Caroline's Daughters (26 page)

“Not since those two rather peculiar calls.”

Noel called Caroline on the day of Sage's supposed departure to say that he had been out a lot, had Caroline heard from Sage? This was odd, in that Caroline had heard from Sage that they were having dinner the night before she left, to celebrate that first crazy sale. Also, if Sage had called Noel, she could have left a message.

And then Noel called again a few hours later to say that he had indeed talked to Sage. Too bad about her arm, he said, but great about her show. He might fly to New York to help her celebrate.

But between those two calls Sage herself had called Caroline to say that she had taken the First Class red-eye, as she put it, and that she had fallen and hurt her arm at the airport; Calvin Crome had taken her to Columbia-Presbyterian, her arm was okay. She might stay a little longer in New York but she hoped Noel wouldn't bother to come. “It's really not his scene,” she said, somewhat ambiguously.

From all of which Caroline and Liza had (separately) worked out that Sage and Noel were not exactly in close touch.

“But there's really no reason I should hear from Noel,” now
muses Caroline. And then, “I did hear from Jim, your father. Speaking of odd phone calls.”

“Oh?”

“He said that Sage called him from New York, which I would not have thought unusual. But he sounded so happy about it. He said he hasn't heard from her for a month or so, I guess that was the unusual part.”

“Their whole connection is unusual,” is Liza's comment, as she reflects that it is also unusual for Caroline to talk quite so much about her other daughters; Caroline must be quite seriously concerned about Sage and Noel, is Liza's verdict.

“My Liza has a pornographic imagination,” Saul tells Caroline.

“Well, Saul, come on, you must admit it's a little intense. My father and Sage.”

“Just don't give me your theories about it,” Caroline addresses her daughter. “More cake?” She gestures with her knife.

“I think Sage will have some trouble adjusting to success, that's my real theory,” Liza tells them. She is looking at Saul, although she knows better than to expect an opinion from him.

And his response is true to form. “Well, maybe. She could.”

Liza laughs. “Such tremendous fun for the rest of us, though,” she says.

And Caroline, “Yes, how we can bask in reflected glory. Well, if you two won't have more cake I will. I can't just take it all home to Ralph.”

“I'd better check the kids,” Liza tells them.

The children, though, are fine, playing so cheerfully with three others, probably the charges of those blonde au pairs, that Liza decides not even to go over to them; if they see her they could quite suddenly decide that things are not fine, they do not like their new friends after all, and they urgently need their mother for arbitration, or more cookies, or something. And so Liza moves back to stand in the shadow of the little clubhouse.

Standing there for a moment, unseen by her children, her mother or her husband, Liza thinks, as she fairly often does, of her total failure in attempting to woo back (she had to admit that this is what she was doing) any former lovers, if only for an afternoon of talk. Not one word from a single one of them. An interesting fact,
Liza is not quite sure what it means. Most likely, she thinks, it means that I'm supposed to stay very faithful to Saul, and to confine my fantasies to paper.

The horizon clouds look both larger and darker now, with menacing areas of gray, shading into black. And although the air is still warm, Liza can clearly feel that threat of cold. Soon enough she will have to gather up the children, toys and Pampers. Her life.

What I really need is a lot more time alone, she thinks, and she sighs for what is most unavailable to her.

Returning then to Caroline and Saul, she sees them in what looks to be urgent conversation, and she hesitates, aware of several impulses, and impressions. One impulse tells her to leave them alone, to let them say whatever they have to say to each other. Another thought, an impression, is of how very attractive her mother is, and she thinks, Caroline could probably still have lovers if she wanted to, couldn't she? It must be hard on her, with Ralph so sick; it's unlikely that they can do it any more.

But at that moment Saul sees her and gestures her over, so that Liza has no choice except to join them.

And so she is in time to hear this urgent speech from Caroline: “I've been having this curious fantasy,” Caroline tells them, her sea eyes large and intense, very serious. “I mean, it comes to me like a message. It's a vision of homeless people taking over, marching on the rest of us and occupying all our houses. All that space where we all now sit so warm and smug and protected. I mean, who could blame them?”

