Our Father

by Marilyn French

  It was 1958 when he left Ellen. Or she left him. Heard she was living with a woman. Who knows? When he called to tell me, all the feelings I’d buried over all those years welled up, I thought, this is it! It is happening! Because I hadn’t dated much—who could compare to Clare? A few guys I’d met at the institute, intellectuals, they were the only ones attracted to me. But their intellects didn’t make them different from other boys I’d dated over the years, they were just like the jocks, needed to have their egos built up every minute, no room for another ego in their universes. All other men a threat, all women nurses offering ear and bandage.

  Not me.

  So what makes you think you can nurse Father?

  She shrugged. Fuck it.

  I went to Father and bargained. Blackmailed him really. And he got Clare a job as an economist at State and a chair at the Brookings Institute. And banished me. Finished with me. Because I referred to it: forbidden. Not only that, I used it as a bargaining chip. I’ve never really regretted it.

  Her mouth twisted.

  And Clare came. I met him at the airport, he looked terrible, dark rings under his eyes, his face strained. What had she done to him? Poor baby, I wanted to take him home and take care of him, but someone had lent him a place, he wanted to be alone and think and deal with what had happened. And of course I understood, how could I not understand.

  We fell back into the old pattern—a midweek movie or play or concert, drinks and dinner Friday nights. He got an apartment in Georgetown, he never invited me there, said it was a shithouse but he liked it, we’d meet at some café or restaurant there, talk talk talk all night, drive home half-cocked at two A.M. Sometimes he’d come up to my apartment and we’d talk talk talk until five. But he always went home. When he started to jog Sunday mornings, he’d stop in after his run, cook brunch for us. Beautifully—unlike Ellen. Omelets, huevos rancheros, pancakes with lingonberries. Or he’d bring something—those wonderful blueberry muffins he got in a little shop down the street.

  It was amazing how he knew about my personal life. I never told him. He seemed to have radar, an antenna that followed my body, saw all my actions. He always knew when I was seeing someone. Andy Bocatelli—sharp, good-looking, nice sense of humor, a little on the macho side but careful with me, didn’t push. I had status. Upton name. Couldn’t figure what he saw in me. Why he liked me. He really seemed to. Clare came to Treasury one day, saw me walking with Andy, laughing in the hall. Asked me about him. Raised an eyebrow. “Little shoe salesman,” he said, voice oozing disdain. Could have been Father. “Not your style, Liz. Not in your class. Beneath you.”

  I broke it off with Andy.

  For a long time I didn’t see anyone but him. Then I started to go out with some other men, few enough god knows but I was still young, late twenties, still wanted to find out what love was like. But I didn’t love anybody but Clare. And he always found out and he always found them beneath me.

  And I always accepted his judgment.

  It was Jack Johnson I was seeing when I found out. Clean-cut, from the Middle West, ambitious, even then rising fast at Interior, assistant secretary now. Looking for a wife who could help him along, who’d make a difference. Because he worked at Interior, Clare never saw us together. Jack and I were dating pretty steadily, it was getting near summer, I could tell Jack was hoping that I’d invite him to Father’s Fourth of July party, which of course was famous in government circles, everyone knew who was invited and who wasn’t. It would be a coup for him, advance his career. I was considering it.

  How did it happen, what was the sequence?

  Clare had asked me for a Treasury report he couldn’t get through the usual channels. He was cleared, but they were sitting on this one for some reason. But he said he absolutely had to have it, and I said I’d get a copy for him. Supposed to give it to him Friday night but they called an emergency meeting and I had to work late, didn’t get home until past midnight. So next morning early I drove over to his place to drop it off. I knew he got up early. I’d wondered for a long time why he never invited me to his apartment—he said it was grungy my place was so much nicer—but it seemed fine to me, a nice old building, a pretty Georgetown street, even an elevator, what did he mean, grungy? Didn’t dawn on me even when the boy answered the door, gorgeous boy in his early twenties wearing only a towel around his middle. He apparently didn’t know about me either because he smiled, he invited me in, saw the big brown envelope in my hands, probably thought I was a secretary. He called out quite innocently, “Clare, someone’s here to deliver something,” padded back to the bedroom, pushed open the door. “Clare, are you decent?”

