Our Father

by Marilyn French

  Pondering, Ronnie could not work but hung her head over the keyboard as if she were studying it, lost in some limbo. After a long time, she sat up, her face impassive and still, her eyes dull. She leaned back in her chair, and gazed out at the snowy woods behind the house.

  I can live without them, she thought.

  But she felt haunted by a question she did not want to bring up to consciousness, but that finally forced itself up: was it irrevocable? Was their sisterhood going now to end, to fragment into bitterness, as if it had never been forged? Was there any way to get it back, to re-bind the connection? Which, she now saw, was precious to her. Where was Elizabeth, her mind and heart, what was going on inside her?

  Elizabeth herself hardly knew. She had felt numb since the night before, had gone to bed like a zombie, been unable to sleep, had smoked and drunk until nearly four, sitting up in her bed. Her mind was empty and reeling at the same time; it was full of things racing too fast for her to discern their nature. Nor was she sure why she was going through her father’s correspondence files, what she expected to find in them. She had packed only some of his official papers before she left here earlier in the month. There was a closet, really a room, off the study, packed nearly to the door with his files, boxes of files from Washington, New York, Boston. It would take months to go through them all, and for a while she had considered taking a leave of absence to do that, then asked herself why, why, why? But a metal file cabinet in the study itself held correspondence from the last twelve years, since his retirement, and that was accessible. It was that she was going through now, sitting on the floor, pulling out one file after another, reading the letters he received and copies of his replies.

  One after another after another, she tore through them, searching, searching. Searching for what? What did she need so desperately? She realized after a time that she was hungry for some personal note, some clue, something that would hook her into what the man had felt, wanted, needed. There were personal notes in many of the letters—banter about a racquetball or tennis game he’d played with the recipient, compliments on a party or dinner given or attended, gossip about Washington personalities—all of it slightly sarcastic, put-downs, challenges, but with an edge of humor, wit. A great sense of humor, one of the funeral speakers had said. This must be what he meant. This must have been the tone of his conversation with these men too, in fact, she remembered it. Yes.

  The personal notes were designed to base the power relation in personal connection, but they ignored the real person, focusing on the image—killer squash player, charmer of the ladies, intimate of the highest and most powerful. She found a few letters to women within the power structure, which had a more flattering tone, but no letters to women friends or lovers. Did he not write them, or did he destroy theirs and not keep copies of his own? Even the letters to his brother or sister were full of business, property matters, or discussion of the proper family stance on a public event. She piled up the files she had already examined, the pile was too high, it fell over. She wanted to weep.

  For a long time she sat there, head hanging, eyes damp, her hair wispy and disheveled, gazing at the mess of files spread out on the floor in front of her.

  What is the matter with me? What the fuck am I doing?

  She pulled herself erect, gathered up the files, straightened them, and without bothering to realphabetize them, slammed them back in the file drawer and pulled out another batch. And started again, desperately.

  Mary and Marie-Laure returned subdued and went immediately upstairs to pack. Soon afterward, a little Japanese sports car pulled up in front of the house and a young man jumped out and rang the doorbell. Teresa let him in, led him to the sitting room, and went upstairs to tell Marie-Laure he was there. Mary was sitting on the chaise in her daughter’s room, watching her stuff her clothes into her bag.

  “Offer him some coffee,” Mary told her.

  “No!” Marie-Laure cried. “I’m ready. I’m almost ready. Tell him I’ll be right down,” she told Teresa.

  Mary waited until Teresa had left. “What is it, Marie-Laure, you don’t want him to meet me?”

  “I want to get to Boston. I don’t want to miss the movie,” she said impatiently.

  “Or is it my sisters?”

  The girl turned to her mother, stood with her hand on her hip, grimacing. “Everything doesn’t have to do with you, you know, Mother.”

  That Mother again.

  “Then what does it have to do with?”

  “I hate this house, okay? I don’t want to be in it any more than I have to!” She was almost screaming, her face pink with rage.

  Mary stared at her. “Okay,” she said softly. “You don’t ever have to come back here again. Okay?”

