Caroline's Daughters

by Alice Adams

  Maybe I’m supposed to live alone? Liza wonders. Maybe that’s better for writers? But how can I, with three children?

  The proprietor of this bar, and at the moment its sole other occupant, is a very thin and sad-faced, very dark young woman, her high-boned face a mask, her clothes dark and drab, anonymous. But despite her Mayan (Olmec? Zapotec?) features, she could easily be a California Mexican woman—and this bar could be in some remote High Sierra hamlet, to which the woman’s family had in some way been displaced, from the valley. The calendar on the wall advertises Pepsi, the radio plays Mantovani.

  “I wish I could have met you at some beach.” Saul apologizes with a gesture that includes the whole of their surroundings: The ugly room, and the speechless sorrows of the woman who served them warm beer. The mud and the dripping trees outside. His crabs.

  “This is like northern California,” Liza tells him.

  Saul brightens. “Quite a lot.” And then, “You don’t know how much I’ve missed you. And the kids. Less them, though.” He smiles.

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “It’s strange,” he says. “I feel more troubled by the people I’ve been treating here, Christ, I mean trying to treat, than I ever did back in the States. And I don’t think it’s only because they’re worse, worse troubles, I mean. But. There I am with some guy whose life could not be less like mine, we’re just barely communicating, I have to say that my Spanish is not as great as I thought it was. And his pain really gets to me. It gets through.” He pauses. “I’m not really making sense, am I.”

  “Sure you are.”

  In fact this is their moment of greatest rapport, so far. Looking at each other across the stained, once-white table cover, Liza and Saul both know this, and they smile, acknowledging the moment. But they are unable to sustain it, and their fragile connection sags.

  “I think I don’t know what I’m talking about.” Saul sighs, and stretches—and reaches to scratch, he can’t not.

  Saul looks more sad than Liza has ever seen him, the lines in his long lean face are deeper and darker, his large dark eyes are downcast. And not quite meeting hers? Liza has this sense of him, of some private, harrowing pain, or guilt—a sense for the moment she suppresses.

  Or, almost suppresses, as she wonders, Can he be so foolish as to feel guilty, still, over having left me more or less alone, while he went off to the wars, so to speak?

  Or, can he possibly be so foolish as to have screwed some nurse, or someone, who gave him crabs? And she thinks, If he did I just pray he doesn’t tell me about it, I can’t stand confessions.

  Nevertheless she says, “I sure hope it wasn’t really some sexy nurse who gave you crabs.”

  Saul scowls. “Of course not.”

  “Well, good.”

  There is a tiny pause, during which Liza, incredulous, receives the clearly intuited information—his whole face is telling her this, and the way he slumps in his chair—that Saul did indeed screw someone. Saul unfaithful, the one thing she never expected. It makes her rattle: “I do wonder about my mother in Italy. She’s staying such a long time.”

  “Isn’t that a good sign? She’s having fun?” Saul indeed looks relieved at the change of subject—as well he might.

  “Oh, I suppose. But in some terrible way everything seems to fall apart when she’s out of town.”

  “We weathered the years in Portugal,” Saul reminds her.

  “Well, did we, really? You and I were too busy having kids to notice. And that’s when Sage went crazy over Roland Gallo, and then married Noel, and God knows what Fiona and Jill were really up to. Or what they’re up to now, for that matter.”

  She simply does not want that sort of confrontation with Saul, Liza believes, at the moment. It would only be damaging, and besides, she could be quite wrong? Her literary imagination running away with itself?

  But maybe later on she will bring it up, and Saul will deny it, and they will have a terrific fight—something they never do, but it might clear the air between them. Now.

  She says, “I’m worried about this black guy I keep seeing in the park. At first I thought he was someone I used to know, but he’s not, he’s just this guy living in the park. I tried to give him some money but he wouldn’t take it, and I brought him some food but I don’t think he ate any.”

  “If he were rich we’d call that a clinical depression. And try Lithium. Or shock.”

  “As it is he’s just a street crazy.”

  “I could see him if you want, when I get home.”