“You're remembering the Thirties,” Saul tells her, gently. “The marches on Washington.”

“Actually I don't remember those marches. I was a very protected Connecticut girl, remember? But I do sort of remember my father talking about how anyone who wanted a job could find one, I guess he really believed that, it's a basic Republican idea. And I remember those shacks under the George Washington Bridge. People living in orange crates. Hoovervilles. My father blamed those people for living there. And I knew he was wrong, I really did. And maybe when I have this fantasy about their marching, taking over, I am sort of thinking about those people.”

“This is what I like best, a dream I don't have to interpret.” Saul smiles, very sympathetic to Caroline.

“Actually I know perfectly well what it means,” she tells him. “It means I've got to find something useful to do. Cut out all this bleeding-heart hand-wringing. You can see I'm quoting Ralph, such a bad habit,” she adds.

“You could have worse,” Saul tells her. “I think you're talking about a violent sense of injustice. As though the imbalance were so great that it must correct itself.”

“That's exactly what I do mean.”

“Well, it's how I feel myself.”

“Ralph sees only political solutions, that's the problem with him. With talking to him, I mean. He's so opposed to what he calls charity, he says it's bandaiding, prolonging the pain. I don't mean he's ungenerous, of course he's not, you know that. But.”

“He's an old lefty. Semi-Marxist.”

“Oh, I know, and I'm simply not political in that sense, aside from voting. And the peace marches in the Sixties, but of course they were so much fun.”

Attending to this serious discourse between her mother and her husband, Liza has also been watching the group in the far corner of the playing field, the indistinct people who have now got to their feet, are standing about in the waning sunlight. Three young black men, and two women, they look to be. Having picked up their blanket, they still have not moved on, they all have an indecisive look, and stance. These could be homeless people, maybe plotting their march on the rich? Liza starts to say this but then does not; it has a frivolous sound, although in a way she means it.

She continues to watch, as, “mysteriously,” those people replace their blanket on the grass and sit down again—as though, having discussed alternatives, they conclude that for the moment they have nowhere to go—or so Liza imagines.

She is prevented from further speculation by the shrill sound of impending children, her own—she would know their voices anywhere, from any distance. Just as, she is certain, they would always know where to find her. To track her down, no matter what she was doing.

“I
hate food. And I especially despise people who think about it all the time, and these days that includes almost everyone. Except for those thousands of people who're really hungry, hundreds of thousands, and of course they're thinking food too. No one should have to think about it. All these people every night, worrying themselves crazy over which fucking restaurant to go to, and then, when they get there, what to eat. What the hell difference does it make? Dover sole or medallions of pork in juniper berries, clams flown from Ipswich, for Christ's sake, what's the difference? No difference, it doesn't matter, it's only food.”

Fiona's vis-à-vis at lunch, a thick-necked, bald, owlish man with round rimless glasses, whom she first met about ten minutes ago, looks less startled by this blast than might be expected. His expression of very mild boredom, resigned annoyance, suggests that for him such a scene is part of his territory: he works for Bonny Fairchild, the restaurant chain.

This particular new Fillmore Street restaurant in which he and Fiona have agreed to have lunch is now owned by his chain, and it is, in fact, the same restaurant in which Sage and Noel enacted quite another scene and finally did not have dinner, a few weeks back—a coincidence unknown to anyone present, although Fiona's tirade has drawn a certain amount of attention, as Noel's did on that dark and fiercely raining night.

Fiona is not only unaware of attracting attention, she could not
possibly care less, as she herself might put it; she is only half thinking of what she is saying, as she continues in that vein.

What in a deeper, more concentrated way she is actually thinking is, why does almost everyone she meets or just sees on the street turn out to be bald? why this Easter basket of round pink or ivory heads, and none of them Roland's?

