Our Father

by Marilyn French

  Stephen’s distorted face changed utterly; he stared at them as at an army surrounding him, arrayed against him. His face tightened, he set his brandy down on his tray table. A bitter smile twisted his already twisted face: you could see him thinking: betrayed. Shouldn’t have let down my guard. He raised his left hand, waved it at them back first, ordering them out.

  Alex started, half rose in her chair. “Please, Father, please tell me!” she cried desperately. “It’s making me sick. I black out, I faint …!”

  Stephen sneered, turned his face away from her. He reached for the remote and switched the power on the television set. He turned up the volume to full. The set, which was right behind the settee, blasted them. Alex crouched, holding her hands over her ears. Ronnie stood up and reached over and turned the volume button down, looking at him angrily. His face set hard and sullen, like a raging child’s, and he pushed the volume up again.

  “We could pull the plug,” Elizabeth said to him, but he didn’t hear her over the blasting commercial.

  Mary stood, looked at Elizabeth. Alex looked at both of them. Ronnie stood quietly, regarding Stephen. His mouth was open, he was straining. At last, he grabbed the tablet and scrawled. He held it up to them, waved it in front of them.

  OUT

  He dropped it, scrawled again, held it up again.

  BITCHS

  Misspelled, Mary thought.

  The others slunk downstairs to the playroom, but Elizabeth went into the study and closed the door. She sat at the desk, her chair turned to the windows. Dark out, she could see nothing. What a bust. Hopeless. Mary tried, she did her best. What the fuck are we staying here for? Life is passing. My birthday today. Fifty-three. He wouldn’t remember of course, he never did even before he got sick. No one else either. Why should they? I never remember anyone else’s birthday, either. Only Clare’s, I always made a fuss over that.

  I’m going to marry Jack.

  In that case, good-bye.

  No, what he said was: I’ll be here if you decide against it. I’ll always love you, always have your well-being at heart. But I cannot stand by and watch it.

  Life without Clare.

  I had the driver take me back to Washington, then sent him home, walked home. Long walk. Washington not a walking city, sidewalks along the boulevards empty. I must have looked crazy walking alone, my head hanging, decently dressed bag lady, someone beaten. Destroyed. Life over.

  Went back and picked up the phone, made a date to see Jack that night, get him to propose. Too high-handed, Clare, too one-sided. Not enough. And not fair. How come you get to have a love life and I don’t. Of course, for a man to have a male lover and for a woman to be married are two different things entirely. Marriage. Still means male ownership somehow for a woman. But I’d have a life with Jack, kids maybe.

  I’d have sex in my life.

  Sex with Jack. Fumbling and fast. Not much in it for me. But maybe I could teach him, tell him what I’d learned on my own. God knows I’d masturbated enough all those years.

  I hated sex with Jack.

  What was wrong with me?

  I knew what was wrong with me. The books were full of it in those days. I was frigid. Funny, how frigidity’s disappeared. It was just a euphemism for male ignorance of female bodies, but that’s what we called it then. Thought then.

  Jack appeared flushed and high, he figured I was ready for him. Took me to dinner at a French restaurant, fancy for Washington in those days. Pink-faced, excited. Ordered champagne, said “I’ve missed you.” Did he love me or just my name? My possible future wealth? I never knew. How come I didn’t know? I knew Clare loved me—in the way he could. I sat there looking at Jack, trying to imagine his mouth on mine, his body around mine, in mine, imagine it every night or almost every night. No more getting into cool clean sheets by myself, putting on my glasses, lighting a cigarette, picking up a book. Quiet peaceful nights. Would he expect me to cook his dinner? Who never cooked my own? Pick up his dirty socks, do his laundry, become his servant? Wasn’t that what men expected from marriage?

  We went back to my apartment and made love. That’s what it’s called, making love. My insides churning. I tried to guide him, show him what I needed. He couldn’t hear, he was full of his own needs, passion. For me or the conquest of my name? He obliterated me in sex, I wasn’t there, only he was there, I didn’t matter, would never matter. Marriage would obliterate me.

  Probably wasn’t fair to him: he didn’t turn me on, as kids say now. Clare turned me on. Clare aroused me—yet he was impossible, inviolable, unapproachable, like the lady in a troubadour poem.

  But so was I. Impossible, inviolable, unapproachable.

