Caroline's Daughters

by Alice Adams

  But it is Caroline, who tells her, “Darling, I am sorry to call so very late. But the head doctor just got here, finally, and I did think you’d want to know. He’s really doing all right, the doctor says. He’ll have to stay here in Presbyterian for a while, but he’s really going to be okay. I think.”

  Thirteen

  Unable to throw out the fall harvest from her deck, the dozens of too-full rose blossoms that must be clipped from the potted bushes to make room for more, Caroline instead floats all those stemless flowers, those masses of yellow, white, pale pink and lavender, in a large blue shallow Chinese bowl. How lovely they are, she thinks, stepping back to admire the luxuriance of bloom, of satin petals, of scent. Leaning down, she brushes her face against the cool petals, and sighs. They’ll be gone by tomorrow, she knows that, or further gone than they indeed are now, but in the meantime how very beautiful they are. She has placed the bowl on a table, against the French windows that lead out to the deck, and now, crossing her kitchen, she looks back at her arrangement, and sees with pleasure the floral profusion, the waves of flowers.

  She wishes she could take them to Ralph, at Presbyterian, but they would not survive even that four-block trip, Caroline knows that.

  Ralph is not doing very well. While still in the hospital he has had two more mild strokes (and how can a stroke be mild? Caroline wonders). The doctors have been guarded; there is now a group of them, all hovering and circling. Like vultures, Caroline tends to think. They do not, they tell Caroline, try to predict the extent of the damage. (Amazing how little doctors turn out to know; she thinks that with some bitterness. For all their airs.)

  But damaged he is, Caroline is certain of that. Even now he is vague, and weak. He will come home damaged, not the person she is used to.

  Damaged, or dead.

  And at times, with great guilt, Caroline thinks that dead might indeed be better. How can she not think that?

  But as though she had a choice, any choice whatsoever. As though Ralph did.

  “Mother, those roses. So like you, I could see that bowl of blossoms anywhere and know it was yours.” Liza is the most effusive of Caroline’s daughters, she is cheering to have about. And today she has come over without any children; good Saul on his days off takes the kids on outings, even the baby. “I find them infinitely more interesting than golf,” is his mild joke, presumably at the expense of most of his colleagues, including his father-in-law, Dr. James McAndrew.

  “I was wishing Ralph could see them—the roses, I mean—but then I remembered he’s not actually mad for flowers,” Caroline tells her daughter. “It’s something he tolerates in me. Some English mania, he thinks.”

  “We’ve both married very nice men,” is Liza’s comment.

  “Well, on the whole, yes, I do think so,” her mother agrees, even as she wonders: is the Liza-Saul marriage as good as it looks? can it be? She is remembering herself at Liza’s age, looking rather as Liza does now, somewhat overweight and underdressed (by doctors’ wives’ standards). Married to Jim McAndrew. A nice young fairly appropriate doctor’s wife, who spent most Tuesday afternoons in motels, with a lively succession of lovers. (Tuesdays, the one day she had help and could leave.) Those afternoons were what got me through those long years, though, she has thought, through the rest of the days with those four little girls, and the nights with Jim, the bad sex or none at all. Until she met Ralph, who insisted on ending both the marriage and the parade of lovers, of which he was only dimly aware.

  “Does it strike you that all your daughters are acting rather odd lately?” now asks Liza, somewhat surprisingly: she is given to gossip (thank God, they all are) but is usually more precise in her observations. Caroline has supposed that Liza’s form of gossip is in some way connected to her literary aspirations: Liza “gathers material.”

  “Well, maybe,” Caroline tells Liza. “Maybe. I haven’t given them much real thought, except Sage. She’s off next week, you know. New York.”

  “Yes. Oh dear. I think Dad’s really worried about her.”

  Caroline sighs, and frowns, as she tends always to do over the intense, continuing connection between Sage and her stepfather. Slightly unnatural, it seems to Caroline. He is not even her stepfather any more, or so Caroline would prefer to think. Ralph is Sage’s stepfather now.

