Our Father

by Marilyn French

  “But then, don’t you see? Everybody should be loved!” Alex announced as if she had just discovered America. “Because after all, we never stop being babies, do we? We all still go on needing love!”

  “Tell it to Hitler,” Ronnie growled.

  That moan came from Mary’s center, the spot just above the Venusian mound, below the swell of belly, where the truth lives. One’s own truth, not the truths of the ages if there are any. That wasn’t playacting for attention, not self-pity. It’s the sound I always imagined a woman makes when she gives birth. What did she say? “Because he had to be the one, not just the center but the only one.” How did she know that? Of course it’s true, I saw it once she said it, but I never saw it on my own.

  But that moan.

  Gazing vacantly into the mirror, Elizabeth dried her face, put on flannel pajamas. Cold tonight. She went back into her bedroom and slid into bed, leaned back against the pillows and reached for a cigarette. She lighted it, put the ashtray on her knees, and switched off the lamp. Think better in the dark.

  She had opened the drapes but no stars penetrated the overcast gray-black sky. Was it fear? But what a profound fear! Okay, so she needs money, maybe she needs him to help but that wasn’t a moan of worry. I mean, how badly off can she be? It isn’t as if she were facing destitution. Or is she. My offer may be taken up sooner than I think, hah!

  But no, that sound came from the past, from a time when he really was the god he wanted to be. For his children anyway. Power of life and death, power over mind and body. My god, how did he come to terrify her so?

  Could he have been the same with me?

  Of course. Of course he could. Oh, the poor terrified little thing! Sad little face looking up at me, Lizabit, please play with me?

  And I hated her.

  Laura so soignée, slim and elegant in a white linen suit, her thin hands always with the right kind of rings on them, her slick dark hair always in place. She was the real thing; Mother could never be more than a flawed copy. Her voice low, her diction remarkably extensive, grammar and pronunciation correct by Upton standards anyway, not like Mother’s screeching, her tough street language, her whiskey voice cursing him out. Laura’s hands slim, nails never very long painted a pale rose, reaching out to caress Mary’s cheek. Mother’s fire-engine-red claws. Mary didn’t respond much to her mother—I thought she was a spoiled brat. But maybe she knew of course because I knew too all Laura’s gestures were for show, acting the mother, not showing love.

  I adored Laura but she looked through me. The enemy: firstborn heir to the throne but child of a commoner, as illegitimate as Ronnie. What would Laura have thought of Ronnie? Tried to pretend I didn’t exist, ignored me while she pushed Mary forward, dressed her up in white lace, handed her to Father, isn’t she adorable, Stephen? Everything for Mary, nannies, piano lessons, dancing lessons, and oh the clothes that child had! And the playhouse.

  God, the playhouse.

  I refused to go into that part of the garden while they were building it, kept my head averted, high and stiff on my neck when I went out to my spot in the woods with my book. I was above such childishness. Little white clapboard house with a green roof, its own little child-sized toilet and sink, they had to dig lines through the garden around the tennis court careful to avoid the pool. I scorned Mary the whole time, called her “baby,” would not no matter what she did how she begged go to look at it with her. And then when it was finished, I made her wait days before I’d go. How she begged, cried, sulked, before I gave in!

  But I was dying to see it. Oh, that playhouse. Little four-over-four paned windows with screens for chrissakes, with lace curtains the housekeeper made from old panels from the house, worn in spots but with enough good fabric for those little windows. Hung on rods three quarters of the way up the window. Table, chairs, where did Laura find that little couch? Mary’s dolls and Mary’s doll carriage, Mary’s beautiful dollhouse full of antique furniture, even a doll high chair and all Mary’s stuffed animals. Not that I liked stuffed animals. It wasn’t that. It was that I didn’t have any and she had so many, too many to love, really.

  And oh the little tea set. Tiny teapot, cups, saucers, cake plates, French porcelain with pink roses and green leaves and a gold ring around the rims. The housekeeper, who was it then, Mrs. Abbott, yes, Eloise, white hair, bolster-body gold-rimmed glasses, what housekeepers were supposed to look like, did look like in those days, every afternoon she carried down a thermos of weak tea and a pitcher of milk with a plate of cookies to Mary’s playhouse. And Mary poured the tea into her little teapot and the milk into the pitcher—the sugar bowl was always full—and served tea to her dolls.

