Our Father

by Marilyn French

  Mother’s maybe a little proud of me. My daughter, a career woman, assistant secretary of the treasury, very important, works in Washington like her father did, you know, years ago. An economist, travels around the world arranging economic policy. She is met at the airport by three-star generals in a limousine she meets regularly with heads of state drinking perfumed tea from delicate porcelain cups. …

  Elizabeth lay on a pyre, aflame. From forehead to toes her body burned in shame.

  The things that make people proud …

  What have I become.

  She sat up, pulled herself out of bed and walked across the room. In the dark, she found her cigarettes on the dresser, lighted one, stood there inhaling deeply.

  She made me come here, summer after summer, year after year. No matter how I begged.

  Someday I’ll tell her.

  She walked to the window, pulled the drapes open, stared out. At nothing. Blackness.

  Nothing.

  Wouldn’t you think this pain would end someday?

  6

  MONDAY MORNING EARLY, BEFORE the others were up, Elizabeth was off, taking the Alfa. She left a note: “Packing the car, I saw some bicycles in the back of the garage. They need to be cleaned up and oiled but Aldo can get them in shape. ECU.”

  “What’s ECU?” Alex asked Mary.

  “Her initials, of course, what do you think. Elizabeth Catherine Upton. Her mother’s name is Catherine.” Mary moved away from Alex with a petulant jerk. “I like that! She takes the car and leaves us the bicycles.”

  “She said she was going to. Anyway, I thought you couldn’t drive,” Alex said. “She signs notes with her initials?” she asked Ronnie.

  “You think we correspond?” Ronnie snapped.

  “No but both of you drive, don’t you?” Mary said. “Suppose I want to go into Boston, I’ll need Aldo to drive me, and you won’t be able to get around.”

  Alex and Ronnie looked at each other. “You’re concerned about us, Mary?” Ronnie asked.

  “I just don’t want any arguments if I need the limo.”

  She got no arguments. After the three of them visited Stephen in the morning, Ronnie and Alex vanished. Mary had to face the gray overcast day alone in the house. When she finally went in search of Aldo to ask him to drive her into town, she found Alex in the garage, pumping air into the tires of a bicycle. Aldo drove her to Concord, where she wandered through a few shops. She found a bookstore and in a move that would have surprised Elizabeth aimed not for the romances but for the poetry. She bought a volume of Anne Sexton and a notebook covered in Italian paper swirled with crimson, silver, and turquoise. On the way home, she stopped at the DeCordova Museum, but it was closed. Of course, Monday.

  Disheartened, she entered the dim silent house. So big, so empty. Such a bleak feeling it had this house. Memories like a bad smell lingering. Would the Georgetown house feel this way?

  A sudden clatter above her startled her. No one came when she called, so she climbed the stairs to the second story. The door to the third floor was open: she peered up the attic staircase. “Somebody up there?”

  Ronnie called down that she, Mrs. Browning and Teresa were doing something—what, Mary couldn’t make out, didn’t care. She ran back downstairs and stood at the foot of the stairs, her head pounding with fury. I want my tea! And she has the help helping her; she! when she’s the help herself! Or should be! Mary felt like Saint Sebastian, as if arrows were shooting into her body at every point. She wanted to pound her feet and screech.

  Why am I so exasperated? What is the matter with me!

  Petulant baby, Lizzie always said.

  Well, I’ll do it myself!

  She marched into the kitchen, filled the kettle, found the tea canisters and chose Lapsang souchong. It took a little time, but she found the tea set and laid cup, saucer, and sugar bowl on a tray. She found a lemon in the fridge, cut off some slices and arranged them on a little matching plate. As she worked, she watched herself with some surprise. It didn’t feel humiliating, why was that? Doing chores in her own apartment always corroded her with shame; she scurried, hid, terrified that someone might see her, that she might see herself in so humiliating a position. She did not do chores! But today it did not feel shameful, it felt—all right. It even made her feel strong.

