Our Father

by Marilyn French

  “Anything about Father?” Mary asked.

  “No. Too soon. Tomorrow. It was on the local television news this morning, though, Mrs. Browning said. We may have reporters.”

  “I suppose there are millions of things to be done,” Alex said anxiously. “I have to call David. And my mother. But what else can I do? Are you planning the arrangements?” she asked Elizabeth. “Is there anything I can help with?”

  Elizabeth did not seem ready to organize anything. “I guess so. But I imagine—well, I’m guessing the funeral will be taken out of our hands. But we need to call Florence’s agency, the home nursing service …”

  “Right,” Mary agreed. “And we have to call Hollis.”

  Still, they all lingered at the table. Teresa poked her head in to see if she could clean up, grimaced and turned back to face Mrs. Browning pointing to her watch. “It’ll be lunchtime before I can clear up the breakfast table,” she complained.

  “They were up all night, Tess,” Mrs. Browning chided. “Why don’t you start upstairs? I’ll clear the breakfast dishes.”

  Still the sisters sat on. They remarked on the weather, a hardy sparrow on a bush, their tiredness, Mary’s headache, but they all seemed to be waiting for something, their eyes on each other with a certain hunger.

  Mary ended it. “Well, I’m going to get dressed. I’ll call Hollis. When do you think they’ll complete the autopsy?” she asked Elizabeth, who shrugged ignorance.

  “Probably tonight or early tomorrow,” Alex said, rising too.

  “Excuse me,” Ronnie interrupted, and they all turned to her. “Do you want me to leave now?”

  “Leave?”

  “Now?”

  “Why?”

  “I mean, there are going to be a lot of people coming in here. Public people. There’s going to be a funeral. I want to know what you want me to do.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that,” Mary said.

  Elizabeth gazed at Ronnie, pondering.

  “Why should you do anything?” Alex blurted.

  Mary looked hard at Ronnie. “No, well of course, you wouldn’t want to be …” She turned to Elizabeth. “Lizzie?”

  “Ronnie is our sister,” Elizabeth said. “Whatever anyone says.”

  “Yes. They can’t shame us, only him,” Mary said doubtfully.

  Ronnie flushed; close to tears, she hardened her face into an angry mask.

  Alex gasped. Mary turned to her. “You know what I mean. I’m talking about the world. People don’t usually have illegitimate children at their funerals. The press. …”

  Ronnie fled, made it to her own room before the tears burst out. Give with one hand, take away with the other, she thought, throwing herself on her bed.

  “Really, Mary,” Elizabeth said.

  Mary looked back at her firmly. “Lizzie, I am not being mean! Have you any idea of what the press is going to make of her? Do to her?”

  Elizabeth fell silent.

  “I’m not just thinking about us. I’m not sure she’d want it.”

  “I don’t think she understood that.”

  “Then I’ll explain it,” Mary said rising.

  She knocked lightly on Ronnie’s door. Ronnie mumbled something.

  “It’s Mary. May I come in?”

  “It’s your house. Do what you want.”

  Mary stepped inside the small shabby room, drew a breath at the look of it—not that she hadn’t been there before. But somehow, she felt, she hadn’t seen it till now. Ronnie stood by the bed. When Mary approached her, she recoiled.

  “Oh, Ronnie, don’t be angry! When I said they couldn’t shame us, I meant that no one of us deserves to be shamed for their behavior except Father. Not us. Not you.”

  Ronnie watched her warily. When Mary put her hand on Ronnie’s arm, Ronnie shook it off.

  “But Ronnie, that’s not the way the press works. Ron … if they know who you are, the press is going to have a field day. With you, with your mother. You know it doesn’t matter that the men are the ones who do these things. Whatever men do, it’s always the women who are the focus of the … attack, really. The persecution. The objects of curiosity. It’s mainly women in the photographs. Photographers might follow you, question people who went to school with you, any friends they discover in Boston, people who used to work here about Noradia. I’m not sure you want that. If you want his name, that history, following you around the rest of your life. If you’re willing … I’ll support you. It’s up to you.”

