by Alice Adams
He pauses, looking away. “I don’t think so, no. I’ve met another sister, Fiona, and come to think of it also your mother.”
“We must seem an odd group.”
“I suppose.” But he seems not to want to consider Sage’s family—and returns to his own. “My wife, well, she’s also a worry to me. I’m a terrible husband, I know that.”
Sage laughs. “Are you saying I should be glad we didn’t get married?”
“Well, now that you say so. But, my very dear Sage, are we really going to have that sort of conversation? Must we? I should warn you, I’m much too old to be what people call open. I’m a closed Sicilian book.”
Sage laughs again, appreciating him almost against her will. “I just wanted to see you,” she tells him. “I thought it would be fun to ask you to lunch. To see you again. And that some of the things I worry about might come clearer.”
He spreads his hands, palms upward, in a very Latin gesture. “I’m all yours,” he tells her.
“Well, actually it was nice of you to come.” Looking across at those somewhat stagy, dark, dark eyes, at that arrogant nose and shining, domed bald head, Sage wonders why she is feeling such a rush of affection for this man, whom she has always thought of as deeply injurious. As bad. At this moment she simply likes him very much, strange as it is that she should. She tells him, “I did feel terrible about your not marrying me, but maybe you were right, I mean it wouldn’t have been a good idea for either of us.”
He acknowledges this with a small gesture of his head, then says, “I’m sure marrying Joanne was a very bad thing to do to her.”
There is a small pause before Sage asks him, “How about running for mayor? Will you, still?”
At that his whole face shifts, and seems to sag. His eyes droop as Roland says, “No way. It’s out, for every possible reason. First off, I’d lose my shirt, financially, and I wouldn’t win. I had to announce this. It’ll be in the papers later this week, in fact.”
“That’s too bad.”
“What’s really bad is that I would have been a terrific mayor. The power would have brought out my better qualities. Look what happened with Harry Truman, if you’ll pardon the analogy.”
Sage is unable not to smile at this, in part because of the incredible difference in personal styles—plain, uxorious Harry Truman, from Missouri, and flamboyant, faithless Roland, the dashing Sicilian.
“I really had great plans,” he tells her. “I had a plan for the homeless, and even ideas about AIDS.”
“You did?” When she and Roland were lovers, Sage remembers, they never had political conversations, other than his conventional teasing of her Sixties views, her marches and protests. Although what he actually said was, she now remembers, “You people are right, of course, but you don’t have a clue as to how to get things done. Take it from an old pol.” She can hear him saying that.
And now Roland asks her, “Have you been out on the bay lately? Seen all those empty wharves? Just imagine them all turned into good clean living quarters. Dormitories, family condos, all types. And think of the work that would involve. Put people to work making houses for themselves. I really like that.”
“God, Roland, you sound like some kind of commie-pinko radical.”
“Well, maybe I am at heart. You know, I always told you that basically I agreed with what your people were saying. And maybe I’ve even been radicalized a little more by Reagan.”
“I love it.”
“Well, the guy’s such a total old twit, he gives ideology a bad name.”
“That’s what Michael Harrington said.”
“Who? Oh, that socialist.”
“Right.” This conversation is becoming heady stuff, to Sage. First, her queer discovery of liking Roland, liking him, feeling this odd affection. And now this beatific, genuinely socialist vision of his, about which she knows he is absolutely sincere.
But what about the very strange flash she had, when he told her about setting in motion something very bad, regrettable—and she instantly thought of the murder of Buck Fister? Why did she think that? Is everything that she now perceives of Roland, including that message, simply more craziness of her own? Could she be falling in love with Roland all over again? (It would be so like her, she knows, to sexualize almost any strong emotion; she does that repeatedly.)
All those thoughts have been very scary indeed, and in a brisk way she now asks him, “And AIDS?”
“Again, some abandoned buildings converted into AIDS hospitals, and several hospices. Apartment-type places. And more research money, piles and piles. Don’t ask me where all the money’s going to come from.” He grins, very quickly. “No wonder those guys, guys with AIDS, are so mad at the administration. They really got shafted, and they’re dead right about why. It’s because those assholes in Washington think they’re a silly bunch of queers.”