  And while there were many ordinary things she did not know how to do—cook or bake, for instance, wield a hammer or screwdriver or drive a car—she found she knew exactly how to make tea, knew to pour boiling water into the teapot to warm it, then pour it out and add three teaspoons of tea, pour in water freshly brought to the boil. She wondered how she knew to do these things. She covered the pot with a cozy, set it on the tray along with a smaller pot of hot water, and carried the tray into the sun room. Letting the tea steep for a few minutes, she picked up the book she had left lying there and began to read. After a time, she poured tea into the cup, added sugar, lemon, stirred, sipped the hot liquid. Perfect.

  I did that! I made that!

  She sat back, her finger holding her place in the book. The sun room was bright even on this overcast day. A stream of quiet contentment rippled over her. The little playhouse out behind the old tennis courts, Daddy had it built for me, I had little chairs and a little bed and a table and a little china tea set. I pretended to make tea—Eloise showed me how, she was our housekeeper then, she was nice to me, she felt sorry for me because my mother died—but Eloise really made the tea and brought it out, weak tea heavily laced with milk, all prepared. I poured it out for my dolls, chatting away, Yes, Mrs. Carruthers, what do you think, Mrs. Bradford?

  Then Lizzie … She shuddered and returned to her book, Sylvia Plath’s Ariel.

  It took her an hour to finish, and she closed it thoughtfully. I’ve read it so often, I wonder why I brought this one. Just what I happened to pick up or is it symbolic? Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through. I’m not though, am I, I’m still here waiting for him to decide to be or not to be. He may be through though. Him and his fat black heart.

  I never could talk to you.

  The tongue stuck in my jaw.

  It stuck in a barb wire snare.

  You wonder what happened to Sylvia Plath to make her write things like that. It feels as if her life was like mine, but it wasn’t, was it. No one else had a life like mine, something wrong with me, about me, my nature. Father said so, said it was me. She wasn’t like me, she was smart, she went to Smith like Elizabeth, went to school in England too, Cambridge. Married a poet. And killed herself. Over him it seemed. I’d never do that: no man worth it. I don’t think I’d do that. Would I?

  I wanted to die after Don.

  Maybe over her daddy, really. What about her mother? My mama a suicide Elizabeth says. A lush. Did I always know that?

  Stop!

  She stood, stretched, walked to the window, gazed out at the trees, most of their leaves gone now. Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang. Me, grieving over goldengrove unleaving.

  Things are easier with Elizabeth gone. Less pressure in the house, everyone feels relaxed, you can tell. Alex is stupid and vapid and one can ignore Ronnie. Boring though. Elizabeth at least keeps you on your toes.

  First, are you our sort of a person?

  Do you wear

  A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch?

  Elizabeth my sort of a person. Alex not.

  Stop reading Plath for a while. Maybe I’ll read my new Sexton, but damn, she knocked herself off too. Should have thought of that before I bought the book. What else did I bring? Merwin, McClatchy Berryman’s Dream Songs, Adrienne Rich, lovely poet but I can’t take that feminism. Stupid: like accusing the gods for the way things are. Have to accept reality, work around it if you are to get what you want. Everyone wants power. Men have it. Women at a disadvantage, pregnancy, raising kids. That’s nature, a fact of life. The feminists would like to eradicate that but how? Women have to get power any way they can. Elizabeth’s way or mine. We understand powe
r. The other two are out of the running. They’re ordinary. Cows. Elizabeth and I are extraordinary, saved from the common fate of women.

  Mary rose and wandered into her father’s library and scanned the shelves. Nothing here I’d want to read. Wait, look: all of Trollope: better than nothing. She slid out Barchester Towers. Haven’t read this in years.

  She gazed out at the gray landscape in the fading light and the irritation she had felt earlier overflowed. AGHH! BORING! Boring day! She wanted to do something violent.

  She carried the book up to her room and searched for her exercise tape. No one was in the playroom, she could use the television in there, plenty of room for stretching. Damn. Didn’t bring it. Meant to. She pondered. Could watch a soap. But suppose someone came in. I can just see Ronnie’s face if she caught me sitting there watching As the World Turns or a game show.

  She eyed the chaise. Didn’t sleep well last night, did I. She lay down on it, pulling a white alpaca throw over her legs, and fell into an immediate deep sleep tumultuous with nightmare. She didn’t wake until nearly five, which meant she had to dress for dinner in a rush. Didn’t matter that much, she thought. No one here for dinner but women.

