Our Father

by Marilyn French

  “It is a little hard …”—she looked up beseechingly—“it’s very hard … for us when he acts as if we were his enemies, when we brought him back here to care for him out of love. I simply can’t understand it, none of us can. …” She stopped, raised her head and stared courageously at the fireplace. “But it doesn’t matter. We’re going to take care of him as long as we can. We know that if we don’t, if we send him to a nursing home—well, we might as well—just give up hope for any recovery. You know,” she appealed to Hollis, “how people in nursing homes just die.” She lowered her gaze again, stared at her hands in a kind of shame, as if she had betrayed something.

  Hollis’s face was wrenched with emotion.

  Ronnie thought, awed, she’s masterly. Didn’t know she was that good. She’s right, it is a profession, a high art to be a woman in their world.

  “I want you to know I think you girls are wonderful!” he said thickly, pulling his handkerchief from his pocket and giving his nose a great blow. He turned to the other lawyer. “You hear that, Tom?”

  “I heard,” Tom said, gazing intelligently at Mary.

  Is he seeing through her?

  “And what about you, my dear,” Hollis said kindly to Alex.

  “Well, Mr. Whitehead …”

  “Hollis, Hollis!”

  “Hollis. You know, Hollis, I haven’t seen Father in years. He and my mother,” she shrugged, “had, well, an unhappy divorce. I was still little.”

  “These things happen,” Hollis nodded solemnly. “Sad—but they happen.”

  “But I remember a man who played with me, who bought me a puppy …” Alex’s voice broke.

  This has to be real, Ronnie thought. She couldn’t counterfeit.

  “I was so happy to see him again after all these years!” she said in a rising voice. “I thought he’d be happy to see me too! I wanted to take care of him, it was my pleasure to tend him! But … he acts as if he hates me and I don’t know why! He acts as if he hates all of us, when we’re trying so hard …” Her voice cracked again, she leapt up and ran out of the room with her face hidden in her hands.

  Silence.

  “Alex,” Elizabeth said finally, “is a very … spiritual … person. Very emotional. She’s a dear—with him and with us. This business is especially hard on her.”

  Hollis nodded solemnly, bending forward in his chair, his hands clasped between his legs. He looked meaningfully at Tom. Tom looked meaningfully at him.

  “Yes. Well, I think I have as much as I need …,” he said, glancing up at Tom.

  “You haven’t asked Ronnie what she thinks,” Mary said sweetly. “She’s been living here for the past six or seven months, tending her mother, so she has more recent knowledge of him than we do …”

  “Ronnie’s mother was Father’s housekeeper, and his common-law wife for the last thirty-odd years …,” Elizabeth explained.

  Hollis looked as if he had just been told that the president was consulting an astrologer to determine national policy.

  “Of course, we didn’t know this before. We discovered it when we came back, and I can see you’re shocked, Hollis, well, it was a shock to us too. But you have to know that Ronnie was a great help to Father while her mother was dying. She kept him going; Noradia’s death was a terrible blow to him. In fact, it seems that his grief over her death precipitated his stroke. He had it the day she was buried, right after her funeral. …”

  The lawyer was trying to keep his mouth shut. A film of shine formed on his forehead, and he pulled out his handkerchief again and wiped it. “I see,” he said faintly. “I didn’t know.” He tried to turn toward Ronnie, but could not seem to get his eyes focused on her.

  Alex returned quietly. “Sorry,” she mouthed to the room at large. “I’m so sorry,” she said to Hollis. “I don’t usually act this way. It’s just been so …”

  “Quite all right, quite all right,” the lawyer said, standing up as she entered, exploding with geniality. “Perfectly understandable, my dear, perfectly understandable. Eh, Tom?”

  “Of course,” Tom said.

  Whether or not he bought Mary, he’s buying Alex, Elizabeth thought. Quite rightly.

  “For myself, I don’t really think I need to know any more. What I’d like to propose is—if it’s not an intrusion, I don’t want to cause trouble for you girls—I’d like to come back in a week to ten days, have another chat with Cab, see how he feels then. I told him it would take some time to have the … have things prepared, and that I’d return for his signature … so he’ll understand.”

