Our Father

by Marilyn French

  I was a pretty brave kid, I think.

  And all she knew was love. Oh Christ. Well shit, she deserved some, didn’t she?

  Was it just malice made me do that? What did I think I was doing? Getting revenge for a miserable day, all because of her, couldn’t think through problems, couldn’t work, tearing my hair just because of her stupid politics? The way Mary and Alex looked at me, you’d think I’d killed a puppy.

  What the hell do I care.

  I do care. I don’t want them to hate me, think ill of me.

  Why? Stupid, both stupid, what the hell difference does it make what they think of you? Dictatorship of niceness for women, I won’t submit to it, never did never will.

  But when we’re all getting along … it makes the edges of my heart curl, I feel lighter, not so jangly and torn. … Ronnie too. In some ways, I like her best, she’s most like me. So why did I have to …

  I don’t care about her politics, sentimental feminist garbage can’t stand up to the light of day. The whole weight of western philosophy stands behind me, the best minds of the centuries, along with all the economic thinkers except a couple of oddballs, the lunatic fringe. But I’m not trying to convert her, why does she insist that I believe what she believes? Dictatorship of the new feminist proletariat, everybody has to dress and act the same, no makeup, no high heels, and above all no dissent—worse than the commies.

  I stand for liberty. Individual liberty. That’s the basis of my politics, my economics, my life.

  Satisfied, Elizabeth turned over and made herself more comfortable among the tangle of sheet and blankets, the punch-drunk pillows. She closed her eyes. She willed herself to sleep. But the mind wouldn’t close down shop.

  Just wasn’t going to let her get away with lies, if she has to lie to herself to be a feminist, okay, but she’s not going to lie to us to make herself better, purer than we. I won’t permit it. How dare she suggest she’s purer than we are! That we colluded in our own … and she didn’t. He just grabbed her and raped her, is that what she wants us to believe? So why didn’t she yell, why didn’t she tell her mother? A loving mother, she claims. That wasn’t Father’s style, that isn’t how he’d act, he wasn’t like that with any of us, you could hear it when we talked about it, he used our love for him, his … love … whatever … for us. Which is the worst part, the killing part, the thing you can’t get past, the thing I can’t get past. I loved him, I wanted him to love me even if that meant … oh god.

  Elizabeth turned again, then, despairing of sleep, sat up. She picked up the clock: ten after four. She felt bedraggled, she could feel the bags growing down her cheeks under her eyes. She sighed, lighted a cigarette, slipped out of bed and pulled on her robe. She walked barefoot on the soft carpet to the window, and pulled open the drapes. The moon was gone, no stars were visible, the sky was completely black. You could barely make out the line where trees ended and sky began. She sat on the chaise, gazing out at nothingness.

  Father.

  I adored him. All those years. Watching him stride around laughing joking talking with all those important men, they all listened to him as if he were somebody, really somebody, and oh how I wanted longed yearned to have him look at me just once with love, to praise me, praise something about me, approve of me. And when I gave up hope for that, when I grew up, I yearned to be like him. What do you want to be when you grow up, little girl? My daddy.

  Then he came to me, said words, said love.

  How could I love Mother, fucking victim, hopeless bitter angry useless woman, sat on her ass fidgeting waiting for the telephone to ring, daydreaming—revenge? restitution? The only thing she ever did in her whole life was give birth to me. Oh, she took care of me, I suppose that’s something, it takes something.

  But she’d scorn Ronnie’s ideas the same as I do.

  You all hate women, Ronnie said.

  Maybe we can’t bear listening to hope when we have no hope.

  Holding the palm of her hand under the cigarette ash, she got up seeking an ashtray. She pressed the cigarette out, then slid back into the tumbled bed, trying vaguely to straighten the covers, and lay on her back, her arms folded behind her head.

  She hopes for the same things I do the same things I would if I could hope. Justice, decency, humankindness. The difference between us is I know better.

  So you try to dash her illusions, all of them. Twenty-five she is, young enough to be my daughter. The young should be permitted illusions.

  She’d probably say that they weren’t illusions. That’s what she’d say. Wouldn’t she?

