Caroline's Daughters (25 page)

Sage gets up very quickly. Not hurt, she thinks. A man who was standing there watching seems also to decide that she is all right, or perhaps it is to spare her shame that he moves on.

As though she had simply slipped and fallen for a moment, as anyone could, in this rain, Sage manages to walk along, as though she were quite all right, so that if anyone saw what happened they would not stop, not offer help. She is vaguely aware that her arm hurts, but she still needs to talk. Far up ahead on Fillmore Street she thinks she sees Noel, darting fast between traffic. But maybe not, maybe that is not Noel—and in any case Noel is gone.

Wherever he now goes (to Jill?) he will stay for several hours, and then come home to Sage, creeping in, crawling into her bed, their bed, carefully making just enough noise to wake her. And then in loud unnecessary whispers (who could hear him, possibly, in their house?) he will tell her what an awful man he is, how despicable, stupid, illiterate; how can she put up with him? To which so far there has only been one answer, which Sage has always given: No, darling, you're none of those things, and yes, I do forgive you, I know it's difficult, I know I'm difficult too. Please, only love me.

But: but this is a little different. Whereas before he has rushed out of the house from some drunken quarrel, which was bad enough, sufficiently hard to bear, he has not before pushed her away. Not pushed her down to a sidewalk.

He has not before told her very clearly, in effect, that he loves, is making love to, someone else.

And now, as she comes to a halt on the dark rainy sidewalk, Sage for the first time imagines another set of responses to his throes of self-castigation; she imagines saying, You knocked me down, you
rotten bastard, I don't care if you didn't really mean to do it, or if it was partly my fault.

And she thinks, I really don't want to talk to Noel tonight. About anything. I don't want to hear his voice.

Providentially, at that moment a cab swerves past, a free cab. Sage hails it and gets in, gives directions to her house on Russian Hill.

Arrived at her front gate, she tells the driver to wait.

Upstairs, now entirely galvanized, Sage in seven minutes accomplishes the packing that she had thought would take her a day.

Back in the cab, with her bag, she directs the driver to the airport.

“What time's your plane?”

“Oh, I'm not sure.”

“You know what airline?”

“Uh, United.”

“Well, it's good you've got no definite time, this traffic's murder. A little rain and all the drivers in town go apeshit, you know that?”

“I guess.”

To herself Sage is saying, He knocked me down, he really did. Even if I was asking for it, as he might say. And he didn't stop to see if I was okay.

Her arm in fact does still hurt quite a lot; she is dimly aware of pain, an ache, but this pain contributes to her mounting exhilaration, sharpens it, as the cab maneuvers through the dark and rain and the dazzling lights, the swish of tires on wet concrete, out onto the freeway.

He won't know where I am, thinks Sage, and he won't dare call Caroline, or Liza; I might have told them, he'd be too ashamed.

A little later she thinks, No wonder I feel a little drunk, I had that glass of wine and no dinner, I hope they serve something on the plane. I hope I can get on a plane, any plane. Tonight, I'll probably have to go First Class, she thinks, with the smallest smile.

She does not think about flying into storms, into snow. She is not now afraid of this trip.

“S
he was in shock, but still, to sustain a compound fracture. And then get herself on a red-eye flight for New York—” “She did get to go First Class,” Liza interrupts her husband.

“Even so. But then to go to your own gallery opening, well, it's pretty amazing. Of course the ortho department at Columbia-Presbyterian is absolutely tops, really lucky she got there and got to Kiernan, he's the best. Does mostly knees but he's first-rate—”

“Lucky her new friend Calvin took her there,” puts in Liza.

“Oh indeed. Compound fractures can be very tricky. Have to be reset, ugly stuff like that.” Saul, like many psychiatrists, is extremely happy (he is happiest, Liza has thought) when dealing with or discussing problems that are strictly medical. Such a relief to have a concrete issue, Liza imagines, rather than the nebulous, often contradictory dark strands of neurosis.

“Sage has always been extremely brave,” puts in Caroline, her mother. Then adding, thoughtfully, “In her way.”

