Caroline's Daughters (23 page)

“No. Not what we'd call his old self.”

“No. If he as we say comes through, it's a question of how much damage.”

“Right.”

“And which would be better, dead or damaged.”

“Christ. But as you say we have no choice. But since it's Ralph—” Harold is enormously fond of Ralph, in fact he loves Ralph, partly by way of contrast to his own father, a John Birch Society, alcoholic Wall Street lawyer, a great success. “Since it's Ralph we have to think that anything's better than no Ralph,” Harold tells Portia.

“Poor Mom. Poor old Caroline. She must feel all different ways at once.”

“At least.”

“We should know a lot more in a day or so. She says.”

“I'm not sure how much longer I can take working at Podesta, speaking of days.”

“Do you want me to talk to Fiona? She's always in trouble with flowers, probably you could help—”

“No, she scares me to death. And Jill.”

During the past week Harold has often gone to the hospital with Portia, at first with some ambivalence (his more or less normal
state), torn between wanting to help Portia and not wanting to be what his mother quite often describes as “very
de trop
.”

It began, though, to seem to Harold that he was very welcome; even Jill and Fiona, usually so intimidating, so impeccably blonde and hard-edged sexy, were glad to see him, Harold felt. (He was always happy with Caroline.) He began to see that he was a sort of buffer, separating family members from too much raw contact with each other, in a very bad time for them all.

No one but Caroline stayed in the hospital for very long—that terrible room, poor Ralph all tubed and computerized, medicated into insensibility. The others all came and went, they stood about with long sad faces, whispering, and at the approach of doctors they all scurried out, leaving Caroline to deal with authority.

“Dad must really hate this,” Portia had whispered to Harold, more than once. And, “You're awfully good to come.”

All the others and especially Caroline have whispered thanks, including Fiona and Jill—though Harold is still quite afraid of them both.

“I couldn't work for Fiona,” he now tells Portia.

“You wouldn't. A nice sort of fat odd guy named Stevie does most of the stuff with flowers. You might get along with him.”

“You mean, because he's so odd? Or fat.”

“Harold, please don't be so touchy. I can't stand it. Not just now, okay?”

And then the phone rings.

The news of Ralph is, though, guardedly, good. Unaccountably in tears, Portia comes back to tell Harold. “He's going to be okay,” she weeps. “I mean, not die. Not yet. Caroline says the doctors say the worst part is over. But what can they mean?”

“I don't know.”

F
or a variety of reasons, and he has to admit that Caroline was always among those reasons, Roland Gallo has taken to dropping in to see his old acquaintance Ralph Carter—although they were never exactly intimates. First off, Roland was looking to Ralph's well-known political savvy: in a word, how did Ralph view his, Roland's, mayoral candidacy? could he win, or was he liable to fall on his face, not to mention all that money down the drain? And besides, Roland has always liked old Ralph (Roland tends to forget that they are very nearly of an age, he and old Ralph). He likes the country harshness of Ralph's very Texan speech, and Ralph's extreme courtesy, in a bad, rude world. He appreciates Ralph's wit and sharpness—he values Ralph as that great rarity, an honest man.

Furthermore, late-afternoon visits to Ralph tend to put Roland home fairly late but with the most legitimate, time-honored of all excuses: he was actually, literally visiting an old sick friend. Joanne could call him there if she would like to check it out.

And, then, there was Caroline.

At the close of his first few visits, as Roland departed she would come up to the front door with him, to thank him and to say goodby. On these occasions they would exchange the same brushing kiss that everyone does these days, perhaps with a little more warmth involved than was quite usual. Roland liked her, and she was grateful for the visit, probably. But one day, somehow, their mouths slid together, and met, and held, surely not by accident.

But the next time he came to visit Ralph, as Roland got up to go Caroline seemed nowhere in sight, as he hesitated, looking around. He descended the stairs as noisily as he could, and then, at the front door, he heard her voice calling down, “Oh, Roland, sorry, I was on the phone, but you can let yourself out, can't you?”

And the next time a neighbor was there.

