After You've Gone by Alice Adams

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.
    â€¦
    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.
    â€œBut, 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.
    â€œThey 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