Our Father

by Marilyn French

  “No!” Alex wailed. “I don’t! What’s bad about what I want?”

  “It ain’t what Daddy wants, you dope!” Ronnie whirled away from her. “Sometimes I wonder how you can be so stupid.”

  Elizabeth sat down behind the desk. Mary sat on the leather couch, bent over like an old woman.

  “It’s not as if I’m asking for something terrible!” Alex said.

  “You’re asking for something he doesn’t want to give. That means we have to force him to give it, somehow. Through pressure, through superior power,” Elizabeth explained, lighting a cigarette.

  Alex considered. “Maybe … maybe …”—she stared at the floor—“it would be better if we all went away. So he could miss us. Then we could come back one at a time,” she said craftily

  “Hah!” Elizabeth cried.

  “You think he likes you,” Ronnie surmised. “You think he’d tell you if you were alone.”

  “Well, maybe he would,” she whined.

  “He’ll never trust us again,” Mary said from her corner of the couch. “None of us.”

  “Why?” Indignant.

  “Because we’re together. Don’t you see? He’d have been entirely different if we’d come in—well, first of all, without Ronnie. Her being there was major, I didn’t fully realize how major, although I sensed … And then, if we’d gone alone, or if we were squabbling with each other, if we weren’t so … united.”

  “We weren’t, at first.”

  “That’s true, we weren’t.”

  “We were by the time he woke up,” Elizabeth said.

  “Are you sorry, Mary?” Alex asked.

  Mary thought. “No. No. With Father … I’ve always been terrified. Nervous. He always makes me feel like a beggar. I always was with him … And I am now too. … I need money desperately, I guess you all realize that by now. I’m in real trouble, financially. But”—she looked up at them, turning her head to face each in turn—“I feel I have something with you. Something that will last, something that makes me stronger, not weaker. Something that makes him … almost irrelevant.” She smiled weakly. “Not that I’m not still horribly scared. I don’t know what it is exactly, why he scares me so. It makes me feel … humiliated. None of you is frightened that way.” She turned to Ronnie.

  “Ronnie, I’ve been thinking for quite a while—in all the business of arranging to bring Father home, I kept forgetting to bring it up. But I think you should move upstairs with us. Take one of the guest rooms—one of the big front rooms reserved for special guests, presidents and board chairmen. They each have a big desk, a settee, an easy chair. They have big closets, big bathrooms. You spend so much time in your room. You’d be more comfortable upstairs.”

  Ronnie stared at her. Her voice, when she spoke, was hoarse. “Thanks, Mare, but I’ll stay where I am. I appreciate the offer—really—but there’s no way I can ever feel comfortable in any part of this house except my room or Momma’s—or the kitchen. I can sit in here or in the sitting room or the playroom—with you—but not by myself.” She shrugged. “Strict childhood training,” she smiled.

  Mary smiled back. “Well. If you change your mind—just do it. Okay?”

  Ronnie nodded.

  “All right,” Elizabeth said, standing up as if she were ending a meeting. “Father has dinner early, at five, so Florence can leave by six. After she goes, during our cocktail hour, we’ll go up and start in on him.”

  Alex sat forward, eyes bright. “Oh, thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you all!”

  “Just don’t count on anything,” Elizabeth warned.

  Ronnie lay on her bed, a book open beside her, supposedly working. She turned to stare out at the dimming light of the afternoon sky, laid her head back on the pillow she had propped against the old wooden headboard. Mary’s words, Mary’s face hung in her mood like a color, a taste, like something sweet, sweet and thick and healing like blood, knitting up a crack in her heart. Easing her stomach, releasing her fingers, her shoulders, from some locked position. She bit her lip: how much she had needed that acceptance, how much it meant when it came. Humiliating. To need that way. From them. From anyone.

  I’m as bad as Mary: “Who would I be?” Like her, I need the people around me to tell me who I am. As if I can’t be anything without them. Maybe you can’t. Maybe everything I ever learned was lies. We’re told we make ourselves, identity is individual, forged in the mind, what other people think doesn’t matter, they can’t affect the rational Man, the free Man. Maybe that’s only true of men.