  Clare in the bedroom door in pajama bottoms, no top, barefoot, staring at me. I stared at him.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. Held out the brown envelope. “Just wanted to drop off that report you wanted.”

  All grace, then, came forward, took the envelope, drew me in by the arm, come in come in you must have some coffee. Antony, make us some coffee will you like a good boy? But I couldn’t wouldn’t, have to go a million things to do just wanted to drop this off, another time. Ran out of there.

  Drove home, packed my bags and loaded the car, drove straight here. Called the office Monday morning, said I’d been called away on a personal emergency. No one here yet, only the servants, Father not due for a couple of days, Mary and Alberto the day after next but that was fine with me I needed not to be seen. I came here as if it were home.

  Only home I ever had. Could hardly go to Mother’s, have her peering at me: Elizabeth, what is the matter with you?

  Trembling from the inside, as if every molecule in every blood cell every muscle every bone was trembling, jumping around wanting to jump out of my skin. Stared at the gun case in Father’s study, even took a couple of the guns out, examined them, looked for bullets. Didn’t know which ones went with which gun. All old, from long before Father’s time, probably from his great-grandmother’s time. Old-fashioned. Confusing. Walked through these woods, stared at the lake, thought about drowning myself. When Mary came, she insisted we take out a rowboat but then she wanted me to row. She leaned back luxuriously, complacent, full of satisfaction. “I know everything about love,” she said.

  Was there no bottom to my stupidity? Anyone else any other woman would have known, seen, long before. Maybe I even did—all those evasions over all the years, the unexplained absences, the way Ellen acted. … Thirty-one years old and still so stupid. Blind. Blind deaf dumb. I deserved whatever happened to me.

  Got through the Fourth of July party somehow—gray-faced, limping, almost dead, a very sick person. Wonder what people thought. Oh they thought nothing, no one pays attention to you Elizabeth you should know that by now.

  When I went back I determined I would marry Jack. Called him the minute I got to town, he was elated, I hadn’t shown such enthusiasm before. Had dinner that night and I finally let him seduce me. He was high, thought he had his fish on the hook. So disappointing the sex, though. A lot of heavy breathing, a few swipes across my breasts, a few thrusts, whammo. That’s what they consider a triumph?

  But I thought I could live with it if it didn’t happen too often. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

  At work the next day, five messages from Clare. I tore them up. But he kept calling, and finally I agreed to see him. We met at La Scala, the café he liked in Georgetown the only one in those days that served cappuccino. Didn’t realize how angry I was with him, thought it was only with myself. But my voice was so bitter.

  “So what have I been all these years, your beard?”

  He reached for my hands across the table, but I snatched them back. “Elizabeth, Liz, please … you must know I love you, my dear, I have always loved you.”

  Then I fucking cried.

  “You are the woman of my dreams, my ideal woman—brilliant, beautiful, strong. You’re the person I can talk to better than anyone else on earth. You know that. It’s just that I can’t—I can’t, darling—be more
than your best friend. But I am your best friend, I have your interests at heart in a way a man who was sexually involved with you never would. Believe me, I know that, it’s true of me too, I’m not a good friend to my lovers, nor they to me. You’re my best friend too, and it would kill me, I think literally kill me to lose you.”

  It made so much sense the way he said it. I almost got lost in it. Again. He could always bring me round. But I found myself again. I wiped my face, sipped my cappuccino, wiped froth from my upper lip.

  “Fine. Fine. We’ll be best friends. And you’ll have Antony—how long have you had him, by the way?”

  He didn’t want to tell me but I wouldn’t stop pressing. Still I got only the briefest picture, phrases, images I had to fill in myself.

