“So what do you all think?” Alex began tensely.
“About what?” Mary asked sullenly.
“Thanksgiving!” Alex cried. “What we were talking about at lunch!”
“I for one—I don’t care what the rest of you do—have no intention of eating in a hospital on Thanksgiving—or any other day,” Mary announced. “Absolutely not!”
“We can’t take our Thanksgiving dinner into the intensive care ward, the hospital wouldn’t allow it,” Elizabeth cried in scorn. “Father can’t eat! They’re feeding him intravenously, can’t you two see that? It’s a stupid idea! Really, I can’t understand how both of you can be so stupid!”
Alex paled. “No, no, I knew that. Really. What it was—I was counting on his being awake by Thursday. And us having a celebration. I guess I’ll have to go home after all,” she added faintly.
“What, it’s either dinner in the hospital or dinner in Newark,” Ronnie laughed, “and Newark is worse? You’re having such a wonderful time here?”
“It’s just that my kids keep phoning, they’re clamoring for me to come home—and David’s getting antsy too, I’ve been away so long. So I told them we were going to celebrate Father’s waking up. You see, I’m sure he’ll be awake by then. I know it.”
Mary drew a sharp breath.
Unheeding, Alex continued, “All along I’ve been telling them that I have to stay here, that it’s vital to Father’s well-being that we all visit him every day. I believe it is.” She turned and glanced at each of them. “But I can’t explain not coming home for Thanksgiving if we don’t spend it with Father. It’s such a joyful holiday in our house. The kids wouldn’t understand. Or David.”
“And you don’t want to go home,” Ronnie concluded. So was there trouble in that little middle-class heaven too? Didn’t sound it, she always made things sound perfectly ordinary, perfectly happy. Build a heaven in hell’s despite and it turns into hell. Wonderful irony.
Alex’s face twisted. “It’s not that … I can’t explain … I feel … There’s so much going on inside me these days. I need to let it happen and it won’t happen if I go home, it will stop. And I need something … it feels as if something terrible will happen if I leave.”
“To you? To your father? To your kids?” Ronnie asked with intense curiosity.
“To me.”
“Thanksgiving was never one of my favorite holidays. Actually I hate all holidays except Mardi Gras,” Mary said, “and that only in the old days.” She grimaced. “Too … déclassé now.”
“I just hate them all,” Elizabeth said dourly. She and Mary looked at each other.
“I love Thanksgiving,” Alex said, her voice very soft, “the family gets together. …”
“Precisely,” Elizabeth muttered.
God how I hate Thanksgiving: Mary let in the thought she’d been shutting out all day. All the way out to Pound Ridge to Martin’s house, sitting there eating a dried-up turkey with Marguerite so supercilious and bored-looking, those white eyelashes of hers how I hate them wouldn’t you think her mother would have taught her to use mascara? and those brats, and Bertie acting like a silly fool, Marie-Laure sulking. No one else invites me anymore. Have to go to Martin’s or sit alone in my apartment with no maid to cook for me. I couldn’t go to a restaurant alone. Call someone to escort me: Larry? Oh, it’s too late. Everyone has plans by now.
“My children are dying to have me come, of course,” she said, “but I must confess I find it trying being around babies—my grandchildren are still small. And Martin lives all the way out in the suburbs, such an awful trip.” Have to beg him to drive all the way to the airport to pick me up. He hates doing chores, expects Marguerite to do everything for him. Just like his father. He’d do it, but with that martyred air, Yes Mother, get in the car Mother. Horrible. Or he’d send Bertie, who drives like a maniac.
Thanksgiving in Washington, Elizabeth thought with a sinking heart. Always welcome at the Bernsteins’ but there’s limited pleasure in sitting at the dinner table of somebody who works for you, everybody so excessively polite you could die from facecrack. Year the secretary invited me, now that was worthwhile. No invitation this year: wonder why. Am I on my way out? Could go to the Ethiopian restaurant in Georgetown. Or stay home, eat a frozen dinner. Could do that here. Save a trip.
“Actually, I don’t want to break off my work at this point,” Elizabeth said self-importantly “I’d prefer to stay here and maintain the continuity. And of course, if Father is about to wake up, it’s vital to be here,” she added, looking at Alex.