  In spite of wasting most of the day in sleep, she continued to feel irritable and unrested. So it was even more annoying that the other two were so cheerful when she entered the sitting room around six, Alex rosy-cheeked and blabbing ad nauseam about the joys of bicycling and Elizabeth’s thoughtfulness in suggesting it, Ronnie also pink-faced and complacent-looking, pleased with herself, why, Mary couldn’t fathom. Maybe everyone was happy because Elizabeth was not here.

  Alex finally wound down at the dinner table. “Elizabeth is really wonderful,” she announced.

  Mary raised one eyebrow.

  Alex pointed her fork at her (good god what manners! she was as bad as Ronnie!) and crowed, “You too! That’s what she does! The both of you so tough and hard but underneath you’re a couple of pussycats.”

  “The two of you,” Mary said sourly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Either ‘the two of you’ or ‘both of you,’ but never ‘the both of you.’”

  Ignoring this, Alex gushed to Ronnie, “Don’t you think so? Pussycats. Just a pair of hurt babies.”

  “Maybe. But hurt babies grow into people who hurt babies,” Ronnie said, her mouth twisted.

  “Oh Ronnie!” Alex exclaimed, “you’re the biggest pussycat of all!”

  “Alex, sometimes I think you live in cloud-cuckoo-land,” Ronnie said with disgust.

  “Call it what you want,” she said. “But where I live is a real place.”

  Ronnie rolled her eyes. Can’t bother with this conversation: too stupid. Mary yawned, covering her mouth. Tired. “Anything on television tonight?” she asked.

  While the other two watched some old movie, Ronnie lay on her bed reading, marking the journal with a yellow highlighter. She stretched her head back on the pillow, a broad smile on her face. I did it. Got organized. Got going. She glanced with satisfaction at the computer, all hooked up and loaded with files, the old bookcase she’d dragged down from the attic today and cleaned with lemon oil, her journals filed in it by category. They’d had to move her chest of drawers out of the room to fit the bookcase in, but that was all right, they’d put it in Momma’s room, so crowded now you can hardly walk in it. But no one does unless Momma’s spirit … how I wish …

  Just give her one last hug, kiss her soft cheek again.

  Don’t lie to yourself Ronalda. You want to accuse her.

  No. Never did never will. Decided that long ago. Forget it.

  Have to clean up her room, air it out, so dusty, Teresa didn’t even want to go in there, smell of death, she says. Get rid of her clothes. Poor clothes. A few photographs stuck in the frame around the mirror. Me at six months, two years, grade-school graduation. Aldo took that one, I wonder who took the others. Momma didn’t have a camera. What to do with that goddamned crucifix over her bed. Looks like gold, wonder where she got it. Maybe Him. Maybe the nuns will take it, give it to some poor kid they want to brainwash. Can’t just stick it in the trash, she loved it. Should have put it in her coffin with her.

  Think about that tomorra, Scarlett.

  Meanwhile: tomorrow she would take the train to Boston and vote. She could pick up her stuff from Linda’s while she was there. Then spend some time at the BU library, buy some reference books she needed at hand, more floppy disks, soft-tipped pens, a disk file box. Still had a little cash left from her fellowship last year, one benefit of poverty: you learn how to live frugally. But what would she do when that was gone?

  She leapt up and pulled open her backpack, fished for her wallet, opened the secret compartment, pulled out some folded bills. Tight roll: she counted: two hundred thirty-six dollars. Not very much.

  Don’t think about it now. You’ll find a way to survive. You survived six months on the streets of Boston at fourteen, didn’t you? Without hooking. Stealing stuff, getting free food at shelters, churches, sleeping in the T, in the library until they kicked you out, at the laundromat. Rosa at the laundromat eyeing me. “I seen you here before, no? How old you are?” Like an accusation. I was scared. But she didn’t look like anyone official in that old skirt, scuffed bent shoes. Big big big bag of laundry, she could barely manage it, “The washing machine, she broke,” it made sense she needed me to help her. She needed help, four little kids, only two in school, Enriqué working two jobs, she doing piecework on the sewing machine. Promised me meals, a bed, shared of course, and once in a while a dollar for spending money, and all I had to do was watch the kids when I got home from school, do the dinner dishes, bathe the kids, put them to bed, help with the laundry, give her a little freedom so she could do that fucking sewing for two cents an hour or whatever she got. It was better than the street. Poor people’s version of the au pair.

