Free A Southern Exposure by Alice Adams

scholarship.” Harry in his turn pauses. “We’re still thinking about a house sometime, aren’t we?”
    “Oh yes, of course we are.” Cynthia utters this semi-truth with enthusiasm. It is something she says quite a lot. “We’re still thinking about a house,” she and Harry say to each other earnestly, and “We’re more or less looking at houses,” they say to new friends, with equal conviction.
    The truth is that they like it where they are. Or, to put it more accurately, where they are suits them very well indeed, both their stated and their unstated, perhaps half-conscious purposes. They are comfortable in “the suite,” if just slightly crowded. But because of that very lack of ample space they are free of certain obligations that were strongly felt in Connecticut: new furniture, large parties. Also (this is the unspoken part), living as they do, as they are, allows both Harry and Cynthia a pleasant sense of privileged visiting; they do not really live in Pinehill, and are therefore subject to none of the local strictures or even customs. They could almost as well be living in Bermuda, or off on Capri.
    Also, their life is much, much cheaper in that low-rent suite.
    And it is rather sexy, hotel living.
    •  •  •
    Abigail feels this too, this lofty impermanence, but, unlike her parents, she both dislikes it and is able to articulate her discontent. “We live in a hotel,” she accurately states. “We’re not like a real family.”
    Exactly, thinks Cynthia. This is not a settled, domestic life that we’re leading. I’m not exactly defined by being a wife and mother down here, and so—so whatever I do is okay.
    What she is doing, at the moment, on a great many afternoons, is “looking for houses” with Jimmy Hightower. Very satisfactory. He is crazy about her, that is clear. He is so impressed, he never met anyone like her. Eventually, Cynthia supposes, some sort of payment will come due. He will make some pass, will want to kiss her, even to have an affair. And when that happens—well, she will or she won’t, she can’t tell yet. In the meantime he doesn’t so much as touch her hands, except for the barest, tiniest, but sort of sexy instants, lighting her cigarettes. He is not, though, in the least attractive. Too short, and puffy. Red-faced, almost bald. Though God knows he is nice.
    But he has not, has never introduced her to Russell Byrd. Cynthia has not, of course, come right out and said, “I’m dying to meet Russell Byrd.” And is she? And if so, just what does she expect of this longed-for meeting? But Jimmy must have got the idea, at least, that she is interested in Russell Byrd. She knows a lot of his poetry; lines of it come into her head all the time down here. It must be the landscape, she thinks.
    Sometimes, fairly often, Jimmy drives her out by Russell’s house, as though that were available, a house to look at. Amazingly, for a family with five children, no one ever seems to be there. Or the famous big car, the Hollywood Cadillac, is there, but no people. Once, they caught a distant view of a woman—“Brett?”—off in the garden, a large woman with a hat and gardening shears who could, Jimmysaid, be Brett. Or maybe not. But never Russ. No sign that he lived there. That he came and went on ordinary human errands—and perhaps he did not.
    Cynthia on these Byrd excursions senses an excitement in Jimmy that is almost equal to her own. He’s like a kid, she thinks, with a sort of crush on an older boy. Only Jimmy is older, isn’t he?
    “How old is Russell Byrd, would you say?” she asks Jimmy.
    “Oh, maybe thirty-nine, forty.” Actually, Jimmy knows the precise year and date of Russell’s birth, but he chooses to make this information vague.
    “Oh, that’s older than I thought.” And Jimmy must be a good deal older than forty, thinks Cynthia, who feels very young indeed at thirty-two.
    “Don’t you know any Byrd kids at school? I think there’re five of