by Alice Adams
Of course one of the problems is that all this stuff going on around her is pretty arousing. And so there she is, turned on and totally frustrated. Cross. She feels very cross, most of the time. A classic case. Maybe she should see Sage’s old shrink?
Even Stevie’s flower arrangements look sexy, Fiona now observes. Beds of moss with towering, spiky pink things rising upwards. What’s with Stevie, anyway? With everyone?
Walking through her rooms, now crowded and lively, everyone grinning and eating and drinking, eating and simultaneously talking food, and talking wine as they drink, Fiona inwardly snarls and she thinks, The silly jerks.
She wonders if a health spa might do it for her, The Golden Door or that other sort of Zen place that’s more strict, where you get bone thin. In Mexico, she thinks.
Or, there’s always her handy vibrator. Which works, God knows it works, right off. But it’s still a little depressing.
Oh shit, Fiona thinks. Maybe I’m just tired. Well, early to bed. Some treat.
She must, though, get through at least another hour of greetings. The stupidest possible chattering with friends and non-friends, friends of friends. She does all that, managing at the same time to think of her bed, her nice private bed, and her book; she has a good new book to read, a history of Venice that her stepfather, Ralph, just gave her. Fiona and Ralph have similar taste in reading matter, both preferring fact to fiction.
“I’m heading up,” Fiona tells Stevie at last. “See you tomorrow.” And she goes outside as though leaving the premises (as she does every night), and slips around the corner to her own private, secret door.
A dark wind has come up, and Fiona glances briefly at the sweep of clouds. She shivers and inserts her key. Which as always sticks.
“Let me help you.”
Turning—had she meant to cry out? to scream?—Fiona sees Roland Gallo. Of course, it would have to be. His bald head shines in the streetlight, and Fiona sees the large bright whites of his eyes. And she thinks, I still could scream—but she does not.
With one hand he takes the key and turns it easily in the lock, as with the other he takes Fiona. He leads, guides, propels her up the stairs. To her own apartment. As she half resists, pushing at him, stumbling a little.
At the top of the stairs he turns her around to face him, and then, gently pulling her hair back, he begins to kiss her. Stopping once to breathe, to mutter, “Ah, good Christ!” Then more kissing, more violently.
This is what rape is, a voice within Fiona’s mind informs her. Someone you know, even someone who knows you want him. But not so quickly, so easily.
“Roland, no. No.”
“Yes—”
He pushes her down to the bed, always kissing—her mouth, her face, her neck.
As Fiona pushes up against his shoulders with both hands, twists her face from his—and feels flooded with a violent, crazy heat.
With a slow and curiously respectful motion, Roland reaches beneath her dress, reaches up silk thighs. “Ah Christ,” he breathes. “The most beautiful—let me touch—”
Eleven
“Does it count as rape if you come?”
Early this morning Jill heard that startling question from her answering machine, in her sister Fiona’s voice. That crazy question, and then Fiona’s deep familiar sexy laugh. A laugh that sounds, Jill knows, very much like her own. As do their voices. Different as in other ways they are, all three of the McAndrew daughters sound very much alike. And unlike both Sage and Portia. Sage’s voice is rather high, at times strangely childish, and Portia’s by contrast is deep, a little hoarse.
But. “Does it count as rape if you come?” Fiona asked that, and left the words on Jill’s machine. So odd. They don’t talk about sex in that way, for one thing. The word “come” has never been used in that sense before, in any of their conversations. And “rape”? What on earth is Fiona talking about? Did Stevie—? Or one of those sexy young waiters? They all look gay, but probably some of them are not.
Thinking all this, and playing, replaying Fiona’s strange question in her mind, at the same time Jill is actually doing I. Magnin’s, as she puts it to herself. A store that she never goes into any more, too old, really retro, but today something called her there, she felt this as she was passing those awful front windows, just now full of opera gowns, the worst. There was something inside especially waiting for her. Jill could always tell that, with stores.
She has already checked out Valentino, St. Laurent and Anne Klein II, nothing for her in any of those places. And just as well, her cash picture is not the greatest right now.