  And what would Clare say?

  Her heart paused.

  Nothing came.

  She always knew what Clare’s response to any statement would be, but this time she could not guess at it. She knew he was opposed to feminism, but not really why. She’d simply mocked it with him. And now he’d fallen silent. The ceiling was blank. She stared at it in panic; a profound loneliness filled the room.

  Alex sat in the formal chair facing the window gazing at a sky moonless now, degrees of darkness, sky, trees, lawn beneath. Would an artist call those colors? Have names for them—night lawn gray, night tree black, night sky … what?

  Just as she was pulling herself together, regaining her past, filling in the patches, everything around was falling apart. Terrible past but better to know, have something to put in those awful gaping spaces. Mother, dooming me to mental retardation: did she think she was doing me a favor?

  Why, Elizabeth Ronnie what is it what is going on? We were so good, we were learning to love each other, embrace each other, help each other, god knows we need help, we need each other, only we alone with our awful truth, our untellable tale, our histories that no history book will ever recount. Women’s lives, untold, unknown, as if a species of creature lived on earth, some exotic form of ant or beetle, busy building their homes getting their food getting young raising them, and no one knew it, no one knew anything about it, everyone looked the other way and said, that isn’t there. They aren’t there. That isn’t happening. That is unthinkable.

  Unthinkable.

  Father.

  How to look at him see him, how to think feel about him unthinkable. Don’t know, all mixed up, too crazy, and now he’s just a helpless old man dying, one more human victim. Can’t.

  She leaned back, let her eyes close partway, saw her own eyelashes, dark against darkness. Let her hands fall limply on the wooden chair arms, neck fall back, let it all fall away.

  Age upon age of humans on this earth, the pain of birth of life of death of injustice, creatures springing up in glorious bodies then are broken, fall down, oppressed and oppressors dancers and dance, age upon age, held in the palm of the ancient parents, small and brown and wrinkled I see them, hold me in your palm, keep me safe, draw your blanket about me, I am one of the children who walk here briefly who need your soft palm on the side of my face. Birth growth desire the dance I too dance to my death in desire and longing and rage and pain, eternal dance, hold me, end this pain. I pray you.

  17

  THE NURSE WHO EXAMINED Mr. Upton every day, Elsie Noonan, came early Monday morning so Florence had plenty of time to get Mr. Upton settled again, elegant in his silk pajamas and robe—a heavy crimson silk thing, must have cost a fortune—sitting up in his wheelchair for the lawyers’ visit at eleven. She’d been worried because sometimes Elsie didn’t get there until ten or ten-thirty, and he would have been in disarray when his important guest arrived, and that would have shamed her. But today she showed up at nine-thirty so everything was fine, Florence had given him a nice breakfast before Elsie came and all she had to do was bathe and shave him and put him in his robe—which was more of a project than you’d imagine—and comb his hair.

  She didn’t hear the doorbell, you couldn’t hear a thing in this house it was so big, but then suddenly there was Miss Upton in the doorway with these two men in suits and ties, important men, you could tell. So of course, she knew how to behave
, she excused herself and tiptoed downstairs for her elevenses, Mrs. Browning had an apple crumble for her today, just scrumptious it was, and she had a little breather.

  Sat there for almost an hour, then in comes Miss Upton to ask Mrs. Browning if she could possibly handle two extra for lunch and not to worry if she couldn’t because they’d all go out and have lunch at the Lincoln Inn. And Mrs. Browning said she had a lovely mushroom soup and plenty of it and a nice fresh apple crumble, and would omelets do? She had some Swiss cheese and a little ham she could toss in, and some nice French bread delivered just this morning, or maybe they’d rather have a soufflé? And Miss Upton said a soufflé would be wonderful and could they have a green salad with it?

  So those men were staying for lunch.

  Hollis came down first, alone. He stood for a moment uncertainly in the foyer, then peered into the sitting room. No one. He crossed the foyer and peered into the dining room—what a majestic room! That table must hold fifty guests!—then walked the length of the great front hall and peered into the archway under the stairs.

