Caroline's Daughters

by Alice Adams

  Walking out on Sacramento Street, heading westward, into the sunlight, Sage is thinking how happy simple sunshine makes her. Probably I should not live in San Francisco, she thinks, with its winter rains and terrible cold windy summer fog. On the other hand, the perpetually sunny places are mostly awful: Florida, Palm Springs, Tucson. And she thinks, If only it could be sunny next week in New York, that would make such a difference. And at the same time she tells herself that it is surely infantile to care so much about weather, to depend on sunny days for feelings of joy and success. Her old shrink would disapprove, but Sage smiles to herself as she thinks this; she smiles tolerantly.

  For at the moment she does feel very successful. Her life at last seems okay. Noel has been busy and apparently happy lately, affectionate if not ardent—and how much ardor should she expect, married now for almost five years? Sage expects too much, she knows that—she must stop. She has certainly observed that when she herself is occupied and focussed on her work, and especially when that work is going well, she gives much less time to her black, obsessive thoughts about Noel: is he seeing someone else, and when and where and who? She puts less pressure on him, and Noel must feel that; they get along much better.

  And now she is going to New York next week, for her show!

  She has just come from seeing her mother and Ralph in the hospital, where Ralph is doing somewhat better. He was mostly asleep while Sage was there but Caroline said, “As well as can be expected. Maybe better. He’s really a tough old party, your second stepfather.” Caroline looked happy.

  Right now Sage is headed out to the Cal-Mart to buy some salmon steaks, terrifically expensive, in a store for the rich (they don’t take food stamps), but so reliably fresh, so good. And Noel has taught her a special salmon sauce, with cucumbers and shallots.

  Sacramento Street, in its Pacific Heights incarnation, remains an indecisive mix of residence and commerce, of dissonant architectural styles: Victorian houses juxtaposed with nondescript two-story boxlike store fronts, or sleazy new stucco condominiums, miserably designed. Here and there the Victorian houses have been converted into offices or restaurants or stores, all with quite varying degrees of success.

  Observing all this, Sage remembers her stepfather, Jim, talking about Sacramento Street. (Stepfather: she does not actually think of Jim as that, she does not think of him in any defined or named relationship. Jim for her is an idea of trust and love, a wave of warmth in her soul; thoughts of Jim affect her as sunshine does.) Jim used to predict that Sacramento Street would become another Union Street, all tarted up for tourists, with fly-by-night restaurants (Sage smiles at Jim’s somewhat quaint turns of phrase). But Jim was more or less wrong, Sage decides, recalling at the same time that she has not seen or even talked to Jim for too long—a week? maybe even a couple of weeks. But it doesn’t seem to matter, really, how often they see each other, or if they don’t; whenever they do get together, everything is right.

  What a good idea not to bring her car today, Sage decides. She walked from her own house on Russian Hill all the way to Presbyterian, where she met Caroline, and now, after picking up the salmon, she can take a bus home.

  Just then she is assailed by the sight of a new boutique, a small shop in the basement of a large Victorian house, one she has not seen before but that is already, as a large sign proclaims, GOING OUT OF BUSINESS. CLOSING SALE.

  Smiling to herself, quite sure that she will find something cheap and beautiful to wear to New York, Sage goes inside.

  And there it is, a green silk shirt that has been twice marked down. Still expensive but closer to her range. And very beautiful, with tiny pleats and nice small covered buttons. Meant for her, she thinks.

  In the dressing room, in green silk, confronted with herself in all those mirrors, what Sage feels is—attractive. Confident. Rather sexy. Almost beautiful? It is hard for her to go so far, but maybe. She imagines herself at the gallery opening with the so far unmet Calvin, then probably dinner somewhere with Calvin later on. Some nice small Village place, most likely.

  Sage has not given much thought to the nature of her Calvin-fantasies. He is at this point a warm deep enthusiastic male voice on the telephone. Fun to talk to, jokey. He always calls her “sweetheart,” which is a nice old-fashioned touch, she thinks. However, there in the heavily carpeted, mirrored cubicle, swathed in silk (the shirt is very long), Sage is quite suddenly aware of the erotic content of all that, all those fantasies concerning Calvin Crome.