“Which is almost as bad as being a woman, or black.”
“Well, probably worse.” And then he says, “What an odd conversation we seem to be having. This is not quite what you had in mind, I’ll bet.”
“You’re right, but, then, I keep telling you, I didn’t really have anything specific in mind. I wanted to see you, and I must say, you’re a big surprise.”
“May I take it, a not entirely unpleasant surprise?”
“Oh no, in fact—But really, Roland, do I always have to feed your ego?”
“Be nice if someone did.” That was a plaintive old tune, very recognizable to Sage.
“Come on, now,” she tells him. “Just when I’ve been thinking how nice you are.”
They laugh, in mutual surprise.
“And this is a very nice restaurant you’ve brought me to,” Roland tells her, with an appreciative look around at flowers, water-colors of flowers, and palest-pink walls.
The restaurant is in fact to be the eventual successor to Fiona’s, in terms of an extreme if temporary popularity. But Sage is always to remember it as the place in which for the first time, after so many years of passion, then of rage and pain, she began to like Roland Gallo, to see him as an exceptionally complicated, contradictory and humanly flawed person, whom she cares about, in his humanness.
Late that afternoon, after Sage has visited her mother and stayed much longer than she meant to (Caroline seemed a great deal more interested in hearing about lunch with Roland Gallo than Sage would have expected—curiously enough), Sage comes into her own house on Russian Hill to the sound of the phone ringing.
Noel. She is sure it is Noel, it must be. And she is right.
“No, Noel, tonight isn’t good for me. Well, I’m busy. A friend from New York. No, I’m not. No, of course you can’t, you wouldn’t get on at all. Well yes, as a matter of fact, he is. Well, what’s wrong with friends? Noel, please, I have to go now. No. No, I just don’t feel like talking right now. I’m sorry. No, no, I don’t think so. No, I’m sorry. Well, goodby.”
Noel’s insistence that they see each other, tonight, is quite out of character for him—but, then, Sage reflects, he has usually not had to insist, with her. Sage was reminded of Jill and Fiona as tiny children, two- and four-year-olds, who never took no for an answer.
But Noel is not a small child, he is a very spoiled and now very angry strong, adult male. And Sage is frightened. Suddenly really scared.
She considers calling the police, but does not. Asking for protection would make her sound foolish, she believes, a “hysterical woman.” In the midst of a “domestic crisis”—she has been told that cops hate both those categories of trouble, especially in combination.
And is she in fact hysterical? Paranoid, even? Noel has no history of violence, unless you count pushing her down on the sidewalk that night, when she broke her arm. And Sage does not exactly count that, she feels that in some way she provoked it.
In an agitated, quite unfocussed way she walks about her house, in and out of rooms.
Realizing her total lack of direction, she tries to concentrate on something sim
ple, like the choice of a restaurant for dinner that night with Cal. But she is unable to think of a place, no restaurants in that city of thousands of restaurants come to mind. Except, quite crazily, Fiona’s. Which is out of the question. Or is it? Caroline did tell her that Fiona was worried, her regulars were falling off. So maybe—
Sage picks up the phone and taps out the number.
And gets Stevie. “Stevie, how great!” she tells him, very much meaning it. His warm voice has come through to her like a much-needed present. “I’ve missed you,” she says.
Stevie says he has missed her too, they must get together, seriously. And yes, she and Cal can have a nice table at 8:15, and yes, he himself will be there. “This someone important to you?” Stevie asks, a somewhat strange question for him to ask, unusual—but quite okay, Sage thinks.
“Very important,” she tells him, “but maybe not in the way you mean. He’s an art dealer, and he likes my work. He’s gay.”
“Well, I think I can handle that.”
They laugh again, old good friends, and Sage hangs up feeling considerably better, cheered, at the very idea of Stevie.
She still jumps, though, at the sound of her telephone, and she thinks that it must be Noel, again, and considers not answering.