The three of them, Liza, Saul and Caroline, are having an old-fashioned picnic (so they all have termed it) in Julius Kahn Playground, on the grass—from which they are protected by several very old-fashioned steamer rugs, one of Caroline's most durable legacies from Molly Blair. The heavy wool protects them from the still-damp, still-cold earth; they could in fact be said to be celebrating what is at least a lull in the season of rain, if not the onset of spring. The day is warm and bright, the sky a pale washed blue, with giant
billowing white clouds along the horizon, above the cypress-and-eucalyptus woods, and out across the bay, above Marin.

The two women are dressed in a way that suggests a hope of spring, Caroline in flowered cotton, pink espadrilles, and Liza in her usual denim skirt, with a lemon-yellow T-shirt, more or less the color of her hair. Even Saul, in his khaki pants and sleeve-rolled blue workshirt, looks as though he believed in a change of weather.

This being a Wednesday, Saul has his day off—and Caroline, somewhat to Liza's surprise, had announced it as her day off too. “The nice Guatemalan lady comes, Ralph loves her, she can get him anything he needs.” It seems to Liza (in fact she is sure of this) that a couple of weeks ago her mother said she never went anywhere.

However, at the moment Liza is too preoccupied with the vagaries of her sisters to give much thought to her mother's possible inconsistencies.

Today Caroline has outdone herself in the matter of sandwiches, as her daughter and Saul (the clear if unacknowledged favorite son-in-law) have told her. Crustless cucumber and watercress, breast of chicken, cheese and ham. With sturdier fare for the children, fried chicken, peanut butter and raisins, their favorites. And a big lemon cake for everyone. “I must be in a really retrogressive Molly phase,” Caroline has explained. “So English, at her best with sandwiches and cakes. Absolutely hopeless with vegetables, or fish.”

Now the baby sleeps in her canvas basket between her parents, and the two others are off in the sandpile, from which from time to time they return, to report to the grownups.

“You haven't heard any more from Jill?” Liza now asks her mother.

“No, and I must say it is a little worrying.”

Jill called Caroline and simply said that she was staying with a friend, that she felt like lying low for a while. She had taken some time off from her firm. She would check back in, which so far she has not done.

“Well, at least there's nothing more in the papers.” For several days, perhaps a week, there had been photographs of everyone listed in Buck Fister's book, of Roland Gallo, and of Jill—Jill, in a bathing suit, even, at someone's Woodside party; Jill, laughing and very
sexy. Recalling all that, out of her multiple reactions Liza sighs, and then asks her mother, “But weren't you even tempted to ask her how on earth she knew Buck Fister?”

“I didn't think I could, you know. None of my business.” Caroline has always had a strong regard for the privacy of her daughters—too much so, they have all at one time or another thought. They have sometimes wished to be asked more, all of them. To be more certain of her interest.

“I couldn't have resisted asking her.” Although Liza now reflects, the fact that Jill should know Buck Fister is not actually so odd, not in itself; Jill, as the phrase once went, gets around a lot, she is out almost constantly, in restaurants and bars, at gallery openings, she goes to all sorts of parties with all sorts of people. Liza thinks of all this with what she has to admit is another small breath of envy, her own life being so very much more restricted, necessarily. For the moment (she hopes it is only for the moment).

The absolutely unmentionable question is: just in what way did Jill know Buck Fister, who is now under indictment for running a ring of call girls?

Caroline, although she seems in many ways a contemporary of her daughters, is nevertheless of another generation; she must find it simply peculiar that Jill would know such a sleazy fellow, know him well enough to be entered in his engagement book. To have had lunch with him, probably.

The further possibility, that Jill could actually have been one of Buck Fister's “girls,” would not even enter Caroline's mind, Liza thinks.

It has, though, entered Liza's mind, and, she has to admit, with a certain air of plausibility: Jill might easily think a little minor hustling was fun, or far out, or off the wall. However Jill might put it. And God knows (and Liza knows, they all know) that Jill loves money, deeply, passionately.

Or is she, Liza, simply fictionalizing her sister's life? It comes to her rather easily, Liza notes: She can see Jill in some very posh hotel suite (it would have to be posh, for Jill) with some guy who was lined up to have sex with her. For money. Some john. Very easy to imagine. Jill in fact would be terrifically turned on by the whole
scene. She would probably come, even if, supposedly, real hookers never do.

But this cannot be true, Liza next thinks. It is only my own very sleazy imagination. Not to mention disgusting rivalrous-sibling feelings.

“The point is,” says Caroline now, “I really don't know where she is.”