The other women in that store all look so desperate, Jill thinks, and she hates (fears, pities) their desperation. They are all hunting, and all very uncertain. All believing that whatever they buy will make some difference in their lives. As she, Jill, to a certain extent must also believe, else why would she be here, so eagerly checking out racks, so avidly looking over this entire store? Clothes are a total hoax, one more rotten trick on women, Jill believes. Women end up with closets full of unworn, or nearly unworn, and unbecoming clothes. All bought on speculation, so to speak. And Jill hates this willingness in herself and in other women to go along with that gag, to read Vogue and to buy what they are told to. To buy what totally hostile, totally commercial-minded men tell them they should wear.
When she is older and stronger (Jill imagines old age as a time of much-increased moral strength) Jill plans to give all this up, “this” being most of what she is doing now, including her fancy clothes. She will wear jeans and runners, Shetland sweaters and maybe some kind of sheepskin, for cold. She won’t care.
In the meantime, however, now, she sees the most perfect nightgown ever imagined. Conspicuously displayed on a plaster model, right at the entrance to Lingerie. A gown and peignoir of the palest pearl-gray silk, the gown cut low and narrow, the peignoir all foaming lace. Handmade lace; Jill or almost anyone could tell that a block away.
Jill can guess too that it costs about 750, crazy for a nightgown, but of course it’s more than a gown. The peignoir with all that lace could be worn to the opera, and wouldn’t that be good? “Ms. Jill McAndrew, in a gray gown and peignoir—”
It costs not 750, but 995, considerably crazier. But there is no way now not to buy it. Jill is hooked.
And no, she does not want to try it on. She can tell, the size is perfect for her. The petite. She hands over her platinum card.
So annoying, though, the length of these transactions. Jill is allowed too much time to think, and to speculate. Just what does it mean, this purchase? Why an expensive nightgown? She is not going back to the Game with Buck any more, she has less than no intention of doing that. And she isn’t “seeing” anyone.
Does it mean, then, Noel? Is she finally going to say some sort of yes to Noel?
Jill’s mind switches back to Fiona then, and she wonders again, just what did Fiona mean, with that flaky rape question? Who on earth would dare do anything resembling rape, with formidable Fiona? Whatever went on with her last night, however, with whomever, Fiona certainly sounded madly cheerful (as Caroline sometimes puts it).
Noel, though. How he would love her pale-gray silk, her lace. (By now they have talked quite a lot, about almost everything, even clothes.) And her lace is as romantic as a Forties movie, Noel’s favorites. He loves all those old blondes, Carole Lombard, even Ginger Rogers (and so what is he doing with Sage, with her dark, dark hair?). Jill can see the two of them, herself and Noel, as in a Forties musical finale. She with her short sleek hair, her blonde cap perfectly shining above all that floating pale-gray silk. And beautiful Noel, with his shapely mouth, strong perfect nose and all that thick dark Irish hair. And Noel is wearing—she can’t see what Noel is wearing, maybe nothing? lovely naked Noel, dancing and bouncing about? Jill is on the verge of a laugh, a giggle, really, when she remembers, or reminds herself: Noel is your sister’s husband, you silly bitch. Whatever are you thinking?
However, the sill
y excitement, the cheap thrill of thinking of Noel in that way persists, as at last Jill receives her nice brown-striped Magnin’s box, and heads for the elevator.
Stepping back to wait as a group of women emerges from the car, Jill suddenly recognizes—of all people, at that moment—her half-sister. Sage herself, in something green, her hair as thick and dark as Noel’s hair is. (If Sage and Noel had kids they would be Jewish-Irish, Jill quickly thinks, all with wonderful dark ethnic hair, all thick and wild.)
“Sage!”
“Jill!”
The two women brush cheeks, not quite together.
“But whatever—”
“Lingerie! of all places to meet—”
“In that case I’m on the wrong floor,” says Sage.
“Oh, me too. But I just bought this silly nightgown,” Jill tells her. “I can’t think why,” she lies.