  Delighted she was or would have been if only she had someone to play with. But I scorned it all, baby stuff, baby play, stupid, play with dolls, I never played with dolls, only stupid babies played with dolls, beneath me, I was ten and reading Adam Smith.

  I stalked off, left her crying. Lonely little heart.

  She tamped out the cigarette, turned on the lamp, pulled another out of the pack and lighted it, turned the lamp off again. Then threw off the covers and turned on the lamp and found her robe and slipped it on, and went out of the room. She walked down the hall, switching on lights as she went, downstairs and into the living room, to the bar against the wall. She poured scotch into a glass, half filling it, switched off the light and retraced her steps.

  What am I doing.

  She got back in bed, turned off the light, took a long drag on her cigarette. Stay here I’ll turn into an alcoholic. Why am I doing this?

  I need it.

  She stared at the window and the opaque darkness beyond. I am fifty-three years old and I am tormented by the memory of a playhouse built when I was ten? What in hell is the matter with me?

  I loved that playhouse, loved the curtains, the stuffed animals, the little couch, the little toilet and sink, even her own little towels embroidered with her name for chrissake …! Most of all I loved the tea set. And I hated Mary for having it all.

  She would have shared it with me. But that wasn’t what I wanted. No way sharing could ever be enough.

  So I took it.

  It had to be after Laura killed herself because Mary was in boarding school. Late August or maybe early September, she had to go back before me, a few days earlier, and I was left here with only the servants, a skeleton staff, Mother wouldn’t let me come back until just before school started. I was devastated, abandoned. Wouldn’t play with Mary when she was here but when I was alone I felt no one cared. And I went down to the playhouse, just sat there picking up putting down her toys, sneering at them. No one brought me tea and cookies. And I decided to take the dishes.

  I brought something with me the next day, what? Something soft to wrap them in, a bag? Wrapped them up well, all of them, every last one. Put them in the bag, packed them in my suitcase. Took them back to Boston, stuck them on a shelf in my closet. Never looked at them again, never even took them out of the wrappings.

  I wonder what happened to them. Maybe they’re still there.

  Did Mary miss them? Did she even notice?

  She might even have given them to me if I’d asked. But I’d have had to ask.

  Not her fault.

  She tossed the rest of the drink down her throat and stubbed the cigarette out. She scanned the dark sky desperately, as if she were waiting for something huge and neon to light up, a word, a sign.

  I could never speak to him. Little Dodo Bird, Mary Mary quite contrary, he called me. Mouth would open, nothing came out but stupidities. “I never could talk to you. / The tongue stuck in my jaw. / It stuck in a barb wire snare.” Cunt, he called me, Elizabeth said. Did buy me a car, though, after all—a Jag with a chauffeur. And gave me that wedding. Loves me, loves me not.

  Not until she was drifting off to sleep did she remember: Lizzie said I was smart.

  Ronnie turned uncomfortably on her lumpy mattress.

  That’s Father, she said. Just like
that. No surprise, no rancor, objective comment, an ornithologist recognizing the characteristics of the creature just described, Yes, that’s a golden grebe.

  You saw a man locking all the people in the building then turning on gas jets from the outside? That’s Father. You saw a man shoot a baby in its mother’s arms? That’s Father.

  She sat up, shivered. Cold tonight. She got out of bed and put on her old flannel robe. She found her soiled socks and put them on, went out into the kitchen and switched on the light. She put water in the kettle, set it on the stove, and turned on the gas.

  That’s Ronnie.

  She set out a tea bag and a cup, and sat down at the table, head in her hand. We’re still babies inside, all still basically needy, Alex said. So can she forgive him? Should have asked her that. One thing to talk. Mostly what she does. Another to mean what you say.

  It’s as if Elizabeth feels, He is what He is. I am that I am: isn’t that what god calls himself in the Bible? “That’s Father.” Wonderful. Men: they are what they are and women have to accept that and try to shift around them. Especially men with power. Money. The upper hand. The raised hand. Momma’s philosophy. Here’s to you, Momma.

