To See You Again (4 page)

Just in front of me were an elderly man and woman, both black, who seemed to be old friends accidentally encountered on this bus. They exchanged information about how they both were, their families, and then the woman said, “Well, the weekend’s coming up.” “Yep, jes one more day.” “Then you can rest.” “Say, you ever see a poor man rest?”

Recently I read an interview with a distinguished lady of letters, in which she was asked why she wrote so obsessively about the very poor, the tiredest and saddest poorest people, and that lady, a Southerner, answered, “But I myself am poor people.”

That touched me to the quick, somehow. I am too. Hortense is not, I think.

Across the aisle from me I suddenly noticed the most beautiful young man I had ever seen, sound asleep. A golden boy: gold hair and tawny skin, large beautiful hands spread loosely on his knees, long careless legs in soft pale washed-out jeans. I hardly dared look at him; some intensity in my regard might have wakened him, and then on my face he would have seen—not lust, it wasn’t that, just a vast and objectless regard for his perfection, as though he were sculptured in bronze, or gold.

I haven’t thought much about men, or noticed male beauty, actually, since my husband left, opted out of our
marriage—and when I say that he left it sounds sudden, whereas it took a long and painful year.

Looking back, I now see that it began with some tiny wistful remarks, made by him, when he would come across articles in the paper about swingers, swapping, singles bars. “Well, maybe we should try some of that stuff,” he would say, with a laugh intended to prove nonseriousness. “A pretty girl like you, you’d do okay,” he would add, by which he really meant that he thought he would do okay, as indeed he has—did, does. Then came some more serious remarks to the effect that if I wanted an occasional afternoon with someone else, well, I didn’t have to tell him about it, but if I did, well, he would understand. Which was a little silly, since when I was not at my office working I was either doing some household errand or I was at home, available only to him.

The next phase included a lot of half-explained or occasionally overexplained latenesses, and a seemingly chronic at-home fatigue. By then even I had caught on, without thinking too specifically about what he must have been doing, which I could not have stood. Still, I was surprised, and worse than surprised, when he told me that he was “serious” about another woman. The beautiful Japanese nurse.

The golden boy got off at Vallejo, without our exchanging any look. Someone else I won’t see again, but who will stay in my mind, probably.

Hortense was furious, her poor fat face red, her voice almost out of control. “One hour—one hour I’ve been waiting here. Can you imagine my thoughts, in all that time?”

Well, I pretty much could. I felt terrible. I put my hand on her arm in a gesture that I meant as calming, affectionate, but she thrust it off, violently.

That was foolish, I thought, and I hoped no one had
seen her. I said, “Hortense, I’m really very sorry. But it’s getting obvious that I have a problem with buses. I mix them up, so maybe you shouldn’t come and meet me anymore.”

I hadn’t known I was going to say that, but, once said, those words made sense, and I went on. “I’ll take a taxi. There’re always a couple out front.”

And just then, as we passed hurriedly through the front doors, out onto the street, there were indeed four taxis stationed, a record number, as though to prove my point. Hortense made a strangled, snorting sound.

We drove home in silence; silently, in her dining room, we ate another chef’s salad. It occurred to me to say that since our dinners were almost always cold my being late did not exactly spoil them, but I forbore. We were getting to be like some bad sitcom joke: Hortense and me, the odd couple.

The next morning, as I got in line to buy a new commuter ticket, there was the New York State girl. We exchanged mild greetings, and then she looked at the old ticket which for no reason I was clutching, and she said, “But you’ve got one ticket left.”

And she explained what turned out to be one more system that I had not quite caught on to: the driver takes the whole first page, which is why, that first day, I thought he had taken two coupons. And the back page, although another color, pink, is a coupon, too. So my first ride on the wrong bus to Vallejo and Oakland was free; I had come out ahead, in that way.

Then the girl asked, “Have you thought about a California Pass? They’re neat.” And she explained that with a California Pass, for just a few dollars more than a commuter ticket, you can go anywhere in California. You can’t travel on weekends, but who would want to, and you can go anywhere
at all—Eureka, La Jolla, Santa Barbara, San Diego; you can spend the weekend there and come back on an early Monday bus. I was fascinated, enthralled by these possibilities. I bought a California Pass.