  Because women know they’re women without somebody else telling them. But they don’t know who they are, we don’t know, do we. All of us bound together by that, the jostling and jangling against and with each other that create our identity. Me the vaunted self-made woman, tough girl, streetsmart schoolsmart, had it locked. Nobody could get to me. Just cut Tania off when she talked about stuff like that, cut her off for good when she wouldn’t stop, just packed my things. Look on her face like I’d stabbed her. Made me hate her. I’ve hated her for years. But she was a sweet kid. Just too needy. Clingy. She was. Sarah too, before she took off. Clinging one minute, gone the next. Shows you. And Susan, so jealous, so watchful. Lilah was like me: didn’t believe in that stuff. Don’t get too close. So we didn’t, and that didn’t work out too well either. Funny how devastated I was when we split up. With Sarah too. Still an ache.

  Love stinks. Whatever Mary says. Holds up that love of hers, that Don, as if she’d had a transcendent experience. Probably the only guy who ever gave her orgasms. A mistake, Mary, taking orgasm for paradise. I should tell her to try a woman: reliable orgasm, on demand.

  If anybody’d told me I’d give a flying fuck what any of my so-called sisters thought about me, felt about me, I’d have screamed in scorn. Of course nobody could tell me that because nobody even knows I have sisters.

  How much ya wanna bet it’ll be a different story when we leave here. Ta-ta Ronnie, nice knowing you. That’ll be the test of truth. One thing while we’re all together, doing whatever the fuck it is we’re doing. But once they go back to their lives, they won’t want to know me. Christ, how would they introduce me? I’d like you to meet my chicana lesbian bastard sister?

  Inviting me to use one of the upstairs bedrooms, what a laugh. Lady Bountiful. Sitting in the kitchen late at night talking about her money problems. Like to see her listen to mine. Can’t you see her face if I met her on the streets of New York when she was getting out of a limo with some friend about to lunch at Le Cirque? You are excused from the tea, Ronnie. Or Elizabeth, say I showed up at her office, said say, how about helping me get a job in government. She’d turn to ice, discuss qualifications, parameters. Alex would be nice, just flaky, she’d shed me by distraction.

  Not that I’d ever show up in their lives. Why would I? What do I need with them?

  Mary sidled into the library, hung in the doorway like a bored child. “Elizabeth.”

  Elizabeth looked up over the top of her reading glasses.

  “May I talk to you?”

  “Come in, sit down,” Elizabeth said, rising from the desk and moving to a chair beside the leather couch. Mary perched on the end of the couch cushion.

  “About Father. I’ve been thinking. …” She hesitated, her face appealing to Elizabeth for help. But Elizabeth said nothing, regarding her steadily.

  “We haven’t … well, most of us haven’t given much thought to him, to how he must feel. Alex does, but her manner … well, it’s so … she acts like a kindergarten teacher and that’s got to drive him mad.”

  Elizabeth nodded.

  “She’s kind, I’m not criticizing her. But she’s picked up this manner from the nurses in the hospital where she volunteers—I think. And it doesn’t work with Father.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I’ve been thinking about him. While I was practicing today. I couldn’t play well because my mind kept reverting to him. …”

  “I thought you played very well. What
was that, Debussy?”

  “Yes. Suite pour le piano. I used to play it years ago when we were girls.”

  “I remember. It’s gorgeous, and it sounded splendid. You sound professional.”

  Mary flushed. “Thanks. I thought I …” She paused. “Thanks.

  “You know it would be terrible for anyone,” she continued. “For me, for you. To be in that state. But for him! Well, you know, you understand, you know him the way I do. He never even rang for a servant when my mother was alive—they had bells then. She did it. He was so powerful things just appeared before him when he wanted them, everyone around him made sure of that. And even afterwards—after we were gone, after Alex was gone—I’m sure Noradia did the same for him. I’m sure she gave him everything he wanted. He didn’t live in the same world with the rest of us. I’ll bet he’s never been in a supermarket in his life.”

  “Have you?” Elizabeth grinned.

