Sage is not sure why she feels that she must tell her mother and Ralph that she is just going for a walk, “I’ll just walk around for a while, check out Pacific Heights,” when she is actually going to see her stepfather. (Or, former stepfather? These designations have become unclear.) Nevertheless, that is what she says.
She is actually going to see Jim McAndrew, former husband of Caroline and father of Liza, Fiona and Jill. Who lives in a condominium not far from Caroline’s house. Sage is off to see Jim, while Caroline and Liza are dealing with one of Liza’s kids, who threw up. And Ralph and Saul are packing leftovers into Saul’s old Ford wagon, directed by Fiona—as Jill buzzes off in her yellow Mercedes.
And Sage announces her walk. “I’ll be back in an hour or so to pick up my car, but you guys will probably be taking naps by then.”
“That sounds right.”
Has she always, all her life, been in love with Jim McAndrew? Sage has wondered this, and she took it up, repeatedly if not very fruitfully, with the psychiatrist to whom she briefly went—at the end of a love affair with a man of about Jim’s age, a married man, a father. Roland Gallo, a well-known local lawyer-politico, a semi-friend of Ralph’s.
But it did not much matter what name she gave to her strong, surviving emotions in Jim’s direction, both she and the shrink concluded. Entering her life when she was at the very tender, very vulnerable age of less than three, as the first San Francisco suitor of her widowed mother, Jim was and has remained for Sage the ultimately desirable and finally unavailable person. “Friends” is the word she generally uses to describe her connection with Jim, and very likely that is how he too thinks and speaks of it, if he ever does mention this connection. “Sage and Jim have remained the greatest friends; it’s slightly odd, I suppose, but extremely nice, and quite natural when you think of it. After all, he was her father for all those years,” is how Caroline has been heard to describe it.
Sage did not much like the lunch party. Or, she wonders, are her nagging, ill-defined worries over both Noel and her work enough to prevent her enjoyment of anything, even in this soft blue April weather? It is easier to ascribe the mild depression that she now experiences to the multiple presences of her sisters, her three half-sisters. Three halves: the very phrase suggests wrongness, no one should have three half-sisters, much less four.
Not for the first time Sage considers the fact that of all those women it is Caroline, her mother, who seems most truly her sister. Although she is indeed fond of Liza, and of the absent Portia.
Suppose she did a group of those female figures? Suddenly seeing that possibility, seeing the circle of small clay figures—perhaps at a table? chairs? No, standing would be better, more scope for individual postures—Sage stops in her tracks, stops right there on the sidewalk, which happens to be at the crest of a hill, the height of Pacific Heights. She stops to think, and to see.
How amazing, really, that she has not thought of this grouping before. Or for that matter not done it long before.
But now she will.
From where Sage stands, had she been looking down to the bay she would have seen a flutter of white sails, all over the blue. A Sunday regatta, through which, all slow and stately, a long black freighter moves deliberately outward, toward the Pacific, the East. Bearing exports, probably, to Japan.
Much closer to Sage, in fact she can smell them, are the thick dark woods of the Presidio, the eucalyptus and pines, the weird wind-bent cypresses.
She is or has been taking the long way around to Jim’s condominium, where she is not due for almost half an hour (she called; she does not drop in on Jim, a busy bachelor-doctor). She takes this route both to kill the time and because she has always walked this way. Below her on Pacific Avenue is the row of large, dark and quite splendid houses, some Maybeck, a Julia Morgan, an Esherick, in one of which Roland the married lover lives, there across from the playground and the woods, with his view of the bridge and the bay. In the bad old days of the end of that affair Sage used to disguise herself in scarves and bulky sweaters (she hoped she was disguised) and to haunt the small area of playground just across from his house, trying to read messages from its handsome façade: lights in what must be the master bedroom (that most horrible, wounding phrase), or drawn shades. What was meant—by anything?
Just as these days Sage tries to decipher the bruises on Noel’s upper arms (he bruises easily, he says, as she does): small round bruises, the size of fingertips. Fingers pressing, in some extreme of passion. Fingers belonging to almost anyone. Or, as Noel says (although she does not exactly ask him), something he bumped into, at a building site.
All of which has led Sage to rephrase an old question: was it in Roland Gallo’s case the marriage, and in Noel’s the possible involvements with “other women” that she finds so fascinating, so addictive? Roland was quite bald, thick-bodied, middle-aged. An essentially political person, a lawyer, involved in various local money-power structures, mostly big real-estate deals. Not much in common with Sage, intellectually speaking. (A few quite incredible tricks with oral sex, however.) Noel, although undeniably handsome, is not especially “interesting” either, and in sex, she has to admit, he is somewhat passive, a recipient of love.
