After You've Gone Page 5

  Sophia did not look like a frightening woman. She was small, much smaller than Prudence eventually grew to be, very erect, and somewhat plump, with an oddly unindented body. Long brown hair worn braided, impeccably, around her head. Her skin was reddish brown, often flushed, rather coarsely textured (to Prudence as a small child, those pores seemed amazingly large—frightening holes). Sophia’s voice was soft and very gentle (usually); on the whole a quiet person, her presence still was felt in any room—Dan always felt it, as God knows Prudence did. An extremely intelligent, highly efficient woman, Sophia headed the local Red Cross, organizing volunteers and fund drives. Doing good.

  Both families had swimming pools, which in those days were not overwhelmingly expensive. The Jamieson pool was down in a ravine, separated from the house by a long, wooded slope (dogwood, maples, small pines). The water in its narrow oval was often cold. The Matthews pool, near their garden, was large and round and shallow, open to sunlight. Warm. (The symbolism of the two pools struck Prudence as an adult, naturally; it was not something mentioned at the time, though others must have thought of it, especially infatuated Dan.) In any case, while the couples still were friends, the Matthews pool was mostly used for daytime swimming; Liza would bring out trays of sandwiches and iced tea or lemonade—none of them were really daylight drinkers.

  The Jamieson pool was ideal for summer-night parties. Sophia’s maid would leave bowls of potato salad in the icebox, and at suppertime Dan would build a fire down by the pool; he would roast hot dogs, hamburgers, or cube steaks and pass them out in buns to everyone there, the dozen or so good friends. They would all be sitting around on steamer rugs, on the summer dew-damp ground, as fireflies drifted through the darkening evening air. As flirtations and arguments grew heavier with drink.

  It was most often Prudence who spent the night at the Matthews house, far out of the way of the parties. Which, for every reason, Prudence loved. Before her parents got to be friends with the Matthewses and she was invited to go spend the night with Laura Lee, the sounds of those poolside parties used to scare her badly. They sang a lot, her parents and their friends, as the night wore on; to Prudence they sounded like the cannibals in Tarzan movies—terrifying! At the Matthewses’, she felt safe: there was Laura Lee in the other ruffled white twin bed, and the only night sounds were perfectly ordinary ones: a friendly wind in the trees, someone’s dog.

  Even the trees around Laura Lee’s house seemed safe: sturdy, fat, upright cedars, and nice, small, squat pines.

  …

  On weekends, the children often took picnics out into the woods that surrounded both their houses. There Prudence was the more adventurous of the two; perhaps being taller gave her more confidence, or maybe it was only people that she feared. She led Laura Lee down a steep hill all billowing with new green leaves, in the springtime, and across a dark field of dry, pale, broken straw, over tiny wildflowers, almost invisible. They pushed through strong, dense, fragrant thickets of honeysuckle and brambles to the stream, where it was Prudence’s idea that they should build a dam. And she had a plan, an engineering outline: first stones, then small, thick sticks, and then the whole all packed with mud.

  “But, Prudy, we’ll get mud all over.” Tidy, sweet-faced Laura Lee still laughed as she said this, excited by the very possibility of so much dirt, of such abandon.

  “They won’t know. We’ll sneak home after they’ve started their cocktails and highballs.”

  They built the dam—in the course of spring and summer they built a lot of dams, and they came home very dirty, and none of their parents ever minded, really. The children were happy and occupied; they were out of everyone’s hair, as the phrase went—and that was the whole point of their knowing each other, wasn’t it?

  Many people were surprised that Liza Matthews—such a beautiful young woman—should also be so extremely shy. Those who knew something of her background attributed her shyness to that: an isolated, dirt-poor farm in the western, mountainous part of the state, a scholarship to Hilton, waitress jobs. And it is true that Liza felt insecure, always, with people from what she considered to be “good families.” (In the South, of course, there is always a lot of such talk, such distinctions.)