I could have dinner with Rosa, Ronnie thought, she invited me last month. I forgot all about it. I have to call her, she’s shy about calling here. Would be good to see them all. But Rosa has no room for me to sleep now the kids are grown. Lidia sleeps on a futon as it is. I have no place to stay. But I bet Linda’d let me sleep on her couch. She’d welcome me. If she’s there. Maybe she’ll go home too. Anyway, I could go, use her pad. Wouldn’t want to be stuck here alone. Or with them if Alex left.
Alex’s eyes were damp. “I want to stay with you,” she said.
Three pairs of eyes met hers, held.
After a long silence, Mary said vaguely, “I suppose we could do something. Have a turkey or …” She gasped. “But I gave Teresa the day off too!” she recalled.
Elizabeth shrugged. “So we’ll go out. What’s the difference?”
“Restaurants are horrible on Thanksgiving!” Mary exclaimed petulantly. “Besides, don’t you think it’s a little late to get a reservation at one of the few decent restaurants around here?”
“Why don’t we cook?” Alex asked, her voice brightening.
“That would be nice,” Mary agreed, “but I can’t cook. I can make tea.”
“Neither can I,” Elizabeth said. “But I’m willing to peel vegetables if someone gives me directions.”
“Tea and peeled vegetables for dinner!” Ronnie brayed. “Wonderful! Well, hell, I can make beans and rice for dessert.”
They all laughed. Together. The tension loosened.
So that was what it was all about: Thanksgiving.
Only Alex was biting her lip. “I guess I’ll have to lie and tell them we’re spending the day with Father.”
Drawing up the menu proved fertile ground for disagreement.
“Quenelles for Thanksgiving, Mary! Only you would want that!” Alex laughed. “And I don’t know how to make them.”
“Beans and rice? Beans and rice? What is that? Yes, I know it’s Mexican, but do you eat it with the turkey, instead of the turkey, or after the turkey? I mean, why do we have to have that at all?”
“Because I want it,” Ronnie said. “We have to honor my traditions too. Like pricking our fingers and mingling our blood,” she smiled.
Mary shuddered. “Suppose one of us had AIDS!”
“Well, if one of us does, it isn’t likely to be Ronnie,” Elizabeth quipped.
After much discussion, they decided on a traditional turkey with stuffing and cranberry sauce, guacamole to start, Mexican beans and rice, Mary’s white puree, a salad, and a pumpkin pie from Alex. It was agreed that all of them together would market, that Alex and Ronnie would cook and Elizabeth and Mary would clean up, not just after the meal but after each stage of preparation—of the cranberry sauce, the pumpkin pie, the giblet stuffing. Mary was not enthusiastic about this idea, but since she had quashed eating in a restaurant, she had little choice.
They were high, even a touch giggly on the day itself, driving back from the hospital (no eye flutters that day), eager to get into action in the kitchen. Mary turned up the volume on the old stereo in the playroom so they could hear it in the kitchen and took charge of putting on records. The sisters commented on each selection—all of The Well-Tempered Clavichord, played by Artur Schnabel (“Boring,” Ronnie yelled; Mary thought that set must date back to her mothers day); the Mozart Piano Concerto K. 467 (“Father must have seen Elvira Madigan,” Mary said sarcastically); two
Beethoven piano sonatas (“Why do you think he bought those?”); Frank Sinatra (“Yuck,” cried Ronnie, who also decided that Stephen had liked Ella Fitzgerald because she sang white bread music). Wayne Newton was unanimously booed off the turntable. “It’s what he has,” Mary apologized.
But when she put on some fifties big band records, Alex dropped the basting spoon and Ronnie stopped mashing avocado and they began to dance together in the modern style, without touching their partner. Elizabeth stopped wiping the stove and Mary dropped the dinner forks and they tried to fox-trot. But they quarreled almost immediately over who would lead.
“It isn’t that I don’t want to,” Elizabeth expostulated, “I don’t know how!”
“Well, neither do I!”
“I always had a problem dancing,” Elizabeth recalled. “Boys always led and I never liked the way they did it. But I don’t know how to lead.”
