Free To See You Again by Alice Adams Page B

plane moves toward the bright beige terminal building.
    Passengers get up and move along the aisle, murmuring to each other that they might as well get some air, maybe coffee; the men across from Claire, with a short glance at her, go out with new just-unwrapped cigars in their hands. She remains fixed in her seat; she watches as almost everyone else leaves, and then she turns to the window again. No longer crying, she has just realized that she is deeply afraid to go into the terminal; she might see someone she knows, or once knew. Maybe even Spencer Goddard, that summer’s fatal lover, still living in nearby Hilton, presumably with his wife.
    She looks toward the pinewoods, the lacing of bright fall leaves, and she thinks of something else that she will say to Susan, describing this last leg of her trip, her South revisited: “Seeing those woods made me actually burst into tears,” she will say. “But you know how I always loved the woods down there. When I was a kid there I spent all my time outdoors.”
    Or maybe she won’t tell anyone, ever, about crying in that awful way, at the sight of familiar woods.
      •  •  •
    The great thing about the woods, from a child’s point of view, was that parents almost never came along; the woods were quite safe then, and there was a lot to do: you could dam up streams or build tepees, wade in the creek or swing on the heavy grapevines, or just run—race through dead leaves and overgrown corn furrows, in the smells of pine and dirt and sun.
    Later, of course, the woods took on other meanings; they offered romantic shelter and privacy for kissing, touching—whatever forms early love took. Although actually (or so Claire thought) there was always something inherently sexual in that landscape: the lushness of it all, the white overflowing waterfalls and dense green caves of honeysuckle vines—and, in the fall, crimson leaves as bright as blood. The hiding and kissing, those heats and fears of love all came early for Claire, but for many years, all the years of her true childhood, she was busy with dams and Indian huts, with swinging out into the sky, wading and trying not to fall into the creek.
    One afternoon, when she must have been five or six, a small dark skinny child, Claire did fall into the creek; she fell right off a log on which she and some other children had all been crossing to the other side—off, splash, into the water. Not hurt, she stood up, soaking wet, her pink dress streaked with brown. The other children, all older than Claire, began to point and laugh at her, and she laughed, too, enjoying all the attention and the drama. “Oh, my mother will kill me!” she cried out as the other kids went on laughing. And then one by one, accidentally on purpose, they all fell in, and stood around in their soaking wet clothes, in the hot, hot sun. It was a wonderful day, until it was time to go home, and then Claire began to get scared. Of course no one would kill her, but they would be very mad. Her mother, Isabel, wouldlook at her and yell, because Claire was so careless, and her father, Bayard, might do almost anything, depending on how drunk he was; he might even yell at her mother for yelling at Claire, and hug Claire, but in a way that hurt. The only safe grown-up person was Lobelia, the maid, but there was no way to make sure of seeing Lobelia first, and Claire approached her parents’ large stone hilltop house cold and heavy with fear.
    There were five or six cars in the driveway, and then she remembered that they were having a party; good, she could go right into the kitchen, to Lobelia, and with luck they might forget all about her; she could sneak some food up the backstairs to her room, some ham and beaten biscuits, whatever.
    But there right in the middle of the kitchen, of all places for her to be, was Claire’s mother, with her head of wild red hair that everyone talked about (saying, “Too bad Claire didn’t get your hair, Isabel honey”).