“Well. I need something for New York. Maybe I don’t really but I think I do,” says Sage a little wildly.
“I saw a yellow blazer on Four, perfect for you,” Jill tells her, having automatically in that moment put Sage in the yellow coat, which would indeed be great on her.
“Yellow?”
“It’s really big this season, it’s all over. Great on you, with your eyes.”
“On the other hand, I could get something in New York.”
“Well, you could.”
“Fiona said Bergdorf’s was on the corner near my hotel.”
“Well, in that case, you can’t beat Bergdorf’s.” I don’t have time for this conversation, I really can’t stand it, Jill is thinking. And she also thinks, This rotten small town, in New York people don’t run into their half-sisters at Bergdorf’s elevators, do they?
And for once Sage is so chatty. “I guess I’m focussing on what to wear instead of the trip itself,” she tells Jill—who could not be less interested, and who recognizes the good-patient tone that Sage has been using, ever since that shrink she put in time with, that dowdy doctor. After Roland Gallo. Ever since then Sage has been analyzing herself—so boring!
“Well, I’ve got to run,” Jill tells her sister, half-sister. And why not? She does have to run, she’s late.
“Well, great to see you. We’ll talk.”
“Yes, great! Good luck!”
A real downer. Running into Sage at just that moment was surely a lowerer of Jill’s high spirits, a destroyer of all that fantasy froth. For one thing, Sage looked so bloody happy. So up.
Sage should have known what Noel was like when she married him. Jill has this thought some twenty minutes later as she contemplates the blank screen that she faces, a space on which her thoughts on a Midland, Texas, mineralogy quarterly are supposed to appear. Her very own serious, appraising, valuable thoughts.
But instead Jill is remembering the marriage of Sage and Noel, it must be nearly five years ago, up on Mt. Tam. So hippie, so retro-Sixties, the whole ridiculous thing, and everyone was already much too old for that.
High up on Mt. Tamalpais, a grassy plateau overlooking the bay, the headlands and back to the bridge, the distant city. Except that on that bright September afternoon, almost as soon as the wedding party arrived great billows of the purest white fog began to roll in through the Golden Gate, obscuring everything but the space where they were, the small sunny clearing that then seemed suspended in clouds.
Sage in pale-yellow silk. (Yellow is Sage’s best color, has she forgotten?) Noel in a light-brown suit, managing to look like a man who does not wear suits, who is uncomfortable in suits—and a bright-red tie that somewhat later he took off, and he unbuttoned his shirt (the afternoon was hot but not all that hot, everyone thought, and they thought too, Did he have to unbutton it so far down?).
A woman judge performed the ceremony, some old feminist friend of Sage’s, from what Sage insisted on calling the Movement.
A recorder group played Sixties songs. Beatles songs, Stones songs, songs from Aretha or James Brown or Dionne Warwick, or even the Beach Boys. Quite sweet, in a way, making everyone feel just slightly sentimental, a little tearful. Emotional, in a way that makes you hate yourself later on, you know you’ve been had, as by a very bad movie. That was Jill’s reaction, and Fiona’s too; they later said to each other, How dumb, how totally dumb.
Since Sage and Noel’s romance had been fairly brief, about five or six months, this was the first time that several of the wedding guests had ever met Noel, including Jill. (Caroline and Ralph were already off in Lisbon, and had yet to meet him.) And Jill had two very clear, related impressions. The first of course had to do with his extreme handsomeness, that curved mouth, indented chin and all that thick dark hair made him almost too handsome, nearly pretty. And the second very clear idea that she had of Noel, right off, was that he was a really big flirt. A real male tease who would never, never in his heart be married. Jill felt this quite clearly despite the fact that on that day, certainly, Noel was all over Sage with affection, little kisses and small touchings. If you didn’t watch too carefully you might think he was mad for Sage, which is what poor Sage herself must have thought, probably.
