Our Father

by Marilyn French

  Alex’s eyes misted. “I can’t tell you how I longed for him—longed for my father. Of course,” she added swiftly, “I don’t mean Charlie wasn’t wonderful. But of course, Mom didn’t marry him until a few years later. And I didn’t understand why I didn’t have my old father and why Charlie was my father now. I do envy you having a father,” she said timidly to Elizabeth.

  “He was no father to me,” Elizabeth snapped.

  “He was no father to anybody,” Mary said sadly.

  “He fathered you more than he did me,” Elizabeth barked.

  “That was only because he hated your mother. That was the problem,” Mary said coldly. “He didn’t hate you.”

  “But you said”—Alex appealed to Elizabeth—“that he loved mine. So why didn’t he ever come to see me?”

  “Don’t ask me to explain him!”

  Ronnie, mute, gazed thoughtfully at them. Didn’t seem to do them any good, being princesses in paradise. What miserable women. My friends in Roxbury are better off. Oh come off it, Ronnie, don’t get sucked into buying the capitalist myth that the rich are unhappier than you and me. Propaganda, don’t believe it not for a minute. These women are just a particularly wretched bunch, rotten like Him.

  And me? I’m of Him too, like it or not. But no exposure, no fathering. I didn’t even realize He was my Father until that day I looked in the mirror and saw His eyes. I must have been ten, eleven. He was there, the family there for the Fourth, I helped Momma serve, I carried food to the long table in the tent, helped clear away, I was little but quick and neat and strong. Elizabeth was with a man with funny blond hair, looked dyed, curled, something. Suddenly saw Elizabeth had the old man’s eyes and looked at Him, He was talking to some senator. That night I saw them in my face. They were what made me look so different from Momma, her round face, high cheekbones, simple clean noble face color of sunlight. Her face an ancient face but still young, uncorrupted. No hard tight lines of greed, hard folds of mendacity from smiling against the grain.

  Still I’ll never forgive her.

  I knew she loved Him, knew it long before that, knew it forever. Bent toward Him, her head a little bowed, sí senor, sí Cabot if I wasn’t around.

  Furious as I was, I couldn’t challenge her that night, she was exhausted, next day too, poor feet all swollen, calves swollen almost to the knee. When the family went to bed, I made her sit in the kitchen, I filled a basin with warm water and Epsom salts and made her soak them, I fixed a plate of their leftovers for her but she was too tired to eat. Then everyone went home, but He stayed on, stayed for weeks, demanding something every minute, up the stairs down the stairs, tray in the morning, Noradia, draw my bath, press my trousers, prepare tea sandwiches and cakes for this afternoon, Mr. Saltonstall coming to tea, homemade soup for lunch every day of His life, crab salad, omelets, fillet of sole with fresh asparagus, all that work for one person, then dinner as well, three courses when He was alone, five if company, Momma in the kitchen humming, she didn’t mind, she seemed to enjoy it, why didn’t she mind? Ronnie felt rage rising, felt her face flush.

  The car pulled up in front of the house and stopped. Getting out, Elizabeth announced, “Meeting after lunch. You too, Ronnie.” Ronnie stared at her with fury.

  Elizabeth waited until Teresa had cleared the table before she launched the meeting, ran it just as if it were some formal Washington affair, all she needed was a gavel for fuck’s sake. How dare she summon me. Does she think she can order me around?

  “We’d know better where we stand if we could find the will,” Elizabeth continued. “My guess is it’s in the safe but I don’t know the combination.”

  “I don’t see what difference it makes whether we find it or not,” Alex said. “I mean, what would we do if he left us money that we wouldn’t do if he didn’t?”

  “You think we’d hang around here visiting him every day, acting the loving daughters, if he’s cut us out and left everything to Harvard?” Mary spat at her.

  Alex looked bewildered.

  “Or to your sons,” Elizabeth said to Mary.

  She paled. “Oh god.” She rolled her rings. “He could do something like that.”

  “Well surely they’d share it with their dear loving mother,” Elizabeth sneered.

  “Oh god.” Mary was too distraught to retaliate. “We have to find out!” she burst out.

  “We can’t. Hollis made it clear he won’t tell us. The only way we can find out is by finding the will. And we can’t do that unless we can get into the safe.”

  “Hire a safecracker,” Ronnie joked.

  “Know one?” Elizabeth asked coolly.

  Ronnie flushed.