Sage never gets very far with any of this, only further into her normal anxiety (she knows she’s a woman who loves too much, and so what?)—and it gets her, geographically speaking, up to the massive glass doors of Dr. Jim McAndrew’s building, which she has just now reached.
Their embrace at greeting, Sage and Jim’s, is always faintly indecisive, and there is awkwardness over kissing: cheeks, never mouths are aimed for, but sometimes it all goes wrong and mouths do brush, accidentally. Rather than hugging, they sometimes grip each other’s shoulders.
And then the ritual comments on each other’s perceived condition:
“You look—”
“—great! thin!”
“—a little tired?”
“—really rested!”
Jim in fact looks worse than tired, he looks gray, and exhausted. And too thin, he has suffered the sort of weight loss that withers the skin. However, apparently aware of his effect, he quickly explains, “This great new diet. I know, too fast. I’d never let a patient do this, but I feel really great.”
“You doctors are such jerks about your own health.”
Jim laughs, acknowledging accuracy. “Of course we are, we think we can fix anything, including ourselves.” And then, “But how’re you? Still madly in love with that Noel, despite being married to him?” This is an old semi-joke between them: Jim believes that marriages have ruined his love affairs. All two of them; there has only been one wife since Caroline.
“Oh, I guess I am. For all the good that does me,” Sage tells him.
“Well, sit down over here by the window. The view may do you some good.”
And here we are again, Sage reflects, looking out at the same high green park that Caroline’s house also faces, from another angle. And she and Jim are returned to their old roles; he is doctor-omnipotent, super-dad, with a small New England shading of irony. And Sage, with Jim, feels herself young and sad and bewildered, but at the same time she is a sort of wise-ass, with Jim.
She never tries to explain that sadness to Jim, though. She never says, Noel worries me a lot, I never know where I am, with him. My work isn’t going very well. I never have any money, and I’m tired.
But it seems today that Jim really wants to talk to her.
And he starts right out. “I’ve been in this, uh, situation. This girl, Lord, she’s younger than Jill.” (Amazing that anyone could be younger than his youngest daughter, Jim’s tone seems to say. Much less a girl with whom he has a romantic connection, or whatever.) “Well, I guess you could say I loved her, I was crazy about her, I have to admit it. I even thought, A new family. Hey, why not? A lot of guys my age do it, and I’d read these articles, and some of my patients, they go on about their biological clocks. Girls wanting babies. But she saw a lot of reasons why not, as things turned out, and it wasn’t just my age. For one thing she doesn’t like doctors. Gosh, I thought everyone loved doctors.” (This is only half ironic). “For another thing she has this really pathological obsession about AIDS. No new relationship for her, she says.”
Jim talks on and on, a boyish man in his early sixties, in the throes of an obsessional love. Sage’s glance and her attention wander out to the terraced park, the dark swaying pines and redwoods, the eucalyptus. And she thinks of the time when she walked through that park in black blind mourning for Roland Gallo, who was only a few blocks away, but could not see her. As Jim has no doubt walked along those same paths.
She listens enough to grasp the essence of his story, though: a rational, older-than-middle-aged man, a doctor, a “success,” is having a sort of semi-breakdown all over this thin, thin girl (“I even worried that she could be anorexic, I cared that much about her, wanted to run some tests”). This girl, who, like his youngest daughter, Jill, is also a big success, another lawyer, is clearly quite uninterested in him, in Dr. James McAndrew. Refusing sex, refusing finally to see him. So that Jim indeed went a little crazy, walking around on upper Grant, where she lived. And calling, calling, leaving messages on her machine. “I even fell in love with her answering machine,” is Jim’s small joke.
During the Sixties, when so many middle-aged men, Jim’s-age men, were growing beards, buying turtlenecks and Nehru jackets, taking off after young girls, Jim was a stalwart, only mildly liberal husband and father, in clothes from Brooks. And that period was the nadir of his relationship with Sage, who was actively demonstrating for Free Speech, the People’s Park, and was totally committed to the Anti-War Movement. “It’s your methods, that’s all I disagree with,” Jim used (not quite truthfully) to complain. “You mean you think we’re vulgar? Noisy? Well, you’re fucking right, we are,” Sage would cry back.
What he is going through now could be called a delayed mid-life crisis, then, Sage thinks. Apparently men can have them at any time, and repeatedly.