  Liza was impressed that Carlton was a doctor, and for the most part she liked being married to him; as a wife and mother, she was generally happy and very busy. She was still shy around most other people, however, until they began to be friends with the Jamiesons and Dan introduced her to gin. Before that she had only tasted bourbon, which she hated, and beer—even worse. She had thought she just plain did not like to drink, and Carlton’s drinking made her sad; he would drink a lot of beer and fall asleep, very early.

  But “You just try this for size, Miss Liza,” said dapper, blond, green-eyed Dan Jamieson. “All ladies love pink ladies, I guarantee you.” And he handed her something pink and frothy and sweet, on an April night, down by the Jamieson pool. White dogwood bloomed all along the slope of woods leading up to the house, and around the pool a high privet hedge also bloomed, sweet-smelling. The shining, slipping surface of the pool reflected, in its wavering black, stars and a thin white moon.

  No one had ever called Liza “Miss Liza” before, and Liza suddenly (crazily!) wished that she were a child, so that she could rush over to Dan and kiss him, like a very polite, very well brought up little girl. Little Miss Liza.

  She liked the pink lady, and she began to like the party very much. It was such a beautiful, soft night, so warm for April. The sky was so starry, so richly thick with stars, and that sickle moon, and everyone there was so nice, such good, friendly people, everyone liking her, smiling. Carlton whispered that she was the prettiest woman at the party and, looking around her, Liza saw that this was true. She was the prettiest, and everyone knew that she was pretty—especially Dan Jamieson, who later brought out his accordion and sang some songs, mostly looking at Liza. “Oh carry my loved one home safely to me.…”

  …

  A few weeks later, Liza got up her nerve and asked everyone to a party at her house. Carlton bought some gin, and Liza made her special chicken salad and honey rolls, and their party was a big success. Everyone said what a lovely house, a good dinner, and how pretty Liza looked. “She can cook, too,” said Dan Jamieson, laughing at Liza.

  Friends. It was wonderful to have friends like the Jamiesons, at last. Even their little girls seemed to like each other, to like staying over at each other’s house.

  Everyone gave parties, and they all drank a lot—everyone but Sophia Jamieson, who seemed pretty straitlaced. With lots of friends, all drinking, though, it seemed all right to Liza to say almost anything at all, and she even told a couple of stories about when she was a little girl and they were all so poor: she and her two older sisters had just one good dress between them, so one time they decided they would all go to the dance for an hour apiece. After her hour, the one in the dress had to come home and let one of the others change into it. Fortunately, the three of them looked a lot alike, and the lights were turned down low in the Legion Hall, where the dance was, so no one knew.

  Everyone laughed at the story, even Sophia. “You’re a natural storyteller, Miss Liza,” Dan Jamieson said, adding in his funny way, “too.”

  A couple of the other women in town invited Liza to join them at Eubanks, the local drugstore, for Cokes: “Any morning about eleven, after you’re done with your marketing.” Uncertain, Liza got a little too dressed up the first time she went, but it was all right; they all said how pretty she looked. A woman called Popsie said she had never seen such a pretty dress. And Liza had fun, although she did think a pink lady would have been more fun than just a Coke. The other women, especially that Popsie, all laughed and talked a lot. And when Sophia’s name came up (Popsie: “She never comes for Cokes, she’s too busy”), Liza was relieved to hear the edge of malice in their voices, a little of the uneasiness regarding Sophia that she herself felt.

  Liza did not understand Sophia at all. Sophia remin
ded her of a teacher, especially one of the strict ones who might hit your knuckles with her ruler. And with such a handsome, flirty husband, why didn’t Sophia fix herself up, just a little bit? Her face was always so red and shiny; could she be so old-timey that she thought face powder was bad?

  Liza never spent any time with Sophia, and although she surely did not want to, she felt that their not being friends was odd. From what she had observed and understood of couple friendships, usually the two women would get together between the parties to talk things over; the strongest friendship is between those two, usually—the husbands make nervous jokes about “the girls.” But with them, the Jamiesons and Matthewses, it was she and Dan holding everything together.