  Mary approached her, put her arms around her. “But whatever you do, however we handle this, we don’t want you to leave. I don’t want you to leave.”

  Ronnie buried her head in Mary’s shoulder, Mary’s arms around her, Mary leaning her head against the top of Ronnie’s. “We’re sisters,” Mary whispered.

  Ronnie pulled away gently, wiped her eyes with her shirt sleeve, sat down on the bed and lighted a cigarette, pointing Mary to the only chair, a hard-backed wooden chair at the desk. “We’re sisters,” Ronnie said in a nasal voice. “Now. But once we leave here … your life … my life … maybe you aren’t going to want to know me.”

  Mary dropped her eyes. No way, no way on this earth could she incorporate Ronnie into her life, her friends, her world. Ronnie would hate it anyway. She looked up.

  “Our lives. Well, our lives can never be … you know … we don’t live in the same world. And you wouldn’t want to live in mine. Sometimes I don’t even want to live in mine but it’s the only one I know, the one I’m used to, the one I feel comfortable in. But I don’t want to lose you. I want my daughter to meet you, Marie-Laure, I think you could help her, well, I’m not asking you to help her, but she needs help and I can’t give it to her, I’ve wrecked my chance. It would be good for her to meet someone like you.”

  “You’re not afraid I’ll seduce her?”

  “Maybe that would be good for her,” Mary laughed, “if it weren’t incest. There’s enough incest in this family already.”

  Ronnie laughed, kept laughing, with an edge of hysterical relief, a threat of tears.

  “Do you know what I realized last night?” Mary asked proudly.

  Ronnie shook her head.

  “I don’t need to get married again! I don’t need another husband! I never have to sleep with a man again unless I want to!”

  Ronnie smiled wryly. “Yeah, marriage is a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.”

  Mary didn’t get it. “… And you did that. The three of you. That has nothing to do with … this … with Father. … But now that Father … well, I can come downstairs in my robe if I want! I can send my poems out to poetry magazines …!” She wore an easy unself-conscious grin that Ronnie had never seen on her before.

  “I wonder,” Ronnie said, only dimly understanding the particulars of Mary’s new freedoms but utterly perceiving their essence, “if I’ll ever be able to walk around this house as if I belonged here.”

  Mary gazed at her. “I hope you will.”

  “So what do you think I ought to do? I don’t want the press breathing down my neck, breathing down Momma’s. I don’t want my picture in the paper. I don’t want to be known as Stephen Upton’s bastard. In my world, that would ruin my reputation,” she grinned wickedly. Then she dropped her eyes. “But I don’t want to be left out, either, to be hidden someplace while the three of you …” Her eyes glistened. “Makes me feel slimy.”

  Mary pondered. “Let me speak to Lizzie.”

  Ronnie nodded.

  Mary’s glance took in Ronnie’s word processor, the hills of books. “You know, whatever is in Father’s will, this house will have to be sold. And that will take months, maybe years. And meantime, someone has to live here, we can’t leave it completely empty. The estate will have to pay someone to stay and act as a caretaker. Not a lot but enough to live. And we need someone trustworthy. So—it might be worth your while—you could stay here while you finish your dissertation … you could move into Father’s study …”
/>   “NO!”

  Mary shrank, stared, blinked, understood. “Or wherever you wanted. It’s quiet. You could use the Alfa. If you wouldn’t be lonely.”

  “Be an Upton servant again?” Ronnie said tightly.

  Mary thought. “Is that what I’m suggesting? Actually, I was thinking maybe I’d come live here too. Sell my apartment and live up here for a while. Just until the house is sold. It’s closer to Marie-Laure than Lizzie’s place. I have to spend some time with her. She could come here sometimes on weekends, bring her friends. In the nice weather. Maybe I could save some money living here. You could continue my driving lessons,” she smiled shyly.

  “Are you asking me to live with you?” Incredulous.

  “I don’t know what I’m asking. I’m just having ideas. It’s as if the world has just started over again! I feel as if my whole past has been erased and everything is beginning newly.”