  “Darling, where? He’d never go to your office. You’d see him in the park?”

  “Why not? I need to broaden the scope of my practice. I see that now.”

  On schedule the rain begins again. Torrential green rains, through which all the leaves shimmer brightly, brilliantly, every green leaf, every shade of green, alive and tremulous. Through a cracked open window comes the smell of rain and leaves, and damped-down dust, and dung, and garbage.

  “Well, here we are in Mexico,” Saul says, with a somewhat forced laugh.

  “Okay.” Liza’s throat tightens—is very dry. “Now do you want to tell me how you really got those crabs?”

  Thirty-four

  In Boston it is raining, a dark warm relentless summer rain; it both accelerates and strangles the city’s pace. People and cars move faster and to less effect, and in both cases they end up jammed in crowds, wet and snarling. Tremont Street looks like Hong Kong, or Delhi. In the quieter sections, around Beacon Hill, the dead white blossoms’ huge petals are spattered against the dark and ancient brick of houses and walkways, flattened on sidewalks and narrow winding streets, in the unbelievably warm wet black air.

  Hurrying along those venerable small streets, in her long red plastic raincoat, from California, Fiona imagines that if she should be accepted at the Business School, at Harvard, she would live around here. In one of these very tall narrow brick houses, with a high flight of worn brick stairs leading up to a shiny black door that is flanked by bevelled glass panels. A big bright brass plate, with her name. And inside there would be a series of high white narrow rooms, with tinted lavender windows looking out to a garden.

  To dead flowers smeared on the old dark earth. God, how she really hates Boston!

  On the other hand, she does very much like the Ritz Hotel, where she is staying, and toward which she now is hurrying through the rain. The Ritz is Fiona’s idea of what a hotel really should be. Quietly luxurious. Discreetly comforting.

  Seated somewhat later in the hotel’s dining room, at her corner table with its view of both the Public Gardens and Newbury Street, Fiona has a sudden vision of herself for the next few years or more, living at the Ritz. It has a nice sound to it, for starters:

  “Have you been able to find an apartment yet?”

  “No, actually I didn’t even try. I’m living at the Ritz.”

  Or:

  “Could I take you home? You live around here?”

  “No, actually I’m living at the Ritz.”

  However.

  However, living at the Ritz, even in just a room, not a suite, would cost her three or four thousand a month, Fiona quickly calculates, the price of a hefty mortgage, at least in California, and not all deductible. As Jill would quickly point out, if asked. For that money I could be buying something really ravishing up in Napa, Fiona reminds herself.

  Besides, she doesn’t even like it in Boston, outside of the Ritz.

  Besides, she won’t necessarily even be admitted to the Business School.

  New York is worse, although it isn’t raining there. Unspeakably hot, in the upper 90s, and thick with smells, the multiple odors of dirty people with half their clothes off. And so many street people, everywhere beggars, sick-looking, crazed. She could be in Calcutta.

  Over the phone Jill tells her, “I must say, it’s great out here. These rare summer days. I know it won’t last, but it’s gorgeous.”

  “I remember.”

  “Lik
e some terrific slam-bam love affair, which I must say I wish I were having.”

  “I can’t even think about sex in this filthy city. Or clothes. They’re getting in the fall collections, already, and I can’t even look at them.”

  “Tell yourself that it’s all in a good cause, your being there. Really, Fi, we’ve got to work out a sensible plan for all that money of yours.”

  “We could go into business together.”

  “Doing what? Running a so-called house? That’s not a sensible plan.”

  “Has Caroline called anyone yet?”

  “Not that I know of. But then as usual I haven’t talked to Sage. Or Ports. And Liza’s in Mexico.”

  “Whatever could Caroline be doing in Italy all this time?”

  “Having fun. Getting fat. Getting laid? I guess she could be.”

  “Honestly, Jill.”

  “I know, that’s all I think about. Well, actually it isn’t.” A pause. “I guess it’s up to me to do something about talking to Sage? Effecting a rapprochement?”

  “If you think so. I don’t know. Poor you.”