  Insisted I go to school. I didn’t really mind, just had to give her a hard time. Bitter angry runaway. I didn’t make it easy for her. Saved my life. Seven people in five rooms. Disgusting rooms, ceilings cracked, plaster corroding, roaches and sometimes rats. Better only than the street. Pushed me all the way to the school, two months late, registered me as her niece, wept, “My sister, she die!” It worked: all Latinos look alike even though they were PR, not chicano. They were a lot like Momma, though, always stroking, but they were noisy, laughed a lot. Momma crept around this house like a mouse and hardly ever laughed. When she did, covered her mouth like a Japanese woman to muffle the sound. They liked to touch each other, especially babies. When she had Joey, she let even Lidia and Téo hold him, fondle him, play with him. Even the boys changed his diapers. Nice. Nice there.

  Mrs. Jenkins knew something was off, knew Rosa wasn’t really my aunt, knew I wasn’t PR. She wasn’t even Latino, she was African, but observant. Thoughtful. Cared, even after all those years of teaching. Saw something in me. Saved me. Still there in Roxbury working against despair, saving a few kids, losing most, she said when I went back to see her. “Graduate school, Ronnie! You’re in graduate school!?” Hugged me like I was her daughter. Well I am. Hers and Rosa’s. Gave me more than Momma ever did. Carrie Jenkins gave me a sense of my own strength, of other possibilities. … I didn’t have to be a servant.

  No! She sat up in excitement, mind whirring with possibilities, body eager to move instantly. Not reference books, they’re so expensive. Buy a modem, plug into a data base. That’s what I should do. Then sat back smiling at herself. Funny how you come to take things for granted, like having the money to buy a modem, which I may not even have, who knows, I don’t know what they cost. But I do know I can get a research grant that will cover it, I know it. Know things other little chicanas don’t. Makes all the difference: gives you confidence.

  Carrie Jenkins did that for me.

  How easily you get used to having everything done for you, food put on the table, house cleaned, bed linens changed, Teresa even does mine. Never cold, the way it was at Rosa
’s some nights. Always a spare blanket if you need it, always something to eat in the fridge, car to drive you into town. Do I dare to ask Aldo to drive me to Boston? Will he be outraged? Mary will be. I don’t care. It’s not as if He was here.

  It’s nice having these things except you come to expect them.

  Will I get spoiled, like them?

  It will be hard to give them up.

  She pondered. Maybe I should try not to get used to luxury. Maybe I should hitch to town and take the train to Cambridge instead of asking Aldo. Or take the bus. Don’t buy books, use the library. Go over to BU, find Professor Madrick, he’ll help me get a research assistant’s card. But then I’d have to go into Boston a couple of times a week.

  Don’t want to.

  Why? What holds you here? When you have so many friends in Boston? Yeah, suppose I ran into Sarah walking down the street holding hands with Becky. No, she wouldn’t walk in public holding hands, she wants to stay closeted. Be great though if she looked worn out, old, dried-up. Whereas I am looking pretty good, well, better, I have to recognize that, even though Momma’s death was such a drain, I look better than in years, I lost all that weight, I look rested, my eyes are clear, why is that when I hate these women, fucking sisters, hate this house. Decent food, probably, and enough sleep. Fresh air.

  She let the journal fall from her hands, her arms hang limp at her sides. She held her body stiff, like one at a seance, waiting for the ghost to speak, for revelation. What was here in this house, what was it she felt here? Momma, unable to rest? Trying to tell me something? She had no words for her sense that she was living at the hot molten core of her being and that if she left now, it would harden and cool and she would never never never find out.

  What?

  Having completed her evening regimen, Mary noted with satisfaction that the lace bedcover had been removed and the sheets turned down. That little talking-to she’d given Browning had been effective. These days you simply had to keep after servants or they took advantage of you, provided perfunctory service, always in a hurry to run back to the idiot box, don’t want to miss the latest episode of their favorite soap. Of course, she had been known to watch them herself, but that was different after all, she was the one paying for service. …