  Actually, though, why not? Why not have a little friendly fooling around in New York? A little evening-up of scores with Noel, who certainly has from time to time “seen” other women, maybe even now he is seeing someone. And all the better that Noel will never know what she does in New York. Sage does not want to punish him, really, just to even things up, a little.

  In the Cal-Mart, clutching the new package that contains her beautiful shirt, Sage buys the salmon—so fresh, that dark-pink flesh of fish, so sensual. She then buys the cucumbers, and shallots. Some nice lettuces for salad, and frozen-yogurt custard, Noel’s favorite, for dessert.

  As she leaves the store it occurs to her that she is only a few blocks from Jim’s; she can call him and come by for just a minute, a nice small visit.

  First, though, she should call Noel, to see if a slightly later dinner is okay. (This is not necessary, but something tells her to call him. Tells her in fact that it would be all right to call him now. It is sometimes not all right.)

  “Well, hi there, babe. Is this a gorgeous day?” is Noel’s opening sally. And then, “Salmon steaks, fantastic. But look, they’ll be just as great tomorrow, don’t you think? I have this goddam meeting. Some new clients on Telegraph Hill. In fact you just caught me, I could be late. Oh, and your new pal Calvin called. Said to call him.”

  The whole point of Cal-Mart salmon steaks is their pristine freshness. Sage does not have to say this to Noel, he knows it as well as she does.

  But this is only a minor setback, really, isn’t it? The October afternoon that she views from the open phone booth on California Street is still extremely beautiful, the blue of the sky just deepening, a breeze of dusk just very lightly beginning.

  And a phone call from Calvin. Another nice flirty conversation to look forward to.

  “Okay, love,” Sage says to Noel.

  And then she dials Calvin’s number, which luckily by now she knows by heart.

  “So funny,” she tells him, having quickly got through. “I’m calling from a phone booth. It’s really beautiful out here. Do you think you’ll ever come out?”

  “Ah, sweetheart, who knows?” Not sounding quite as up as usual, Calvin next tells her, “Things aren’t so great around here, actually. Trips are just about the last thing on my mind.”

  Aware of a quick droop in her own high spirits (she has to work against this dangerous volatility), feeling the slightest chill in her blood, Sage struggles for balance. “We all have those days,” she tells Calvin. “But they pass—you know?—and it’s all okay again.” But how limp that sounded. How dull and unconvincing.

  “Look, sweetheart, I’m telling you. Things are not good. I’m having to make a lot of changes. Very quickly. Don’t ask me what’s going on, it’s stuff I don’t even understand.”

  By now Sage is grasping the receiver so tightly that her hand hurts. Realizing what she is doing, she is still unable to loosen her fingers, as she thinks: I might have known.

  “—postpone until January,” Calvin is saying. “No big difference, really just two or three months. You’ve still got time to change your reservations, right?”

  “But I hate January,” is what Sage ridiculously says.

  From New York, from Calvin she hears a short, not-amused laugh. “Sweetheart, I can’t deal with your superstitions today, okay? You hate January. Jesus. I hate this October.”

  A few minutes later they have said goodby and hung up, and Sage, incredibly, cannot remember the intervening words. After Calvin said he ha
ted October, then what? She cannot remember. She is sure, though, that she did not try to pin him down, did not say, as probably she should have, WHEN in January? Probably should have. She thinks. But can’t remember.

  On the sidewalk near the phone both, where Sage still stands, transfixed, the foot traffic is increasing. Late-afternoon shoppers, or people just out for a stroll, as the air perceptibly begins to cool. Pacific Heights ladies, all dressed up from their lunches, dates with each other in downtown restaurants, at which they drink a little too much wine, and tell secrets. And younger women in running clothes, or leftover summer cottons. People with little kids. And among all these regulars, the legitimate population of this highly respectable neighborhood, are the highly irregular street people, slow and shabby, grossly overweight, or sometimes sickly thin. Neglected, and mostly ignored. Almost invisible.

