Caroline's Daughters Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.
    â€œYou’re right,” Sage now tells Noel. “I know I’m grasping at straws. Leaping for them in fact. But. Well. You know.”
    â€œI 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.”

Three
    O h! Oh—good!” Saul breathes out, as he always does, as he comes. His words are slightly muffled in Liza’s hair, as was her outcry a minute before: their middle child is uncannily alert to sexual sounds. “You’re beautiful,” Saul now whispers to Liza’s ear, so that she makes a small half-laughing sound of pure pleasure. “I love you,” she whispers.
    Removing himself from her body, Saul now stretches beside her, his hard bones and tight skin against her much softer, very ample flesh. I am perfect for Saul, Liza has sometimes thought and sometimes said to him; a thinner woman with Saul would be a mass of bruises.
    Liza pulls the covers up over them both. The fog has come in, a cold night succeeding the hot, hot April day. She should get up and see that the children are covered too, Liza thinks, but maybe she doesn’t have to, actually? She wants so badly just to lie there next to Saul, savoring sated flesh. To lie in peace.
    In the late Sixties, the years of her own late teens, Liza appeared to be the essential Flower Child, plump and blonde, streamy-haired, braless, in her bedspread or Indian-looking flowered fabrics. She was often half stoned on grass, and in a feckless, affectionate way she made love a lot, as everyone was enjoined to do, back then. With a lot of long-haired boys, who often gave her flowers to wear.
    And then, one day in Presbyterian Hospital, where Liza was visiting her endlessly dying grandmother, Molly Blair, an intern came in to check on Molly (who usually gave him hell). Saul Jacobs, who took one look at Liza and had to have her, he was instantly crazy about her and not only that—he took her seriously, he insisted on marriage and began at once to talk about having children.
    Even Caroline, who had done more or less the same, married impulsively not once but twice (Jim, whom she now regarded as in most ways an error, had been the single reasoned choice)—Caroline nevertheless thought this was a bad idea. “My darling, you’re so young, and you don’t have any money. It’ll be really tough, these days, the expensive seventies. Are you really sure you want children?”
    Liza laughed. “Didn’t you want us?”
    â€œWell, once I had you I did.”
    And so everyone who thought it would not work out was wrong, for the most part. And the parts of the marriage that worked less well were known only to Liza, who never spoke of them, not to anyone.
    â€œIf we didn’t have children we could do a lot more screwing,” Saul now whispers.
    â€œWe do quite a lot, don’t you think?”
    â€œNot as much as I want to.”
    â€œMe neither.”
    â€œWe’ll have to get away for at least a weekend this summer.