Our Father

by Marilyn French

  The sheets were not pulled down.

  New housekeeper, not properly trained, Ronnie would not know how to train her of course but the maid wasn’t new Ronnie said she’d been here for years, she should know better. Mary peeled the coverlet off the bed and dropped it on the floor. Let the maid—what was her name?—pick it up off the floor in the morning, maybe she’ll get the message. She folded the sheet back and slid her body in between the clean cool sheets and sighed as her skin opened up, each pore drank in the coolness, sighed in pleasure, cool white satin on her body, cool white cotton around it, if it was, yes, she felt the sheet between her fingers, he still had percale sheets, that woman hadn’t converted him to polyester even if she preferred not to iron.

  Her face felt hot and her heart banged loudly as the recollection hit her, horrible, horrible, ironing her own blouse before she came. Horrible. Had to get some money. Immediately.

  2

  “I REFUSE TO GO to the hospital with her,” Mary whispered hotly to Elizabeth in the upstairs hall. “I definitely will not!”

  But at quarter to eleven on Saturday morning, all four women piled together into Stephen’s limousine for the short trip to the hospital and trooped together to intensive care. They were met by the neurologist, who was so impressed by them, he nearly bowed as he introduced himself, shook hands (dropped Elizabeth’s cold hand as if it were an ice cube), Dr. Stamp, Arlen Stamp, he was breathless meeting them, especially Mary. (The face holds, she thought.) His eyes simply passed over Ronnie; he ignored her utterly. Had he heard rumors?

  He was slick, deferential, but could offer no prognosis. No way of knowing, he said. Stephen had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke, a hypertensive brain hemorrhage in the left frontal lobe, not unusual in a man his age with high blood pressure, an extravasation of blood from a ruptured artery that had totally destroyed part of his brain, how much they could not tell. The brain was still full of blood, once it subsided they’d have a better idea of the damage. They had given him intravenous steroids, were keeping him in the ICU and giving him medication to bring the pressure down, monitoring his blood and heart rate.

  “We will of course deal appropriately with any swings in either of those parameters,” he concluded. Glancing at their faces to see if they were properly impressed, he was uneasy: unreadable women these were. He moved to diplomacy: of course they were doing everything they could, such a great man, wasn’t he? Focusing mainly on Mary, the doctor proclaimed pompously, as if he were telling her something she did not know, that Stephen Upton had been a distinguished adviser to every Republican president and to the party since Hoover left office. The whole town of Lincoln was proud he lived there, they must be desolate about the illness of such a father, such a wise good man. He would do everything he could to restore him to them.

  “We’re sure you will, but we’d like a second opinion, if you don’t mind,” Elizabeth said in a tone of voice that made it clear she would do it whether he minded or not.

  “Of course! Of course! Dr. Roper, chief at the General—which is the Harvard hospital, you know—is the big name in this field. Shall I call him for you or will you do it yourself?”

  “We’ll call him, thank you.” After checking first, Elizabeth thought. “What about his personal physician, Dr. Biddle?”

  “Yes, the young lady”—he glanced at Ronnie for the first time—“suggested we call him yesterday, and he came down and looked at your father. He took care of your mother, is that right?” he asked Ronnie, who nodded.

  So everybody knew, Mary thought.

  “Yes, surely we’re happy to have all the cooperation we can get,” he said in a strained voice, and led them to the old man’s room. Stephen lay, a white distorted lump in the bed, his face askew, a mask over his nose, an IV attached to his forearm, another inserted in his neck above the collarbone, a catheter attached to his nether parts and dripping into a bag hanging on the side of the bed. Mary gasped when she saw him, tears filled those great brown eyes, the doctor was moved, he edged closer to her, he put his hand on her arm. But she ignored him, grabbing the old man’s hand, “Father! Oh, Daddy! It’s your little Mary! Mary Mary quite contrary!” she cried, but the hand did not respond, the eye did not open. Elizabeth too looked distraught, but she did not touch him. Alex’s voice dwindled as she spoke, ending in a whisper, murmured, “Hello, Father, it’s Alex. …” Ronnie said nothing.

