Caroline's Daughters (12 page)

But about Noel's coming with her to New York, Sage with some interest now notes, she does not feel any such urgency. She is not even entirely sure whether or not she wants him to come along. How very interesting, she thinks. She is almost moved to call the shrink whom she went to see at the end of her Roland Gallo debacle; she can almost hear that classically Viennese voice, saying, “So. So you genuinely do not care that he comes or not? That is very interesting, it is even very good.”

Sage asks herself, is this new attitude because she has no special suspicions of Noel, recently? For she has not, she has even had the curious instinct that someone had turned him down, maybe a good feminist who does not believe in screwing married men? Sage smiles
at that thought, and then she thinks, But it could be anyone at all. Even one of my sisters.

It might almost be better if Noel did not come to New York. Sage explores that idea for an instant, tasting it, and then wills herself to leave it alone. For one thing, if Noel got the slightest whiff of that feeling, which he surely would if she truly entertained it, he would in some way act on his perception: he would come to New York.

Perhaps, Sage often thinks, I am simply one of those people who do fairly well with work but not with love.

Which in the long run is surely better than the reverse? In her Roland Gallo days she felt supremely good at love, so in love and so loved that her work was all pushed aside, postponed.

And then, in the horrible, devastated post-Roland period, she could not work either.

But in her present semi-euphoria she is even able to remember only Roland at his best. Which is to say, Roland in bed.

Why me? was one of Sage's earliest responses to Roland's violent pursuit of her. Why me, for all those phone calls and flowers? (Roland in his way was an old-fashioned, classic lover.) Why me for such extremes of insistence that I see him? Even at the party at which they met, a gallery opening of the very lavish sort being done a lot just then—that night there were better-looking, younger women than Sage. But soon after that, in the early stages of their great love, Sage saw herself as inevitable for Roland, she even saw herself as fantastically, incredibly attractive: of course Roland Gallo would pursue her. Later still, she felt that he must have chosen her for a certain docility, and for a sensed potential for gratitude. Not to mention the very practical consideration that she lived a scant few blocks from his house—he then as now in his Pacific Street mansion, facing the playground, and she then in a small flat above a store, out on Sacramento Street (at that time even less fashionable than now, in fact rather shabby). Sage had the very small flat, easily
taken over and possessed by Roland. What Sage remembers is standing on the top of her stairs, breathless from the sound of his knock at her door and the turn of his key (of course she had given him a key, even insisted that he take it). Those stairs were the most impressive feature of Sage's apartment—and Roland would run up them, would run up to her, both of them laughing. “Your stairs keep me very young,” he had said. “Not to mention—” (Like many exceptionally sexual persons, Roland was quite chary, prudish, even, about sexual references in talk.)

And then they would move from their languishing kiss, down the short hall to her bedroom, to bed, where, almost as soon as they were naked, touching, Sage began to come—at first slowly, trying not to, postponing. And then she did, again and again. Explosions of light.

“I have a sort of weakness for Italians,” a few years later, supposedly “over” Roland Gallo, Sage said to the very handsome young carpenter who had come to help her with her house, the house she had finally dared to buy with her inheritance from Molly Blair. He had come, this Noel Finn, to talk about what could be done, a studio, et cetera. But then he stuck around for some wine, and personal conversation. He was not especially attracted to Sage (that must have been the case, although Noel would never admit it), and therefore, as they talked, in that way, he confessed to a lot of love affairs, laughingly telling her that he did best with married women, preferably Catholics, much better than young chicks who wanted to get married, have babies and a house. He was telling her quite clearly: Don't get involved with me, I'm not to be taken seriously. Although he said, with his flirty, confident smile, “Would a South-of-Market Irishman do?”

And so Sage not only got involved, fell in love, but married Noel, despite both their intentions otherwise: they simply reached that point in the affair when it was time either to marry or to separate, and according to many observers (Sage's half-sisters and her mother, Noel's past and present lady friends) they made the wrong choice.

And all along Sage knew everything about him: Noel was much
too handsome, vain and unreliable. She also knew that in some mysterious way he was an imitation Roland Gallo.