  It came to me while he was making love to me: Clare and I belonged together. So when Jack asked me to marry him later that night, sharing a cigarette and champagne among the pillows, no just came out of my mouth. “I can’t,” I said. He seemed so crestfallen. Could he really have cared for me? He married, only a few months later. I thought, see: he didn’t care. But that’s not necessarily the case: sometimes when you’re full of love, you have to put it somewhere.

  How come I never felt it again then?

  I couldn’t call Clare, I was too proud. Go crawling back to him, when he’d abandoned me, denied me having what he had? I’d live alone, I decided, without anyone, it was all too much, couldn’t hack it, couldn’t. Heartbroke, mindbroke, spiritbroke. Did my job like an automaton. But he heard. Jack must have been seen with some other woman, maybe the one he married. Clare called. He acted as if nothing had happened, as if we’d just had coffee the other day and it was time for our weekly dinner. We just picked up where we left off. Jack was never mentioned again. I loved him for that, for salving my pride. But he could afford to: he had set the terms.

  Wouldn’t have worked out, marriage to Jack. Whether he loved me or not, I didn’t love him. But I’d always thought that if a man really loved me, his passion would be so powerful, it would sweep me up in it and I’d automatically love him back. Why did I think that? Such a reactive way of seeing. …

  No one’s passion ever swept me away. Not even my own. At least Mary let herself feel that kind of passion once. Lucky girl. No. Not luck.

  Courage.

  But it isn’t true you didn’t have a life! You had wonderful times with Clare. True meeting of the minds without the complications of sex or domesticity. Lots of couples stop fucking some time in their marriage. So we never fucked at all, so what? Does that mean we didn’t love each other?

  It would be nice to know what it’s like, loving sex.

  Just your garden-variety twentieth-century nun, that’s me. Mary calls me a frigid cow. Casts aspersions on Clare’s male sexuality. She knows. Clever bitch. Maybe she can psych out Father too.

  Father.

  That’s why.

  For the past few days Mary had whispered in the kitchen with Mrs. Browning about menu and cake and candles for a birthday dinner for Elizabeth on Friday night. Thursday afternoon while Elizabeth was working, she and Ronnie and Alex sneaked out of the house and went shopping in Concord. They were all a little high: it was a small excitement in their monotonous days, planning a surprise celebration. Mary had intended to remind Stephen to wish Elizabeth a happy birthday before they went down to eat, but his explosion propelled it from her mind, and she left Stephen’s room in a hangdog silence.

  They had to knock at the study door to get Elizabeth to come to the table, and when she entered the dining room, they all gave it their best effort, trying to joke, talk cheerfully, kissing Elizabeth, wishing her a happy birthday. Mary assured her she looked forty-five; Alex said how happy she was to have her sister after all these years; Ronnie squeezed her hand, said “Me too.”

  The menu included Elizabeth’s favorites—poached salmon, pureed greens, risotto—and Mrs. Browning proudly carried in the birthday cake she had made, a single large candle burning in its center.

  “That’s to celebrate our first shared birthday,” Mary
explained. “It’s lemon-filled, you used to love that,” she said, demanding the ritual of blowing it out and cutting the cake. Then they offered their gifts, and demanded oohs and ahs over each one—a book of Louise Gluck poems from Mary, a record—Debussy’s Suite pour le piano, clearly Mary-inspired—from Alex, and a pair of knitted wool gloves from Ronnie. “For your walks,” she said shyly. “I think wool is warmer than leather.”

  Elizabeth’s pale drained face was twisted, her eyes damp.

  “This is the best birthday I ever had,” she told them. Not a complete lie. One birthday Clare had flown her to Paris to see an art show; once they’d flown to San Francisco. She’d been in a kind of glory, but all their trips were edged with sadness for her, loving him so much, wanting him, knowing she’d never … But there’s always pain, she thought, whatever happens to us in life. Nothing ever perfect. Try to learn to focus on the pleasure, the joy, instead of the other: the pain is countable on, you can take it for granted. She tried: this was the best birthday, she said.

  She succeeded: they all believed her, believed the damp eyes, the twisted smile, the torn voice. And having given her something, they were full of love for her. They gathered around her as they left the table, embracing her, and Mary and Alex walked with their arms around her into the playroom.