  “Of course,” Elizabeth murmured.

  “No trouble at all,” said Mary.

  “We’d be happy to see you,” Alex put in. “And so will Father.”

  The lawyer sighed. “Things aren’t always what they seem,” he declared, “eh, Tom?”

  Tom nodded, slipped his notepad back into his pocket.

  “So what did you think of the election, Hollis?” Elizabeth asked. “A real triumph, no?”

  “It was a crazy idea, Elizabeth,” Ronnie snapped at her after the lawyers had left, and they had moved into the playroom. “Really crazy. An unacceptable risk.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “In the first place, I shouldn’t have come into that room! And to introduce me that way! You had to know that would upset him. And that it could turn him against all of you, not your father! You made him uncomfortable!”

  “Yes,” Mary murmured. “Rubbed his face in it.”

  “In what?” Alex asked.

  “In … Elizabeth breached what is considered good manners in polite society, Alex,” Mary explained.

  Ronnie laughed. “Rubbed his face in what lies underneath it!” She turned back to Elizabeth. “Did you really think that would undermine his faith in your father’s sanity? More likely to undermine his faith in yours! I mean, you risked your entire future, the future of all of you, your birthright, your legacy!”

  “It was necessary,” Elizabeth said coldly.

  “Why?”

  Mary studied Elizabeth’s face. “Yes,” she agreed, “it was.”

  “WHY?” Ronnie screamed.

  “Hush!” Mary whispered. “You want the servants to hear us?”

  “I’m not sure,” Elizabeth faltered.

  “Come on, Elizabeth, you never do anything without figuring all the angles first. Especially run that little scam. What a bunch of fakes you all are!”

  “I’m not a fake,” Alex protested.

  “Probably not,” Ronnie said sardonically, as if she thought Alex would be better off if she were.

  “And as if it wasn’t hard enough for him when you introduced me, you”—she turned to Mary—“had to compound it.”

  “Wasn’t that fun?” Mary giggled.

  “You mean you were trying to provoke him? Don’t you realize what’s at stake for you?”

  Mary shrugged. “I don’t know what I was trying to do. What are you, worried about our futures? You were there and he hadn’t asked you anything. …”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth agreed. “You see, you’re here. You exist.”

  “You didn’t introduce me the first time he came.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Mary said.

  “Yeah. Four weeks,” Ronnie commented dryly.

  “So we’ve changed.”

  “You’re … our seal,” Elizabeth said. “Our symbol.”

  “FUCK THAT!” Ronnie shouted. “I’m me, a person, not your mascot, your little goat, your dog …”

  “No, no, no!” Elizabeth cried impatiently. “Don’t you see? You are us, we are you. We’re illegitimate. All of us. As women we have no rights, even to our own bodies. We don’t even have the right to complain. Underneath all the glitzy surfaces we’re all in the same boat. That’s why it was necessary. We have to hold together. All of us.”

  All of them sat in silence.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” Alex said suddenly. “Get away from this house.”r />
  This time they took the driveway leading to the road and headed toward town. They had trouble walking four abreast on the grass verge, but they kept trying.

  “Okay, I understand what you’re saying,” Ronnie admitted. “And I guess I even agree with it. And of course, it makes me feel … more accepted. But I wish I could believe that Hollis guy would blame your father for his discomfort, instead of you for making him feel it.”

  “Why do you keep saying your father? He’s your father too, Ronnie,” Alex objected.

  Ronnie shrugged. “Doesn’t acknowledge it, does he? I don’t know what to call him. I can’t call him Father and I’ll be damned if I’m going to call him Mr. Upton—as he probably thinks I should. Would you prefer my calling him the dirty old prick?”

  Silence.

  She picked it up again. “I wasn’t raised an Upton and I can’t claim to be an expert on your class’s morality. But I’m willing to bet that in Hollis’s morality, your sin was more serious than your father’s. His is accepted, you know—men are allowed to do anything, really. It’s the person who exposes a wrongdoing who’s to blame.”

