Free Rich Rewards by Alice Adams Page A

again. Most likely she had got them at Magnin’s, I decided; maybe a present from her father, Royce?
    Or may be Caroline had been the thief
?
    That thought, as irrational as it was unavoidable, flooded me with a sudden extreme embarrassment at having entertained it for even a second. And as soon as the thought had gone, I thought, How crazy, untrue, impossible. And then I forgave myself.
    Coming back, Caroline said, “That was a friend of mine. He’s a carpenter, in fact, and I said he could come over for a minute. You don’t mind? If you’re still looking for someone—”
    Then she looked over at where the earrings lay, and she said, “Someone just gave me those. I really don’t like them very much,” and she blushed.
    It was Whitey who ripped off, burglarized my house. And he gave the earrings to Caroline. Those two sentences raced through my mind with the steel-cold ring of truth, and I too blushed.
    However, a minute later I decided that he of course would not have told Caroline where they came from. If she knew or guessed that he had stolen them, she would certainly not know from where, or whom. And so I was able to look up and face Caroline, who had begun to talk about her parents—again.
    She said, “You know, in her crazy way I think my mom is still crazy about my father.”
    She had spoken so unhappily; for that and every other reason I decided against mentioning Stacy, and offered, instead: “But even if that’s true, couldn’t they possibly be better off not together?”
    Caroline looked sadder yet. “I just don’t think so. I don’t know; I’m sure it’s all going to get a lot worse.”
    She was very convincing, and certainly her unhappiness was real. From some comforting impulse I asked her, “Have you thought about moving away somewhere? Mightn’t it be easier for you if you weren’t around all this?”
    This seemed to strike Caroline as quite an aberrant suggestion. “But where would I go?” she asked. “I’ve been to New York a couple of times, and I really hated it there.”
    Later I came to understand that this was a very San Franciscan attitude. Where else
could
you live? was the usual position. As a stance I found it quite hard to imagine, always wanting to stay in the place where you were born, and where you had grown up. I liked Madison, my native place, very much indeed; I still feel nostalgic, sometimes, about the lakes, the pink twilight winter vistas of snow in the hills that surround the town. But that nostalgia is rather for my adolescence, which was spent among those scenes. Unlike most people I know, I loved the years from about thirteen to twenty, except for time out at St. Margaret’s; I disliked my earliest childhood years, and those that began with my marriage but I have wonderful memories of dances and necking in steamy parked cars. I loved all that. But I couldn’t wait to get away from Madison; I was always led on by visions of New York or London, Paris. And I sensed that Caroline would not even be tempted by those places. They were too far from San Francisco.
    In fact, their mania for their city could be seen as a sortof trap for San Franciscans; they are caught and bound in civic affection. And as I think of this, there comes to mind a picture that undoubtedly originates in Forties newsreels: people are leaving a besieged or ruined city; they walk in groups along a highway, carrying their pitiful possessions. In the case of a bombed-out San Francisco, this march would take place across one or both of the bridges, or down a superhighway to the Peninsula, the south. And with these visions came my notion that the city was a trap, as beautiful as it was confining.
    Someone knocked at the door. Caroline went to open it, and she came back with what I can only describe as the loveliest young man I had ever seen. A beautiful brown boy, at first he looked; on second glance, he was a little older, maybe thirty. Blackish soft curly hair, long-lashed dark eyes, a curving