Free After the War by Alice Adams Page A

your Harry? You don’t get scared with the bombs and all over there? My goodness, there’s Deirdre Byrd, still seems strange to call her by that name, don’t you think? With her darling little SallyJane—now, talk about names that take some getting used to! She sure has put on a pound or two, hasn’t she—of course I’m referring to Deirdre, not that darling baby. Billy says that her Graham—I guess I shouldsay their Graham—anyway Graham is the worst little sissy in school. But you know how boys talk, not one grain of sense in a carload. But I surely hope he’s not going to turn out like that—you know what I mean. His daddy Russ would kill him, or more likely kill himself. Speaking of children, you must be purely delighted to have your darling almost grownup Abby visiting you for so long. And so nice that that young New York man of hers would visit too. Jacob? Jonathan? Joseph? Oh, I’m just getting so bad about names, especially those ones that are sort of, you know, unfamiliar. And to speak in a serious way for just one minute, that’s one good thing this war has done, don’t you think? It has surely changed around the way we all think about Jewish people. Why, some of those refugees over to the university are perfectly lovely, as I’m sure the parents of Abby’s Jacob are lovely too.”
    “Joseph. And I’ve never met the Marcuses,” said Cynthia when she could. And then she said, “Sorry, I’ve got to rush. I’m taking the afternoon train up to Washington, and I can’t leave Abby and Joseph with nothing to eat.”
    “Oh, well—” Dolly’s small bright eyes sparkled. “You’re leaving those two young people in that house all by them selves ? My, you certainly are—advanced.”
    Cynthia, used to Dolly, laughed. “Odessa’s there in the apartment,” she told Dolly. “And Horace. So they’ll be fully chaperoned.”
    Dolly laughed too, with no humor at all. “Oh well then,” she said to Cynthia. “That’s all right then.”
    “Oh, I’m so glad you think so.” Equally unconvinced—even to her it seemed somewhat careless—Cynthia smiled.
    • • •
    Odessa was indeed late. Late that same afternoon, after Cynthia’s departure for Washington, Abigail, from her broad bedroom window, watched as tall Odessa with her curious swinging gait crossed the backyard, along the flagstone path to the garage and the apartment above that she shared with Horace. When he was around. “Some chicken and greens on the stove,” Odessa had told Abby. “Be ready anytime you are, you just heat it up. Just a tad.”
    Abigail’s room faced west, and now in the final brilliant burst of winter sunlight the white sheets on the tousled unmade bed were golden, as Joseph’s bare back was gold, the smooth muscles sculptural. Abigail’s sense of her own body was golden too; she was irradiated by an inner dazzle—as she wondered why no one had ever said (but who would have; maybe Cynthia?) or she had never read, not really, that actually making love was like—like this . Like a prolonged involvement of every nerve, every cell, an extreme of sensation. Like nothing possible in words.
    She was smiling as she turned from the window to stroke the nice curve of Joseph’s buttocks, slowly, admiringly.
    Looking up, he smiled back before he said, “I’m sorry, I can’t do it again, you’ve worn me down. I’ve heard about you younger women—” He smiled again.
    “What I meant was,” Abby told him, “why don’t we sleep for a while?”
    “You have the best ideas.”
    He turned so that his back pressed against her chest, her stomach; he reached around to her arms and clasped them around himself.
    And with absolute pleasure Abby adjusted. And that is how they napped, for an hour or so.
    Or rather, Joseph slept. Abby was thinking, in a somewhat confused way. Unsurprisingly, her thoughts had to do with sex.
    She knew from studious reading on the subject—Abby had an energetic curiosity, what was actually a