Allen, and she is true. But still. And she has hopes of being accepted at law school, in New Haven.

Well, if she must, then why not Stanford, or Berkeley, or Davis?

In the waning late-afternoon light, the cool fall end of that golden October day, their words rise in the air, in circles and patterns that then, like smoke, dissolve, and Day and Allen fall asleep, in the high narrow guest bed, in the flimsily slatted green-stained cabin.

In the kitchen, clearing up, Rachel and Jimmy do not fall into a conversation having to do with Stella; they do not even mention Stella. Instead, they discuss Santa Barbara, and Jimmy’s plans to go there, to live with his sister.

“It’s a most charming place,” he tells Rachel, as he polishes glasses (remembering that Stella thought they came out brighter with paper than with linen. “Such an affectation, linen towels,” she used to say). “And the flowers,” Jimmy now tells Rachel, quickly. Well, the flowers. And it’s interesting,
he continues, how some people seem to mellow with age: his sister, who for years was such a terror, now is very nice, a kind and pleasant person.