Caroline's Daughters (35 page)

“Of course you know where it is,” she told him, calling at last, on the stormy night when she was still at Fiona's. While Fiona was upstairs fucking Roland Gallo, probably. “I saw you there at Stinson, the day you came after me,” she said to Noel.

“Jesus, you did? Why didn't you come out from wherever you were? Jesus, what a bitch!”

“I didn't feel like seeing you right then.”

“But you do now?”

“Now I really do. I told you.”

“Well, just hold on for a couple of days. There's some stuff I have to pull together. I'll be out Tuesday night.”

How like him to put her off for a while, Jill thinks. There's always more than a little power play with Noel. And maybe with me? She asks herself this question, does not answer.

In any case, on Tuesday, she hopes he gets there before dark—an hour or so from now. For one thing, the road out there is dangerous in some places, skirting the slopes of Tamalpais, winding and winding high up above steep gorges. Jill herself has just come in from a sunset beach walk, rather hoping that Noel would have
shown up while she was out; that would be very good for him, she thought. But of course he did not—and there she sits in the foggy cool gray dusk. Somewhat worried.

Also, anyone passing can see right into the house; this too seems a little risky. Getting up to turn off lights, Jill is gratified at the thought of giving Noel just a little more trouble: he will have to come looking for her, all through the darkened house.

She wishes, though, that she did not know all those dizzying curves of the road by heart; it is far too easy to imagine Noel rounding each one of them, and at last not quite making it. Over-confident Noel at the wheel.

And then it occurs to Jill that there is absolutely nothing in the house to eat. All she has, she remembers, is some very fancy cigarettes that a man at work laid on her some time back (“Doctored—they've been through the Mayo Clinic,” said their donor). She had thought she and Noel might try them out, but let's hope they don't make us hungry, Jill adds to herself; this is not exactly blind-munchy time. I don't even think there're any cornflakes.

There is, Jill observes to herself, a kind of woman for whom laying in food supplies, special goodies, is very much a part of getting ready to be visited by a man; she remembers a friend who at the end of a significant romance complained, “There I was with a refrigerator full of smoked salmon, which I don't even like very much.” And there was always Caroline, bountifully feeding men (searching out Tex-Mex recipes, all that bean stuff that Ralph really loved). But Jill's own view of romantic protocol is at variance with all that: in her imagination a really super lover would himself arrive with a great big hamper of food, a basket of crazy, marvellous stuff, and some really good wine.

And that is almost exactly what Noel does. From her perch in the living room Jill hears and recognizes his car (no one else brakes like that) and then in a moment she sees him rounding the corner of her patio, and sees that he is burdened by a very large hamper. At that moment (not only because of the hamper, though it does seem a very good sign) Jill believes that this will be one of the greatest nights of her life. Even if Noel has only cornflakes in his hamper.

She rewards him by rushing out, not making him look around
for her after all, as she had more or less planned. She wraps herself against him, prolonging their kiss.

Running his free hand down her thigh, “You're
really
skinny now,” Noel tells her. “I brought some cholesterol booster for you.”

“Great. I have some high-powered cigarettes, but I paid the earth for them.” Might as well make him think that she too went to a little trouble, big expense.

“Well, super. I have a little wheeze.”

Possibly because she hadn't seen him for a while Noel looks, to Jill, extremely beautiful. Slightly flushed from the exertion of the drive (and possibly the excitement of her, he is excited) his skin is fine and fresh, his narrow eyes are brilliant and his thick dark hair, as always a little long, is becomingly disheveled.

“I walked out and saw the sunset,” Jill tells him, and they both just stand there on the patio for a minute, in the fading light from the glowing reddish sky. Looking at Noel, at the thin perfect line of his nose and his perfectly curved mouth, Jill has the odd thought that this is the most beautiful moment of his life. Forever after this his handsomeness will blur, will steadily, very slowly decline.

She says, “Well, come on in. I can't wait to see all your goodies.”

What Noel has brought is: Bread and cheese and wine. And some apples and grapes and pears. Big brownies.