  “Hello?”

  No one.

  He passed through the archway, turned into another wide hall and walked toward an open door at its end. It was the library, and Elizabeth was sitting at the desk.

  “Elizabeth!”

  She removed her glasses. “Yes, Hollis. Are you through? Come in.”

  She’s different, he thought as he settled himself on the leather couch. Nicer somehow.

  “You and the other lawyer—Mr. Kaplan?—will stay for lunch, I hope.”

  “Can’t speak for him but I’d enjoy that. I think Kaplan intends to see Cab’s doctors this afternoon, over at the hospital, so I imagine he’ll be grateful for a civilized interlude. And it’s a bit of a ride back to Boston, I’d be glad to eat first. Especially with such delightful company!” he added, having long ago learned his manners.

  Elizabeth lighted a cigarette.

  “Still doing that, eh? I gave it up five years ago. Evelyn kept after me, drove me crazy. But I must say I still enjoy getting a whiff of cigarette smoke.” He smiled stiffly. “Elizabeth. …”

  She looked up sharply at his tone change.

  “How’s Cab feeling? How’s he acting?”

  Spurts of adrenaline pumped swiftly through Elizabeth’s body. Danger. Watch it now. Careful.

  She looked directly at him. He was frowning, his head in his hand, his elbow on the arm of the couch. “I’m afraid … he’s … unhappy, Hollis,” she smiled apologetically. “We understand, of course. It must be unendurable for such an active … powerful man to find himself … almost helpless. Having to be done for in the ways he is.” She let her voice drop, fade, then drew a long breath and started again. “That’s why we decided to put our own lives on hold for a while, to oversee his care at home. The only alternatives were a nursing home or bringing him back here with no family member to make sure he was being cared for properly—the way he should be. …”

  “Of course,” Hollis murmured, his face full of sympathy. “What you girls are doing is—well, it’s nothing short of damned wonderful, Elizabeth. We’d all be lucky to be on the receiving end of such devotion when we get old … helpless. God knows it’s awful.”

  “Yes,” she agreed softly.

  Didn’t know I had it in me.

  “You know, I have to confess, Lizzie, I never thought Cab was much of a father. So many women—excuse me, but you know—well—and he was never around, you know, that sort of thing. But he must have done something right.”

  She tried to picture Bernini’s Saint Teresa when she smiled. “Father is very special to all of us.”

  “Takes his frustration out on you, does he?” The old man gave her a wise look.

  She shook her head gently, dismissing this. “It’s understandable. We’re family. Better on us than on the help,” she added laughing. “They might quit!”

  He laughed. “Yey-uh, things ain’t what they used to be, are they, Lizzie?”

  A desperate voice in the hall cried out “Hello? Hello?” Hollis rose, chuckling. “That’s Tom, lost in this maze. Forgot how big this house was. Looked different years ago when it was full of people.”

  “Hollis, why don’t you take—Tom—into the sitting room. I’ll join you there in a minute. I’ll call the others. We can have drinks.”

  Elizabeth went to find her sisters. As the lawyers in the sitting room put their heads close together to talk in whispers, she gathered the sisters in Ronnie’s room, which offered more privacy than the sun room or playroom, and whispered there.

  “I think—I’m not positive but almost—that Father wants Hollis to cut us out of his will. My guess is Hollis thinks Father has lost his wits. What’s at question is whether the other lawyer—the guardian ad litem—thinks the same thing.”

  “What is that other lawyer doing here?” Mary whined.

  “He’s the guardian ad litem,” Elizabeth repeated. “The court appointed him. His job is to decide whether Father is competent or not. We have to persuade him that Father’s not in his right mind.”

  “Well, he isn’t,” Mary said.

  “Well, he thinks he is. And who knows—maybe he is.”

  “You mean, he’s as sane as he ever was,” Ronnie said glumly. “That sounds right.”

  “But this time he’s being held up to judgment,” Alex said calmly.