  “I’m going to AA next week, my first meeting. Everyone says it’s really neat. You see everyone you know.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “Well, maybe they’ll tell me what to do.”

  “I hope.”

  Hanging up, Fiona realizes that talking to her sister has afflicted her with a terrific homesickness. She longs for California passionately, sensually. She has not felt so bereft since the early days of missing Roland Gallo.

  And in New York she does not like her hotel. The Plaza. The lobby is jammed with tacky people in awful Midwestern clothes, and out in front she can’t even get a taxi, it’s so crowded with gray or white stretch limousines. One pink. The only good thing that happens to her in the Plaza is that one night in the Palm Court (of all incredibly tacky places) the waiter brings her the wrong check; he brings her a check for one glass of wine, whereas actually she had two glasses and a lobster salad. Well, screw them, a free drink and a free lobster; big deal, her present from the Plaza.

  She has interviews at Columbia and NYU, Princeton and Pennsylvania. Which on the whole go quite well.

  “It’s hard to tell with New Yorkers, though, they’re so goddam rude,” Fiona tells Jill, on the phone.

  “They are that. But it works out, their rudeness makes them think we’re just terrifically nice. So friendly and open.”

  Fiona laughs. “Right, I could feel them thinking that. Thinking, What a nice friendly open woman, we want her around. My hunch is that I’ll be accepted at least in a couple of places.”

  “You’re probably right. It may be a problem for you. Choosing.”

  “Probably.”

  On her next-to-last night in the Plaza, Fiona is invited to dinner by an old school friend, Pipper Harmon, and her husband, Jack Matting. Pipper, a literary agent, and Jack, a show-biz lawyer, live on upper Park, in the 90s. A wonderful building, Fiona sees that right away. It is huge, a great fortress built around a central courtyard, and guarded by not one but three very tall doormen, gnarled old Irishmen, with brogues, and red noses, and smart gold-trimmed uniforms.

  The apartment too is impressive. Long low rooms, and fireplaces, and halls, and big windows looking down to the street, then back to the courtyard. All done in pale silky fabrics, pinks and sands, pale turquoise; very smart, Fiona recognizes the style.

  The other guests are literary rather than show biz, somewhat to Fiona’s disappointment (too bad her sister Liza the writer is not here, instead of her). There is a famous writer whose name she knows but whom she has not read, and his wife, a doctor; a newspaper-writer couple; and a young actor whose name Fiona has never heard, who is very cute and possibly gay; he is Pipper’s gesture toward inviting “someone for Fiona.”

  All these people seem to know each other very well indeed; happy to see each other, they talk a lot, so that Fiona is barely required to make any social effort, not even to explain where she comes from or why she is there. Until the famous writer at her side asks her if she could possibly be connected to the marvellous San Francisco restaurant of which they have all read so much. And so Fiona explains all that. Everyone seems to find it really impressive that she once owned a trendy restaurant, and they all agree that it was even more clever to sell out when she did. (What a bunch of morons, is what Fiona thinks.)

  Al, the blond and bearded famous writer, tells Fiona that actually he comes to San Francisco from time to time. He went to Stanford, he got his start in the creative-writing program there: “great bunch of guys.” He would like to call her, could they meet for a drink? Well, why not? Fiona tells him, but with as little interest as he himself has actually shown in her.

  Unfortunately, the only really attractive man in the room is her host, Jack Matting, lawyer, husband of Pipper. With his dark wise look of experience, his narrow white face and thin sexy mouth, Jack is a prize, getting more attractive with age and success; quite probably he knows this, and undoubtedly Pipper does. Pipper is or was extremely good-looking too, a small frothy blonde, but she has put on weight, and she drinks too much. And from Jack Fiona is getting serious flirtation signals; for one thing he is extremely discreet about it, which he would not be if he were not serious. But: Do I really need a new romance with a married man? And with an old friend’s husband, for Christ’s sake? That’s almost as bad as Jill with Noel, really, Fiona decides.

  She shares a cab ride home with the cute young actor, who also says that he would like to call her when he comes to San Francisco. Fiona says yes, sure, why not? He is gay, she is sure of that.

