Caroline's Daughters (21 page)

“You're out of your mother-loving mind. A home in the Mission. Jesus H.”

“Well, a considerable number of our friends in the Department don't seem to find it such a weird idea. It's very nice. Some very nice, very nice young people. Young women. Uh, girls.”

“Under-age Asians, I'll bet. I've heard about that. Cops are so stupid, I've always said so.”

“What you mean is you're not ready to give up your latest McAndrew.”

Roland grins, widely. A tooth-flashing, self-stroking Sicilian grin. “Say, how about being my manager, in secret of course?”

Buck's smile is a little lopsided. Somewhat furtive, the smile of a man unused to smiling. “Fine,” he says. “That's just about what I had in mind.”

It is somewhat later, over their sweetbreads, that Roland remarks, “If I am in truth going to run, and you're going to help, I suppose we should talk about issues?”

“There are no issues. This is the Eighties, remember?”

“Italians can be very, very treacherous.” It is Stevie who says this to Fiona—speaking not of Roland Gallo but about some nursery wholesalers, a family some miles south of San Francisco, in an area of broad flat sunny well-irrigated acres, next to the coast. Presumably, Stevie does not know about Roland, though the smile accompanying his remark about Italians might suggest that in fact he does know.

What has happened is that the two young women, the florists, who every morning delivered the flowers to Fiona's, so early, so fresh—these two young women, black Lois and small blonde Bonnie, once lovers, now have broken up, ended not only their relationship but their working partnership, their business, with Lois gone off to Mexico and Bonnie back to Louisiana, where she came from.

And so, mildly desperate, Fiona and Stevie have undertaken this Monday drive (Fiona's is closed on Mondays), down to seek out new suppliers. The Silvestris were last and most appealing on their list, but also very expensive. The Silvestri specialty is lilies, wildly various, glamorously hued and fashioned lilies. Fiona's favorite was a giant but most delicately petalled pink, each petal improbably but beautifully edged in a pale apple green. Whereas Stevie took to an almost cocoa-brown variety, streaked with gold. All lovely, really lovely, and rare. “No one else on the coast can match our breeds,” Julio Silvestri told Fiona, with a grin that reminded her strongly of Roland—but, then, almost everything these days reminds her of Roland. Fiona is very much in love.

However, as Stevie makes his possibly pointed remark about the treachery of Italians, Fiona thinks, You're goddam right, and I'd just better watch out, I know that. “I know,” she tells Stevie. “We'd better ask around. About flowers.”

As they drive northward, the land rises; to their left are smooth grassy bluffs, overlooking the glass-smooth gold-blue October-afternoon
sea. There is such an extraordinary shimmer on the water, such a haze of gold far out at the horizon—it is all so amazing that Fiona, who is driving (her blue Ferrari), asks, “Mind if we pull over? I never get to see the ocean.”

“San Franciscans don't, have you noticed? It's the bay we all look at. I think the sea frightens people. They might jump.”

Swinging dangerously across the highway, Fiona finds a small road, where she parks the car, and they both get out—to walk silently across the bleached, cropped grass. To stand looking down and out at the sea.

Just below them is a narrow uninviting beach of coarse yellow gravel, no sand, and the bluff is red, eroded, deeply creviced: there is no way down. And the glistening stretch of water is changing even now, the gold darkening, like wet silk, with long purple shadows.

Italians are treacherous, and none so treacherous as Roland Gallo is with women, is what Fiona is thinking. And no matter what he says, why should I be any different from the rest, finally? The only thing that would make me different would be if I dumped him first. But—

But, as she thinks this, perfectly rationally and constructively, Fiona is assailed by a wave of erotic longing, a literal long flash of heat across her thighs (and she wonders: is that what so-called hot flashes are? older women remembering sex? she will have to ask Caroline). At that moment the desire, the pure lust for Roland is so strong that Fiona's knees weaken, almost buckling, as in a very specific way she thinks of him, of what he specifically does—repeatedly, repeatedly, in the same way every time, and each time is new for her, all her flesh becomes new, all melted, all liquid gold.

Unthinkingly she reaches for Stevie's arm, and just as automatically he moves away.