A little ordinary, Jill thinks. But she appreciates his effort; he meant to please, to be nice to her. He is just not a very sophisticated person. Not original.

Once they are settled on the sofa with all their supplies, it then becomes hard to choose—what to do first, to eat or drink or smoke. Or snort. And so for a time they just sit there, while their eyes run over everything before them.

Sage has thrown him out of the house, Noel says. Their house. “Jesus, the work I put into that place. For that broad.”

Noel has boasted that he was the first dropout from Mission High, and he has never mentioned parents; no relatives came to his wedding, just a few offbeat carpenter friends; one might suspect that if he has any people he is not exactly proud of them. But all that is evident in the way he talks, Jill muses: lack of education, lack of family. As she also thinks, God, I sound like my grand-mother.
Social class is really what it all comes down to, though, which no one ever mentions and which you are not supposed to think about, but there it is, everyone thinks of it all the time or at least is aware of it.

And she could never marry Noel, never, never, for just those reasons. This realization, never before quite so clear to her, gives Jill a certain feeling of power, in terms of their connection. She wants absolutely nothing from Noel, which means that she can do anything she wants to, with him.

“How about a smoke?” she now asks. “Chuck, who sold me this stuff, said it was really wild.”

Noel laughs. “Well, okay, let's get wild.” He has a good laugh, if very slightly phony; it is deep and controlled, a lot better than his speaking voice.

First they do a very little coke, then they light up.

Whatever is in the long fat doctored cigarettes at first makes them cough, and cough again, both Noel and Jill; they are laughing and coughing, bent forward on the huge sofa.

There was something powerful in that first hit, though. Jill feels somewhat unreal, and maybe Noel does too. She sees a slight confusion on his face, he looks disoriented, mildly.

“Okay,” Noel says, “let's go for wild. I'm ready, are you?”

“Well, I think so.”

They toke again, in silence. There is only, from the beach, the darkness, the heavy rhythmic periodic crash of waves, both loud and very remote. As though the waves were breaking in some cold dark other country.

Then Jill says, “What I am is hungry, I'm starving.”

“Me too. I haven't eaten for a couple of years, I feel like. Not anything.”

As they put out all that food, unceremoniously spread on the floor at their feet, as they bend, picking up things, eating ravenously, messily, somewhere in a corner of Jill's mind is the observation that they are not falling upon each other, Christ, they are not even kissing. Whatever this is it does not seem to be a sex drug. Or, not so far.

They eat all the food, each small scrap of bread, each grape, and
they finish off both bottles of wine, only stopping occasionally to take more drags from the magic cigarettes.

Outside in the night a thin sharp wind has come up, it tears through this flimsy summer house, as boards creak, and windows rattle.

Noel says, “I wish we had a little plane, or a chopper.”

“Oh yes, to be up in the wind. Or a boat.”

“Yes, the sea. The rough.”

“Yes, wind!”

“Birds!”

Crazy. And at the same time as they are having this loopy exchange they are also, as though unaware of what they are doing, kissing and removing their clothes, and then coupling, there on the hard cold bare floor.

A little later, or possibly several hours later, it is Jill who says, “God, I'm so cold.”

“Let's make a fire. I am too. Freezing.”

“But there's no wood. No nothing.”

“Rotten people.”

And then Jill says, “Oh, but I know where there's a wonderful warm fireplace. And it's near here.”

“Great. Then we won't have to burn the furniture. Or burn the house down.”

“There's no furniture here to burn, you silly fool.”

“Well, Jesus. Let's go. But first a little snort.”

Not locking, barely closing the door, they run out into the night, to Jill's car. Noel wants to drive.

“But you don't know where we're going.”

“I do. I will. You just think of it real hard and I'll receive your message. Directions.”

They skid out of the
calle
and onto the bumpy dirt road, fast past those dumb middle-class houses, past night walkers who skitter off the sides of the road like birds. And on, on to the main road, where they take a left, around the lagoon.