But she does answer, and she hears not Noel but Cal, sounding most unlike himself. He must have eaten something terrible, he tells her, he is not at all well. No, he doesn’t think he needs a doctor, the crisis is over, he’s sure. Rest and hot tea will do the trick, he knows. And he couldn’t be sorrier about tonight—will she be okay?
Reassuring him that she will, she could use some rest herself, Sage on the instant of hanging up wishes that she had insisted on coming around to his hotel to see how he was (ostensibly). The truth is that she does not want to be alone in her house. Does not. She is frightened. Even another phone call from Noel would be more than she could handle, much less all the normal night noises that are very frightening to a person alone, a frightened person.
Various possibilities come to mind. She could after all just go to a hotel by herself, check in for the night: who would know? But that seems a little extreme, an admission of panic. Or, she could call Caroline, and go stay over there. But they just saw each other, Caroline would be alarmed.
Then she remembers that the first thing she should do is call Stevie at the restaurant, to say they won’t be coming—and then she thinks, Why not? I can go by myself, and see Stevie. Stevie in one way or another will surely help.
Twenty-seven
“It must be wonderful for you, having such a, such a voice. You’ll be great at readings and lecturing and just plain talking about your work, all those things writers do. In your own voice. Why, I’d know the sound of your voice anywhere, anywhere at all,” Joanne Gallo quite improbably says to Liza. Out on the grass, at the Julius Kahn Playground.
At first, what most confuses Liza is the fact that her new editor at You, kind, hyper-intelligent Kathy, has in quite a different context said more or less the same: “What comes across most clearly in this story is a fresh, distinctive voice,” wrote Kathy, in that first and memorable letter. Joanne is surely not talking about Liza’s literary voice; she refers of course to the actual voice, the literal sounds of Liza’s speech. But the coincidence seems more than strange.
And since this conversation, if that is what it is (so far, more like a monologue by Joanne), is taking place on a mid-morning, a balmy cirrus-strewn blue April day, Liza thinks it unlikely that Joanne is drunk; this is not a post-lunch or cocktail-hour encounter. (Although Joanne sounds, well, not right.) In any case Liza is less concerned with Joanne’s sobriety than with her own children, who are all wandering off in separate directions, at varying speeds. The baby, a terrific crawler, is on hands and knees, heading for some very attractive yellow weeds that would no doubt make her very sick. Jumping up, Liza moves fast, at the same time saying to Joanne, “Well, thanks.”
“Even on an old tape I’d know your voice right off.” Joanne now speaks in a crooning, private way, addressing only herself. And then she asks, “Do you girls all sound the same, you and your lovely sister Sage?”
Inattentively Liza tells her, “No, I think Sage and Portia just sound like themselves.”
“Sage, what a lovely name. What a name from the past, but simply, absolutely lovely.”
At that moment Liza, who has managed to pick up the baby and tuck her under one arm, sees that the older two are pulling each other’s hair, for no apparent reason. Their faces are red, noses streaming. Rushing over, Liza with her free hand manages to separate them, a not-easy task—as at the same time she has two thoughts: one, this isn’t like her children, there must be something in the air, like pollen; and, two, what on earth is eating Joanne Gallo? whatever is she talking about, all this about voices?
Liza settles back on the grass, with her three children more or less all over her, still sniffling.
“What I can’t figure out is when and where you would go to do it, you and Roland. I just can’t figure that,” sings Joanne Gallo. “When and where, where or when. When to fuck, where to fuck. Some problems!”
“Fuck!” echoes the oldest child, enthusiastically. A mysterious word, it is very powerful, she knows; all the kids at nursery school say it a lot. Her parents say it rarely.
“Joanne, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.” But as she says this Liza’s stomach clutches with guilt, as though she had in fact made love with Roland Gallo. As she has indeed imagined doing, seeing him here in the park, sometimes. Thinking about him and Sage.
“I’ll admit he does give great head, fantastic head, I used to come three or four times, did you?” Now Joanne’s tone is conversational, almost rational.
“Joanne, look, you’ve really got it wrong.”
“Oho! No, no I don’t. Not wrong. I’d know your voice any old where, I heard what you said to him.”