Finally, “Let’s dance their way,” Mary suggested, and they did, all four of them dancing in a circle, alone yet together.
They did not stop until the record did, and began again when Mary put on another big band record. When that ended they were out of breath and returned to their chores. Then from the playroom, Mary cried out in pleasure, and put on Peggy Lee singing “Is That All There Is.” They all stopped what they were doing, and simply listened.
Is that all there is,
Is that all there is,
If that’s all there is, my friend,
Then let’s keep dancing,
Let’s break out the booze
And have a ball
If that’s all
There is.
When it was over, “Play it again,” they urged Mary. She put it on and returned to the kitchen, and the four sisters held each other around the waist and swayed with the music.
With the turkey roasting, the vegetables peeled, the table set, and the mess cleaned up as much as it could be, they decided to go for a walk. They put on heavy rough coats and wellies—there had been rain that morning and the ground was muddy—and headed for the woods. They spoke little, walking sometimes in single file, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in a row. Alex seemed to be in the lead and she headed straight for her cathedral, where they stood looking at the light seeping through the branches, the sun low in the western sky, wan and weak at this hour, lighting the cathedral with a soft hazy glow. When Alex stopped, they all did. She stood in silence, her arms akimbo, head high, looking straight ahead, like a priestess about to lead a ceremony.
“Today is a day for giving thanks,” she said, “to whatever for whatever. I think it’s important to take time to give thanks you know, to remember the good things in our lives that we forget about because they’re familiar, you know like liking the way your body smells or the color of your eyes or the sound of your own voice or the way your living room looks in the afternoon light. I don’t mean we should thank some big deal in the sky or anything, try to bribe some god by thanking him so he won’t hurt us tomorrow, I don’t mean we should burn innards or anything. But for ourselves. For what we have been given. For any beauty in our lives. You know?” she appealed to them. “Not in humility to something, but in gratitude.” She gazed at them uncertainly. “Well,” she shouted, “I like to do it.” She looked up and out into the forest.
Elizabeth watched her, a sarcastic look on her face. Thanks for the memories? I used to hang out here too in the summers, I remember that stump. Came here when I couldn’t bear things. Even then I didn’t cry. Past it. Stone, I was. Wanted to be stone entirely, wanted not to feel ever again. A form of death.
Still, she thought, I’m alive. Not all of me, but some. Is that something to be grateful for? Would I rather be dead? I guess not—I didn’t drive a car into a tree, didn’t fill those prescriptions for pills and I’m not choosing to die at this moment anyway. Not really choosing to be alive either: that would mean letting myself feel it all, go back into it. Spent my life getting out. Too hard.
And when you think about it, I haven’t done all that badly. Considering. Figure I’m a creature deformed, not from birth but from childhood handling. What can such a creature expect? I have a life that lets me use my mind the way I need to. That’s the most important thing. Lucky I was born into an age when I wasn’t married off at fourteen to spawn a brood of sniveling kids. And I live pretty well. I have my own apartment, my car, books and clothes and food I like. Which is more than about 90 percent of the human race presently living has. That’s sheer luck too: luck of the draw of birth: century, continent, nation, section, sex, color, socioeconomic sector.
She paused. I’m glad I had Clare, however I had him for however long. But is that all there is, all I’m going to have now he’s gone, now I’m utterly alone? I don’t even have a friend. Even Mary has friends. Of a sort. She raised her head and looked around at her. The sisters stood communing with themselves. A wave of feeling surprised her: maybe I have them, she thought wonderingly.
Why are we letting Alex tell us what to do, Mary wondered, gazing unseeingly at trees. Who the hell does she think she is, a druid priestess or something? What do I have to give thanks for? Don’s dead, I’m broke. My kids? I suppose I’m glad they’re healthy, well-off, educated, all those things you’re supposed to be happy about. I wish I liked them more. Aren’t they supposed to be a joy to you in your old age? Not that I’m old of course.
Course I’m no joy to Father either. But that’s different. That’s his fault. I always loved him.
Her eyes dampened.