  “In recent years,” Mary smiled ruefully, “often.” She stopped smiling. “He never knew what it was to be without—anything—even for a moment. I don’t know if he ever knew pain.”

  “No one doesn’t know pain.”

  “I guess not. But here he is now, deprived utterly—unable to speak or move by himself, can’t even walk to the toilet. … I can understand that he’s in a fury, can’t you?”

  Elizabeth nodded.

  “And we haven’t been thinking about that, really. We were so thrown by his … by the way he acted … when he woke up. As if we were his enemies. …”

  “That is how he looks at us.”

  “But it could be he was shocked. He probably never imagined the four of us together. Being able to be together.”

  “It’s mainly because of his behavior that we never were,” Elizabeth said sharply. “You were the one who saw that.”

  Mary moved even closer to the end of the cushion, leaning toward Elizabeth. “But that’s irrelevant, Lizzie. We need something from him now. I’m not sure what. Alex needs answers, I need money, well, I thought I needed money. But you-all have made me see—oh, I don’t know—that I can survive, I guess. Somehow. Even without his money. Ronnie probably wants some sign, some flicker of acknowledgment, poor kid. I don’t know what you want … but I know you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here, if we didn’t want something from him—rather urgently.”

  Elizabeth stubbed out her cigarette and immediately lighted another. Her face was wreathed with smoke.

  “So, what I was thinking was—if we want something, we have to go about things in a way that will dispose him favorably to us. Let me take this business over. The doctor said he can have one small drink a day, that it might even be good for him. I want to have Mrs. Browning set up a bar in his room. Just a small one—with bourbon, brandy, scotch, gin, some wine and port, didn’t he use to drink port after dinner? And Perrier and mixers and Coke for us and an ice bucket and glasses. I think it will make him feel more in charge of himself. And we can have our drinks up there with him. And I want to lead the discussion tonight.”

  “Fine,” Elizabeth sighed.

  “You’re used to being in charge. You won’t mind?”

  “I only do it because it has to be done and none of the rest of you has seemed able … well, Ronnie could do it, but she feels. …”

  “Illegitimate,” Mary smiled nastily.

  Elizabeth grinned. “Yeah.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “I hate talking to him, I don’t know how. I never did know how. I know I sound like. … I don’t know … I must sound like a sergeant giving orders … fuck it, I sound like him!

  “I’m sure you can do better. If you’re not too frightened. You mustn’t do it if you’re frightened. You’ll blow things.”

  “I’m frightened but not too frightened. I feel I know what to do.” She stood up.

  Elizabeth stood too. She moved toward Mary uncertainly, put her arms around her tentatively. “I’m sure you do,” she lied.

  14

  FLORENCE KEPT STEPHEN’S DOOR open except when she was tending to his bodily needs, so Mary lightly tapped on the open door at six o’clock. Her sisters hovered behind her in the doorway. Florence, straightening his bed for the last time before she left, looked up at the knock.

  “Well, here are your daughters, Mr. Upton! Up for a visit are you? Isn’t that nice? Your lovely daughters, come to visit you!”

  Mary stepped forward lightly. “We usually have cocktails at this hour, Father, and we decided it would be fun to have them with you.”

  “Yes, I noticed that,” Florence scowled. “A bar in his room? I don’t know about that. What does the doctor say about that, now.”

  “He says a drink will probably be good for him, Florence. Just one. And he’ll enjoy it. Father always enjoyed a drink after dinner.”

  “I guess that’ll be all right, then.” She gathered up her sweater and knitting bag, took her coat from Stephen’s closet. “I’ll be going now. He’s fine. Ate his dinner like a good boy, ate it all up! Vegetable soup, roast beef and baked potato and string beans and ice cream. He’s got a wonderful appetite, I’ll say that. Ate it all up!” She got as far as the door, then turned.

  “Miss Upton? May I have a word?” she whispered to Elizabeth, who went outside with her.

  “Miss Upton!” Florence whispered urgently, “you know that if he has a drink, he may need to … void. Someone will have to get him the bedpan and empty it. You do realize that?”

  Elizabeth smiled. “I don’t think we had, Florence, but it will be taken care of.”