  Thinking all that, she voices some of it to Liza, as she has not quite done before. “So odd, Sage and Jim,” she tentatively says. “I don’t quite understand it. One would think they had rather little in common.”

  “It is a little weird,” agrees Liza. And then she asks, “If they became lovers would that be incest, do you think?”

  “Liza! Honestly.” In a very nervous way Caroline laughs.

  “Well, it does suggest itself as a possibility? I wonder if I’d be jealous. I guess I would. I mean, my own father. Saul would certainly expect me to be jealous, and God knows what another shrink would think.”

  “I’d feel very strange about it myself,” Caroline admits, “very, very strange.”

  “Well, we’re not likely to know about it if they do, so I guess we’re safe.”

  Imagining (hoping) that to be the end of a preposterous conversation, Caroline sighs. “I really should get some sort of cleaning help,” she remarks. “I get so behind.”

  “Mother, it’s perfectly okay and you know it.” Untidiness is a quality shared by Liza and her mother, and one that each appreciates in the other—so unnecessary, the fuss that most people go through, they say to each other.

  “Sage will always be faithful to Noel, though, I’m sure of that,” next observes Liza. “Have you noticed that women whose husbands play around are always faithful as hell, themselves? It’s so awful, and I know it’s true. It’s as though an unfaithful husband paralyzes them.”

  “Well, I have noticed, and it is sort of awful, as you say. It’s true of men, though, too, I mean they’re faithful to unfaithful wives.” Caroline of course is thinking of herself and faithful Jim McAndrew. “But I don’t think Noel is actually as you say playing around, do you?”

  “Actually I do,” Liza tells her mother. “I didn’t use to, I thought he just had that look. Mr. Available. He’s a flirt, he really is. But he and Sage came by a couple of days ago, she had the kids’ birthday presents, she’s so great about that, and—I don’t know, I could swear Noel’s up to something.”

  “Really.” I am so convinced by my daughters, thinks Caroline. They could tell me anything, especially this most talkative, most informative daughter.

  “He’s almost too affectionate, and at the same time rather impatient with Sage,” Liza pursues. “Do you know what I mean?”

  “Well, I think I do.” That was a fair description of her own behavior with Jim a great deal of the time, thinks Caroline. The guilty affection, the impatience to be off with a lover. She knows very well just what Liza is describing.

  “His timing is great, isn’t it,” Liza comments. “Just when Sage is really up. Well, maybe she’ll be a big success and get up the nerve to dump him.” Liza’s smile, though, indicates that she does not believe this will be the case, not really.

  “Let’s just pray for her success, whatever.” Is Sage so in need of our prayers? Caroline wonders.

  “Oh, absolutely. But I still think Noel was mostly a reaction to Roland Gallo, don’t you? Part of her recovery, don’t you think?”

  “I guess. Roland Gallo—” In a musing way Caroline finds herself repeating the name, and finds too within herself a shocking thought: if Ralph should die, went that thought, she, Caroline, could have some sort of an affair with Roland Gallo, maybe. How appalling, though! How dreadful the very process of her mind, and her heart. How could she!

  I very well could, Caroline then answers herself. I damn well could have such an improbable fantasy, for that’s all it is, and I must not blame myself.

  “Roland Gallo’s very sexy, don’t you think?” is Liza’s (possibly clairvoyant?) remark. “The old shit.”

  �
��I’m sure he thinks of himself as very young,” Caroline tells her daughter, as she also thinks, Much too young for me, I’m sure he would think that. And she silently echoes Liza, The old shit indeed.

  Partly to change the subject Caroline asks, “Are you managing any time for yourself these days?”

  This means, Are you writing? How’s it going?—which Caroline is much too delicately tactful, too discreet to ask directly. Always a non-intrusive mother, Caroline is perhaps most cautious, at least in this area of work, with this particular daughter, who most reminds her of herself. She knows that Liza spends a lot of time—that is, what time she can spend—with notebooks, journals, with what amounts to notes for being a writer. Which she herself had very often thought of doing, and not done. And Caroline has even wondered, Suppose Liza actually manages to pull it off, the successful sexy marriage and the nice kids, and some sort of literary success? How would I feel about that, actually? Caroline asks herself. Delighted, terrifically pleased (of course she would be all that) but at the same time more than a little envious; she can feel a little of the envy just thinking in this way.