  “He thinks we were presented with some upsetting information and are brave girls making the best of it,” Mary declared.

  “Are you sure? Are you sure he doesn’t think you’re scandalous girls,” Ronnie snapped, “rubbing his nose in shit?”

  “No. ‘Scandalous’ goes with ‘women,’ not ‘girls,’” Elizabeth said thoughtfully. “And he kept calling us girls. So I think we’re home free.”

  Mary’s voice grew anxious again. “What’s going to happen, though, if Father keeps insisting he wants us out, sooner or later Hollis is going to have to cut us out. …”

  “We’ll know soon. If Kaplan awards me the conservatorship, that means he doesn’t think Father can manage his own affairs.”

  “Poor Father,” Mary mourned.

  “What!”

  “Well, think about how he must feel! He’s not mad or senile or out of his mind. He’s the same as he ever was. But suddenly he’s totally impotent! He can’t even get his lawyer to do what he wants!”

  “I don’t think he’s the same as before,” Alex argued, “not the way I remember him. And he must be a little insane to treat us with such hate when we’re trying to be kind to him. …” Her eyes filled.

  “He doesn’t think we mean to be kind to him,” Elizabeth muttered. “And he’s right.”

  “Well, I mean to be kind to him,” Alex said, a tear running down her cheek. She hastily wiped it away with her hand.

  “Well, I don’t,” Ronnie said in a tough little voice. “He was never anything but a bastard to me. He’s not acting any different now than when I was fourteen. Only thing, he’s not raping me.”

  “I came here with so much goodwill. So much … longing,” Alex said in a thickening voice.

  “You don’t still feel that way, do you? Now that you realize what he did?” Mary challenged her.

  “I can’t just stop feeling that. I had this longing for my father. I’ll always have it. Whether he’s there or not, alive or not. For the father I knew before … or the father I imagined … or the way he was sometimes, other times. …” She turned to Ronnie. “Don’t you? You grew up without any father at all! Didn’t you have a longing …”

  “NO!” Ronnie erupted.

  All of them stopped dead and looked at her.

  “STOP! Stop looking at me!” She moved with great agitation, shaking her fisted hands, her eyes darting around. “I don’t see why you all keep insisting …!” she cried. “It’s better not to have a father. They’re all bastards in one way or another! I was better off than you!” She ran ahead of them, then stopped and faced them in attack position. “It’s you who are all crazy!” she yelled, running off.

  The sisters walked in silence.

  “I think,” Alex said finally, slowly, in a low voice, “that Father has to be made to acknowledge Ronnie. Much as he hurt us, he hurt her worst of all.”

  “Yes,” Mary said, “you’re right. But he should be made to acknowledge everything—what he did to us as well. I never would have gotten married at nineteen except for … Maybe I wouldn’t have thought that marriage … sex … was all I was good for.”

  “Oh, you might’ve,” Elizabeth said gloomily. “It’s what they taught us in those days.”

  “Maybe,” Mary agreed. “But maybe I would have become a poet.”

  “A poet!”

  Mary stuck out a challenging chin. “I write poetry.”

  “I didn’t know,” Elizabeth said in a small voice.

  “I’ve written a poem a day since we’ve been here,” she said proudly. “Of course, they’re probably not any good. They’re probably awful.”

  Elizabeth put an arm around Mary. Alex embraced her from the other side. At the crossing where their road met a main road, Ronnie stood waiting, kicking dirt. They all walked back together but without speaking.

  Mary came a little late to the dinner table. She’d had a telephone call. “That was Chris, Christina, one of my friends, the ones who came to tea? They want to come to visit Father. I’ve told them he’s home, and they want to pay a call. Tomorrow. Is that all right?” She looked around.

  They just looked at her.

  “I suppose,” Elizabeth said.

  “They’re planning to come at eleven. I feel we should give them luncheon,” she said tentatively.

  “Not if it’s the big deal the tea was,” Elizabeth said. “I can’t go through that again.”

  “I’ll be glad to help you, Mary,” Alex offered.

  “Something like what we had for the men today would be adequate,” Mary said. “With, perhaps, a more elegant dessert. They know we weren’t expecting them. All right then? I’ll speak to Mrs. Browning.”