The balmy weather most unexpectedly became a heat wave, two days of temperatures in the nineties—unheard of in San Francisco in July. No breeze anywhere, no fog. And even Sage, who normally hated both fog and wind, began to long for both.

“It's as hot as New York,” Noel tells her over dinner, a shrimp salad that Sage intended to be better than it is, but at least it is cold (and then she remembers: God, she forgot the cilantro).

“I hope you don't get this kind of weather there in October,” Noel continues—meaning that he isn't going along?

“I suppose I could,” Sage tells him—perhaps meaning, It's okay if you don't come, I can make it alone all right. Or does she mean that?

He grins, showing strong white perfect teeth. “You're ready for anything, right?”

“I guess. Listen, is that the beginning of foghorns?”

It was. Faintly at first, and then with more assurance, the horns had begun their hoarse, inharmonious rounds as, edging into the bay, the first dark fingers of fog could be seen, and a slight breeze began to flutter the air—not yet quite cooling, but shifting the currents, promising cool.

The heat has not agreed with Noel at all. He looks sweatily pale, exhausted. His perfect nose is red at the tip, and his eyelids droop. Looking across the table at his face, Sage sees what she has never before observed there: she sees an intimation of age, of a lessening of his beauty. Someday, Sage thinks, he'll be just a plain aging man, good-looking (he'll always be good-looking, probably) but no longer such a dazzler. Fewer heads turning in the street to stare.

She finds some measure of relief in that thought—how could she not? Quite involuntarily she smiles.

“Feeling better?” Noel asks her.

“Yes. Really.”

He smiles across to her, and with that smile all his beauty is instantly restored.

N
ow that Caroline is back, Liza talks to her mother so often that the two women sometimes lose track of the fact that they have not seen each other for a while. Liza even feels, sometimes, that she talks to her mother almost as she would to herself, so non-judgmental—and at the same time interested—does she feel Caroline to be. At other times she thinks that Caroline is less non-judgmental than simply preoccupied. God knows what is really on Caroline's mind.

In any case Caroline is the only person to whom Liza could say, as one morning she does, “Well, David Argent really got trashed in the
Times
. That almost makes my day.”

“Honestly, Liza, he's really not worth a thought.”

“I know, I really do. But for so many years he got all that terrific attention, like all those Enrico's guys. The so-called writers.”

Caroline laughs. “Yes, one wondered when they wrote.”

“One did indeed.”

A pause, and then Caroline remarks, “I am a little worried over Sage. She's so high, over-excited. Come to think of it, I saw something of the same thing with Aaron, that terrific excitement.”

“All my kids are like that. So far. But you think Sage could be manic-depressive? Saul says it can be inherited, at least a tendency. He thinks.”

“Darling,” says Caroline, reprovingly. “Of course I didn't mean that.”

As Liza thinks that actually she did—that Caroline is worried.

“Jim might know how she is,” adds Caroline. “I gather she sees quite a lot of him. Still.”

“Well, that's nice,” Liza tells her mother, somewhat distractedly. And then she asks, “Have you been to any more good parties?”

“Well, we did go to one in our old neighborhood. Mostly Ralph's old political pals, but very nice. Just around the corner from Liberty Street. With such a pretty garden, I nearly died of envy at all those roses. One surprise, of all people Roland Gallo was there. So odd, you see an unlikely person in one place and then they're everywhere, have you noticed? Anyway, his poor young wife got terribly drunk, quite sad to watch actually. I did not get an impression of much marital accord.”

“Very likely not,” says Liza. “I don't imagine marriage is exactly what he's best at. Does Ralph think he'll run for mayor?”

Caroline allows one of the discreet pauses for which she is noted, within her family, and then she says, “He won't say. In fact I have to tell you that I find Ralph the least bit worrying these days.”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing specific. Just not entirely himself. Very tired. But of course I always forget how old we both are.”

“Of course you do, since you aren't.”

“You're sweet, but I'm really not thirty, which is what I seem to think I am.”

Hanging up the phone (a child is crying upstairs), as she hurries to them Liza wonders, Do Ralph and Caroline sometimes still do it? I think probably yes, they do.