  Sage watches as a tall, gaunt woman slowly passes the booth, a woman with wild yellow eyes (she is the same woman who passed by Caroline’s house, whom Caroline thinks she knows), who chants—very softly, here on this populous street—“Three hundred sixty-five days a week, three hundred, sixty-five.” Half hearing her, Sage is thinking that she herself could be a street person, so easily. The lines or walls that now separate her from them, from that woman, are so precariously thin, and imperilled. At any moment she too could be out there on the street, and cold. Neglected. She shudders.

  But then, with a jolt, an upward lurch of her heart, Sage thinks of Jim. Jim, just a few short blocks away, out here in Pacific Heights. Jim, whom she was thinking of a few minutes earlier, and all along meant to call. Whom she now imagines as her true direction. Everything that has happened has propelled her toward him, all of this hitherto terrible day. She will not even bother to call him, Jim is meant to be there for her, and surely he will be.

  First, though, she reaches into her billfold, having decided that whatever she touches will be what she gives to that woman. She pulls out a ten—well, good. Passing the woman, who has halted momentarily, gazing out into the traffic, Sage pushes the bill into her hand—rudely? Rudeness was surely not her intention, but the gesture felt wrong, somehow. However, when she looks at the money, maybe the woman will be pleased? Sage can only hope so.

  She has walked a long fast block from the phone booth when something, some very slight lightness, reminds her that a short time ago she had two packages, and now she has only the brown paper bag of groceries.

  After one quick split second of panic she turns back, almost running toward the phone booth (passing the street woman, who has still not opened her hand to look at the money)—panic, although Sage is entirely sure that her box will be there. The blouse that she bought to show Jim.

  And it is there. One more sign that she is on the right track, she finally and absolutely knows what she is about. She picks up the smart store package, along with the groceries, and starts off again, toward Jim.

  How terrible it would have been, though, if she had not remembered for several blocks. Maybe not even until she was at Jim’s door. Suppose she had rushed back for her package through the increasing dark, and got there too late? Someone having taken it from the phone booth—maybe even the tall thin chanting street woman. If she had actually lost the lovely expensive green shirt, all paid for and never worn. Terrifying even to think of, a look down into the abyss. The abyss that for Sage is never very far away. (Where the bag lady lives.)

  But the point is (isn’t it?) that she did remember in time. She has the blouse, and she is on her way to Jim’s. She thought of the abyss, she recognized its presence, but did not fall. She does not have to live on the street.

  Going to New York next week is not important. January will be perfectly okay. Beautiful snow. Very quiet. (Although she does not like snow, actually.)

  Only going to Jim’s and finding him at home is really important.

  Arrived quite breathless at his door, the heavy mitered glass, she pushes the buzzer. And Jim is there, he answers almost at her ring, as though waiting. He buzzes the intercom and Sage calls up, “It’s me, Sage. Can I come up?”

  His hollow voice. “Honey, of course. Come on up.”

  At his door, though, Jim tells her, “The truth is I’ve got this real cold, that’s why I’m home. Had to cancel some patients.” His voice is thick and congested, his long nose red.

  How perfect and fortunate, then, that she should come to see him! “I’ve come to take care of you,” Sage tells him. “I’ve even brought dinner, see?” Reaching for his shoulder, so that tall Jim bends toward her, Sage presses a kiss into his cheek. “I’m not really interested in germs,” she laughs—giddily, she feels. “Let’s just kill them with drinks, okay?”

  A brief laugh from Jim, who then asks, “What would you like?”

  “Could we have martinis? Would that be fun?”

  “Well, sure, why not? I think I have gin. I haven’t had a martini, Lord, it must be fifteen years. Caroline liked them. Sometimes.”

  “Great! And I brought a brand-new blouse to show you!”

  Jim’s bathroom is very bachelorish, all black tile and polished brass. The mirror is a little hard to maneuver, hard to find herself there, but Sage can see that the shirt is actually long enough to be worn as a sort of mini-dress. If she doesn’t put her jeans back on.

  “Oh, pretty short dress!” is Jim’s comment.

  “But it’s beautiful, don’t you think?”

  “It really is. I like green a lot.”

  Perched on his hard white linen sofa, Sage can watch Jim in the kitchen as he goes about making a pitcher of drinks. She sighs to herself, almost tearfully, with love. Her heart is swollen with the incredible, overwhelming, dazzling love that she has always felt for Jim. So much love that everything else is crowded out. Problems with Noel. Her postponed show. She is dizzy with love, before she has even one drink! But at the same time very happy. Happy.

