Caroline's Daughters (24 page)

Liza thinks almost everything is interesting, thinks Sage, with some annoyance. Liza is so objective, no wonder she and Saul get along so well; they're basically scientific, both of them. Liza may think of herself as a literary person, but she's really a scientist.

“The point is, I suppose,” continues Liza, apparently unaware of sibling hostility, “you have to work out what you're really scared of. And then you can pack.”

“Thanks a lot. But that's easy enough, in my case. I'm scared of my show. I'm terrified.”

“Well, there you are. Just convince yourself that what you pack won't really affect how your show goes. Try to tell yourself that it really doesn't matter.”

“But it does matter. Everything matters. To me.” And Sage makes an incoherent sound of pure helplessness.

“Well, call me back if you need anything. If there's anything I could do.”

“I'm afraid not, but thanks.”

And that is quite true of Sage: to her everything does matter. And almost everything frightens her, in one way or another. Her show
is only the start. There is also the terror of unknown New York weather, so cold it might strike her dead—or so Sage feels its threat. And the city itself is a source of increasing panic, with its muggings, murders, its very streets filled with rage and hatred, with murderous impulses.

Furthermore, Sage is frightened of her meeting with Calvin Crome, now such an important person in her life. He is capable, she has so far perceived, of a considerable spectrum of behavior, and in her experience this is not a good sign.

She is frightened too of leaving Noel alone in San Francisco.

She is frightened of Noel, who is far more unpredictable than anyone, ever in her life.

Years back, after her time with Roland Gallo, Sage discussed her fears with her psychiatrist, her fears that Roland Gallo would leave her, as he did in fact eventually do. And they discussed her older fears that her mother would marry Jim McAndrew and have more children. Her fear that Caroline and Jim would divorce, and that Caroline would marry this huge new scary man with the funny accent, Ralph Carter. “You see? Whatever I most fear seems to come true, I am not really so irrational,” Sage pointed out. Anna Weldon: “It's perhaps the intensity that is irrational.”

Sage had of course lost the fears that revolved around Roland, and in time she did cease her mourning for him, but she remained very much that same person: the woman who had loved Roland to distraction, always terrified that she would lose him, was very much the same woman who now loves Noel, a far more dangerous man. Loves and fears him, mortally.

Packing, Sage now regards her open suitcase with panic, as though nothing she could possibly, imaginably think of to take with her could protect her from the violence of New York, from cold or snow. Nor could anything conceivably equip her for an exhibition of her work (“exhibit”: the very word is horrifying). The small, highly personal ceramic sculptures now all nakedly exposed—if not
broken in transit. She has not even been able so far to call Calvin Crome to see if they got there all right; this seems such an amateur question, full of juvenile or at best adolescent anxiety.

She carefully folds a heavy white sweater and places it in the suitcase. Then takes it out and puts it back on the shelf.

Because she is concentrating on warmth, the question of what to wear to the opening itself is almost buried in her avalanche of anxieties, but occasionally it surfaces, like an iron post in deep snow. Dangerous, immoveable.

The green silk shirt, so happily, optimistically bought for the specific occasion of her opening in New York, is now irrevocably associated with the horrifying hours at Jim's—of which Sage is still barely able to think. (When she does think back to that afternoon, it seems to her that that was the beginning; that was when everything terrible that she now feels commenced. When she fell into this dark, panic-stricken decline.)

On the other hand, it still is a beautiful shirt. No one seeing her in that shirt would imagine her to be a woman who would fling herself insanely, sexually upon her stepfather. Former stepfather. Whoever. Drunkenly. Crazily.

She does not, then, have any idea what to wear to the opening, and for dinner with Calvin Crome. And she sees that packing could take her even longer than the entire afternoon that she has allowed for it. Even longer than the day and a half that remains.

In the meantime the ferocious rainstorm continues, dark and gray, gathering momentum rather than abating. Sage wonders that her small house can withstand it, that she herself can. And what would they ever do, she and her house, in a major earthquake, which is constantly predicted, which could happen any day.