  Florence sighed. “Well, that’s all right, then,” she smiled and started for the stairs.

  Stephen glared at her back as she left. Mary smiled at him, and when they heard Florence’s footsteps on the wooden floor of the downstairs foyer, she whispered, “She must drive you crazy!”

  Stephen looked up at her in surprise. His scowl softened. She smiled. “I’m afraid they’re all like that, Father. She means well, and she takes good care of you, doesn’t she?”

  He nodded reluctantly.

  “We don’t want to keep you up if you want to sleep. I expect that the hospital settles people in right after dinner, but it’s awfully early. But maybe you’d rather go to sleep?”

  He stared at her warily for a moment, then relaxed. He shook his head no.

  “Do you think you’d like a drink?”

  He nodded.

  Ronnie stood by the bar, ready. “What’ll it be, sir?” she asked, his to command.

  He looked up surprised then relaxed further.

  World returned to its proper order, Ronnie thought.

  He wrote on the tablet. Mary bent over to read his nearly illegible, ill-spelled scrawl. “Brandy,” she interpreted for Ronnie. “Remy Martin,” she directed. “Put it in one of those big bubble glasses.” She glanced flirtatiously at Stephen. “Ronnie isn’t used to the high life.”

  His eyes darted quickly to her face, examining it. He took the glass from Ronnie with his left hand.

  “Women?” Ronnie turned to them. “The usual?”

  “No. Brandy for me too,” Mary said.

  “Before dinner, Mary?” Elizabeth protested.

  She shrugged. “I want to keep Father company.”

  “I’ll have a gin and tonic,” Elizabeth said. “Do you need some help?” She went over to the bar. “Ronnie?”

  “I’ll have what I had the other night. With you. Whatever you had. It was brown. Scotch?”

  “Ice?”

  Ronnie nodded. She pulled an armchair from the back wall and set it to the right of the bed, then pulled up a small settee from the front window wall. Mary moved to help her drag it in front of the television stand. The rocking chair they had had brought in from the nursery playroom for the nurse stood on the left, diagonally across from the foot of Stephens bed, which was now surrounded by chairs. Mary sat in the rocker, Elizabeth in the armchair. Ronnie, who had waited until last to sit, sat beside Alex on the settee. She tensed, waiting for Alex to exclai
m, “Isn’t this nice?” But Alex did not speak.

  “How are you feeling, Father?” Mary said with feeling.

  His face twisted, fell.

  “Are you in pain?”

  He shook his head wearily.

  “Just the situation.”

  He raised his eyes to her. The right corner of his mouth drooped and drool constantly dripped from it, beyond his control. The right side of his face drooped too. His right eye was half closed. He opened his mouth, strained to speak, but only a grunt emerged.

  How alone he is. Always was, wasn’t he, Ronnie thought, scowling. Are we all he has? Didn’t protect his future very well, did he. Doesn’t he have any friends? Where are they? Jesus, he’s eighty-two, they’re either dead or in the same shape as him. Even if he was the devil, he’s a poor devil now. So powerful all his life … But had he felt sorry for her when he was powerful and she was helpless? She hardened her heart. Never forget, he’d hurt you if he could.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mary said feelingly.

  He blinked and a tear appeared. He lifted his left hand a little, let it fall. A gesture of despair.

  Pitiful, Mary thought. Poor baby. She wanted to embrace him but something held her back.

  “You know, being back here, living here these past weeks, has thrown us all back into the past, Father. To when we were young.”

  His eyes rose. Wariness entered them.

  “We’ve been talking over old times—my playhouse, the horses, Mama, the parties you used to give—and my wedding! What a beautiful wedding you gave me, Father! Alex was just a tot then, she was the flower girl, remember?”

  His eyes glistened. He gazed at Alex, smiled.

  “But do you know, Alex doesn’t remember anything after that. Isn’t that odd? There’s a huge gap in her memory, and it’s very upsetting to her. She can’t remember whole years of her life. She starts to remember again after she’d been living in Baltimore for a while. But you were gone then, and she … missed you. She needs to know what happened. Why you and Amelia split up, why she never heard from you again.”