  “Aren’t we entitled to something by law? Being his daughters?”

  “Not if he specifically cuts us out.”

  Mary considered. “We definitely haven’t been the most attentive daughters.”

  “He won’t cut us out entirely,” Elizabeth asserted. “We’re his blood. But he may leave us small annuities. We’re girls after all, expected to find husbands to support us.” She turned to Ronnie. “Your attitude suggests you don’t expect to be acknowledged in his will.”

  Ronnie gave her a long cold look.

  “So why are you hanging around?” Mary wanted to know.

  Ronnie looked at her with hate.

  “For the same reason I am,” Alex said quietly.

  All of them looked at her. She looked steadily at them.

  “To get to know you. All of you.”

  “For heaven’s sake, why?” asked Elizabeth after a pause.

  Have to have something to do, can’t just sit in my room, can’t be around them much, why am I staying here, what am I doing? Ronnie picked up and put down one book, leaflet, packet of papers after another. Organize my research data, start to write the goddamned dissertation. Read the material I didn’t get to last year. Make up a schedule for myself, stop wandering around this house like a lost child. Could she be right? Am I staying to get to know them? Why? What do I want from them? Elizabeth always in His study, Mary lounging in the sun room reading, Alex out walking for hours, walked all the way into town to get a library card, plenty of books here, mostly unread. Otherwise hides in her room like me, no place to go, all these rooms and no place to go. Drawing room with that stiff French furniture, can’t relax there, why did He call it the drawing room? Out of a nineteenth-century novel: what in hell’s a drawing room? No one ever drew there that I saw. Sitting room, anyone could walk in, see you there. So what? I am a member of this family, Alex says so, I can go anywhere now.

  Or is it for Him after all that we’re here, something we want from Him. Acknowledgment?

  I HEREBY DECREE THAT RONALDA VELEZ IS MY NATURAL DAUGHTER, A LOVE CHILD, BECAUSE I LOVED HER MOTHER, THAT DEAR SOUL WHO TOOK SUCH GOOD CARE OF ME UNTIL SHE BECAME MORTALLY ILL, WHO CARED MORE ABOUT ME THAN SHE DID ABOUT THAT DAUGHTER WHO HAS THEREBY BEEN DOUBLY DISPOSSESSED.

  Ridiculous. Will never happen.

  I could clean out Momma’s room, get rid of her things, such as they are. Take them to a church or some charity. Even a poor woman would probably turn up her nose at them.

  Her eyes filled. Can’t.

  She sat on the narrow bed and leaned back against the headboard. Servants room in the kitchen wing, narrow, shabby, but with a window facing the overgrown kitchen garden. Bed, dresser, hard-backed chair. But at least it has a desk, well table really. “Momma, I need a desk! I have to have someplace to do homework, we have to write a Paper, Momma, a Paper! When I work at the kitchen table, everything gets spots on it! It’s important, Momma!” Her homework on lined paper, food-stained, other kids typed theirs by seventh grade on nice neat clean white paper without lines. Couldn’t tell her, couldn’t ask for a typewriter; make her feel bad. Always tried not to make her feel bad. But then I’d burst out in fury at her at some stupid inconsequential thing. Sudden spurt of rage. Way she looked at me, dark brown eyes, she’d shake her head so sadly, sometimes she’d just op
en her arms while I was screaming at her, and I’d throw myself into them and she’d hold me and we’d both cry. She loved me. Momma loved me. It wasn’t that she loved Him more, it was just that He had all the power. But did He or did she give it to Him?

  She poked around until she found something, a table in the barn, old pine thing long ago discarded but beautiful, she was so happy. “Ronalda, look!” Something she could give me. Now it holds the computer. I wish I could keep it. Nothing mine in this house, not even the desk I used for years. They’d probably let me keep it, they wouldn’t want it, but I’d have to ask them, be a beggar at their door. Couldn’t.

  Funny, you can know that money isn’t the thing, that love is what matters, know that you were loved by your mother at least and that they weren’t anyway it seems they weren’t, Elizabeth and Mary. But it doesn’t help, nothing helps. I hate them, hate hate hate them. And I can’t bear to think that maybe I love them, want to love them, I love my hate, I want to keep it. Why I wonder. Did their father love Momma? Could He love? Did He see how beautiful she was inside? Surely wasn’t her clothes attracted Him or her shape. Simple face, no makeup. But maybe that’s what drew Him after all His society women, secretaries, call girls, all decked out in designer suits and necklaces, dyed, painted, high-heeled, mannered. She might have been a relief, someone He could despise openly, treat like a servant and she accepted it.

