Free Return Trips by Alice Adams Page A

“Oh, Hattie. Hi.”
    A very long pause, and then Sarah’s voice, now stiff, all tightened up: “Well, no, I don’t see that as a good idea. We really don’t know Popsie—”
    Another long pause, as Sarah listens to whatever Hattie is saying, and then, “Of course I understand, I really do. But I just don’t think that Jonathan and I—”
    A shorter pause, before Sarah says again, “Of course I understand. I do. Well, sure. Give us a call. Well, bye.”
    As she comes out to where Jonathan stands, waiting for her, Sarah’s face is very white, except for her pink-tipped nose—too pink. She says, “One more thing that Hattie, quote, couldn’t get out of. A big post-wedding do at Popsie Hooker’s. She said of course she knew I’d been working my head off over dinner for them, so why didn’t we just put it all in a basket and bring it on over there. They’d come and help.” Unconsciously, perhaps, Sarah has perfectly imitated Hattie’s inflections—even a few prolonged vowels; the effect is of a devastating irony, at which Jonathan does not smile.
    “Jesus” is all he says, staring at Sarah, at her glistening, darkening eyes, as he wonders what he can do.
    Sarah rubs one hand across her face, very slowly. She says, “I’m so tired. I think I’ll take a nap.”
    “Good idea. Uh, how about going out to dinner?”
    “Well, why not?” Her voice is absolutely level, controlled.
    “I’ll put some things away,” Jonathan offers.
    “Oh, good.”
    In the too small, crowded kitchen, Jonathan neatly packages the food they were to have eaten in freezer paper; he seals up and labels it all. He hesitates at marking the date, such an unhappy reminder, but then he simply writes downthe neutral numbers: 8, 19. By the time they get around to these particular packages they will not attach any significance to that date, he thinks (he hopes).
    He considers a nap for himself; he, too, is tired, suddenly, but he decides on a walk instead.
    The still, hot, scrubby pinewoods beyond their house are now a familiar place to Jonathan; he walks through the plumy, triumphant weeds, the Queen Anne’s lace and luxuriant broomstraw, over crumbling, dry red clay. In the golden August sunlight, he considers what he has always recognized (or perhaps simply imagined that he saw) as a particular look of Sundays, in terms of weather. Even if somehow he did not know that it was Sunday, he believes, he could see that it was, in the motes of sunlight. Here, now, today, the light and the stillness have the same qualities of light and stillness as in long-past Sundays in the Boston suburb where he grew up.
    Obviously, he next thinks, they will have to leave this place, he and Sarah; it is not working out for them here, nothing is. They will have to go back to New York, look around, resettle. And to his surprise he feels a sort of regret at the thought of leaving this land, all this red clay that he would have said he hated.
    Immersed in these and further, more abstract considerations (old mathematical formulas for comfort, and less comforting thoughts about the future of the earth), Jonathan walks for considerably longer than he intended.
    Hurrying, as he approaches the house (which already needs new paint, he distractedly notes), Jonathan does not at all know what to expect: Sarah still sleeping (or weeping) in bed? Sarah (unaccountably, horribly) gone?
    What he does find, though, on opening the front door, is the living room visibly pulled together, all tidied up: a traywith a small bowl of ice, some salted almonds in another bowl, on the coffee table. And Sarah, prettily dressed, who smiles as she comes toward him. She is carrying a bottle of chilled white wine.
    Jonathan first thinks, Oh, the McElroys must have changed their minds, they’re coming. But then he sees that next to the ice bowl are two, and only two, glasses.
    In a friendly, familiar way he and Sarah kiss, and she asks, “How was your walk?”
    “It was good. I liked it. A