Families and Survivors by Alice Adams Page A

with a little orange, a lot of white. A bowl of daisies, a vase of dark green leaves. A bedroom of red and pink. (A sexy room: if she had a room like that, for love, would Dan be in love with her? She doubts it.)
    “I have to make a phone call,” Louisa says.
    “It’s right there. How about a Bloody Mary? I think we ought to celebrate. I haven’t seen you forever!”
    “Swell.”
    Dan is not at home.
    The little girl comes into the room sniffling. She is a redhead, like Kate and like her brother Stephen. (“It’s really embarrassing,” Kate has said. “Like those dumb ads about never underestimating a woman’s power, or something.”)
    “Mommy, I want you to read to me.”
    “Darling, I can’t. You see I have company.”
    “But I want you to read!”
    “Darling, I’ve told you, I can’t read right now. Louisa and I are talking.”
    Maude by now would have been screaming, and Louisa watches with interest for what will happen next.
    The small girl scowls and goes off toward her room. And Kate says, “Honestly, don’t you sometimes wonder about being a mother? Why did we do it?” And she laughs.
    Louisa senses that she is seeing something that in her experience is quite new. Whereas Grace Magowan always seems an “ideal mother” (and thus more than a little unreal), Kate comes across as simply honest: a mother who is uncertain about motherhood, and who (remarkably, for that pious period, the Eisenhower years) can say so.
    But all this is only half-consciously perceived. Louisa is really thinking about Dan. Will he be at home? Will he want to see her?
    Then—banging and pounding on the door, yelling “Mom!”—Stephen (whom Louisa has not seen before) arrives home. A big and sturdy five-year-old, who looks remarkably like Kate. He gazes coolly at Louisa, then says, “Hey, Mom, what’s for lunch?”
    (Stephen has one of those faces that change very little over the years: much later, at a party given by her daughter Maude, Louisa is to see Stephen—Stephen with Jennifer Magowan—and to know instantly who he is.)
    Kate goes into the kitchen to feed her children, and Louisa tries Dan again. “Well, I’d counted on doing somework this afternoon,” he tells her. He is writing a novel; he will not let her see anything that he has written, but it is important that she respect his effort.
    “Well, okay.”
    “Christ,” Dan says. “If you could just get out sometimes at night! I’m so tired of this married-woman shit.”
    So is she, as she cannot say. She says instead, “I’ll try, I’ll think of something.”
    “Okay, kid. See you later.”
    Kate puts both her children down for naps, and then in the yellow kitchen she serves lunch to Louisa (a delicious shrimp curry).
    “I always remember that marvelous chicken you made when I came to see you down on the Peninsula,” Kate says, smiling.
    Louisa can barely remember that evening; it is a discolored blur, among other blurs.
    “Do you still see those people?” asks Kate. “Andrew something and his wife?”
    Louisa makes an effort at recall. “Oh, the Chapins. Well, not really. Not since we moved up here.”
    “He called me once,” Kate says. “It was strange.”
    And she tells Louisa.
    Andrew called Kate, and reminded her of their meeting; he said that he had an appointment in town, and would she have lunch with him? (“Well, David had been away for so long, and I was so lonely that I would have had lunch with almost anyone.”)
    Andrew seemed excited, and much more animated than Kate remembered. He talked a lot about writing, aboutwanting to write, and preparing himself for that. All the novels in his mind. (“I had a terrible feeling that they would stay right there, inside his head.”) A pleasant lunch, really, at a good French restaurant. Nothing untoward, nothing that could be construed as a pass (except the fact of the lunch itself, which
was
a pass, of course).
    At the end Andrew thanked her for coming, and asked if they could meet