  And the children, Laura Lee and thin little Prudence, Prudy. A strange child; if she were mine, I’d worry about that girl, Liza thought. So skinny and nervous, sometimes she looked to be scared of her own shadow. But at other times she could get very fresh and talk back to grown-ups; in fact, at those times she sounded like Sophia, the same long-worded, show-off way of talking. Only when Prudy came over to stay with Laura Lee did she act like just a plain old little girl.

  But didn’t Sophia care about the way her husband carried on at parties? Did Sophia somehow think that Dan Jamieson didn’t really mean it? Was Dan afraid of Sophia?

  In any case, they were never alone together, she and Dan, not for five minutes—not ever, although it would have been so easy, Liza thought. There she was, at home so much of the day, Carlton off at the hospital or his office, and Laura Lee like as not over at Dan’s own house. Dan could just … drop in, some afternoon. With no excuse at all. They could (Oh Lord!) kiss, the way she used to do back home with the boys who came over to see her.

  Sometimes when they were all down at the pool, Sophia would go back up to her house to go to bed; everyone knew she worked very hard all day, but often she would not even say good night, not to anyone. Liza could never decide whether that made it better or worse, her sneaking out like that. When Sophia did say good night, after she left there would be a guilty lull in the conversation. But it was almost the same when she didn’t say good night; eventually, someone would say, “Oh, Sophia must have gone on up to the house,” and the same lull would come, as though Sophia questioned their right to be down there carousing—until everyone had had a few more drinks and Dan had picked up the accordion again.

  One night in October, during a strange heat wave—hot days like summer coming back again—there was a party at the Jamiesons’, but at the last minute Carlton had an emergency at the hospital. The little girls were already upstairs, starting their evening of giggling and whispers, and Liza was almost dressed, when she had to call the Jamiesons to say they couldn’t come. But Sophia, who answered the phone, insisted that Liza come by herself. Liza could drop Carlton off at the hospital, which was not too far from the Jamiesons’; he could get a ride over later. Sophia had it all figured out.

  The night was almost as hot as the day had been and heavy, starless, purely dark. Liza had on an old dress from the summer before, but it hardly mattered what she wore; no one could see a thing.

  That night, Dan didn’t play the accordion, because another man, someone’s houseguest, was there with his guitar. He was good; he knew some Mexican songs, as well as the old ones they were all so used to. In fact, Liza was so moved by this man’s music, so interested, that for a minute she didn’t realize that in the darkness Dan had somehow moved over to her steamer rug, where she was sitting all by herself, at the back of the group. But, of course, it was Dan she had been thinking about as she listened to those songs. And now there he was, seated right next to her. His face was just visible, his bright teeth, his smile.

  His hand touched hers, then covered it. Slowly, like someone hypnotized, Liza turned her palm upward in his grasp, so that all the naked flesh of their two hands lay tightly together. Liza felt as though all the nerves of her body had moved to that one hand, her hand pushing upward to Dan’s pushing downward. Oh, Dan, I love you, I love you so deeply, with everything! cried out Liza, within her heart.

  The effects of strong drink on that particular group were interesting in their variety; Prudence, saved from drinking by an ulcer, was later to make this observation. Heavy, tired Carlton passed out early; lively Dan, and probably Liza too, could have stayed up all night, getting drunker and wilder. And then there was lonely, hostile Sophia, who preferred to drink alone.

  Another, much earlier observation of Prudence’s was that she could get along with either parent alone; two people is all right, she thought. It was the three of them that she found unbearable: the meals full of heavy silences, of too strong emotions. But the three of them were all right with guests around, preferably lots of guests, a party. It was like a geometry theorem in which the triangle is the villain. (She never even considered the possibility of Sophia and Dan alone, partly because they almost never were.)

  In any case, during the November week that Dan Jamieson and Carlton Matthews and a couple of other men went duck hunting in the eastern, marshy part of the state, Prudence and Sophia even enjoyed being together, for a while. Sophia talked much more than usual to her daughter, and Prudence experienced an odd elation, quite unfamiliar; at dinner her mother talked about her college days, up North at Bryn Mawr, her studies there in history and economics. (“No one thought those fit subjects for a girl, back then,” said Sophia, enjoying her recollected defiance.) Sophia talked about her friends from that time, many of whom she kept in touch with, though still she missed them.