Jill, though, had picked up on a certain look, a look that Noel surely meant for her to think was meant for her alone (and recently he has said as much, in one of their increasingly long phone calls: “My wedding day, and I couldn’t take my eyes off you, babe. My new sister. I thought, Oh, right!”). But Jill also knew that his flirty look could have landed on anyone, any woman, that is, whom Noel had sized up as the best-looking, or simply the most available, or the sexiest, maybe, in any group he landed in. At that moment. For Noel was a very momentary person, Jill knew that right off, along with all the rest she knew about him, just seeing him that first time. They were in some ways rather alike, she knew that.
Will Sage ever work that out? Will she ever get a fix on what Noel is really like? Probably not, Jill decides.
In any case, on Noel’s wedding day, Jill just happened to be the best around, the best in sight, for the moment. Liza was pregnant (of course) and Fiona was in one of her imperious, Red Queen moods (Caroline used to tease her when they were teenagers, “Come on, Fi, please don’t Red Queen it with me, I’m tired”). Fiona, cross and bossy, was not at her most attractive. And Portia was much too young, and that day especially nerdy in her pinkish Indian gauze, so Cost Plus. And there was Jill in her bare black dress. No one cares about black at weddings any more, it’s all right to wear black. Jill had assured herself of that, since she wanted to wear that particular great dress—although if Caroline had been around she just might not have.
Anyway, Noel was managing to be wildly affectionate with Sage, while communicating quite another set of messages to Jill. Nothing really sleazy, though, nothing to put her off, make her mad. Noel’s glances at Jill said, rather, Can’t we be friends? And, We two have a certain understanding of how things are, now, don’t we?
And then more looks. And after that, at all the so-called family gatherings, over the next few years, some idle but not really idle conversation.
Very little comes to Jill today on the Midland mineralogy publication, and so she simply gives it a negative report. Which it very likely deserved. Forget it, guys.
Walking home through Chinatown, along jam-packed Grant Avenue, among all the lagging tourists, fat and ugly in their polyester travelling clothes, and the fatter and uglier Chinese, shopping and stopping to talk—and oh, how long and loud they talk, those Chinks, Jill hates them all—she wonders why she walks this way. It’s all so terrible, and getting worse, daily more Chinese, or whoever those people are, from wherever, and every day more tourists. The two major San Francisco industries, Jill with some asperity thinks: tourism, and taking in Orientals.
And then she thinks, Christ, I haven’t fucked anyone for over a month, no wonder I’m turning into such a snarling racist.
She thinks, I hope, I really hope that Buck doesn’t start calling me again with any big Game plans. I might, I really might just say yes. Maybe that’s what m
y new nightgown’s all about. Not Noel. Maybe it’s really a brand-new uniform for the Game, when I always secretly hope for that first John to come back again.
Besides, I could really use a thousand bucks about now. I really could.
If she takes a long, foaming, scented bath, and then tries on her new nightgown, no one will call her. Jill is superstitiously very sure of that. It is her kind of logic.
And so she does just that. She lies back in a tub that is scented with bath oils and bubbles, she lies there admiring her breasts. So nice, small hard pink nipples just peering up through the foam. She loves her breasts.
But she is thinking of sex, distractingly. Of course she is. All the terrific men she’s done it with. And it all seems so long ago, dear God! As though sex were something she just didn’t do any more. As though everything were dangerous now. Which everything is, she thinks, the air we breathe is carcinogenic, probably.
Glancing around her steamy bathroom—but basically a beautiful room, all bright glass and steel and mirrors, she spent a fortune on this bathroom—Jill’s eyes come to rest on the phone, in its cradle on the wall, not far from her head. Just as, jarringly, it rings.
She reaches for the receiver. “Hello?”
“Hello.” It is indeed Buck, which is somehow not at all a surprise.
However, as they pass through the preliminary small talk, not having seen each other or communicated for quite a while, as Jill is thinking, Well, why not? Why not right now, tonight?—in a very slow way she realizes that Buck is not calling about the Game. No John.
For one thing, he is taking far too long to get to the point: if he had some guy whom he wanted her to “meet” there would be some urgency, some haste to get on with it. But no, tonight he runs on and on about nothing at all. New restaurants, stale gossip. As though they were big friends.