She looked up at the tallest branches of the trees, at the evergreens beyond this grove, fragrant and green. But oh, I am glad I had Don, that experience, at least once in my life if that’s all I’m allowed, to feel that kind of love swelling the heart making it into a huge hot center warming the entire world, making it radiant. I loved the city because he was in it even when he was downtown and I wasn’t going to see him that day. I loved certain songs because he whistled them, and all men because he was a man, and hated any woman who might take him away from me. I loved watching him eat, loved thinking about the food that went into his mouth, nourishing him, enriching him, making him strong, and when he looked up at me watching and broke into a smile I wanted to throw myself down on the floor before him, worship, with my body I thee worship, oh Don, I did. I even loved myself, loved my pale green silk suit, my soft heavy body, my dark hair like a glowing halo he said, because he loved them. I loved life because it let that happen—let me know what it felt to love and miracle of miracles—let him love me back. How many have that?
The trees blurred.
But is that all there is?
Christ, Alex must be some kind of religious freak. And look at them—Elizabeth has her head bowed and Mary is gazing up at the treetops with tears in her eyes as if she were having an orgasmic experience with a god! She probably is, knowing her. Although she’s the kind of little seductress who never has an orgasm in her life. Maybe they were taken to church as little girls, are pious little goody-goodies at heart. Rosa always trying to get me to go with them, her and the kids, Enriqué hardly went. Momma went to St. Joseph’s a few times, stopped. All those Irish faces staring at her. Shee-it. I will be goddamned if I bow my head to any Big Daddy or even any Big Mommy for that matter. Everyone I ever loved betrayed me, starting with Momma. Never had even one decent lover: every one of them let me down. Even Julieta, and she was a sweetie, a real sweetie. She didn’t mean to. But Sarah, that was the worst blow. Liar, cheat, hypocrite. Tell me you’ll love me forever Ronnie and two weeks later she’s shacking up with somebody else. Women. As bad as men.
The only person I’m grateful to is myself. Whatever I am, I made myself, did it all myself, turned a little terrified chicana on the run awed by the Anglo world by Him into a self-possessed professional woman. Well almost. No Big Momma or Big Poppa helped me. Rosa of course. And Carrie Jenkins. But she said doing that was her own reward, she said helping me come alive mentally kept her alive emotionally, my flowering w
as her flowering, she said, kept her from entirely burning out as a teacher. Rosa too whenever I thank her, she says I helped her as much as she helped me. I couldn’t save Raoul though, or Tina. But maybe Tina will be all right someday, being a hooker isn’t the end of life. Unless she gets AIDS, or killed. Or can’t get off crack. Or gets pregnant.
Christ. It’s all unbearable.
Still, I’m okay. Is it selfish to feel that?
I guess I’m thankful for whatever it is about our genes that makes us feel that way. Act that way. Grateful there are Rosas and Carries in the world. I’ll try to be like them myself. Not sure I have the gift. Selfish. Seems to run in my family. Hallelujah, I’ve found common ground with my sisters! She smiled.
Alex closed her eyes, tried to feel the surround through her pores, smell it, hear it, merge with it. Her body trembled with images—Stevie at six, the skin of his cheeks fine as satin, how she loved to caress him. His brown eyes bigger then, trusting, adoring, Mommy, he called me then. Melly at eight, skinny long-legged, tearing out the door with her hockey stick, confident she would win. At ten, in her nightgown after her bath, glowing pink cheeks, her hair curled up and damp, hands over her ears. No Mommy, I don’t want to hear about that stuff, we heard about it in Scouts, I have a book about it, I’ll read it when I want to! Still a baby, not ready to hear about menstruation but the next year she was menstruating. Shocked she was, hated it. I no help.
Her hands ached with emptiness of them, her hands remembered wanting to hold them keep them safe forever. So vulnerable. But not hers any longer. Stevie still that translucent skin but dark hard little hairs beginning to poke through it, standing in the doorway laughing at her as she rapped out a series of commands about his behavior at the party; Melly, curled on the chintz-skirted window seat in her bedroom, her face downcast and thoughtful, upset about the plight of a school chum. Wouldn’t tell me what happened to the girl. Could have been anything—pregnancy, rape, her father beat her, her mother an alcoholic, who knows? Wouldn’t say, tried to work things out herself. Of course I never tell her anything serious either. Like my mother. Generations of silence.
Our Father Page 17
