A Southern Exposure by Alice Adams Read Free Book Online

lowly instructor in English comp., went like this: Give a lot of thought to the things you don’t want to think about at all. For whatever reasons, never mind the lowliness of the source, Jimmy took this dictum seriously; it was part of his writing credo, insofar as he had one. It makes him give a lot of thought to his Russell Byrd feelings as he vows, I’ll be a writer if it kills me.
    In his study Jimmy has a massive oval desk (several people have made remarks about Mussolini, which Jimmy does not find very funny), and in those drawers he has parts of a Western novel (80 pages of that) and a sex-and-oil novel (120 pages) and 30 pages of a newly started story,about a town somewhat like Pinehill, in which two very famous writers live and work, and are great friends.
    In the meantime, “To hell with you,” Jimmy mutters to the slowly settling clouds of dust above his jonquil bed at the end of his impressive lawn, and he goes back into his house. He is thinking by now less of Russell Byrd than of Cynthia Baird, the blonde, the new girl in town. He believes that Esther and his daughters have gone somewhere for the afternoon, but although he knows he was carefully told, he can’t remember. There is too much in his head, he knows there is.
    Where was Russ going, anyway? So fast, not looking anywhere. Could Russ have a lady somewhere, someone he drives off to see, on a secret afternoon? Who? Where?
    This thought, today’s thought, is entirely new to Jimmy, and he finds it exciting, both stimulating and scary. If Russ, the upright, the Boy Scout of American letters—if pious blue-eyed Russ has a girlfriend, then anything could happen, and probably will.
    Esther is actually in New York, he suddenly, shockingly remembers—and the girls are over at a friend’s for the afternoon. Esther has gone up for some of her committees and meetings. Joint Anti-Fascist Refugees, something like that. She always comes back sick with migraines and other strong emotional symptoms, and consumed with an urgency to tell Jimmy all about it, what the committees are doing, what the most recent news is from there, from Hitler’s Germany, the land of poor Esther’s nightmares.
    Thoughts of Esther, of Hitler and Germany fill Jimmy with an extraordinary if vague discomfort, a squirming unease. He wants so much to help her, to cheer her and make her happy again, but there is absolutely no possible way to make Esther happy until Hitler is gone. Defeated, dead. “We have to go to war with Germany,” she whispersfiercely—to Jimmy alone; no one else will listen to much of this stuff, and of course no one else is married to Esther. “Roosevelt knows it too, he’s just buying time.” Her great dark Jewish eyes are huge, filled with all the sorrows of all Jews, forever.
    However, remembering that Esther is in New York, and the girls off at their friend’s house for the afternoon, Jimmy pauses in his over-sized, over-windowed living room; he stares at the new French telephone, and he thinks of Cynthia Baird.
    “I thought if you had any free time this afternoon—I know you want to see some houses—a little drive?”
    “Oh, divine! I’d love to. I’ve been deserted by both my husband and child.”
    Cynthia’s legs are long and thin, a little too thin for Jimmy’s special taste but they are pretty, very pretty legs, he has to admit. She stretches them out in Jimmy’s new Buick’s front seat, showing off her pale silk stockings and spectator pumps. “It’s so interesting, the shape of this town, isn’t it?” she comments.
    “I guess.”
    Beside him there she chatters. Is she nervous, does he make her nervous, or is she always like this? Jimmy wonders, and decides to ask her later. When they know each other slightly better.
    “It’s a real plateau, isn’t it?” Cynthia continues chattily. “With those interesting sideways wrinkles all around. Roads, and then places where there aren’t any roads.”
    “This is my road,” Jimmy tells