After You've Gone by Alice Adams Page B

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