  Antony was the great passion of his life. After years of dalliances with a long string of students and other young men, he’d met Antony at a party in London, artists, writers, friends of his. Antony a young composer, penniless of course, had come to London with an older man, the painter Harmon Ascelot, know his work? Hung in several museums, very good really. Antony lived with Harmon, Harmon supported him. Had no way to survive without him. Clare was struck dumb with love, had to have Antony. And Antony loved Clare. No way to be together though: there was Ellen, and he didn’t have the money to maintain a second establishment. They went to cheap hotels, but Clare was consumed, life didn’t matter, all that mattered was love. It mattered so much he was even willing to come out, after all those years of concealment. He asked Ellen for a divorce, knowing she might expose him.

  But she didn’t. Sat there on the couch across from his chair and looked at him with her pale dead glance, said, “Why not. Why keep up this charade?”

  Seeing a chance to keep his cover, Clare took it. Not possible in London, where everyone knew him, knew Antony, knew Ellen or at least knew she existed. He’d come back to the States. In a big city like Washington, it would not be impossible to remain anonymous, undetected.

  “Especially with me for cover,” I said bitterly.

  “That is not what we are about,” he said sadly.

  This time I let him take my hands.

  “You have him,” I burbled, started to cry again like a little kid, “but what do I have?”

  “You have your work and the best of me.”

  I pulled my hands away and wiped my face with the napkin. God if Father saw that! “I’m going to marry Jack Johnson. I’m going to have what you have!”

  Jack hadn’t even asked me to marry him, but I wanted Clare to see how it felt.

  His pale cheeks turned ashen, he turned in his chair, stared off down the street, hot Washington Saturday, waves of heat rising from the asphalt. He lighted a cigarette. The fingers of his right hand drummed on the table. I knew the signs. He was angry.

  Good, I thought, a jab of satisfaction plunging through my stomach.

  He turned back his distant, superior face, the face he put on at meetings when he was about to destroy someone’s argument—or them, personally. He could be brilliantly cruel. I always got a vicious kick out of his cruelties. He never visited them on me, not full force anyway. He signaled the waiter for the check. He said, “I can’t, I’m sorry, Elizabeth, I simply can’t bear to see you with that little opportunistic social climber. I love you too much to sit about watching you demean yourself, dwindle into a wife.” He left the money for the bill and stood up.

  I was still sitting. “What does that mean?”

  “It would kill me to see your brilliance, your courage, your fine mind ground down into housewifery under the heel of that boor. Because of course that’s what will happen. Ground down in the mill of the ordinary like Isabel Archer in that wonderful James novel. You know the one. I love you too much to stand by and watch it.” He leaned over the table, kissed my forehead. “Darling. Try to salvage some of yourself from the marriage. I’ll be here if you decide against it. I’ll always love you, always have your well-being at heart.”

  He was saying good-bye. For good.

  Life without Clare.

  And now I have it anyway. And nothing else.

  Cursing her hands, Mary closed the lid over the piano keys.

  What’s the matter with me today, clumsy, awkward. I played that ballade much better yesterday. Often happens though, doesn’t it, play better one day, worse the next. Doesn’t mean anything.

  She stood up and wandered through the rooms, entered Father’s study. Papers were strewn across the desk, but no Elizabeth to be seen. She walked out into the huge foyer, her heels’ click on the parquet floor echoing in the high-ceilinged silent space. She tried the drawing room, the dining room, the kitchen. No one about anywhere. She paused, then pushed open the door leading to the little maids’ rooms on the first floor, and knocked on Ronnie’s door. At Ronnie’s call, she pushed it open. Ronnie was lying fully clothed on the made-up bed, a pamphlet open beside her. Her eyes looked full of sleep.

  “Oh, sorry. Did I wake you?”

  Ronnie shook her head. “S’okay. Nodded off. Stuff can get really boring.”

  “I wondered. Would you like some tea?”

  Ronnie pondered. She sat up. “Actually, yes.”

  Mary smiled broadly. “I can make it!”

  “Oh, you do tea?” Ronnie grinned a little sarcastically. She got up and went into the bathroom and brushed her teeth; Mary went to start the tea ceremony.

  As she entered the kitchen, Ronnie asked, “Where’s Mrs. Browning?”

  “I don’t know. What time is it?”

  Ronnie looked at her watch. “A little after four. She should be here. It’s Monday, right? Not her day off.”

