After You've Gone by Alice Adams

thing she said, when she told a reporter, ‘I’m not Antonia Love’?” asks Phyllis. She has wanted to mention this before to Bynum, but they have, seemingly, no time for conversation.
    â€œI think she meant that she could only view herself as created,” Bynum explains authoritatively.
    Phyllis is not sure whether he is speaking as a fellow artist or simply as an old friend. She asks, “Do you mean by the media?” She is aware of enjoying this conversation, perhaps because it is one, a conversation.
    â€œOh no, so much more sinister,” Bynum assures her. “By herself. She thinks she’s someone she’s painted.” He chuckles a little too loudly.
    And loses the momentary sympathy of his young wife. Declining to comment, though, and remembering how hungryshe is, Phyllis gets up to her feet. “Well, I don’t care how lost Lisa and what’s-his-name are. I’m heating up dinner.”
    She goes out into the kitchen as Bynum calls after her, “I’ll be there in a minute.”
    But several minutes pass, during which Bynum does not follow Phyllis. Instead he stares out the window, out into the dark, the enveloping, thickening fog. Into dimmed yellow lights.
    He is fairly sure that Phyllis will leave him soon; he knows the signs—the ill-concealed small gestures of impatience, the long speculative looks, the tendencies to argument. How terribly alike they all seem, these girls that he marries. Or is it possible that he sees none of them very sharply, by herself—that he can’t differentiate? One of them made this very accusation, referring to what she called his “myopia.” In any case, he will probably not miss Phyllis any more than he missed the others, and in a year or so he will find and marry a new young woman who is very much like Phyllis and the rest. He knows that he must be married.
    A strong light wind has come up, rattling the windowpanes. Standing there, still looking out, Bynum has a brand-new thought—or, rather, a series of thoughts. He thinks, Why do they always have to be so goddam young? Just who am I kidding? I’m not a young man. A woman of my own age or nearly might at last be a perfect companion for me. A woman artist, even, and he thinks, Well, why not Antonia? This place is a dump, but she’s so successful now we could travel a lot. And I’ve always liked her really, despite our fights. This Reeve person must surely be on the way out. She won’t put up with him much longer—so callow.
    â€œBynum, come on, it’s all ready,” Phyllis then calls out as at that same instant the doorbell rings.
    It is of course Lisa and the new young man, Perry, who looks, Bynum observes, far too smugly pleased with himself.
    Introductions are made, warm greetings exchanged: “But you look marvelous! Have you been here long? Yes, I’m sure we met at the gallery. How very like Antonia not to be here. But whatever could have happened?”
    â€œActually, it is not at all like Antonia not to be here,” Bynum announces. He is experiencing a desire to establish himself as the one of them who knows her best.
    Over dinner, which indeed is excellent—a succulent veal stew, with a risotto—Bynum scrutinizes Lisa, and what looks to be her new friend. Lisa is looking considerably less happy than the young man is, this Perry, in Bynum’s view. Could they possibly have made it in the car, on the way over here, and now Lisa is feeling regrets? Even to Bynum’s somewhat primitive imagination this seems unlikely.
    What Lisa regrets is simply having talked as much as she did to Perry as on the way over they remained locked in the fogbound traffic. She not only talked, she exaggerated, overemphasized Antonia’s occasional depression, even her worries over Reeve.
    And even while going on and on in that way, Lisa was visited by an odd perception, which was that she was really talking about