  Ronnie kept her voice steady. “Maybe we could.”

  The house was full of activity that afternoon as trucks came to pick up the medical equipment rented for Stephen and deliver flowers. The telephone rang—all three telephones, almost constantly—and a few reporters appeared at the front door. But Elizabeth did not manage things. No one did. Somehow, they all knew precisely how to get rid of reporters, how to handle workmen and telephone calls, and to record the senders of flowers for thank-you notes to be written later, and what would keep the servants calm—Teresa especially was distraught, kept wiping her eyes, muttering “Such a kind man.” Maybe remembering her own father, Elizabeth thought. But she had spent considerable time sitting with Father. Probably thought he was kind because he never hit her. It would be a kindness to let the woman leave early, Elizabeth thought, then realized it was already nearly four. Couldn’t give them tomorrow off, they needed all hands. And after that, Teresa might be let go—the sisters were leaving and would no longer need her. Maybe that was really what the tears were about.

  Elizabeth sighed, leaning back in Father’s chair, exhaling in deep satisfaction. She had spent the afternoon repacking his papers, labeling the boxes. It would take another two or three days to finish. The boxes would go to an archive somewhere, some college or university, maybe someone would even pay to have them. There were more, a closetful here, perhaps others in New York, Boston, Washington. Let someone else write his life. His disgusting life. Make him out a hero.

  Hollis had been cagey, Mary said. Of course he expressed deep condolences, so sorry my dear, my poor dears, you dear girls, but cagey. Mary laughed, “He isn’t coming out to read the will until he’s goddamned certain the autopsy shows no sign of foul play!”

  Didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore, nothing that used to matter. Not even if he didn’t make me executor. It’ll twinge, but no more. Everything changed somehow now. Have to get a new life. Have to get a life. If they pushed her out at Treasury, she’d get a job. Teaching maybe. Maybe near here. Live in this house. No. Too expensive to keep up. Sisters. She had sisters now, people who knew her, who didn’t think she was just a coldhearted mean bitch. People willing to put an arm around her. People whose touch she could stand. Welcomed even.

  She looked at her watch, picked up the telephone for the twentieth time that day, leaned her head on her hand, then slowly hit the numbers.

  “Hello, Mother. It’s Elizabeth.”

  “You might have called earlier. I had to hear on the television that my own husband died?”

  “You wanted me to call you at two in the morning? Because that’s when I got back here last night.”

  “You might have called me this morning.”

  “I slept late.”

  “It’s four o’clock. You just got up?”

  “No. I just worked up the energy to call you. It’s not pleasant calling you, and I have to steel myself.”

  “That’s a fine thing to say.”

  “Do you want any information from me? If not, I’ll hang up.”

  “Have you seen the will?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “The lawyer won’t read it until after the autopsy.”

  “Why is there an autopsy?”

  “To determine the precise cause of death.”

  “And what was it?”

  “How do I know?”

  “What did you do—kill him or something?”

  “I think he had another stroke.”

  Elizabeth could hear a match strike, an exhalation.

  “Well at least I outlived him.”

  “Yes. You were determined to do that.”

  “He had to leave me twenty-five thousand dollars. Of course, that sounded like a lot more in 1934 than it does now.”

  “No, Mother, he had to put twenty-five thousand dollars in a trust for you. It’s probably up to millions now.”

  “REALLY!”

  “Really.”

  “I’ll have money of my own! I’ll be the only one of my sisters with money of my own.”

  “You will be.”

  Catherine was silent. Finally she said briskly, “Let me know when you know about the will. And about the funeral. I want to go.”

  “I’ll make sure you’re included.”

  “All right. Will I be seeing you?”

  After a silence, Elizabeth said, “I suppose I could drive in one day.”

  “I’d like to see you, Elizabeth. I never see you.”

  “Then I’ll come.”

  Glide into it over tea: and by the way, Mother, did you know Father fucked me, regularly, for years and years? And that when I used to cry and beg you not to send me out there, it was because he was fucking me, fucking me, fucking me, did you know that, Mother? Mother?