“These are the best sandwiches,” Saul tells her, in his serious way. And then, “Have you asked Fiona?”

“Asked Fiona where Jill is? Well of course not, I couldn't. What an idea.” Caroline laughs nervously at the very idea of using one daughter to spy out another.

“She might know, though.”

“Even so. And come to think of it I'm not exactly hearing a lot from Fiona these days either.”

The park is relatively unpopulated at this hour, despite the beautiful fresh new weather. At the moment only one other picnic group sits gingerly on their blanket, some distance off: two very blonde young women, probably au pairs, speaking either Swedish or German. And much farther away, in another part of the playing field, is a small cluster of people, impossible to tell just how many, all huddled on the grass.

Thus, as soon as she enters from across the way, from her dark Pacific Street mansion, Joanne Gallo, coming across the park, can be seen by Caroline, Liza and Saul. Very clearly. Joanne on what must be very high heels is stumbling nearsightedly along the damp ground, her small sad thin daughter pulled along beside her. Both mother and daughter in pink.

“Oh God, Joanne Gallo,” Liza whispers to Saul, who gives her an ambiguous look.

“Oh, is that—?” whispers Caroline (much too loudly, as she much too obviously stares, in Liza's judgment).

Joanne seems not to see them, although their group blanket lies directly in her path. But then, as she is almost upon them and as Liza is thinking, Shit, now I have to introduce her to everyone and she'll probably stick around—just then Joanne seems to see them. All at once her face contorts, as though with conflicting expressions,
and she mutters a greeting that seems (curiously) to be addressed to Saul alone, and then she veers off toward the swings and slides, walking as though blind, and still pulling her child along, who also seems unsteady.

Liza has instantly understood that Joanne is a patient of Saul's, and so she only remarks, “How odd.” Saul not only does not gossip about his patients, he will not even tell Liza who they are; she finds out sometimes inadvertently, and uncertainly, like this. So that now she thinks, Well, good, I hope it's true. Saul will help her if anyone can.

Caroline, though, seems uncharacteristically interested in Joanne. She who has been accused by her daughters of a fundamental lack of interest in most people—this same Caroline now remarks, “What a very odd-looking young woman. Honestly, white lipstick? And she looked so unsteady, could she possibly be a little tipsy, do you think?”

“I suppose she could be,” is Liza's guarded response. She feels that under the circumstances (Saul) she should not say that she has fairly often seen Joanne Gallo fairly drunk, although that is indeed the case. Although she and Saul will never discuss his patient, she feels the need for a certain discretion.

Saul is simply staring into the distance—in the direction opposite to that taken by Joanne Gallo, Liza notes.

“It's interesting that there hasn't been any more in the papers about Roland Gallo.” Liza cannot help saying this, and then she notes a distinct lack of response from her husband and her mother. “I mean,” she runs on alone, “I do wonder what that big friendship between him and Buck Fister was all about. And I wonder if he'll run for mayor. What does Ralph say?” she then asks Caroline.

“I don't think Ralph has seen him for a while. He hasn't mentioned him.”

“Sage should go up to U.C. to get her arm checked out as soon as she's back,” Saul now says—as though Sage had been the subject of his scowl. “But I suppose they'll tell her that at Columbia.”

“Her arm must seem the least thing on her mind,” Caroline begins to beam. “The show going so well, it's all quite marvellous, and startling.”

“It is marvellous,” Liza agrees, although it occurs to her that it is a little strange that they are only just now getting around to Sage's success; and they have been together, the three of them, for well over an hour.

At Sage's opening, described by Sage in phone calls to both her mother and to Liza (and also to Noel? no one seems to know just how closely in touch they are), five more pieces were actually bought. “And not all by Ms. Hoover's pals either, that would make me feel truly meretricious,” Sage has said. Bought by perfectly okay people (in Sage's judgment) who for whatever reason came to the opening and who very much liked Sage's small groups of figures. “Despite the totally crazy prices this Crome person has stuck on them.” This was said with a great laugh from Sage, a laugh not entirely understood by Liza; she takes it as a reference to Mr. Crome, rather than to his prices. “Crome person,” though, is surely a suggestive phrase. Something must be going on between those two, Liza thinks, and she also thinks, Good, just what rotten Noel deserves. She now asks her mother, “You haven't heard from Noel?”