  They all stared at her.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said, sounding surprised. “So we have to play this just right. We have to give these guys the impression that we are devoted long-suffering loving daughters who forgive him for his irrational rage against us.” She checked their faces. “If you can’t,” she warned, “don’t show up for lunch. I’ll say you’ve gone out, that I didn’t know you had a doctor’s appointment. …”

  Mary and Alex nodded their preparedness. Ronnie turned away from them stiffly, stood at the window.

  “Ronnie?” Elizabeth asked. “Are you okay? Can you do it?”

  She turned. “I’m invited to lunch?”

  “Of course!” Elizabeth snapped, as if it were a stupid question. She led the way, stopping in the kitchen. “Mrs. Browning, Mr. Whitehead and Mr. Kaplan will have drinks with us in the sitting room. Will you send someone to serve us?”

  The sisters walked down the front hall and into the sitting room. Both lawyers rose.

  “Hollis,” Elizabeth said, “you haven’t met our half sister Ronalda Velez. We only recently discovered her ourselves.” Nodding to Ronnie to step forward, Elizabeth put her hand lightly on her back. “Hollis Whitehead and … Mr. Kaplan …?”

  “Tom, please!” said the younger man, smiling.

  “I didn’t know …,” Hollis spluttered, his face shocked. “Another daughter?”

  “Yes, Father seems to have specialized in daughters,” Elizabeth smiled. “As far as we know! Please sit down!”

  Hollis stared at Ronnie as he lowered his large body into his chair, his face working unpleasantly. The six of them sat in a circle around the empty fireplace. Teresa and Doris bustled in with trays, and set bottles and ice on the small sideboard.

  Alex rose. “Let me get you something to drink,” she smiled.

  “Oh!” Hollis half rose from his chair. “You sure you don’t want me to do it, little lady?”

  Alex smiled shyly. “Well, I may not do it as well as you, but I’d like to try.”

  Shee-it, Ronnie thought. You thing. You’re as bad as Mary.

  As soon as they all had drinks, Hollis said, “You know the judge appointed Tom here guardian ad litem to look into the matter of the conservatorship. He has to determine what state Cab is in, whether he’s able to handle his own affairs. He’s going to interview the doctors this afternoon. Who are they, Tom?” He turned to him.

  Tom pulled a pad from his breast pocket. “Dr. Stamp—the neurologist who took care of Mr. Upton in the hospital? And Dr. Biddle. He was the family doctor for years as I understand it.”

  The sisters
nodded. So did Hollis.

  “Good men, good men,” he pronounced solemnly.

  “If I may make a suggestion …,” Elizabeth began tentatively.

  Elizabeth tentative? Shee-it!

  “You might want to talk to Nurse Edna Thompson as well. She probably saw more of Father than the doctors—more hands-on work, you know,” she smiled.

  “Excellent idea! Excellent!” Hollis boomed.

  Tom scribbled on his pad.

  Hollis set his sherry on the side table. “Listen, girls, I’ve known you, well, Lizzie and Mary at least, and I remember you as a tiny tot, Alex. …” He glanced uncomfortably at Ronnie, then away. “I’m Cab’s lawyer, obliged to realize his wishes, you know that, but … well, I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t know, you said when you called me that he wanted to talk about his will. The thing is, Cab has some idea … about changing his will. The question facing us is whether he’s … well, quite himself yet. I’ve had a nice little chat with Elizabeth,” he smiled at her benignly, “but I’d like to know what the rest of you think.” He glanced from face to face, settling on Mary. “Mary? What do you think, dear?”

  Mary dropped her eyes, bit her lower lip, then looked shyly up at Hollis with that appealing upward tilt to her face. “Oh, Hollis, you know it has to be so difficult for him!” she said fervently. “It would be difficult for any of us, but for a man like him! It’s … it’s …”—she dropped her eyes again—“sometimes it’s hard. You know, he was always such a, well, such a loving father.” She curled her shoulders, raising her face again to his fascinated gaze. “I always felt I was his favorite, but it seems we all felt that way,” she said glancing at her sisters, “at times.” She pulled an immaculate hankie from the pocket of her silk dress, dabbed her nose lightly.

  Does she really think that in this day and age she can get away with that?