  They stood beside him as over a corpse for some minutes, then the doctor led them out. Elizabeth asked a few detailed questions about medication and nursing, then they left. They piled back into the limo. They did not speak.

  Elizabeth stared out the limo window. Horrible: him so helpless. How he would have hated us standing there looking down on him, he never let anyone look down on him if he could help it, always stood when he spoke. He was taller than we of course, taller than lots of men too, but he always liked to stand when he spoke to someone. If he had to sit, he looked for a chair with a high seat, he sat high anyway, long from the waist up. The quiet forceful voice, the stillness of his body, no superfluous gestures, for years I copied him not to be like Mother, always with a hand on her hair or fiddling with her rings or waving her hands around. I wanted to command attention the way he did, learned how to do it too, Clare said I had it down, but not the same, they don’t listen to me the same way, it’s different. They liked listening, looking up to him, elder statesman. They don’t like listening to me.

  “Father would have hated us standing around looking down on him,” Elizabeth said into the silence.

  “Yes. And with his mouth open like that, and his face drooping …!” Alex rushed on, “Anyone would hate that, it’s so demeaning! I only hope he doesn’t remember his condition when he comes to.” Poor thing, poor man. Feeling oozed around her heart. Why can’t I think of him as my father?

  No one responded.

  No one ever responds to me.

  Elizabeth and Mary sat side by side in the back seat; the two younger women sat facing them in the jump seats beside the bar.

  Mary turned to Elizabeth. “Did you get an impression of what the doctor really thought the prognosis was?”

  Elizabeth shook her head.

  Alex said brightly, “David’s father, Sam, had a stroke and was in a coma for about forty-eight hours, but he recovered and is fine now, really, he can even speak and walk now. Of course, it took a few years.”

  Silence.

  “It’s true,” she answered her own objection, “he was a lot younger than Father.”

  “How old?” Mary wanted to know.

  She spoke to me! “In his sixties, sixty-one or -two. Sam’s sixty-seven now, he can even drive again! He drove himself and my mother-in-law to Stevie’s high school graduation a year ago.”

  “Our father never drove himself anywhere,” Elizabeth said brusquely.

  Ronnie took pity on Alex. “Who’s Stevie?”

  Alex smiled on her gratefully, poured words out. “My son. He’s almost nineteen, he’ll be nineteen next month, the day after Christmas, I had both my children right after Christmas, which is really amazing because I was born on Christmas Day myself. He graduated from high school last year, he’s in college now,” she beamed, “at Lehigh, to be an engineer, his father’s a chemist, David, my husband, he works for Du Pont, has all his life, well, since he’s worked,” she giggled nervously.

  Three pairs of eyes stared at her fascinated.

  Damn them, she thought and plunged on. “My daughter Amelia, we call her Melly, she’s named after my mother, it was so confusing because Mom was around so much and David calls her Amelia, so we just started calling Amelia, my daughter Amelia, Melly. She’s seventeen, she’ll be eighteen three days after Christmas, she’s in college too, they’re both in college!”

  She searched their faces for the confirmation she was used to receiving from women, smiles and nods, yes the children are adorable and we love them, yours must be especially darling since you’re so lovely, and how wonderful they are good
children, safe in college where they should be, where we want them to be, the messages women send, little sighs and murmurs, smiles, a hand reached out. Nothing. Ronnie’s impassive Indian face was turned toward her; Elizabeth and Mary stared at her as if they were observing a foreign species.

  Still she couldn’t stop. “My children were born exactly a year apart, we didn’t plan that, it just happened, you know in those days birth control wasn’t so reliable, I was using one of those vaginal creams, but …” She blushed, stopped, then jump-started again. “I named Stephen for Father and of course for David’s grandfather Schmiel, but he was dead and Father was never around so there was no confusion, he didn’t need a nickname, I mean, he never visited or anything. Father. But he was so cute we just fell into calling him Stevie, not Stephen. Did anyone ever call you by a nickname?”

  Now they were looking at her as if she came from another planet. She burst out, “I named him for Father because I thought it might please him!”

