Families and Survivors by Alice Adams Page B

town was crazy about John.” This last is said directly to Andrew: “I am crazy about you” is in her eyes. “In fact he broke my best friend’s heart.”
    “Oh, he sounds terrible,” Sally says.
    And Alex Magowan. “Bad news, from the sound of it.” He chuckles.
    Andrew is interested. “Your best friend? You mean that girl we met at your house a few years ago? With dark red hair?”
    (Andrew was disturbingly attracted to Kate, so much so that he called her once when he had gone up to San Francisco to get a new suit at Brooks. He asked her to have lunch with him, telling himself that that was all he meant, but it somehow got out of hand: he had made what they both knew was a pass.)
    Louisa is astonished. “Kate—you met Kate?” And then she remembers. “Oh, of course, four years ago. Sally and I were both pregnant.”
    “She was awfully attractive,” Sally says (doubtfully). “Whatever happened to her—did her husband get back from Korea? I remember she told us she was ‘frustrated.’ ” Sally giggles at this boldness.
    “We’ve sort of lost touch,” Louisa admits. Then she says, “It’s terrible, I’ll call her tomorrow.” And she believes that she will do this.
    The truth is she has been too depressed, and unwilling for Kate to see her in still another furnished house, Michael with a still-unfinished degree, and a baby who cries so much, who is so often sick.
    Then, suddenly, all the children begin to scream at once.
    “Mother, look at Douglas!”
    “Look, there’s Douglas on the fence!”
    “Hey, Mom, look at me!”
    All the grownups look, and there, unbelievably, is small Douglas against the April sky; he is standing on top of the fence, balanced there.
    None of them knows what to do. Then Alex springs up and heads toward his son. “Stay there, old man. I’ll help you down.”
    But with a wild pirate’s grin Douglas has leapt down, to fall on the spring earth as softly as a bird might plummet down—to fall in a heap from which he quickly arises, dirty and triumphant. Alex reaches the boy; he grasps him, picks him up under the arms, and holds him out in the air (but not as high as Douglas by himself just was); Alex is quietly domineering, saying, “Look, that was a pretty dangerous thing to do.”
    Grace laughs permissively, although for a moment she makes a gesture of clutching at her throat. (Is that where her anxiety lives? Louisa’s is in her gut.) “You know, everyone says it’s terrific to have such a fearless child,” says Grace. “But I can tell you—sometimes—” and she laughs again. Her long hair is caught up in a smooth low knot, and she now pushes back a stray lock.
    “Well, how about lunch?” says Sally, and she and Louisa go into the cozy Chapin kitchen to bring things out. Often, both Louisa and Michael make Sally nervous; theyare so intelligent, so Eastern, so critical. They and Andrew talk so much. (Andrew who is also Eastern and intelligent. And critical.)
    But today Sally and Louisa are in a mood of warmer rapport than usual.
    “Having the Magowans over always makes me a little nervous,” Sally confides. “You know, she’s such a fantastic cook, and everything.”
    “Well, you’re awfully good. That’s how I sometimes feel about you—nervous,” Louisa says, and they both laugh wildly at that, because it is less than half true.
    Louisa’s cooking is as erratic as everything else about her at this time. Often barely able to get a mediocre meal on the table, she occasionally emerges to near greatness: a truly superb single dish; less frequently, a great dinner. Once, after too many martinis, she underdid a pot roast in the pressure cooker, and produced a roast that was marvelously tender and succulent.
    Now Sally says, “Remember your pot roast? Andrew still talks about that.”
    Louisa laughs. “So does Michael.” (What Michael says is “That time you got drunk and we had the good pot roast.”)
    They have cold sliced ham and potato salad and