  What would she say? I haven’t the slightest idea, no inkling at all, not even a hint of an idea. I don’t know her at all I guess.

  Suppose she said: Yes, I thought so. Could I bear it? Suppose she said: Better you than me. Or, Why didn’t you tell me? Or, I don’t believe you. Couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t. So don’t tell her. What else could she say? She could cry out, hug me, say she was sorry she didn’t listen to me.

  Elizabeth pondered.

  Better not tell her.

  Alex was busy all day, arranging flowers in vases, answering the telephone, going to the door and getting rid of reporters, patting Teresa on the back, praising Mrs. Browning for her fortitude. But between chores she seemed to vanish, and Mary, Elizabeth, and Ronnie, who were also involved in the practical work of the household, kept noticing her absence. Still, the next time the doorbell rang, she would be there, so no one questioned her.

  When they gathered at six for cocktails, she was especially silent, and Ronnie touched her hand.

  “Are you okay? You seem—absent. Withdrawn.”

  She smiled gloriously. “I’m fine.”

  “What have you been doing all day? Apart from all the shit work?”

  “Making telephone calls.” She sipped her wine.

  Alex terse?

  “One thing,” she said suddenly. “I’d like to be called Alexandra. Not Alex. If you can remember,” she added apologetically.

  They stared at her.

  “Who did you call?” Ronnie blurted.

  “Oh, David and the kids of course. And my mother. I had a long conversation with my mother.” She smiled and sipped again. They all leaned toward her.

  “Did you tell her?”

  “Not exactly. I just said my memory had returned. Let her stew that over for a while. I don’t want to tell her over the telephone. I want to see her face.”

  “What did she say?”

  Alex laughed. “She ummed and hummed. She said ‘Really? Your memory of what?’” She laughed again, a dark harsh laugh, and all three of them stared at her in surprise. “My mother,” she concluded bitterly.

  “Our mothers weren’t much help to us, were they,” Elizabeth said.

  They all sat pensively for a time.

  “I wonder. If my mother had lived. If she hadn’t k
illed herself …,” Mary began, “would she have been any help? Would he still have …”

  “He did it to me when my mother was alive,” Alex exploded. “A woman you say he loved.”

  “I wonder what it was. Why he had to do it.”

  “Like a male dog peeing on a tree,” Ronnie said. “Marking out his territory.”

  “You think?”

  “He probably really didn’t see anything wrong with it. He probably really did see us as his possessions.”

  “And our mothers? Did they think the same way?”

  Silence.

  “My mother,” Elizabeth said finally, “is very pleased to have outlived him. Get her trust fund. I swear if she’d had a terminal disease, she would have managed to stay alive that long.”

  “What happened to it if she died before him?” Ronnie asked.

  “It died too. Reverted to his estate.”

  “So you wouldn’t have gotten it.”

  She shook her head.

  “I keep being shocked by him. By his …” Ronnie shook her head hard, as if she were trying to toss water out of her ears.

  “Yes. So foreign to the way we think. Are. Feel. I wonder if all men are foreign to all women that way,” Mary mused.

  “Are you going to tell her?” Ronnie continued, facing Elizabeth. “Your mother?”

  “I don’t think so. No.”

  “Afraid, huh,” Ronnie said knowingly. Elizabeth turned to her sharply but Ronnie was not smirking. She seemed thoughtful.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said.

  “But suppose you had a daughter,” Mary said to Elizabeth. “Would you feel that way—that she was his property, that he could do whatever he wanted—her father?”

  “Absolutely not!”

  “Me either!” Alex announced.

  “Nor do I,” Mary agreed.

  “I’d kill him!” Elizabeth cried.

  Ronnie turned to Elizabeth. “Of all the things your mother could say if you told her, which would hurt you the most?”

  Elizabeth thought. “If she didn’t believe me.”

  “Would that be worse than if she said—however she said it, however implicitly because she’d probably never say it straight out—that he had the right?”