The Sacramento express was almost empty, so I told the girl that I had some work to do, which was true enough. We sat down in our separate seats and concentrated on our briefcases. I was thinking, of course, in a practical way about moving out from Hortense’s. That had to be next—and more generally I was considering the possibilities of California, which just then seemed limitless, enormous.

Actually, the Greyhound system of departure gates for buses to San Francisco is very simple; I had really been aware all along of how it worked. Gate 5 is the express, Gate 6 goes to Vallejo and Oakland before San Francisco and Gate 8 is the all-stop local, Davis, Dixon, everywhere. On my way home, I started to line up at Gate 6, my true favorite route, Vallejo and Oakland, when I realized that it was still very early, only just five, and also that I was extremely hungry. What I would really have liked was what we used to call a frappe in Binghamton, something cold and rich and thick and chocolate. Out here called a milkshake. And then I thought, Well, why not? Is there some law that says I can’t weigh more than one-ten?

I went into the station restaurant, and at the counter I ordered a double-scoop milkshake. I took it to a booth, and then, as I was sitting there, savoring my delicious drink, something remarkable happened, which was: the handsome black man who so angrily displaced me on that first trip came up to me and greeted me with a friendly smile. “Say, how you, how’re you doing this evening?”

I smiled back and said that I was fine, and he went on
past with his cup of coffee, leaving me a little out of breath. And as I continued to sip and swallow (it tasted marvelous) I wondered: Is it possible that he remembers me from that incident and this is his way of apologizing? Somehow that seemed very unlikely, but it seemed even more unlikely that he was just a friendly sort who went around greeting people. He was not at all like that, I was sure. Even smiling he had a proud, fierce look.

Was it possible that something about me had struck him in just the right way, making him want to say hello?

In any case, I had to read his greeting as a very good sign. Maybe the fat young woman would get on the bus at Vallejo again. Maybe the thin one in purple. And it further occurred to me that traveling all over California on the Greyhound I could meet anyone at all.

At the end of a very long and, by normal standards, ghastly San Francisco party, its host, Josiah Dawes, an ex-alcoholic, ex-philosopher, sits on the floor with two women, Hope Dawes and Clover Baskerville, in an almost empty flat on Potrero Hill. The women are propped up on pillows on either side of Josiah, silhouetted against long black naked windows; they both face him and, indirectly, each other. In an idle, exhausted way they are discussing the party, among the inevitable debris, the dirty glasses and plates and ashes, in the still stale air. Josiah liked the party; he smiles to himself at each recounted incident.

Hope, Josiah’s small, blond and very rich newlywed wife, during the noisy hours of the party has been wondering if she should kill herself. Her mania for Josiah surpasses love—has, really, nothing to do with love; it is more like an insatiable greed, an addiction or perhaps a religious fervor. She has just begun to wonder whether they moved to San Francisco to be near this other woman, with her silly name—Clover. This is Hope’s question: if she killed herself, jumped off one of the bridges, maybe, would Josiah fall in love with
Clover all over again? marry her? or would her death keep them guiltily apart?

Clover, a former lover of Josiah’s, of some years back, is a large, dark carelessly beautiful woman, with heavy dark hair, a successfully eccentric taste in clothes. In the intervals between her major love affairs, or marriages, she has minor loves, and spends time with friends, a course that was recommended by Colette, she thinks. This is such an interval, since Josiah who was once a major love is now a friend, and maybe Hope is too; she can’t tell yet.

Josiah’s very erect posture, as he looks from one woman to the other, and back again, suggests that he is somehow judging between them, or keeping them in balance. He is handsome, in a way, with his drained look of saintliness, his sad pale eyes. His hair and his beard, even his skin and all his clothes, are gray.

Josiah and Hope have just moved to San Francisco and taken this flat; thus the lack of furniture. Also, one of Josiah’s somewhat eccentric theories about parties is that people should be uncomfortable, like prisoners; they are more apt to reveal themselves.