Where—ah!—Noel makes the car fly over the water! although that is quite impossible, anyone knows a car would sink, no matter who was driving, but even many months later, by which time God
knows she is straight and sober, that is what Jill remembers: her wild yellow Mercedes winging fleet across the slick black water. Water shining below them, shining ahead.

She does not remember the accident: the explosion and fire that almost killed them both—in Bolinas, near Portia's house, their presumable destination.

“O
ne of the first things I'm going to do is join AA. For one thing, I hear it's the greatest for meeting people. The new singles scene,” says Jill, from her narrow white bed.

Portia smiles, then remembers that, since Jill cannot turn to see her, she has to speak. “Probably a good idea,” she says.

“Well, I have abused a few substances in my time.” And then, “Do you think Sage will come to see me?”

“Probably,” Portia repeats.

“Shit. How I wish she wouldn't. What an impossible conversation, the one we'd have to have.”

“I could ask her not to for a while.”

“Would you really, Ports? That would be most kind of you.”

Jill's hair is lank, a darker blonde than usual, and her un-made-up skin is sallow, yellowish. Her face was not burned in the accident, no bandages, but her upper body is still immobilized; she suffered some burns there, and in falling backwards (no one can quite account for this fall, least of all Jill) she fractured both arms and shoulders. She thus can only look straight ahead, generally she keeps her eyes closed. Portia, her most frequent visitor, has made note of this, but she still tends to forget that Jill does not see her. “Sage will understand,” she now says. “I doubt if she's exactly dying to have that conversation either.”

“Is she, uh, pretty upset about Noel?” Jill seems not to remember that she has asked this several times. On the other hand, she may
be on painkilling drugs that affect her recall. Or, Portia has thought, she may be questioning her own feelings about the near-death of Noel, his undoubted terrible burns, and scars. (Noel somehow had himself transferred from Ross General, where they were taken, that night, up to another hospital, in Grass Valley.)

“She's not as upset as she might be if she weren't so busy,” Portia tells Jill.

“Well, that's good. I guess.”

It is not clear to Portia just why most of the hospital duty with Jill has fallen to her. “You think that, since she was hurt while engaged in driving toward your house, you owe her perpetual care,” Hilda has said, with unusual asperity, only modified by one of her mysterious, oblique dark smiles.

“Well, you're right, that would be my kind of logic,” Portia agrees, half laughing.

Somewhat closer to the truth (Portia believes) is the simple fact that no one else is around: Caroline has suddenly and most surprisingly gone to Europe—at the moment she is in Paris, having left the day before the accident. Informed of what happened, she now telephones, and Portia has reassured her that no, she does not have to come home, Jill is doing well, Sage is all right. And although all that is quite true (Sage is indeed quite all right), because of Noel, Sage seems hardly the person to care for Jill. Besides, she is much too busy.

Liza comes to see Jill, but her visits are never long, with Saul away (he is in some sort of training camp, in Chiapas, Mexico, near the Guatemalan border) Liza is extremely busy with her children, as well as with trying to write. Fiona is in New York and in various parts of New England, being interviewed by various business schools; she wants to get a degree in corporation management, or corporation something—Portia is unable to follow this plan. Fiona wants to get out of San Francisco.

And that leaves Portia, who is still here, and spending most of her time with Jill.

And, when not with Jill, she is at home with Hilda. Absorbing,
listening to, laughing with—simply enjoying Hilda, who moved to Bernal Heights, to Portia's house, during the week before the accident.

Knowing each other at once so intimately and in other ways not at all has made for some difficulties; both Portia and Hilda have had to acknowledge this to each other. They are, and have been since their first dinner together, “in love”; however, their eating and sleeping habits, those boring but irrefutably demanding basics, are vastly different. Portia, a California girl with certain distant Texan roots, is essentially a day person—up early, instantly vigorous, hungry for breakfast. Whereas Hilda wakes slowly from a troubled sleep, from whatever Middle Eastern dreams of violence; she is not quite herself until noon. And then by nightfall she is vividly alive, prepared to listen to music, talk, prepared for anything, including love, until long past midnight.