  Teresa entered to clear their plates.

  “Did you see that they arrested another Sikh for murdering Mrs. Gandhi?” Elizabeth said to the table at large.

  They gathered in the playroom and Alex turned on the television set. Elizabeth picked up a book lying on a table—poems by Barbara Greenberg. Must be Mary’s, she thought. She began to read. Ronnie was gazing dully out the glass doors to the terrace.

  Mary rustled in. “Well, that’s settled! A watercress soup and a chicken salad—there’s enough left over from the birds we had tonight—and she’ll make a wonderful dressing and serve it with dill, black beans, and tomatoes. And she’s going to make French pastries in the morning! Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “That sounds delicious, Mary,” Alex said warmly.

  “These poems are really wonderful,” Elizabeth murmured.

  “Yes, aren’t they? She’s a local poet, I found her book in the Concord bookstore.”

  “Any poems on incest?” Elizabeth asked.

  “No. Not by her. But in Anne Sexton. And I often wonder about Sylvia Plath. …”

  Ronnie sat tensely and looked portentously at Mary, then Elizabeth, then Alex. They all looked back at her. Elizabeth slowly put down the book. Alex switched off the set.

  “I’m sorry,” Ronnie said.

  “No need,” Elizabeth muttered.

  “It’s nothing,” Mary said.

  “Oh my dear.” Alex reached a hand toward her.

  “You’re right, of course,” she said in a dead voice. “I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to say. To think. To admit.”

  She turned her body to face them. “When I was little, I used to lie in bed and imagine that I had a poppa and that he would come one day in an old black car and lift me up crowing with joy at me. Wanting me. And take Momma and me away from here to our own house, where I could run around just as I chose. Momma had wonderful parents, her poppa used to carry her on his shoulders when they all walked out to the fields in the morning. The grass was still covered with dew, it was damp and she had no shoes. She remembered the light coming up, she remembered him with so much love. I wanted a poppa like that, a man who wanted me, wanted me to exist, I me
an, not what he … your father … what he wanted. And with my Poppa would come all these people, grandmothers and grandfathers and cousins and aunts and uncles, and they’d all be happy that I existed. That I was alive. I yearned to feel that, feel them, be surrounded by them. I wanted to be … welcomed into the world.” She stopped, rose, left the room. They heard the bathroom door slam, then silence.

  Only Alex was unaware of her, was elsewhere. “Yes,” she sighed, almost to herself. “Lifted! Warmed by body heat, smelling their body smells, seeing the pores on their skin, the gray in their hair, feeling part of them, like them, not perfect but wanted. Then you know what home is!”

  Elizabeth studied the Ping Pong table. She carefully avoided rolling her eyes.

  Ronnie came back with swollen eyes and a washed face. Even her hair was damp. She sat on the edge of a hassock, staring at the floor.

  “Talk to us, Ronnie,” Alex pleaded. “It’ll make you feel better and us feel wanted.”

  “Wanted?”

  “As if you need us. We want you to need us. We need it.”

  Ronnie grimaced. She asked Elizabeth for a cigarette. She stared at the floor, smoking.

  “Your father,” she said in a dead voice, “did seem like a god to me when I was little. He was so tall and handsome and rich and powerful and my mother adored him, and he was so easy with all those important people. …”

  She stopped. No one spoke.

  She looked up at them. “But he treated me like a nigger slave, and I don’t want to talk about it,” she said firmly.

  “We won’t mention it again,” Elizabeth said after a time.

  “Thank you.” Dead face, dead voice.

  The four of them sat in silence, their faces thoughtful.

  “He should be tried for his crimes,” Elizabeth said at last.

  “Tried?” Alex frowned. “You mean put on trial?” she asked incredulously.

  “Yes. Indicted and tried—incest is a crime, and we all know he’s guilty of it.”

  “That will never happen,” Mary said.

  Ronnie said, “Even if we’d been able to tell, even if anyone would have listened to us, even if anyone would have believed us, can you imagine them prosecuting a man who entertained presidents?”