But why are you telling me all this? she also thinks, observing his pale bony high-browed familiar face (so similar and yet so much more distinguished than the smaller faces of his daughters, Sage believes). I am not in sufficiently good shape myself to hear so much of your nutty obsession, she thinks. And the real problem is that you old guys are just not used to being turned down, you’ve had it your way forever, all you middle-aged establishment successes. Young girls all tumbling into your tired old beds.
At the same time she knows she is being both selfish and unfair; for one thing, Jim has never been “promiscuous” in the sense that she thinks Roland is—fears that Noel is—and an impulse urges her to go over to Jim, to cradle him in her arms with murmurs of reassurance, of ultimate love. And then, as in Sage’s childhood dreams, could the two of them run off somewhere together? Could they live happily and sexily ever after? Sage often believes that they could, if things were ever so slightly changed, changes that she cannot exactly specify.
“I’ve even thought of going to a shrink,” Jim more or less finishes, running nervous medical fingers through his fair graying thinning hair.
“That wouldn’t be the worst idea.”
“I guess not to my son-in-law, though.”
“Saul could recommend someone.”
“I wonder if Caroline would see me,” Jim muses.
“It’s not quite the same thing.”
Sensing a small joke, Jim laughs a little. “Don’t think I don’t know how trite all this is,” he tells her. “If one of my patients told me this story, it’d be very hard not to laugh.”
“Why don’t you try laughing, then?”
He frowns. “Laughing? That nonsense? But I’m not sick.”
“No, I mean pretending you’re a patient. Your own patient.”
“Oh. Well.” The frown deepens as he tries to puzzle it out. “I sort of see what you mean.” He brightens a little. “Matter of fact, a patient was telling me her story yesterday, very sad, mixed up with an alcoholic, and heaven knows I didn’t laugh.”
“Of course not,” Sage reassures him.
Jim grins. “She wouldn’t believe me when I told her how old I am. But I’m always very open about that. I just tell them right out.”
Sage has been hearing this particular little vignette from Jim, the telling of his age, on most of the occasions that they have recently seen each other, she now reflects: the patient who cannot believe Jim’s so readily admitted age. And for a crucial moment she now wonders: could he have misinterpreted all around—are they in fact surprised that he is not older than he says?
On the way over to Jim’s, Sage now realizes, she had wanted to talk about Noel. She wanted from Jim the magic, impossible words: No, of course Noel isn’t seeing anyone else, you’re just very insecure, you’re too used to trouble, when it isn’t there you make it up (true enough). Or, she had wanted some large and quite “inappropriate” dosage of love from Jim.
“How about a drink?” he now asks her. “What a lousy host I am, I go on and on about myself and leave you high and dry.”
There is so much truth to this—and a drink is so much not what she wants—that Sage begins to laugh. She laughs and laughs, bending over as she sits there, then cuts off as she feels her laughter out of control, she could as easily cry.
“Actually I have to get home now,” she tells Jim, when she can. “I want to get a little work done before dinner.”
“Work? But it’s Sunday. Don’t you know there’s a name for people like you?” Somewhat heavily he chides her.
“I like to work, it’s when I know who I am,” Sage tells him.
“Well, I guess I’m rather like that too. I should stick to medicine, I do best at being a doctor. In fact Caroline said that to me rather often. Only very tactfully of course.”
“Of course,” Sage echoes.
By now they both have risen and are walking toward the entranceway. Where they repeat their small non-embrace routine. Affectionately.
“Well, I’m really glad you came by. You always do me good,” Jim tells her.
“Oh, me too,” Sage lies.
Driving home, passing Presbyterian Hospital, Sage thinks briefly of the years of her grandmother’s dying there. Molly Blair, all shrunken and dying forever, and Caroline going to see her every day. Caroline brushing Molly’s thin yellowed hair, and taking home Molly’s handmade silk nightclothes to wash by hand and to iron. (Sage, who hates to iron, was especially touched by this detail.) And Sage, visiting, would silently, secretly exhort her grandmother to die. She used to wonder if Caroline ever felt the same. She must have, mustn’t she? Must have longed for her mother to die? But if so no one ever knew.
The house now occupied by Sage and Noel, bought by Sage with her inheritance from Molly Blair, is at the end of a small cul-de-sac on the eastern, “wrong” side of Russian Hill, a neighborhood once cheaply inhabited by working-class Italians, now very expensive, mostly occupied by Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian families who double or triple up, in the tiny rooms of those houses.