  “Maybe she’s in town. It’s nice she’s not here,” Mary said, carefully measuring spoonsful of tea into the pot. Her hand was trembling. “It’s nice to have our kitchen to ourselves.”

  Ronnie glanced at her, said nothing. Nice to be without a servant? Our kitchen?

  “You didn’t play long today.”

  “You noticed?”

  “It sounds good. I like it, like listening to it. Is that Chopin you play?”

  “Today, yes.”

  “Did you ever think of playing professionally?”

  Mary’s hand jerked, boiling water spilled on the counter. “Oh no!” she exclaimed laughing, looking around her hopelessly for something to wipe up the spill.

  Ronnie found a sponge, swooped it up.

  “I was never good enough for that, not by any standard! Father said I had a nice womanly touch, pleasant for after-dinner entertainment. He liked my playing,” she added tonelessly.

  “I think you have more than that.”

  Mary, searching the cupboard, peered round at her. “Really?” Shook her head. “No, no, not possible. You know, there are so many really gifted people out there. The really talented ones are concertizing by the age of seven, nine. The sheep and goats get separated very early in the music world.”

  “And you’re a goat?”

  Mary laughed. “Afraid so.” She was placing little cakes on a dish. “Let’s go inside.” She nodded her head in the direction of the sun room.

  Not quite ready to sit in the kitchen.

  Ronnie followed her, carrying the teapot. They settled at the glass table.

  “Tea is so comforting,” Mary said, pouring. Some tea spilled into the saucer. “Oooh!” she exclaimed exasperatedly. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me today!”

  “Well, it’s been a traumatic day.”

  “Traumatic?”

  “Sure. We decided to bring the old man back here, committed ourselves to taking care of him. That’s a major decision.”

  Mary clutched her cup. “Yes.”

  “Maybe you’re having second thoughts.”

  “Are you?”

  Ronnie shrugged. “You want the truth? I don’t have any money and I don’t have anyplace to go. I could probably get some kind of job in Boston but it wouldn’t be much, it would just pay the rent and my food and it would keep
me from finishing my dissertation—at best, it would delay it. For years, maybe. I have to write it to get the degree, and I need a degree if I want to do the kind of work I love in my field. If I don’t do it now I’ll probably never do it. I want to do it. So staying here for a few months suits my purposes.” She paused to light a cigarette.

  Mary shook her head at her. “I can’t believe Elizabeth got you to smoke!”

  Ronnie smiled, said, “Don’t blame her,” blew out smoke. “I figure I can do my share of tending him and write the dissertation at the same time. And I can live here for nothing while I’m doing it. I probably shouldn’t tell you that. You think I’m a leech already.”

  Mary peered at her over her cup, rubbing her lips together. “If you’re a leech, what am I? I at least started out with some money,” she said bitterly.

  “Huh?”

  “I’m broke. Totally broke. I can just about manage to pay the mortgage on my apartment, I’m behind on the maintenance. In fact, I’m in debt. If Father hadn’t fallen ill, I was going to come up here and ask him for a loan—against my inheritance, of course,” she added hastily.

  “I thought you married all those millionaires!” Ronnie burst out.

  “Oh, that’s Elizabeth’s way of seeing it. Well I did marry some of course. But Harry’s estate was tied up in court for years and then the judge put most of it in a trust for Marty, I only got three million dollars, oh I know that sounds like a lot of money to you Ronnie but it isn’t really, believe me. Not when you’re keeping up three residences and a car and chauffeur and you have a child to raise and educate—and a husband—because Alberto didn’t have any money, he was supposed to be so rich but he wasn’t, now he really was a leech, I ended up paying for everything, even his bar bills. …” She was whining now and Ronnie turned her head away.

  “When he left me, I got this great settlement in court, everybody thinks I have oodles of money, but I never saw a dime of it. Not a dime! I understand what these women go through, the ones in the papers on welfare whose husbands don’t support the children after they get divorced, I know all about it!” She shook her head, her lips pressed together angrily. “And Alberto’s in Europe, so there’s not a damn thing I can do about it, either!”