This group consisted of some old Berkeley connections of Josiah’s, and a few new friends introduced by Clover. For various reasons many people drank too much, which, along with the physical discomfort of sitting on the floor, led to quite a few of the revealing scenes of which Josiah is so fond. One drunk man announced that he would kill his wife if she didn’t come along home; in fact he might kill her anyway. A drunk woman accused Clover of lusting after her husband, although Clover was welcome to him if she wanted that slob, said the wife. Another man said that he was gay and proud of it but he was goddamned if he was going to come out of any closet.

Although she laughs, going over all this with Josiah and
Hope, these episodes really made Clover more than a little unhappy, and she is slightly uncomfortable with them both. She senses that something is going on that she does not quite understand. She would much rather be having an overwhelming love affair, and she wonders if she ever will again.

Certain conventions, or rules, have been established for this new three-way friendship. One rule is that all Clover’s lovers, past and present, are to be considered hilarious, as fair game for jokes (except of course for Josiah). Their number too is exaggerated. That this picture is not entirely accurate is one of the things that is making Clover uncomfortable, but she enjoys the intimacy of the relationship; the three of them see each other almost every day, and she and Josiah talk for hours on the phone. It almost makes up for the lack of a serious love. Clover has small capacity for being alone, and so for the moment she goes along with the gag; she presents all her lovers as being figures of fun, and herself as being far more promiscuous than she is.

Explicit sexual details are out; they are all far too fastidious for that, especially Josiah, who sets the tone. However, Clover has been unable to resist telling them that Nicholas, the publicist who brought her to this party, and who, being married to someone else, left early—Nicholas shaves his chest. And now, in an exhausted, end-of-party way, they are laughing over Nicholas.

“Think how much more time getting dressed must take him than it does most people,” suddenly says Hope, who is a practical person.

At this Josiah and Clover look at each other and burst into near-hysterics. Clover’s laugh is deep, a sexy laugh; Josiah’s is almost silent, but his whole body shakes with it, his face is convulsed. Hope watches both of them seriously as she thinks, My God, it’s like watching them make love, in fact more intimate, really; their laughing is unique.

“Yes,” Josiah says, in his calm, still-professorial voice. “A ‘shave and a shower’ would have an entirely different meaning for poor Nicholas.”

Clover laughs again, and then she says, “Oh Lord, I’m so tired. I’m getting old.”

“We all are,” says Josiah. “Except for Hope, who will always look about ten years old. My pocket-sized wife. Any day I expect to get picked up for child-molesting.”

Hope giggles, as she imagines he expects her to, but she wonders: Is that a compliment? Does he like having such a small wife, or does he long to be with big dark Clover again? All he said to her, by way of describing Clover before they met, was “You two certainly don’t look much alike. No one can accuse me of being partial to a type,” with his ambiguous laugh.

Now Clover, in her loose dark flowered silk, pulls herself to her feet. Hope and Josiah get up too. They all say good night to each other, without touching; somehow either kissing or shaking hands would be all wrong.

And Clover goes home, by herself.

Since Clover and Josiah drank so much when they were in love, when he was an alcoholic and a philosopher, teaching at Berkeley, it is hard for Clover to remember, really, what it was like, what Josiah was like, back then. She just remembers a lot of drinking, with vague intervals of sleep and love, against a backdrop of Berkeley Hills, San Francisco restaurants and bars.

But almost everything that happened between Clover and Josiah is vividly clear to Hope; what Josiah left out her avid imagination readily supplies. On her way to sleep, in the giant bed where she feels a little cold, and lost (Josiah is huddled on the other side), after their party, what Hope sees
is: Clover and Josiah propped up in a warm plain double bed, a turmoil of white sheets, the two of them drinking California champagne, and laughing their heads off. Clover: dark and young, even more beautiful than now. And Josiah: beardless, dark hair just graying, his face flushed (not gray) with drink and love and so much laughing, all the time. Or, she sees them on the old ferry, crossing to Oakland; they are standing on the prow, salt wind blowing their hair. They are drinking from a pint bottle of bourbon, they are feeding the sea gulls some peanuts which they have soaked in booze. They are getting the sea gulls drunk—they are laughing, laughing, laughing.