Looking westward from her bedroom window, in the direction of the mountains, the Sierras, Sage thinks of the snow that must be there by now, covering Donner Summit, relentlessly falling all over Lake Tahoe and the far Nevada slopes.

When the phone rings it is hard to hear; Sage cannot instantly identify that sound, above all the pounding, incessant sounds of weather, in her house.

“Hi, sweetheart, it's me. Your old reliable buddy. Old Crome.”

“Oh, Calvin. I can hardly hear you, we're having this rainstorm. Really violent.” Sitting down on her bed, beside the table where the phone is, Sage notes that her heart is beating very hard, and she thinks, He sounds strange, could Calvin be drunk?

“Well, January. We've got a fair amount of snow, but actually I love it. It calms the city down, slows everything. Everything shoddy looks beautiful.”

“I don't like snow very much.”

“Well, pack up your snow boots anyway. It's supposed to last.” And then he says, “I hope you're sitting down? I've got some news that's really pretty amazing.”

“I am sitting down.” And you're going to tell me the show's postponed again, or cancelled forever, Sage thinks, and guess what? I don't even care. As long as I don't have to fly into snow. Fly through storms, thinks Sage.

“—your first sale,” is what Calvin is actually saying. “Really funny, in a way. How it came about. Well, I was there in the gallery, setting things up. Your pieces look fabulous in this space by the way, if I do say so. And suddenly, unannounced, in flounced B. B. Hoover, you know, the big real-estate dame, with her entourage, those creeps. Anyway, she fell in love with your
Family
. Had to have it.”

“Jesus.” Sage feels that she is listening to a story about someone else, about other, quite unknown people. B. B. Hoover, whom you read about in trashy magazines, could have nothing to do with her, with Sage, and her simple though laboriously achieved small pieces.

“Jesus is right,” Calvin goes on. “Jesus Mary
AND
. I even argued with her, I said I hadn't absolutely set the prices yet. A big lie, of course. So she said—she insisted, that's a lady who's never heard NO—Hoover said she'd give me thirty thousand down.
DOWN
. And to let her know the final price. She was a little gassed, or coked or something, but I checked with her bank and the money's quite okay.”

“God.”

“Indeed. The very hand of. So. So far you're about fifteen thou ahead. Want me to wire it to your bank? Unlike other dealers, I'm
prompt. You could upgrade your flight. Make yourself a bit more comfortable. No point going steerage when you don't have to.”

Waiting for Noel in the pricey new Fillmore Street restaurant at which she is taking him to dinner (“No, it's not too early to celebrate, Calvin's convinced me, the money's in the bank”), Sage sees her image reflected in the multi-mirrored room, herself in the green silk shirt. (Why not? she thought, after Calvin's call; it's her best color, jinx or not.) Sage is glad that no one can read her mind as she thinks, I really am beautiful. At last. I really am. My hair, skin, with this color—I look great.

She has ordered a glass of white wine to help her wait, some premonition having warned her that Noel will be late.

But Noel is not late. There he is, just now striding down the aisle of the restaurant, in his old cords. Wearing his work clothes as though they came from Wilkes. And frowning—even from this distance Sage can see his terrific, handsome scowl. His black-Irish scowl.

As Sage thinks, If he doesn't notice at all how I look, if he doesn't say anything, I don't think I can bear it.

Sliding into the booth, still frowning, Noel instantly says, “I don't suppose you saw the afternoon papers.”

Her heart drops, as she thinks that if something really awful had happened, Reagan killed, an earthquake, then of course Noel would not notice her, how she looks. She must not take everything so personally. “No, I didn't,” she tells him.

“Well, it's not good news.” To the waiter who has just delivered Sage's wine Noel says, “Do you think I could have one too?” His voice is unnaturally challenging, meanly ironic, a mood Sage knows.

“Whatever's happened?” she asks him.

“Well—” And now Noel does seem to see her. “That a new blouse? It looks great. And—hey!—congratulations.” But before Sage can respond to any of that he frowns again. “More news about Buck Fister,” he tells her.

“Who?”