“Sorry—”

“Oh, sorry—”

Recovering first, Fiona remarks, “The sunset is gorgeous, though, isn't it.”

“Sure is. Worth the trip, as they say in the Michelin guide.”

“Oh, right.”

Fiona is thinking, I really can't dump Roland yet. Or, not quite yet. Or, maybe I can?

She asks Stevie, “You been to Europe recently?”

“Not for a while,” he ambiguously tells her. And then, “But I'm getting a real lust for Italy again. Maybe Sicily.”

“Why on earth Sicily?”

“Because I've never been there.”

He doesn't like me at all, Fiona suddenly thinks, and this new thought or perception bothers her not at all, not at that moment.

They turn back to the car and start off for home.

“My own darling, my adored, I count the minutes until I see you, but tonight there is an emergency. Political. A meeting. I will call, or call again, despite my hatred for this cold machine. Distorting your voice—”

“Roland, love, I couldn't be sorrier, but something's come up with my stepfather. He's not doing so well, we're all gathering around.”

“My angel, the gods are against us. This afternoon has become impossible. I am devastated.”

“Darling Roland, I know it's unromantic as hell but I've got this filthy cold. No, I absolutely cannot see you. Out of the question. I can't even go to the hospital to see Ralph.”

Considering the high general intelligence, and the highly developed sexual intuitiveness of both Fiona and Roland Gallo, it is probably surprising that this exchange should continue beyond three or four messages, but continue it does—perhaps in part because both people are too vain to imagine the secretly subversive intentions of the other. It continues for weeks, and then months, with infrequent intervals of time actually spent together. Seized hours of the most marvellous intensity, as always.

Indeed, as they frequently say to each other, they are most
perfectly matched, in a sensual way, thin blonde young Fiona McAndrew and aging, dark Sicilian Roland Gallo.

They are also agreed on late afternoon as being the perfect time for love. Hours that are especially beautiful, that sunny October and then on into a November of drought, in Fiona's penthouse. Late sunlight brilliant blazing copper in all the windows across the bay, dazzling Berkeley, Oakland, San Leandro.

Dazzling copper sunlight on all Fiona's taut white skin, and on Roland's graying chest.

This pattern could have continued, those postponing messages on answering machines, repetitive and for the most part silly, those far rarer intervals of love—all that could have gone on indefinitely. It needed some shock to end it, a violent shock that was ultimately provided.

A
lthough she eats so little, Jill cares a lot about food—more, actually, than Fiona does. Her favorite mode of intake consists of tiny bites, from a lot of creamy, rich, highly seasoned dishes. Watching her, anyone might think that she was eating quite a lot, although a look at her plate would inform the observer otherwise.

Her favorite meal is breakfast. And recently a new restaurant has opened in the financial district that serves marvellous breakfasts—Louisiana food: hush puppies, beignets and all manner of wonderful warm Southern breads. Not to mention the delicious breakfast casseroles of shrimp or crabmeat or oysters, or all three, in a creamy rich béarnaise.

Jill is there at the counter at Maxine's, eating (or, rather, tasting) crabmeat in béchamel, with hot buttered cornbread, when she hears the news of the stock market crash, that bad October Monday morning.

One of the things that Jill has so far liked about this restaurant is that no one else, no one she knows, that is, has thought of breakfast there. Who could handle all that rich food first thing in the morning? is the general view, among people who happily eat lunch or dinner at Maxine's. But Jill of course can and does handle it, she is enjoying her breakfast, when her peripheral vision catches a guy she does not like at all. He likes her even less, and for the stupid tired old reason that she turned him down: one night when they were simply having a boring conversation in a bar on Union Street
(Jill thought that is what they were doing), he used that tired old Seventies line, My place or yours?—and he meant it, the stupid jerk, he even got ugly about it, later on, and he badmouthed her all over town. Jack, she thinks his name is. A thin monochrome guy with a strange very unattractive lipless mouth, and darting pale humorless eyes.

And now he comes up to her, of all people, this Jack, to tell her, “Well, eat up, kid, this meal may be your last. The market's down fifty-seven points so far, and going fast.”

“Very funny, what else is new?” But Jill is somehow sure that this is not a joke. Jack is not a joker, his awfulness is in another style.