Roland thinks about that semi-kiss, though. He was (curiously) very turned on by it, and he observes in himself a series of sexual fantasies concerning Caroline. A little more flesh than he is used to, but that might be very nice. And talking to her, making plans to get together, then somehow doing it—and hearing whatever she would say to him in bed. Hearing his sexual self praised in that high-toned voice. The truth is, he really wants to make love to Caroline.

Making it with Caroline would be like getting into the P.U. Club, he thinks to himself with a laugh—and regrets that there is no one he could say that to.

But how to suggest it to Caroline? Even assuming that she might possibly say yes. She would not mess around, Roland is quite sure of that; if she says no she will mean it, no for good—and if she says yes, well, well hooray!

She should get out more, Caroline knows that—and still, even when the weekly Guatemalan woman Nelia comes to clean (a gentle woman, whom Ralph clearly likes and trusts), even with Nelia there in the house, Caroline mostly stays home. She putters—and now for the first time she understands the meaning of that word. She polishes silver that is not even in use, she dusts invisible corners.

And she takes long naps. Sleeping poorly at night, she allows herself to collapse in the guest bedroom, where sometimes these days she sleeps, for an hour or so in the afternoon.

Her dreams, which are vividly, undeniably sexual in nature, inform her of one thing that is clearly wrong: sheer deprivation, hunger. She suffers the loss, the lack of love, until now such an active element in her life.

How do her daughters manage? Caroline wonders. She is thinking
especially of Fiona and Jill—who, as far as she knows, are not “with” or “seeing” anyone. But of course they manage with the knowledge that eventually someone will show up, they're both so young. Also, although she chooses not to dwell on this, it is clear to Caroline that those two daughters “relate” to men in ways that are quite unlike her own. She finds it hard to imagine either of them in love—or, perhaps “in love,” but not feeling whatever it is that she, for example, feels for Ralph.

However, finding that this line of thought is making her very uncomfortable, Caroline turns her attention instead to thoughts of Liza—at which she smiles; and Sage, to whom she gives the smallest worried frown.

But before she can even consider Portia the phone rings.

How did she know that it would be Roland Gallo? For in the instant before picking up the receiver and hearing his voice, Caroline did know just who it was. And she almost knew what he would say.

“Caroline? Roland Gallo here. Well, how're
you?
I was wondering, possibly, could you—lunch someday, like, tomorrow?”

Having said, No, terribly sorry, never go out to lunch these days—and hung up, and struck anew with the ferocity of her own needs, obviously so great that she does not dare even have lunch with Roland Gallo, whom in many ways she does not even like, Caroline bursts into unaccustomed tears.

From Caroline's bedroom, Caroline's and Ralph's, the sunset has faded to a dusky, ashen blue. As Ralph still sleeps, and she sits, dry-eyed, beside him with her tea, Caroline simply watches the sky—still in early evening fairly light, streaked with dark clouds, above the eastern horizon. In her further view, great purposeful, powerful jets rise up from the international airport, heading south, moving with infinite deliberation up and across the sky. One can even, occasionally, confuse a plane with a bird, from this perspective their size is about the same, and sometimes a large bird will seem to move so slowly, so majestically as to emulate the motion of a plane.

In the middle distance the lacy spires of a church are reminders of Notre-Dame, or Chartres—and not far from that sacred stone is an extremely strange cluster of very tall, very delicate structures. Like children's toys, Caroline has thought, the Erector Sets (such a funny name, actually) that are surely meant for boys but that she could never resist buying for her girls, who loved them. Especially Sage, who was always building something. These structures, in her view, so delicately balanced that sometimes they sway or very slowly swing about, like masts, sometimes catching a wink of sunshine—they are actually cranes, Ralph has told her, building cranes, in the midst of the Western Addition. They have risen there like swamp weeds, so Caroline imagines, from a bog of bureaucratic arguments. They are quite crazily beautiful, and Caroline has thought how she would miss them, should they ever finish whatever work they are supposed to be doing, and go. They are part of her ravishing landscape, the most beautiful painting that is her view.

These days Ralph has moments or even hours, almost, of lucidity. A total return of all his old intelligence, his sharpness. But these intervals can be neither predicted nor summoned, they relate to no known exterior stimulus. Ralph, as always, responds to no will but his own.