  This house. His. Grand spaces, light pouring over the shining floors, wonderful old carpets, the elegant tables, paintings …

  Momma had to wax those floors, vacuum the rugs, dust the tables, the picture frames, clean the chandeliers, ammonia and water with newspapers, Ronalda, that is the best cleaner for glass. Remember. Remember that so that when you grow up and become a servant like me, you will have skills I had to learn. That’s what she meant even if she never said it: my future a given. Our color. An unchanging unchangeable prison we carry with us wherever we go. Servants even in the country her parents came from, Mexico. No way to go home to a different kind of place.

  The gardens used to be so beautiful, catch your breath in April, the forsythia and the hyacinths and daffodils, then tulips and lilac, then the wisteria, and then May oh god everything burst out, the rhododendrons and azaleas like flame, lavender orange pink cerise and the roses the old-fashioned ones with a scent like poetry, and then the peonies and the clematis. I thought I wanted to be a gardener, gardener in paradise. Asked Momma to ask Him. I was twelve, after all. Tony used to bring his son to help him with the lawn, little Tony, he wasn’t much older than me. Lots of women gardened, I used to see them in front of their houses when Momma and I drove into town to do the marketing, wearing lovely straw hats, kneeling on mats, gloves on their hands. I hid behind the door when she went in to ask Him. A GIRL gardener! He exploded, laughing. What next! Tell her to study dusting and she has a deal!

  Is that all He wanted for me.

  Well, suppose He’d said yes. Work for Him the rest of my life like Momma, servant in His house. Live the rest of my life in this room or maybe Aldo’s apartment over the garage. Take care of the car and supervise the gardening. Summoned for praise or reproach, head bowed, yes sir. Like Momma.

  Wish I could keep that desk.

  I was never able to say anything to her. Not then, not later, not even the times she came to see me in Boston after I left. Couldn’t. She loved Him, the only one in her life besides me. For her the most important thing was to love, not to be loved. Besides, she never knew. If she had …? Maybe He was kind to her when they were alone. Never really looked at her that I saw, but He must have, must have.

  She never had anything but us, Him and me. No, long ago she had her parents, her sisters and brothers, they loved each other, she had happy memories. Happy memories!!! A childhood in workers’ camps among rusted-out cars and broken crockery, her momma and poppa and all the kids moving from farm to farm California living in shanties no toilet or bath, crates for furniture, one stained mattress on the floor for all of them. All of them had to work even the kids to earn enough to carry them through off-seasons. But what she remembered most was the light at dawn as they set off for the fields, dew still on the leaves, holding her momma’s hand, or carried on her poppa’s shoulders, the family together.

  Brother, sister, poppa dead of TB, another brother dead from violence, other sisters went to Los Angeles to find jobs as maids, what a joke. How could they be maids, they had never had houses, washing machines dishwashers vacuum cleaners coffeemakers Cuisinarts. Had to learn everything, everything terrifyingly new, threatening. But Momma did.

  My momma with her momma, my abuelita, the grandma I never knew, two women alone in a hostile world, who had always lived so closely with their kin. Took two years to work their way across the country, often hungry. Picked their way to Vermont and when the last apple was packed, Grandma got them on a bus to Boston, the postcard clutched in her hand with an address where Momma’s aunt, Abuela’s sister Imelda, had gone with her man years before. But Imelda was gone from the address on the card saved over all the years, a card neither of them could read and Imelda couldn’t have written. Who wrote it? Who read it to them?

  Ronnie’s throat felt tight and she got up and walked the length of the room.

  Forget all that, all over, done with, I’m not doomed like them, I have a chance. Her gaze fell on the disconnected computer, the piles of books and papers on the desk.

  Lazy wetback.

  Well, how could I do anything, she silently shrieked at herself, when she was dying, when she was in such pain, when I tried to be with her every moment! I finished the coursework, didn’t I? In a tough discipline! I did the research!

  She fell into the chair at the desk and gazed out at the brown ruined kitchen garden. It hadn’t been tended since Momma fell ill, but a few straggly lettuces still struggled for life, a couple of tomato plants had re-seeded themselves and sent up leggy shoots.