  Then they subsided again. Elizabeth lighted a cigarette. Mary was twisting her belt in her fingers. Alex was curled up in a chair looking catatonic.

  “I don’t understand,” Alex said finally in a small voice, “why it made him so angry. Okay, so maybe he did something he shouldn’t have—I mean, why would Mom leave him if he hadn’t? Or why would he make her leave him? But after all these years—I mean, how bad could it have been, what he did? Have another lover, be unkind to her, never be home, what could he have done that was so terrible?” She raised her hand to her mouth and nibbled at the skin around the nail of her right forefinger.

  Elizabeth bent forward and clasped her hands together near the floor between her legs.

  Mary leaned back, raised her head as if she were trying to separate it from her body. She peered upward, breathing hard.

  Seeing them, Ronnie suddenly stiffened. She sat absolutely unmoving, barely breathing.

  “Can you understand it?” Alex went on. She bit her underlip, stopped and raised her hand to her mouth again, nibbled skin.

  Elizabeth sat up. “I need a drink.”

  “We all need a drink,” Mary said.

  Ronnie got up with a sigh. “What’ll it be?”

  Elizabeth stood. “I’ll help. Orders?”

  They all asked for scotch, even Alex.

  “Oh good,” Alex breathed. “Serious-talk drinking.”

  “I’m turning into a drunk,” Ronnie murmured. She and Elizabeth went into the sitting room, where the bar was set up. They returned carrying bottles and glasses; Alex went into the kitchen for ice. When drinks had been passed out, Elizabeth sat down and relighted her cigarette, which had gone out, inhaling it deeply. Then slowly, purposefully, she turned to Ronnie. “Why did you leave home so young, Ronnie? You were only fourteen and your mother was wonderful to you, wasn’t she? Not like mine or Mary’s. So how come?”

  Ronnie looked at the floor. “I couldn’t stand it here once I knew … I didn’t like your father very much but once I realized he was my father, I was furious with my mother, and I couldn’t tell her that, I didn’t want to hurt her. It made me crazy, living here and watching every day, every night, wondering if she was with him …”

  “Yes. I can understand that. But was that enough to make a kid who’d always been protected risk dangerous alien streets? A big city?”

  “I wasn’t so protected … I just couldn’t stand the situation.”

  “It must have been terrible to drive you out onto the streets.”

  “I told you, I went to live with my aunt. Rosa.”

  “Why are you persecuting the child, Lizzie?” Mary protested. “It’s perfectly understandable that she wouldn’t want to live here under those conditions.”

  “Kids endure far worse. They endure terrible things. It takes something unendurable to drive them to run away from home.”

  “What makes you an expert on children?”

  “I was one.” Elizabeth sat forward like a prosecutor and faced Ronnie. “Why did you run away from this house!”

  Ronnie looked up at her in terror, her eyes aflame. “Fuck off, Elizabeth!”

  Elizabeth leaned back in the deep soft chair, letting out a sigh that was almost a groan. “So,” she breathed. She lighted a fresh cigarette from a half-smoked one. She drank a big gulp of scotch.

  Mary’s eyes were fixed on Elizabeth with terror, her body immobile. Ronnie, her face twisted into wretchedness, stared at the floor.

  “WHAT!” Alex cried. “What is going on! What are you saying?” She leapt up, she poked Elizabeth in the shoulder, she whirled on Mary. “WHAT, WHAT, WHAT?”

  Elizabeth laid her hand across her eyes. Her voice was toneless. “I’ve never talked about this. I’ve never told anyone. Nobody. Ever. I was too …” she choked—“ashamed.” She laid her head back as if she were studying the ceiling. “When I was ten years old, here for the summer, Father raped me.”

  The room froze. No one even breathed.

  Her dead glance swept Mary. “You were little, only five or six. You still slept in the nursery with your nanny. Laura was here but she was drinking heavily. The war had started and Father was always working in Washington or flying to England. He only came up for long weekends, and only a couple of times that summer. So Laura and I had dinner alone most nights. She was sloshed by dinner and most nights she passed out right after it. The servants got her to bed. When Father came to Lincoln, she barely spoke to him, and she didn’t change her drinking habits. Her form of rebellion, I guess.