  She raised the empty cup.

  What’s the use of fighting them. What’s the use. To struggle, to live in anger takes everything out of you, drains you, makes people hate you and what’s the use? You get nothing you want, all you get is tired.

  That’s Father. Can’t beat’m, join’m. At least that way maybe you end up with something you want. But what the fuck do I want?

  The kettle whistle startled her and her head fell off her hand. She laughed at herself, stood up, poured boiling water into the cup over the tea bag, jiggling it a few times. She sat down again.

  To be happy in life, you have to love, Ronalda.

  So say I drop it. Stop pushing feminism, go into the closet, get myself a suit and heels and panty hose and a job guarding a corporation against environmental laws, whatever environmentalists do in corporations, get $20,000, $30,000 a year, maybe even more, my own car, a nice apartment, some furniture. …

  Okay, so forget that.

  But say I stop being so … pugnacious. I’ve been learning to do that a little, haven’t I? See Alex as a good kid really, even Mary’s a decent soul in some ways. Elizabeth—she’s deluded, even dangerous. But there’s something tragically brave about her. Most of their bad qualities come from their unhappiness. Mine too? So suppose I just say, like Elizabeth: that’s Father. Forgive or at least forget. Look at the bright side. Isn’t that what the ads din into us?

  She took out the tea bag and sipped her tea. Too hot.

  List good things.

  1. He didn’t throw her out when He found out about me. He could have. Would have, even though it was His child, in the nineteenth, eighteenth, or seventeenth centuries. Maybe even in the sixteenth. It was a kindly act, generous, letting her stay here with a squalling kid.

  Unless He still desired her.

  She sipped tea.

  Okay. 2. He was a baby once too. Things pressed on him growing up, terrible pressures: sex class color family tradition. Turned Him into a monster. But if these things are so good, if they are privileges, how do they turn people into monsters? And why don’t didn’t people see that He is a monster? Why didn’t Momma? Why did they all treat Him like a god?

  A memory struck the middle of her forehead: a tall slim handsome man wearing white trousers and a V-necked sweater walked around the lawn carrying a croquet mallet. His deep sure rumble carried all the way to the terrace, where Momma was setting the table for tea, little sandwiches and cakes but with a bar as well as coffee and tea. He laughed and joked with the senior senator from Massachusetts and the junior one from New York, and an aide to the president. Of the United States. He kept telling them croquet was really a mean game. I couldn’t understand why meanness made it better, as He seemed to be implying. Gorgeous, He sat in the cushioned wrought iron chair, leaned back easily, holding a sandwich in one hand, Bloody Mary in the other. So assured, so easy. Easy jokey talk. They, far less glorious, paunchy and balding, laughed with Him, responded to Him, agreed with Him. Everything in sight belonged to Him. He authoritative about everything that mattered about the everything that belonged to Him. He was beautiful: a god, golden, glowing, impervious.

  So it was that really, it was myself, Alex thought, sitting utterly still, fully dressed in the armchair in the bedroom she’d been assigned. One of the guest rooms, furnished formally. She’d pulled the chair up to the window, an antique chair with a stiff back and wooden arms. She sat facing out, querying the stars, so brilliant here at night, far from the city, in the middle of woods.

  She glanced at the room around her. Not the room I slept in when I lived here. That must be in the wing that’s closed up. I remember it as a suite—nursery, playroom, laundry room, toilets, bathroom, nanny’s room.

  Funny the way the house is arranged—the parents’ suite, Father’s room, the wife’s room, and their sitting room on one side of the house, the children’s suite way across on the other side, all these other rooms in between. You’d think parents would want to be near their babies, not clear across on the other side of the house. Take minutes to get to them if they cried. You wouldn’t even hear them.

  I suppose that was the point, not to hear it. Nanny’s job to take care of crying babies. I wouldn’t like that. I’d want to pick up my baby, comfort it myself. Otherwise why have children? The only people in life you can ever love unconditionally. The way they love you. At least while they’re little. But I think it lasts, maybe buried under a lot of other stuff. Important to have that, don’t you think? Sometime in your life? Unconditional love. Like the foundation of a house.