  “Oh, when I can,” Liza says, in answer to her mother’s question.

  Which Caroline knows to mean, Oh God, how I wish I could find more time. How (at times) I wish I had fewer or maybe even no children.

  “I am getting strange strong voices from both my younger sisters, though,” Liza then says to her mother. “I don’t know, I think they’re both up to something.”

  “Oh?” Despite this sound of dubiousness, Caroline entirely trusts the instincts of Liza, and Liza’s extreme sensitivity to “vibes,” as she trusts her own instincts, her sensitivity. “You think they both have new lovers?” Caroline is quite sure that that is what Liza did mean.

  “Well, yes. Guys they both are making a point of not talking about. Probably not even to each other. I get a sense of something really furtive. From both of them.”

  “You could be absolutely right. It’s odd how they seem to act more or less in concert, don’t they.”

  “Yes. Do you think it’s all those early-morning phone calls? They sort of start off their days in the same direction?”

  “I suppose, and then they’re both so rich and successful. In more or less the same ways.” Caroline sighs. “My yuppie twins. You know, I worry that something terrible could hit them both at once.”

  Very interested, leaning toward her mother, Liza’s gray-blue eyes (Jim McAndrew’s eyes) are wide. She looks so young, Caroline thinks, younger even than Jill and Fiona, who both are much too thin. Liza on this pleasantly warm October afternoon is wearing faded blue denim, a shirt and skirt. Not stylish in the least, Caroline admits, but very becoming. Liza looks extremely pretty. And rested, and well.

  “Like, they both get pregnant the same afternoon, in separate motels?” Liza laughs.

  “That’s not quite what I had in mind. I was thinking of something more public than pregnancy. Some financial disaster, I guess I meant.” Saying this, Caroline at the same time wonders, Just what made Liza think of motel afternoons, instead of night—a more licit time for conception, generally?

  “Well, actually we could all be financially ruined, couldn’t we. The way things are going. Though for Saul and me not such a very big change. God, how can we stay so broke.”

  “Well, us too.”

  When the phone rings just then Caroline jumps, as she has for the past few days. Ever since Ralph’s hospitalization, that awful afternoon when he came home from lunch with Portia. So ill.

  On answering, though, she hears her son-in-law’s deep pleasant voice, but sounding upset. “Dear Saul, of course she’s here,” Caroline tells him. As she thinks, And thank God she is, and not off in some motel. “Just a minute,” she says to Saul.

  Listening to Liza’s soothing, affectionate voice on the phone, Caroline then thinks, We haven’t talked about Ralph at all. Is that strange?

  “I guess I have to go.” Returning from the phone, Liza twists her mouth in an apologetic smile.

  “Chaos at home?”

  “Chaos. Utter.” And Liza adds, “Well, no one’s perfect. Not even good Saul.”

  Walking together toward the front door, the two women are momentarily stopped by a rhythmic sound of chanting from outside on the street. They look at each other: what?

  Opening the front door, they see, just passing Caroline’s house, a tall thin tattered woman, actually gaunt, her no-colored hair as ragged, unkempt as her rusty clothes. Bent forward, as though there were wind. Carrying nothing. A bag lady with no bags. Slowly walking past. Chanting.

  “Three hundred sixty-five. Days a week. Three hundred. Sixty-five. Do you know? Fire comes from dung. From shit. SHIT, SHIT.”

  Once in the course of passing by she has glanced up toward the two women in the doorway, her strange light-yellow eyes meeting Caroline’s level blue-green eyes. And in that instant Caroline has thought, I know her. From somewhere. I’m sure I do.

  “You never know what to do, do you?” is Liza’s comment.

  “No—”

  “There’s always the impulse to take them in. You know, at least one person.”

  Caroline, having just had precisely that thought, smiles at her daughter, helplessly. “So curious, really,” she says. “I know her. From somewhere.”

  “Well, the way things are going you certainly could have. She too could have lived in Pacific Heights.”