And now, just as Caroline is about to submit to the end of her sunset observation, to relinquish her birds and the spires and the building cranes to the coming night—as she starts to get up and go downstairs to heat up their soup, Ralph comes fully awake.

And with an announcement: “Very interesting news on the tube this afternoon. You catch any of it? No? Well, it seems this guy named Buck Fister is about to be indicted by the Grand Jury. All manner of unsavory charges. Interesting. I've never liked the fellow, I was just saying so the other day to Gallo. But I'm sure Gallo had no idea what he was up to.”

“Who is he, this Buck Fister?”

“Actually I hardly know the fellow. Friend of Gallo's, though I never did understand quite why, or I didn't want to. But he's been running some kind of a call-girl operation. A very fancy one, it looks like.”

“You mean Roland Gallo could have been involved?” Shuddering, Caroline experiences a small vague nausea, as though she has eaten something a little off.

“Oh no, nothing like that. That wouldn't be Gallo's style at all, I wouldn't imagine. He's a rather old-fashioned gentleman in his way, wouldn't you say?”

“Well, yes, I would have.”

“Your true womanizers don't run to whores. That's more for neuter types like Fister.”

“I'm sure you're right, darling,” says Caroline. “Ostensibly, what does this Fister do?”

“Real estate. This town's prime industry, right? Every whore and pimp in town is into real estate.”

“But that isn't what Roland Gallo does. I don't see why you keep mentioning him in connection with this fellow, this Fister.”

“Because they're pals, that's all. They have lunch together. Herb Caen sees them at the Big Four together and talks about it. And that's one more black mark on the page against Gallo running for mayor. If they really nail Fister, and it looks like they're going to, it's not good at all for anyone who knows him. Has lunch with him.”

Pulling herself together (after all, there was nothing, really, between herself and Roland Gallo, nothing happened), Caroline says, “Well, it's really lucky that we don't know this Fister, and don't know Gallo any better than we do, don't you think so, darling? And now are you ready for some really super minestrone?”

“Sure, sweets. But first a kiss.”

“I
t's terrifically cold in New York,” Liza, on the phone, tells Sage. “You can hardly imagine. Saul and I were there at those meetings about this time last year. Oh, I nearly froze! And then all the buildings and everyone's apartments are so overheated. But the snow is wonderful, so beautiful in Central Park. We walked there—”

“Actually I don't much like snow. You remember at Tahoe, when we were kids?” Sage in fact finds the very idea of snow terrifying, and especially in New York: the whole city could be buried, smothered in snow, all of life there frozen. Though perhaps in that way preserved, like the slaves and domestic animals in Pompei. But she is horrified at the thought of a snowstorm in New York while she is there.

And she leaves the day after tomorrow.

San Francisco, just now in the throes of January rainstorms, is bad enough, the soughing, powerful winds, water pelting the windows of Sage's house. All this weather seems an omen, a warning of worse things to come, in New York: if this is so nearly unbearable, how possibly can she even consider a still more treacherous climate, colder weather, snow? Sage feels that she is being asked this, is being accused in this way. How can you deliberately fly into your doom? is the question.

“I think you'll have a wonderful time,” pronounces Liza. “You'll love the snow. You probably didn't like it at Tahoe because Jim
overdid it, with skis and all that. But now you will. Just take along a lot of warm clothes, if you're warm enough you'll be fine.”

“Oh God, I hate to pack. I'm so bad at packing, the very idea of packing drives me crazy.”

“It is awful,” Liza agrees. “Actually I hate it too. But I'll tell you my secret method. Allow an enormous hunk of time just for packing. That really works out, for me. Hours and hours.”

“But. But I still don't know what to take.”

“Saul has an idea about that,” says Liza, who is not generally given to quoting her husband. “It's to do with displacement. We tend to displace other anxieties, other fears onto what to take on a trip. Women do, mostly. It really comes down to what to wear. How we want to present ourselves. As though it mattered, deeply. We're all so brainwashed when it comes to clothes, don't you think? It's actually quite interesting.”