  “You mean New York would be okay if you could live on upper Park? Do you have any idea what those places cost?” It is early still in California, when Fiona, late at night, gets back to the Plaza and dials her sister, and finds Jill lively, wide awake.

  “No.” Tired, with a little too much wine, Fiona listens to Jill and feels homesick, for California quite as much as if not more than for her favorite sister.

  “Well,” Jill tells her, “I’ve heard that these days in New York a million means less than nothing, maybe some fixer-upper on the West Side. And a place like that, well, I just don’t think it’s for you, dear Fi.”

  From the terrace behind the house, beneath the pure blue vaulting California sky, the view is all green, of hills and vineyards, a low-lying, flowing meadow, and farther hills, all green, here and there darkened with the shifting, irregular shapes of shadows of clouds. Even the small lake nestled into the valley looks green, a jewel of cool green water, reflecting leaves.

  “Actually the house that goes with this is quite nice too. Come on up and see it.” The real-estate agent, a sharp-eyed, hoarse-voiced Marin County “socialite,” a recovering alcoholic, has noted Fiona’s total bemusement, her dazed look of someone in love, in love with that view. It is a look that Lil, the agent, has seen before, and so she knows that it does not necessarily mean closure.

  “Nice” is not quite the word for that house; even dazzled Fiona, who has already decided to buy it, finds the structure quite peculiar: the downstairs area is conventional enough, a huge glassed-in living room (facing that view), and at one end a galley-dining room. But for going upstairs, to any one of the seven or eight quite sizable bedrooms, there is a separate staircase. Eight staircases, each partially concealed by some very tricky panelling.

  “Actually a local architect I’ve talked to told me he could take out all those steps and put in a balcony, and just one flight, no problem,” says Lil, who is dying for a cigarette.

  “Well. I don’t know. It’s sort of fun like this. I’ll have to show it to my sister. The practical one.”

  “Fine with me, any time you want to bring her by. But what on earth do you think the builder had in mind?”

  “A whorehouse, probably.”

  Lil laughs raucously, although that is exactly what everyone who has seen the house has said.

  “A mansion in Napa? You real
ly are quite nuts, do you know that?” Jill scolds. “I know, you’re going to start a new restaurant up there. The new thing, a country inn.”

  “That was last year’s new thing, remember? Actually solitary splendor is what I’m thinking.”

  “Baby, you can’t afford it, not with that mortgage.”

  “I could rent it out part-time and take off for somewhere cheap, like Mexico.”

  “Liza hated it there, she said. She even lost weight.”

  They snicker familiarly, and then Jill continues to chide. “Fiona, you’re not being practical, and you have to. This is like some new addiction you’ve come up with.”

  “Oh God, are you going to start talking like that?”

  “Probably I am.”

  However, as Fiona thinks of it, she has to admit some truth to Jill’s rather clinical view of her purchase: she did fall in love with that view, and what love really means is (this flashes across her mind): I have to have this, now.

  Thirty-five

  “My turning tricks, if that’s what you want to call it, had nothing to do with low self-esteem. I do not have low self-esteem, and I’m so tired of reading that that’s why people do it. Trick. I did it because I got a thousand bucks a shot, and I knew I was worth it, and getting all that money helped me keep on thinking I’m terrific. Like buying hundred-buck panty hose and two-fifty haircuts. I love all that stuff, and the thousand-dollar tricks were part of it.”

  No one is clapping, although Jill has been told that at AA meetings everyone claps when you talk; she was looking forward to that, she now realizes, she was thinking of all the clapping even as she dressed in her new red Go-Silk clothes to come to this Tuesday-night meeting, in this somewhat dingy church basement.

  But the faces she sees out there are not at all responsive; they are sad, lost-looking faces, not quite getting her drift. These people are heavy and pale, a lot of them with bad skin. They look puzzled, and surely she sees real disapproval, here and there? Surprising; you’re not supposed to disapprove of other people in AA, Jill feels sure of that. Perhaps they expected her to talk more about drinking, using drugs? Well, she’s coming to that.