  Do I love Father that way?

  Maybe you only love the ones who really take care of you. Father was certainly never a caretaker like David.

  I should ask them for the key, go look at that wing, maybe remember something.

  This isn’t the room they gave David and me that time. … Not that I remember it very well, just had a glimpse, my eyes full of tears when I flew up to repack our things. Someone had unpacked them, a maid, I guess. Didn’t challenge him, didn’t protest, just tore out of here without even saying good-bye. He probably thought I was a fool. Don’t accomplish anything by running away, don’t change anything, ease anything. He didn’t care. What does he care about? Not me, that’s sure. Does he love Mary? What would have happened if I’d fought back, attacked him for talking that way, blasted him the way Elizabeth would for deserting me. …

  I ran because I was trying to make him feel sorry for what he’d said without actually confronting him. Coward’s trick.

  David was sorry for me, saw the tears, but they weren’t tears of hurt, they were tears of rage. But the truth, I see it now, I was really enraged because of what I’d done, blamed him, he made me do it, but I did it didn’t I threw Stevie away like garbage. Heard him howl, that sudden thrust shocked him, frightened him, but I didn’t care. He was garbage, Father said he was garbage.

  How could I have done that?

  How could I?

  11

  THEY STOOD UNDER THE portico waiting for Aldo to bring the car around. Mary’s gaze concentrated on the pine trees that protected the house from the road, as in an easy, almost musical voice, she suggested, “Do you think we should go in to see him separately?”

  Alex and Elizabeth checked each other’s eyes; Alex glanced at Ronnie, who stared straight ahead with a tough unfeeling face.

  “No,” Elizabeth decided tentatively. Alex slid her arm through Ronnie’s and pressed it to her side. Ronnie slid her arm away

  In the ICU, Edna Thompson was praising Stephen for moving his left leg. Tubes were still attached to his nose and chest, and he did not respond to her, staring straight ahead with an expression of rage on his face. When his daughters moved into his field of vision, he moved his face away.

  Does he see a difference in the wa
y we are standing here, our shoulders slightly touching? United.

  The nurse greeted the sisters warmly, especially Elizabeth, then left the room.

  Amazing. She used to dislike Elizabeth, you could see it on her face. Disliked her arrogance. What had changed, Mary wondered.

  Elizabeth stepped forward, said hello, kissed Stephen’s forehead, asked how he was feeling today. Mary also kissed him, and asked if there was anything they could do for him. He glared straight ahead. The other two stood where they were.

  “Good morning, Father,” Alex said.

  “Sir,” Ronnie nodded.

  Mary chatted to him, asking if the food was all right, if he was comfortable, if he’d like something to read. When he turned his head and looked at them, their voices dwindled away. He lifted his left hand and made a whisking movement toward the door.

  “You want us to leave?” Elizabeth asked coldly. “We will.”

  Dr. Stamp met them as they left and took them to a smoking lounge. Elizabeth immediately lighted up.

  He tried to address each of them in turn, but his eyes kept returning to Elizabeth. “We’ve been doing tests on your father regularly since his stroke. They show he has Broca’s aphasia and hemiparesis, which means that he can’t talk and he’s paralyzed on his right side. We can’t predict how much improvement there might be, and you have to be prepared for the possibility that there might not be any. But we have to move him out of the ICU.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as—probably tomorrow.”

  “As soon as what?”

  “We have to be satisfied that he can breathe on his own without a respirator and doesn’t require suctioning. If his blood pressure and heart rate are stable, if he doesn’t require intensive monitoring. In any case, you need to start thinking about future care.”

  “Such as?”

  “The best bet would be a rehabilitation hospital if they’ll accept him. We’ll have the social service department contact a rehabilitation hospital—we’ve found Middlesex Rehab very competent. They’ll send a nurse to evaluate him. But if she decides that he’s totally disabled, she’ll reject him. And he needs chronic custodial care.” He turned a more sympathetic gaze at Mary. “I’m sorry the outlook isn’t better.”