  “I think I might like to be a physicist,” said Prudence boldly; she was not at all sure what that was, but she hoped the word might appeal to her mother.

  “Well, that’s a hard profession for a woman to get into. But, Prudence, dear, we know that you’re exceptionally intelligent.”

  Prudence thrilled to her mother’s praise and to the attention.

  Sophia too seemed to enjoy their time together. “Well, I think I’ll have a little sherry with my dessert,” she said on a couple of nights. “No reason not to.” Gay, liberated Sophia.

  And then one night, about an hour after dinner, when Prudence had gone up to her room to do homework and Sophia to her room for whatever she did at night, Prudence heard a loud, determined knock at the front door. And a few minutes later, she heard Sophia’s steps going down the front stairs.

  It was Liza Matthews. Very surprising: at first, Prudence felt a small chill of fear at the sheer unusualness of Liza’s coming to call, and at this hour. But soon she was reassured by the entirely usual sounds of social pleasure she heard from both women down below. Liza explained that she had just been driving by and thought she would drop in for a minute. Sophia expressed joy that Liza should have done so. Drinks were offered and accepted.

  Bored with her homework and not quite sleepy yet, Prudence decided to go and listen more closely; her bedroom’s situation near the top of the stairs made this easy. She and Laura Lee often sat there listening to parties.

  As she settled down, her nightgown tucked up under her knees, Prudence heard Liza announce, “I just have to tell you, Sophia, what I’ve been thinking and wondering about.” Her voice was slurred, but Liza often slurred late at night. “I just wonder how it is,” continued Liza, “that you and me, I mean you and I, haven’t ever got to be friends.”

  A silent moment followed, during which ice clinked in glasses.

  And then Prudence heard her mother’s voice: “That is very possibly because you and me, as you put it, have nothing in common whatsoever.”

  “Well, I guess—” Liza’s voice had begun to tremble a little.

  “You guess.” Sophia’s voice grew louder, and harder. “Well, I know. I know that I have absolutely nothing in common with a low-class little tramp … who drinks.”

  “But Sophia …” Was Liza crying now? Very possibly. Prudence herself was trembling on her cold top step.

  Sophia made a loud, hoarse sound. Prudence had never heard thi
s noise before, but she knew that it came from her mother.

  “Drinks!” Sophia repeated, with emphasis. “Why, Popsie Hooker said you showed up for morning Cokes with gin on your breath.”

  But her mother sounded drunk too, thought Prudence, her blood chilled, her stomach sick. Even though she could not actually see Sophia’s face, she could visualize red-faced Sophia, blinking with rage, could imagine the impotent wringing motion of her hands. Prudence saw and heard the invisible; she recognized her mother’s essence.

  Liza left, and Prudence went to bed and pretended to sleep.

  A few days later, Dan came home, and at breakfast Sophia told him, offhandedly, “Oh, and Liza Matthews came by here one night. Drunk as a skunk, I’m afraid. I wish you could have seen her.” Accusative, she stared at her husband.

  Prudence too stared at her handsome, duplicitous, frightened father, and she too thought, Oh, I wish you had been here.

  But she never, ever described that scene to anyone, not to her father and especially not to Laura Lee, who over the years occasionally would ponder: “You know, Prudy, sometimes I just wonder whatever could have happened between our parents—do you reckon they had some kind of an argument?”

  That fall, Liza Matthews was hospitalized with what was said to be pneumonia. Her recovery was long and slow, and at that time the two couples who had been such friends barely saw each other.

  The girls saw each other at school now; they were no longer encouraged to ask each other over for the night or for a swim. In fact, both were urged in the direction of other girls, from other families. But at this both children balked: Laura Lee, generally so agreeable, did not want to have Mary Elizabeth over for supper and the night; Prudence would not even go to Henrietta’s birthday party.