“Joanne, where do you think you heard my voice?”
“On Roland’s tape. He keeps all his phone tapes, it looks like. The one where you talk about fucking in Palermo.”
“Joanne, I have never.”
Joanne is drunk, after all. As she moves closer Liza catches winy breath, sees unfocussed eyes, crazily blue.
Joanne cries, “I’d know your style, I’d know that voice anywhere. I know you! And why do you think he decided not to run for mayor?”
“I—”
“I told him I’d have the tapes played over KPIX!” shouts Joanne. “All of them, all the ones he’s too dumb to throw out. Shit, he’s as stupid as Nixon, and just as vain. And you, you’ve got a pretty filthy tongue in your head. Shit, I thought I was a dirty talker, he complains that I am, even if it used to turn him on. But you, honestly, you—”
By now all three of Liza’s children are shrieking in panic. This is their first view of a raging adult, a grownup out of control, and they find it terrifying.
Preoccupied as she is with their comfort, stretched three ways for hugs and pats and murmurs of love, another part of Liza’s mind still attends to Joanne, and in the midst of all the shouting the obvious answer comes to her: What Joanne must have heard was a tape of Jill talking to Roland Gallo. Or possibly Fiona. For one thing, they both have so-called dirtier mouths than Liza does.
But she cannot say any of that to Joanne, of course not. And when she can speak at all above the subsiding wails of her children she only says, “You know, you’ve got me confused with someone else. I’ve honestly never talked in my life to your husband on the phone. And barely anywhere else.”
“Fucking liar.”
The oldest child, now staring with interest at this more controlled grownup conversation, now takes this up, a new chant. “Fucking liar, fucking liar,” she sings with pleasure, as the second child, with even less real sense of the word than the first, tries to sing along.
“Oh, come on kids, shut up. I don’t like that song,” Liza tells them. And, to Joanne, “I’m sorry, you’re just
wrong. All around.”
Joanne manages to get to her feet, and with a long baleful look at Liza, she starts off across the grass to her own house. Roland Gallo’s house.
Watching her unsteady progress—Joanne is wearing heels, a narrow black skirt—Liza is moved to go and help her along; it is terrible to see another person, a woman, in such dire straits, and when Joanne thinks of it later, presumably sober, how deeply humiliating this will be for her, for poor deluded crazy drunken Joanne.
However, both because of the children and because of Joanne’s very possible response, extreme anger, Liza does not go to her; she stays where she is on the grass, and her lively, busy mind runs over the interesting scenarios, possibilities suggested by Joanne, who has now moved out of sight.
Just suppose, thinks Liza, that as she, Liza, once assumed, Jill had at one time indeed been a call girl: could she have met Roland Gallo (so to speak) in that capacity?
Liza plays with that idea. She envisions Jill in a posh hotel room, lying there waiting in some very fancy nightgown; she envisions the entrance of R.G.—whom Jill of course would instantly recognize from all his pictures in the papers. R.G. the family villain, the demon lover of Sage. What would Jill say—and what would Roland?
Next Liza wonders if she should tell any of this to Saul. This is a tricky problem, which she now ponders in all its complexity, as she gathers up her children and their gear (this gathering is an even trickier problem, both in physics and logistics), as she tries to start off for her house, for their lunch.
But is this information that he should have? Should he be told about a drunk and seriously delusional Joanne, at such an hour of the morning? Liza decides that it could, conceivably, be important, and she decides too that she can easily pass it off as gossip: silly me, you know how writers are, but guess who I saw in the park, and guess what she said?
More or less pulled together, trailing Pampers and toys, Liza and her group at last start up the rutted path by the twisted cypress trees, through an area of dark woods, and now bright spring weeds. Someone, a man, seems camped out there. Liza sees a red blanket, a torn backpack, a dark and grizzled head propped up against a tree. A black man lying there, bearded, in ragged dark clothes. Whom Liza automatically labels A Homeless Person. And she remembers Caroline’s fantasy, the homeless all over the parks, armies of homeless, taking over all the “lovely homes,” reclaiming space for themselves. Reclaiming this last lovely city for their own.