“Jesus, Sage, don't you read? You're supposed to be the big intellectual
in our group. The papers have been full of nothing else, don't you think about anything out in the world?” And then, in one of his familiar but still startling reversals, he leans to kiss her. “Sorry,” he says. “I'm a little upset.”

“Well, I guess I do sort of remember. He's someone in real estate?”

Noel laughs, shortly, angrily. “Ostensibly. Turns out his real shtick was hookers. Call girls. Hustling sex.”

“Well. But—” But what on earth can this have to do with us? Sage would like to ask this, although even as she phrases the question she knows that it does indeed have something to do with them. Something terrible.

“This afternoon it said where some reporter'd got hold of one of his notebooks. Names and addresses of friends of his. Roland Gallo, that's the most conspicuous name.” A name that by tacit agreement has not been mentioned between Sage and Noel, not ever, so that now Sage feels its force, even as she wonders: But so what? Roland has some sleazy friends, he always has, so what?

It is very much on her mind that so far Noel has said nothing, really, about her sale, beyond those vague congratulations. Isn't that what they are doing tonight, supposedly celebrating? “How do you feel about this restaurant?” she now asks, by way of exploring his mood.

“Well—” He lifts his head to look around, and Sage sees that his eyes are not quite focussed; he looks feral, an animal trapped in that room. “Expensive restaurants all look alike these days,” he then says, in the soft, controlled voice (so contradicting his look) that Sage knows is dangerous.

“That's interesting, of course you're absolutely right,” she babbles. “You could close your eyes and open them in another place, and the food too, I really don't know why anyone goes anywhere these days.” Running down, she stops talking and looks at him, sees that he is staring distractedly around the room, as though at any moment he might rush out into the street. He looks trapped, threatened, desperate.

When at last he speaks to Sage, Noel's voice is a whisper, barely audible above the restaurant noise. “Jill was in the book too,” he tells her. “Jill was on his list.”

In the stupefied way of someone repeating bad news, Sage repeats her half-sister's name. “Jill,” she says, unemphatically.

“Jill McAndrew. Young corporation lawyer. Your sister,” Noel confirms.

Your sister Jill is in trouble.

That is Noel's audible, intended message, but Sage hears his true declaration as loudly as though he had shouted it. He has said, I'm in love with Jill, I've been fucking Jill, I only care about Jill.

That was absolutely in Noel's voice, but Sage is only allowed to respond to his actual words. She says, “That's too bad, poor Jill. But she doesn't necessarily know him very well, do you think? I mean, Jill knows a lot of people, I'm sure she does.”

As her heart clutches, and she thinks, You lousy rotten prick, my own half-sister, how dare you? how dare she?

Having probably heard all or almost all of what she did not say, Noel glares across the table. “You bitch. Cunt. You don't even care about your sister's reputation.”

“But.” Have her heart's valves closed? She feels that. “But it just said her name was in the notebook, didn't you say? It could just mean—”

“You don't care. Your sister's name is implicated in a call-girl ring and you're only thinking about your fucking art show, your trips to New York. Your money from some alcoholic real-estate broad.”

“But Noel—”

Having always foreseen doom, Sage has always known that one day Noel would get up and leave her. Just walk out.

Which now he does.

With a quick flashed look of total defiance, defiance both of Sage and of the room at large (some people of course have begun to turn and listen), Noel stands up, throws his napkin on the table. He turns and rushes toward the door.

But Sage cannot let him go, she will die if he goes.

Throwing money down on the table, too much money but no matter, Sage runs out after Noel, out to the sidewalk in the rain, just reaching him there.

“Noel, you can't—don't—”

“Crazy bitch—”

She is clinging to him fiercely, as though the pressure, the urgency of her body could stop him—and knowing as she does this how appalling, how infantile, hysterical and utterly futile is her gesture. But still she can't let him go.

Noel is much stronger, and even more charged with purpose than Sage is. He pulls her hands off and then, because she still presses against him, he pushes at her body, and then he leaps aside, away from her, as she falls back against a building, then slips down on the rainy, skiddy sidewalk.