They were certainly active the year before they got married, Liza remembers, just after Caroline broke up with Jim and Ralph moved in. They could hear them every night, and all those sex sounds were new—they never heard Caroline doing it with Jim, although they must have, at least a few times. And Liza wonders if she and Saul will begin to taper off, and if so when.

At times I sort of wish we would, thinks Liza. I could use more sleep.

“You kids were supposed to be asleep!” she says to her children, in their bedroom. “It's naptime.”

“My mother called, and I think she's really worried over Sage,” Liza tells Saul that night, during what they somewhat ironically refer to as the cocktail hour, which is more often spent in some way with the children: talking to, reading to, playing with, trying to separate from children. At the moment, though, out of character, the two older children are sitting across Saul's knees, absorbed in a magazine. And the baby is asleep in her basket.

“Here we go again.” Saul sighs, possibly remembering the many evenings that he and Liza spent with Sage, after Roland Gallo. Listening, giving advice, and more listening, listening, to all the repetitive rhythms of Sage's broken heart. “But I think she's really okay now,” he says, hopefully.

“Well, maybe. Oh, and Fiona called. Such a surprise, she wants us for dinner. Thursday.”

“Thursday's out. You know, my good works.”

“Well, I'll go and tell you all about it.” Liza smiles, and then adds, “An interesting thing about our family parties, have you noticed? There's always someone missing.”

“Well, I guess I get to be the missing person.”

“Darling, I'm not sure you count.”

The more surprising missing person at Fiona's dinner turned out to be Jill, actually; this was considered odd in view of her known great closeness to Fiona.

Also, a second surprise, Portia brought along what with great relief everyone took to be her boyfriend. Harold, the young man with whom she worked at the nursery. (Harold, in what looked to be his prep-school graduation suit: dark blue, with wide lapels.)

But the main event of the evening was surely the food. “I'm still not sure what Fiona was up to, but if she meant to be impressive in a totally disgusting Eighties way she really succeeded,” Liza later reported to Saul. From the lobster canapés through foie gras (in a cornmeal crust) and salmon mousse with a tomato coulis. Veal Orloff, which at that meal was a nice old-fashioned Julia touch. Spinach with prosciutto. Salad of arugula, radicchio, et cetera. Brie and Stilton. Grapefruit sorbet. Melons, grapes. Chocolate truffles. Coffee. Armagnac.

They were all somewhat subdued, no doubt in part by the sheer weight of so much food—and conversation rather dragged. But some of them made a certain effort—mostly of course Caroline.

“I keep reading these days about yuppies,” she said. “You know, it's quite a new concept for us, they don't have them in Lisbon. It sounds quite disgusting, all that programmatic expensiveness.”

At which Fiona told her, with a small tight laugh, “Mother, this has been described as the quintessentially yuppie restaurant.”

“But surely you don't like being called that? I think it's most unfair.”

“I'm afraid the shoe fits,” Fiona told her.

But, Liza wondered, surely Caroline knew all that before? Sometimes she suspects Caroline of considerable feigned innocence.

Caroline tried again, conversationally. “Another thing that I very much dislike,” she said, “is the use of the word ‘elegant.' Suddenly everything is elegant, when it really isn't at all, if you see what I mean. ‘Designer clothes,' and what an awful term that is, right there. Anyway, designer clothes are not elegant.”

“They're just ripping off L. L. Bean,” Ralph suddenly, surprisingly said. “Calvin Klein, Mr. Lauren, all that bunch, it's really straight out of Freeport, Maine.”

Such a typical Ralph observation, everyone thought. So right on. But how did he know? One doesn't exactly imagine Ralph perusing the ads in
Vogue
. In fact all Caroline's daughters had sometimes wondered just that about Ralph:
how did he know?

Fiona was all over the place that night, like a first-time hostess, jumping up and down, running in and out of the room, staying away for increasing intervals. Of course she was working, being hostess in her restaurant on what looked like a busy night, as well as entertaining her family, but still: Liza had a curious sense that someone was there whom the rest of them were not supposed to know about. “Fiona must be getting it on with someone wrong,” was how she described it to Saul. “The hidden mystery guest.”