Sage and Noel’s is a large two-story stucco box with an entirely undistinguished exterior, a sort of disguise, Sage sometimes feels the outside of their house to be. While inside Noel has performed miracles (or, almost performed; he tends to leave things unfinished): walls knocked out so that what had been a warren of tiny rooms now contains essentially one room per floor. Downstairs, a living-dining room; upstairs, big bedroom and bath. Everywhere large white spaces. Scant furniture, good Oriental rugs.
And that is how they first met, Sage and Noel. He was the carpenter whom a painter friend recommended to help her with her new house. “He’s sort of offbeat, you’ll like him. Very talented, good ideas. And fabulous-looking.” Thinking that she did not especially need a fabulous-looking carpenter, Sage nevertheless called this Noel Finn and Noel came over, came over again for more talk, and plans. And then wine, excitement, more plans and eventually love, or something like it.
And now they are married, and the house is still unfinished, its suspended quality still (sometimes) afflicting Sage with gloom: Why must their house be so perfectly an expression of their life? she wonders. And she answers her own question: Because this house is Noel’s work, he made it this way.
The small panel on her answering machine shows a bright-green 2. Two messages, one surely from Noel, with excuses.
Sage pushes Play, and instantly she hears loud sounds, banging, background shouts and then Noel’s clear voice: “For Christ’s sake, Bill, you fucker, cut that out, I’m on the phone.” And then, “Sorry, babe, my asshole partner’s deaf. And look, I’m sorry I missed the lunch, but we’re really going at it down here. Got to go now, it’s going great! See you later.”
Oh, so he really is at work, is what Sage thinks. And then, How terrible that I should be pleased by the mere fact that he isn’t lying.
The next message is fairly long, and entirely unexpected.
“Sage Levine? Jack Cronin. You won’t remember but I’m the guy who bought that little woman-holding-cat figure from your show at that place down on Union Street?” (Sage does remember, it was her only sale from that show.) “Anyway, I’m in New York, and a friend of mine saw it and went a little nuts, I mean he really liked it, and guess what? He has a gallery down on Broome, in SoHo. So, do you have some slides? Would you be interested in something back here, and if so would you call him tomorrow? Calvin Crome,” and he left a number.
Sage has been a ceramic sculptor for about fifteen years by now, and she has considerable dark knowledge of the probabilities of success in her field (she knows about the art world in the meticulous way that a jealous lover knows the faithless habits of his beloved). Still, despite all that information, her blood leaps at this message, this possibility of a New York show—and the woman whose face she sees in the mirror above the phone table, the woman holding the phone, is grinning, a bright grin that seems to cover her face.
And even with such a grin this woman, Sage, looks very pretty, she has to admit this of herself. She looks like a happy, very pretty woman.
“Baby, that’s great, that’s great.” Noel hugs her to his chest, but the face that Sage now sees mirrored, Noel’s face, is frowning, preoccupied. He came up to the bedroom, where she has remained since the phone call, where she has been sitting and thinking, daring to imagine: a New York gallery. And so as she went to greet him, to tell him, and as Noel embraces her she can see the two of them mirrored there. And at his slight frown her elated spirits sink, just a little.
She asks, “But you don’t think it’s necessarily so great?”
He touches her hair very lightly, quickly. “Well, maybe not.” He laughs, a light quick laugh. “But don’t take me so seriously, babe. After all, what do I know?”
Noel’s very dark hair is longer than men are generally wearing their hair that year, and his skin is very white and fine. His nose is narrow, finely molded, eyes narrow and gold. A Renaissance face, Sage thought, when they first met. The face of a Medici prince—a description that pleased him a lot, early on, that made him laugh with pleasure.
Actually they look quite a bit alike, Sage and Noel. Others (her sisters) have said this, and at certain times even Sage can see it, but she would not say this to Noel. He does not even like it when Sage has borrowed and worn a shirt or sweater of his (she no longer does this, ever), although they are very close to the same size. A small, slight man, Noel is even thinner, narrower than Sage is, a new experience for her: she has generally loved very large men. Roland Gallo is large, and so is Jim McAndrew.
“You’re right,” Sage now tells Noel. “I know I’m grasping at straws. Leaping for them in fact. But. Well. You know.”
“I sure do.” He gazes at her, but dreamily, his gaze somehow abstract. And then, returning to her, he advises, “Well, get some slides together, send them off. Why not? What’ve you got to lose?”
Sage smiles, feeling the melancholy of her face. “Not a hell of a lot, I guess.”