  The eyes of both Elizabeth and Mary flickered simultaneously, as if a puppeteer controlled their heads. A little smile tipped Elizabeth’s thin mouth. “But it didn’t did it?”

  “Not really,” Alex admitted, flushing. So now some little kike has my name. That visit, the only visit she had ever made after Momma took her away, eighteen years ago, bearing in her arms her offering to him, her seven-month-old rosebud baby son. With David, who did not hear that—fortunately. Who therefore did not understand when she announced they were leaving immediately, although they had just arrived. Long trip up from Delaware by car and she wanted to turn right around and go back? He was fascinated by Father, the great man, famous father, you mean your father is Stephen Upton?! The Stephen Upton? What do you mean you don’t know him? You haven’t seen your own father since you were nine?! Unthinkable to someone from so tight a family as David’s. A little embarrassing, his reaction to the house, my god what is this place, it’s not a house, it’s a mansion! Must have thirty forty rooms, set in a park! Geez, Alex, every bedroom has its own bath! Too bad she hadn’t grown up here instead of that little Baltimore row house! All the advantages. On the other hand, he was glad she hadn’t, she never would have married him! Laughing, full of pleasure. So naive. So am I, I guess.

  She hadn’t told him, but still he repacked the car, silent, puzzled, knowing that if she demanded it, there had to be a good reason. And never asked why again after that day. David. Who let it alone and didn’t complain when Stevie cried all the long trip back. And never again asked why they never visited her father or asked him to visit them. He must have wondered. Her heart oozed again, love for David, the dear, the good, her husband, the father of her children. My husband, she repeated mentally, my dear husband. Why can’t I feel that?

  She caught herself up, breathed deeply, turned toward Mary. “You have children too, don’t you? I know you had a darling baby boy, just a few months old, you brought him to Lincoln one Fourth of July party, years ago when I was still a girl. When we lived with Father. I think your husband was there too …”

  “Yes,” Mary said abruptly. “I have three.”

  “Oh, how wonderful!” Alex gushed.

  Elizabeth grimaced. “What’s wonderful about being a fertile cow?” She lighted a cigarette.

  Mary fanned her handbag, waving away Elizabeth’s smoke. “What’s wonderful, Elizabeth, is that some people have love in their lives.”

  Ronnie watched them, a smile playing around the edges of her mouth.

  Alex’s hands were tightly clasped in her lap. She cleared her throat. “How old are they?”

  “Twenty-eight, twenty-two, and twenty.”

  “Boys or girls?”

  “The two eldest are boys. The youngest is a girl.”

  “Oh, they’re really grown up, aren’t they!” she gushed. Like pulling teeth. What do I have to do to get them to talk to me?

  “Quite grown,” Mary said coldly. She turned to the window. “That’s wonderful too. No more nannies to contend with.”

  “What are their names?” Alex asked, leaning forward, her face alight, eager.

  “The boys are Martin and Bertie. They’re both lawyers. Tiresome profession. The girl is Marie-Laure. Beyond using the pill, she has not yet decided to grow up. She’s at school. Bennington. My alma mater.”

  “Your alma mater?” Elizabeth sneered.

  Mary bristled. “I went to Bennington!”

  As Elizabeth prepared a sarcastic comment, Alex swooped in, interrupting. “And they’re like us, aren’t they!” she exclaimed in unaccountable joy.

  Elizabeth and Mary looked at her. “Well, we all have different mothers,” she answered their glances miserably. “They all have different fathers, don’t they?”

  “No. Harold is Martin’s father. Alberto is Bertie’s and Marie-Laure’s father.” Not that he ever laid eyes on her. “Two fathers, not three.” Mary fanned smoke away.

  Elizabeth put out her cigarette and stared straight ahead. Alex flushed. She tugged dark glasses out of her purse and put them on. She turned to the window. Stupid. I’m stupid. Damn. Damn. Damn.