  “He came into my room late one night. I was sound asleep, I woke up when I felt … I felt …”—her voice trembled—“something someone pressing touching …”—she brought her voice back into control—“underneath my nightgown.” She stopped, inhaled deeply. She sipped her drink. She regarded them dry-eyed. They all stared at her, paralyzed.

  “I was still a child. I didn’t menstruate until I was fourteen, I didn’t have breasts, I’d never masturbated, I hadn’t felt sexual desire.” She inhaled again, turned her gaze to the ceiling. “I fought him off, I pushed him away, I cried. He put his hand over my mouth, I was terrified. I thought he was trying to kill me. He said he wasn’t going to hurt me, just make a woman of me. Said it was time someone did and it was a father’s office. I still wriggled, struggled, and he patted my head. He patted my head!” Elizabeth cried. “He said he loved me. Loved me!” She broke into tears. “And this was the way men showed love to women. And I … I … oh, I so yearned to be loved!” She bowed her head, laying it in her hands, sobbing softly.

  The sisters sat frozen until Alex got up and went into the bathroom, came back with a box of tissues and handed it to Elizabeth. Elizabeth wiped her face with a tissue.

  “It didn’t happen often. He wasn’t around often. But whenever he was here, I lay in bed so tense, never knowing … I couldn’t sleep. And even when he wasn’t here, the memory … the memory was in that bed somehow, in this house, this town.”

  “That’s why you changed your room!” Mary burst out. “When you came for the Fourth one year, you made such an issue of it, insisting on having a different room. I thought England had made you crazy, that you had some snobbish thing about your old room …”

  “Why didn’t you tell your mother?” Alex asked simply. “Why didn’t you say you didn’t want to come here?”

  “I did tell her! I told her I didn’t want to come here,” she concluded miserably.

  “Why didn’t you tell her what he was doing?” Alex continued, in some outrage.

  Ronnie stared at the floor.

  Elizabeth lighted another cigarette, inhaled deeply, sipped scotch, regained her composure. “I was afraid,” she said
bitterly.

  “I don’t understand. You were just a little girl…”

  “No, you don’t understand!” Elizabeth whirled on her. “You had a mother who loved you! Who would have consoled you. Who wouldn’t have blamed you! I didn’t know what my mother would say and I couldn’t have borne it if she …” Her voice broke, she bent her head.

  “How long did he do it,” Mary asked in a hard voice.

  “Until I was seventeen.”

  Mary calculated. “When I was twelve.”

  “Then I stopped him.”

  “You stopped him!” Mary gasped. “How!”

  Elizabeth turned to her slowly. “You didn’t?”

  “I was afraid!” Mary cried. “He started when I was only eight years old! He said I was his girl, that we were lovers the two of us, Mommy was dead, only he and I left in the whole world. He said he was lonely, that I could make him happy and he would make me happy and that it was all all right. That this was what daddies did with their little girls. But I mustn’t tell anybody. That would kill him: if I said anything to anybody, he’d shrivel up and die and I would know I killed him. And that if he died, I’d be sent to a home, an orphanage. I’d be all alone. Then later on, years later, he showed me a gun, he pulled it out of his drawer, he said if I said anything he would shoot himself!”

  “He told me that if I told, he wouldn’t send Mother any more money,” Elizabeth said.

  “He usually did it in the Georgetown house, when I was home from school on vacations. But when I got older, he did it here, in the summer when he came up,” Mary added. “Probably starting about then, when I was about twelve. When you stopped him.” She stared at Elizabeth. “How did you know about me?”

  “I didn’t. It’s just—since we’ve been back here—some things you said—the way he terrifies you. It was the only thing that made sense.”

  “I didn’t even ever imagine he did it to you! He never seemed to care about you and he was affectionate with me. I thought he loved me, not you. I thought that was the proof. That that was what I had to pay for having him love me. But it was so awful! It hurt, and I didn’t want it! That’s why I was so devastated when you went to England: I knew I’d be here with him all alone with no one to stop him, and he was here most of the summer then. I couldn’t stand it, I tried to get away, I begged him for driving lessons or to let me spend the summer with Aunt Pru. But he absolutely refused. He wouldn’t let go of me. That’s why I got married! To escape him. And he knew it! He tried to stop me! He was furious! But I couldn’t stand it anymore! I figured it couldn’t be any worse with a husband!”