  Every spring, the gardener turned the ground over for Momma and she planted the hot peppers and herbs she couldn’t buy here and pole beans and tomatoes and squash and eggplant. Up every morning early out there with her small golden hands working in the soil, pressing and pulling, treating the plants as if they were her children.

  She was happy here. Only she missed her momma. Grave in Boston, too far away for her to tend. Together now.

  What happened? She only got sick last spring. Maybe she was sick before that, couldn’t attend to things. Because everything has gone to pieces, all the gardens are a wreck, He still had the groundsmen working, how come? As if when she stopped overseeing things, they fell apart. As if she was the soul of a house she could never own. All His money and power couldn’t keep things together.

  Maybe it takes love to keep things together.

  Hah! Where do you find that?

  Where could Momma find it, twenty-six years old, her own mother dead, alone alone alone in the world, friendless world for her. Getting this job a fluke for her.

  She never tired of talking about the man in a uniform who came for her in a limousine! Her shabby coat, belongings in shopping bags. Servant shortage or she never would have got such a job. The driver told her to sit in the back and she held on to the handgrip in terror, sure someone would come and rip her out of this car in which she did not belong. They drove to this town, all white the trees iced the snow still over the fields not like Boston where it had turned to stained slush. And the houses so big, so many trees, she hadn’t imagined houses like this, farmhouses were sometimes big but not like these houses.

  And then her first sight of the house! And then inside! All those rooms, all that furniture, so grand, so elegant, so rich. She even had her own room up on the third floor, closed now, a whole floor of servants’ bedrooms, little cells with one shared bath. Thing is, it was better than what she was used to. She was working in a palace. Housemaid to an Anglo god. Must have terrified her: what did she know about polishing silver and crystal? Treating antique walnut and rosewood? She tiptoed around
the rooms terrified of breaking scratching soiling something. He had a full staff then, she could already speak English, she listened, watched the cook. Each thing she learned made her proud of herself: mastering skills, acquiring knowledge. Well she had hadn’t she: how to clean crystal chandeliers, get stains out of Persian carpets. How many people know such things? She learned so well that when He reduced the staff He promoted her to housekeeper and cook. On call twenty-four hours a day six days a week, two hundred dollars a month plus room and board. Almost never anyone here anymore except Him for a few weeks in the summer. All the wives dead or gone, the children elsewhere. Only the July Fourth party. Maybe He was fucking her from the beginning, why He kept her on, promoted her.

  I was born in April 1959. AprilMarchFebruaryJanuaryDecemberNovemberOctoberSeptemberAugust yes, August 1958, in the summer when he was here alone, that’s when. Maybe started earlier. She came in the snow, after Christmas JanuaryFebruary probably, 1956. I know how it was, had to be. Some night, late, He in bed, calls her on the intercom, Noradia bring me a brandy, she young and smooth and simple climbs the stairs approaches nervously carrying blown glass on a silver tray, come here, sit down. Do you like me? Oh, sí señor. Fervently. Loved a disgusting old man, over fifty already, wrinkled skin white as a dead fish, head half bald, that hawk nose. All he had was money. Power. Is that what you loved him for Momma? Because he was the señor? Droit du seigneur. The women of your family had to know all about that. Still, how could you stand those hands on your smooth golden body?

  Fury gushed around her heart and Ronnie rose and paced but it was a joke pacing in that room, three steps one way, three back. She fell into the chair again, put her head in her hands.

  I hate you Momma, she whispered weeping, I hate, hate, hate you!

  5

  SUNDAY IT RAINED OFF and on all afternoon, the sky a thick gray gruel. The sisters could not settle. Elizabeth plonked herself in Father’s study to examine his papers and put what she had in some coherent arrangement, but kept waking startled from minddrift, finding herself leaning back in his high-backed desk chair facing the window and the bleak chilly November day. Her eyes seemed to burn all the time, and she had put on eyeglasses instead of her contact lenses. But the bone-framed glasses annoyed her too and she regularly removed and wiped them clean, rubbing the sides of her nose and the spot they touched behind her ears. Occasionally, laying the glasses on the desk, she would get up and wander into the kitchen for some coffee, or to the toilet to wash her face, or to the sitting room where Mary was reading, some stupid romance probably. Mary always wrapped her books in tooled leather covers. Pretentious way to conceal her trash. Unspeaking, Elizabeth would stand by the front windows and look out at the rain.