“If there's anything that makes me sicker than food it's people who know a lot about it, it's really more disgusting than just knowing wine, although that's fairly dreadful. So boring. It's just food! just stuff to push into your face.”

But you could pretty much say the same of sex, Fiona thinks, not for the first time. Just an odd part of one person's body shoved into another, differently shaped person. A lot of skin-to-skin friction.

And then she thinks, Oh Christ, I can't stand it, I really can't. I am losing my mind over that dirty rotten crooked dago prick. Who is probably off somewhere doing stuff for the Mafia. His family.

“A person can get pretty tired of the restaurant business, like everything else,” is Fiona's lunch companion's comment.

Which leaves her no choice, really, but to simmer down and to consider, against her principles, what she would like for lunch.

Roland, after their weeks of mutually planning not to see each other, is now quite unavailable. Out of town, on business; Fiona has even called his office, as though she too were conducting business. It is as though they had been competing for unattainability, and Roland had won. Fiona has even been forced to admit this to herself, to admit that she longs to see him.

“But what do you really do?” She once asked him that, of course in bed (wherever else were they, ever?), in an interval of calm.

“I'm a lawyer, angel, you know that. A little dabbling in city politics. A few business interests, some real estate. Nothing original.”

“Is that all you do? It seems to me that these days lawyers are all over the place, doing other stuff. My sister's a lawyer but she's really in investments. A lot of lawyers I know own wineries.”

Roland laughed, happily, peacefully, and smoothed the small area
of gray hair that remained to him, around his neck. “Of course I have some things that I inherited out of town. Tied up with some relatives. On the East Coast, mostly.”

“Darling, are you Mafia?”

“You read too many books. Bad movies. No one's Mafia these days.”

Since her phone calls to his office Fiona has had a couple of postcards, proving that Roland is or was indeed out of town, but cards from somewhat odd places: Mamaroneck, New York, and Princeton, New Jersey.

Fiona assumes these places to be covers, as it were; he was probably actually in New York—or, more sinister, Jersey City.

In any case she is suffering his loss, or his lack in her life, with more rage and pain than she would have thought possible. If she ever sees him again she plans to really make some trouble.

“Yes, I'm very tired of the restaurant business,” Fiona now says to the man with whom she is having lunch. “I hate my restaurant. Fiona's. God, what a silly name. I don't know how I got into it. Sheer accident, is how it feels.”

“Well, you're young, and you're not locked into your restaurant. Even if it does have your name.”

Knowing what is to come (she knew it pretty clearly when she made this lunch date, she who almost never goes out to lunch), Fiona still feels a powerful excitement. “What else would I do?” she asks him, a quick, false ingenue.

And he says, in words that she could almost have put in his mouth, “You could retire. A very early retirement. Sell out.”

Fiona laughs. “I'm under forty. Think of the money I'd need. For the rest of my life.” She laughs again, thinking of Italy. Sicily.

“I am thinking of the money you'd need. And I'm thinking of the money you could get.” His voice is low and very controlled, but controlled with an effort, Fiona feels. He too is excited, thinking of major sums. Of very big bundles.

She then wonders how they must look together, she and this stocky, bald person with his thick round glasses. His rising voice,
his quickening breath. Are they taken for lovers, she wonders, lovers in the excited throes of some sexy plans? She says, “Actually I wouldn't dream of selling.”

“Not even for—” He mentions an outrageous sum.

“You're talking funny money.”

“That's right, I am. But you think about it.”

“Frankly, I wouldn't dare give it another thought.”

“Well, that's pretty definite.”

“I mean it. Honestly.”

“So, Jilly, what do you think? Could I live for the rest of my life on that much funny money?”

“Actually you probably could. Especially if you did it right now, with the market so down. And please don't call me Jilly, I hate it.” Jill's voice, from wherever she is (she still won't say), is indistinct; however, Fiona notices that when giving financial advice Jill is more focussed than at any other time in this so far not easy conversation.