  “I know. I think about that.”

  Caroline then begins to be haunted by that woman. Her eyes. Her strange chant. And the idea persists that this is someone whom in some context or other she actually knew. Not well, or very likely she could place her eventually; Caroline does not tend to forget people, only facts. And somehow, she is sure, she did know that woman.

  In his room at Presbyterian Hospital, Ralph speaks almost not at all. Lying there, his extended arms attached to tubes, an incredibly elaborate monitoring screen mounted high above him, he acknowledged Caroline’s presence with a look in her direction.

  And so she talks. And talks, and talks.

  “Liza came by today. Without the babies. Such a treat, really for both of us. She looks beautiful, I think. Of course she could do a little more about herself, the other girls say that, but, then, so could I. Always.”

  Realizing that she is talking to herself—and so boringly! dear heaven—Caroline comes to a halt, and looks out the window.

  The hazy October day is coming to its golden close, as far out on the Pacific the sun sinks down, a sightless dazzle along the distant horizon. As, within the immediate hospital world, the noisy bustle of visiting hours, the footsteps, hurrying or slow along the corridor, the metallic creak of trundled carts, of IV stands laboriously pushed along. All those sounds now mingle in some dreadful and menacing disharmony.

  On the other hand, I might just as well keep on talking, thinks Caroline. At least I drown out all that.

  “Liza seems worried about her sisters, though,” she tells the possibly not listening Ralph.

  “I hope not me?” asks another voice from the just-opened door.

  Startled, then delighted, Caroline has turned to see her youngest daughter, tall Portia, in the doorway, her smile hesitant and shy, even as she goes over to kiss her father, who himself smiles for the first time that day.

  Portia then perches gingerly on the foot of the bed, avoiding the large double lump that indicates Ralph’s feet. And she turns to her mother. “Liza’s worried?”

  “Oh, not really. Besides, I think people like to worry over each other, don’t you? It makes them feel superior.” And especially my daughters, Caroline thinks but does not say. How they all cluck over each other! “She mentioned Fiona and Jill,” Caroline tells Portia. “And Sage. Not you.” She smiles.

  Some shade seems to cross Portia’s face as she says, “Well. Jill.” And she stops, regarding her mother as though asking for permission to say more.

  “I haven’t seen Jill for a while. Or Fiona. Have
you?” Caroline adds, “Of course they call a lot.”

  “No, really not,” Portia answers her mother. She still looks troubled and questioning. But then she brightens. “Sage leaves next week?”

  “Yes.”

  Some sound then comes from Ralph, whom in a way both Caroline and Portia have forgotten (as hospital visitors tend to do; so much easier to talk to each other than to the patient). In a terrible, remote, hollow voice Ralph says, “When I’m home, pills always on the table.”

  Instantly grasping this frightful, cryptic but to her absolutely clear message (by “pills” Ralph means the assuredly lethal dose that they have always promised to make available to each other), Caroline hesitates for just one instant before she tells him, “Yes, darling, of course.” As though he had asked for tea, or a special cookie.

  She looks then at Portia and decides, or hopes, that Portia has not understood.

  And she goes on talking. “This morning in front of the house there was this quite frightening woman. Poor thing. Chanting something. Something about three hundred sixty-five days a week. I just thought, She must have had some really awful job, don’t you think? Or just an awful life. And some more about fire coming from dung. But is that at all true, Ralph darling? People do burn dung somewhere, don’t they? Or they used to?”

  But Ralph’s eyes are closed, and his breath is deep and hoarse. Portia is gazing sadly at her father.

  “The strange thing is,” says Caroline to no one, “I’m sure I know her.”

  “I think he’s asleep,” says Portia.

  Fourteen

  The golden, brilliant, vibrant October weather goes on and on, that year. Drought is mentioned, but in the lovely warm blue air it is hard to worry. Clear pure sunlight brightens the pastel-painted architecture; sharp-edged shadows darken Victorian cornices, descending eaves. In the city parks, especially the better-tended ones of the expensive neighborhoods, Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Pacific Heights, the grass and beds of flowers have a midsummer look.