“Lucky for me,” he now tells her. “I mostly got out last week. Just a hunch I had.”

“Well, hooray for you.” Jill is not the only person to find Jack especially hateful that day.

At least he does not sit down beside her, he goes on down the counter to accost another non-friend (probably) with his good news. With his
Times
and his
Journal
rolled and tucked under his arm, his Burberry arm.

Jill very rapidly calculates that she could lose about 750 thou. Not exactly a million but goddam close. And close to all she has, not counting the paltry fixed assets, like the equity in her condo, the time-share place in Tucson. Her car, stuff like that.

For once she is quite unable to finish eating.

By noon Jill has found that her calculation was amazingly accurate, as she might have known it would be. She has always excelled at lightning arithmetic with large figures.

She is supposed to have lunch today with Buck, of all people. And one of the things that Jill instantly thought, in one of those clusters of automatic reactions, undifferentiated, that arrive in the wake of disasters—she thought, Now I can be a real hooker, fulltime. I'll have to. I'll get in touch with Margo St. James. Join
COYOTE
.

Another thing that she thinks, seated there at her wide impressive desk in the Transamerica Pyramid, with its golden, spectacular view
of the bay—she thinks, I'm sick, I've never thrown up before and now I have to.

Which she does, hunched over a bowl in the lavish restroom. Violent, repeated spasms, over and over, until nothing comes up but the nastiest, bitterest bile.

Could anyone do this on purpose? she wonders. Do it often? I'd a thousand times rather be fat, be fatter than anyone, thinks Jill.

After calling to break the date with Buck (easy enough: his secretary sounded as though she expected the call, as though this were a day on which anything could happen, and probably would), Jill's next rather curious impulse is to go home. To go, that is, to see Caroline. And Ralph; she thinks he's home from the hospital, isn't sure.

Caroline's house as always smells faintly of roses, and today it smells too of some lemony furniture wax that Caroline likes to use when she waxes, which is not often. “But it's so therapeutic,” Caroline has said. “I should do more, all that scrubbing and rubbing.”

If she, Jill, now told Caroline, I've lost almost all my money, would Caroline suggest some brisk furniture polishing, as therapy? Or making chicken-soup stock, as she is also now engaged in doing: the house smells too of that rich, highly personal broth of Caroline's, her special mix.

So far Jill has only said, “I was having a lousy day. I thought I'd come by.”

“Well, darling, I'm so glad you did. And actually me too, all this with Ralph is just so worrying. He's back in Presbyterian, you know.”

Caroline does look distracted, her normally smooth face is strained, and for the first time Jill notices that her mother has lost some weight, which is curiously unbecoming; both Caroline's face and her body look older, a little tense, without those extra pounds.

Jill notes too that the house is much too clean, for Caroline. All that obvious effort with the vacuum, with mops and rags and brushes bespeaks time on her hands, and tension, nervous energy to burn. Normally what is called an “indifferent” housekeeper, in her case an accurate description, Caroline has worked too hard at cleaning, so that every surface shines, with too high a gloss. Too
much is reflected from glass-topped tables, silver vases and picture frames, in the high sheen of wooden surfaces, the rosewood table, Molly Blair's big walnut desk. It is simply not a good sign, all this cleaning by Caroline.

“Actually he's doing rather better, though,” Caroline tells Jill, of Ralph. “But it's so back and forth, up and down. I keep having to readjust.”

Readjust to the possibility of Ralph's dying, or not dying: she must mean that, and Jill tries to take it in, even as in another part of her mind she wonders: Should she tell Caroline about losing her money? Maybe not, after all?

Jill on the whole likes Ralph very much, she always has. At first, when she, Jill, was a very small child, he was sort of someone their mother knew, and then, when Jill was four, and Fiona six, they got married, Caroline and Ralph. In a non-close way Jill is fond of him (God knows nothing like Sage with her huge disgusting permanent crush on Jim McAndrew). And the real point is that Caroline is crazy about Ralph, she always has been. Fiona and Jill have figured that he was the first big sex figure for Caroline, that Caroline and Jim, their dad, did not get along so wonderfully, in the sack. And so Ralph's illness must be really horrible for Caroline. Loyal Caroline, who always puts such a good face on things.