  “Well, here you go. Cheers, honey. This’ll kill us or cure us, right?” Jim raises his glass, which is tilted in her direction.

  “Cheers. Jim. Darling Jim.”

  Jim gives her a mildly questioning look that lasts only a moment. Then he sits down on his largest chair, and smiles. “Nice of you to come by.”

  “This is the best drink I’ve ever had.”

  “Good. Let’s see, you go to New York next week?”

  “Well, actually it’s been postponed for a while. Maybe January. But I’m sure this is better all around. January, much better. I’ll have more time to get stuff together.” Sage feels her own smile to be brilliant, convincing. She can feel the brilliance, the warmth.

  Outside Jim’s apartment’s long windows a darkness that has seemed sudden now descends. Only streetlamps are visible, blurs of yellow, and the occasional slow beams of passing cars. The park across the way would be entirely dark by now, the sole and secret property of whatever and whoever choose to spend their nights there. Dogs, stray cats and smaller animals. Rodents, lizards. And for all anyone knows people are sleeping now out there in the park, in hidden or not-so-hidden corners. Huddled singly or perhaps together. Cold. Afraid.

  “Aren’t you sort of gulping that?” Jim asks.

  “Well, maybe I am. I guess I need another, though, don’t you? And then I’ll make our dinner.”

  “You weren’t kidding about drowning germs, were you. But maybe it will cure this goddam cold. What do doctors know.” And he goes off to make more drinks.

  So in love! All her life she has been in love with Jim, Sage now sees this very clearly, and her old shrink used to hint as much, now that Sage thinks of it—in her murky Viennese way. Roland, Noel—they were nothing, really.

  And Jim will make everything all right. He always has.

  “You could sit here,” she tells him. She pats the sofa, and smiles upward.

  “And give you my cold for sure? I’ll try not to.” But he takes that seat.

  Sage puts down her drink, and in another minute they are kissing, wildly kissing. Opened mouths, wet
. Tongues. Hands frantic on each other’s backs.

  Jim’s hands grasp at her waist, then one hand reaches up her thigh, beneath the short silk, touching the top of her panty hose.

  But then, as though her flesh had burned him, Jim cries out, “Jesus Christ! Sage! Crazy!”

  His hand withdrawn as though from fire, he has moved back, away from her, and now he tries very hard to laugh. Chokes, tries again, and coughs. At last he gets out a laugh. “Drunk! I’m really drunk, have to stay off martinis, pure poison!” With the back of his other hand, not the one that touched her, he wipes at his mouth.

  She cries out, “Jim, I love you! No one else. Always—” But her heart is leaden, weighing her down.

  Jim stands up, beyond her grasp. “Honey, I love you too. But the truth is I feel really lousy. I’m sick. I’m going to call you a cab, while you get dressed.”

  Automatically, almost, Sage bows her head down, down nearly to her knees; the classic pose of a scorned, grieved woman.

  But also a woman who is about to be very sick. Who will vomit.

  She jumps up, rushes to the bathroom, barely makes it, before leaning into the bright-black bowl and emptying herself of everything. Of bitter bile. Of nothing.

  In the cab, Sage forces herself to sit rigidly upright, resisting the impulse to hurl herself to the floor. To lie there, sick and hidden. As everything flashes by, in the dark. Lights, cars, stores. Up hills, down hills. Toward home. Russian Hill. And Noel.

  But I don’t have any money.

  That rational, true sentence prints itself across Sage’s mind, along with a clear and reasonable memory: as she checked out at the Cal-Mart she noted only one bill, a ten, and a little change left. Pretty close, she remembers thinking that, pretty close, and remembers too the self-congratulatory note of the phrase, of that distant moment. A golden time, afternoon. And now, now she is hurtling along in a cab, she has given that last ten to a bag lady who seemed not even to want it, and Sage has no money to pay.

  Pulling at her bag, a drawstring sack which is hard to open, Sage examines her billfold again and finds—yes, two singles that she somehow didn’t see before. And in her change purse a couple of quarters, dimes, some pennies.