  After lunch, they lingered at the glass table in the sun room facing the garden, ruin really—overgrown, ratty anyway in November, the saddest month, Mary thought, because there were still signs of what had been, a few brilliant leaves clinging to dead-looking branches, women clinging onto men who had turned toward death. What made them do that? Patches of vermilion and gold chrysanthemums among the brown stalky mess. When I was a girl, the garden was a wonder, blooming by season, waves of color tended by an army of groundskeepers. Her heart felt stopped in her chest. Was it possible? Could he have gone through everything, was he broke? Was that why everything was so seedy?

  “Why is everything so tawdry!” she exploded. “Why isn’t the garden cared for, the house!” She turned almost tearfully to Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth’s mouth set. “We have to find out. We need to have a meeting.” She looked pointedly at Ronnie.

  “He couldn’t be broke!” Mary cried. “He bought IBM stock in the fifties!”

  Ronnie did not even try to hide her grin.

  Elizabeth turned to her. “If you will excuse us …”

  Ronnie looked at her, uncomprehending.

  “We need to have a family meeting,” Elizabeth said, staring at her.

  Ronnie paled.

  “Ronnie is family,” Alex objected.

  “No she’s not.”

  “She’s his daughter, we all know that. She’s his daughter as much as we are. Even more, really.” She appealed to Mary. “You went away to school when you were seven. You lived mostly with your mother,” she told Elizabeth, “and I never saw Father after I was nine.” Except that one time …

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Elizabeth asked curtly.

  “Well, after he retired, he lived here, didn’t he! So Ronnie saw him every day. None of us ever saw him every day after we were very little!” she announced, as if she had provided conclusive proof of something.

  Elizabeth stared a question at her.

  “Well, she saw more of him … was around him more … than we were. I mean, she lived here all her life! So when he came to stay in the summer, she was here. And then he retired and he sold the Georgetown house and came here, didn’t he? Isn’t that what you said?” she asked Mary

  “No,” Elizabeth asserted authoritatively. “He sold the Georgetown house when he left the cabinet. When Kennedy was elected and a new administration came in. But he went on practicing law—in New York—until he retired. Then he moved here permanently.”

  “So from the time he retired, he lived here in the same house with Ronnie.” She turned to Ronnie. “When did he retire?”

  “At seventy,” Elizabeth said sharply before Ronnie could answer. “In 1972.”

  “How old were you then?” Alex continued addressing Ronnie.

  “Thirteen,” she mumbled.

  “You see! From the time she was thirteen she saw him every d
ay of her life until … when did you leave?”

  “Fourteen,” Ronnie said, with a little grin.

  “Fourteen! You left home at fourteen! Where did you go?”

  Ronnie thought about that for a moment. “To live with an aunt in Boston,” she said finally.

  “This is all nonsense,” Elizabeth interrupted, “and it’s irrelevant. Exposure, even if she had it, is not legal right. Ronnie has no legally recognized relation to our father. She has no legal right to any claim on the estate. So she is extraneous to this meeting.”

  “But morally, she has a voice,” Alex protested. “I mean, aren’t we going to decide what to do about him? And doesn’t she have as much a right to discuss that as we do? She surely knows him better than I do. You can say exposure is not legal right but who has a right to a thing, the person who knows it or the person who has some formal connection to it? Morally, I mean. I don’t care about the estate. Besides, maybe she does have a legal claim. Maybe she could sue the estate.”

  Mary glared at Alex. “Let’s not give people ideas!”

  Ronnie stood up so suddenly her chair fell over. She didn’t pick it up. She leaned across the table on her hands and spat, “Legal! That’s what you all are, aren’t you! Letter of the law! Well it’s on your side and you can have it! I don’t want anything from him! Or you! I despise you all, nothing but a bunch of spoiled princesses! You”—she swung to face Elizabeth—“work for the most corrupt mindless government this country ever had, you support those fascist pigs in Washington, just the way he did! And you!”—she swung toward Mary—“are nothing but a high-class prostitute, something my mother never was, you have gall looking down on her! And you!”—she turned to Alex—“are a patronizing hypocrite, a stupid middle-class liberal! Count me out!” She darted from the room, slammed the door behind her, leaving the glass panes rattling.