To See You Again by Alice Adams Page B

can help me.”
    This seemed a dangerous plan to Dylan, possibly because it relied on Zach, who Dylan was sure would end up in jail, or worse. She stubbornly stuck with her job, and on her two days off (Mondays and Tuesdays, of all useless days) she stayed in bed a lot, and read, and allowed her mother to “spoil” her, with breakfast trays (“Well, after all, who deserves her own tray more than you do, baby?”) and her favorite salads for lunch, with every available fresh vegetable and sometimes shrimp.
    When she wasn’t talking to her mother or helping out with household chores, Dylan was reading a book that Mr.Iverson had lent her—
The Eustace Diamonds
, by Trollope. This had come about because one afternoon, meeting him in the library, Dylan had explained the old
Vogues
, the
House Beautifuls
scattered near her lap, saying that she was too tired just then to read, and that she missed television. The winter before, she had loved
The Pallisers
, she said, and, before that,
Upstairs, Downstairs
. Mr. Iverson had recommended
The Eustace Diamonds
. “It’s really my favorite of the Palliser novels,” he said, and he went to get it for her—running all the way up to his room and back, apparently; he was out of breath as he handed her the book.
    But why was he so eager to please her? She knew that she was pretty, but she wasn’t all that pretty, in her own estimation; she was highly conscious of the two crooked front teeth, although she had perfected a radiant, slightly false smile that almost hid them.
    “I wonder if he could be one of
the
Iversons,” Flower mused, informed by Dylan one Monday of the source of her book.
    “The Iversons?” In Flower’s voice it had sounded like the Pallisers.
    “One of the really terrific, old San Francisco families. You know, Huntingtons, Floods, Crockers, Iversons. What does he look like, your Mr. Iverson?”
    Dylan found this hard to answer, although usually with Flower she spoke very easily, they were so used to each other. “Well.” She hesitated. “He’s sort of blond, with nice blue eyes and a small nose. He has this birthmark on his neck, but it’s not really noticeable.”
    Flower laughed. “In that case, he’s not a real Iverson. They’ve all got dark hair and the most aristocratic beakynoses. And none of them could possibly have a birthmark—they’d drown it at birth.”
    Dylan laughed, too, although she felt an obscure disloyalty to Mr. Iverson.
    And, looking at Flower, Dylan thought, as she had before, that Flower
could
change her life, take charge of herself. She was basically strong. But in the next moment Dylan decided, as she also had before, more frequently, that probably Flower wouldn’t change; in her brief experience people didn’t, or not much. Zach would go to jail and Flower would find somebody worse, and get grayer and fatter. And she, Dylan, had better forget about anything as childish as being adopted by rich old people; she must concentrate on marrying someone who really had
money
. Resolution made her feel suddenly adult.
    “Honey,” asked Flower, “are you sure you won’t have a glass of wine?”
    “My mother wonders if you’re a real Iverson.” Dylan had not quite meant to say this; the sentence spoke itself, leaving her slightly embarrassed, as she sat with Whitney Iverson on a small sofa in the library. It was her afternoon break; she was tired, and she told herself that she didn’t know what she was saying.
    Mr. Iverson, whose intense blue eyes had been staring into hers, now turned away, so that Dylan was more aware of the mark on his neck than she had been before. Or could it have deepened to a darker mulberry stain?
    He said, “Well, I am and I’m not, actually. I think of them as my parents and I grew up with them, in the Atherton house, but actually I’m adopted.”
    “Really?” Two girls Dylan knew at Mission High hadgot pregnant and had given up their babies to be adopted. His real mother, then, could have been an