  Marie-Laure’s face softened and she looked at her mother almost kindly. “Okay,” she whispered, and turned and grabbed her bags, slinging them over her shoulders. “I’m out of here.”

  Mary rose and followed her downstairs. “You have to say good-bye to the others,” she said at the foot of the stairs, as Marie-Laure greeted Duff. She introduced the boy to her mother, then turned. “So where are they?”

  “Look in the playroom. Ronnie’s probably in her room. Ask them.”

  The girl disappeared, Mary sat down and spoke easily with Duff, whose mother she knew, and his stepfather, as it turned out, and his grandparents on his mother’s side. She’d been to their house at Marblehead, years before.

  Marie-Laure was gone only a few minutes. She walked swiftly into the sitting room, gave Duff the high sign, and he rose. After a few politenesses—Marie-Laure suffering her mother’s kiss—they were gone.

  Mary turned away from the door, shoulders slumped, head down, and went back upstairs. Pack, she would pack. But she didn’t. She sank down on the chaise in her room and lighted a joint—something rare for her during the day. She sat there until the gong rang for lunch.

  Lunch was soup made of leftover vegetables with leftover roast beef in a salad with leftover roasted peppers and white beans, and the leftover pies. This pleased Alex, who worried about waste—and it was delicious. But conversation was stilted. Mary was sunk inside herself, Elizabeth was vacant. Alex talked and talked and talked, telling them more than they ever wanted to know about Edith Stein. Ronnie watched them all from beneath hooded eyes, her face anxious. Eventually, Alex wound down, her voice simply trailing off.

  “I’ve been looking through Father’s correspondence,” Elizabeth said suddenly in the silence.

  All eyes turned to her. “I’ve been looking for …”—her voice wavered—“something personal. Something that shows him, his feelings. …”

  Alex was all sympathy. “You feel you don’t know him,” she said warmly, compassionately. “I know how you feel. I don’t know him either, who he was, what he wanted.”

  “Yet we killed him,” Elizabeth said.

  They paled, watched her.

  “Maybe not with our hands. But with our actions,” she continued.

  They looked at their empty salad plates.

  Teresa came in to clear.

  “What time is your plane?” Mary asked Alex.

  “Five-ten,” Alex replied. “And yours?”

  “I can leave at five or five-thirty, there are two shuttles. What time is yours, Lizzie?”

  Teresa left the room but they knew she would be returning with dessert.

  “Four fifty-nine. So that’s convenient. We should leave here about three-thirty, three forty-five, just in case there’s traffic.”

  Teresa entered with the pies, a bowl of whipped cream, a plate of cheddar. She set them on the table and moved among the women, offering them pie. They helped themselves in silence.

  “I’ll let Aldo know,” Elizabeth said after she had taken a piece.

  “You have plenty of time to pack,” Alex said, looking at her watch.

  Teresa left the room.

  Silence. All eyes were fixed on Elizabeth.

  “I mean, we killed him but we
didn’t even know him.”

  “We know what he did to us,” Ronnie muttered.

  “Yes.”

  “And maybe Marie-Laure too!” Mary burst out in a tearful voice.

  They turned to her. No one spoke.

  She wiped tears from her cheeks, looking around at them. “No, I don’t know for sure! But the way she acted, the things she said! I don’t know what to do!”

  “You have to tell her. About you. Us,” Alex said softly. “You have to be open. Honest.”

  “Oh god! How can I tell my daughter that! How? How?” Mary cried.

  Their eyes moved uneasily, each considering what that would feel like, how one could do it, how the girl would feel, how she would look at her mother. No one had any advice for her. Shame descended on them like a lowered canopy, muffling them.

  Mary stopped sniffling, wiped her face, looked at them. “I guess I’ll have to,” she said. “I’ll think of a way. I may—at some point—need you all to help me. Will you?”

  “Oh, of course! I’ll come if you need me, Mary, anytime! I’ll fly back! Just call me—or maybe,” Alex giggled, “you’ll have to write or telegraph! I don’t know. But I’ll come.”

  Ronnie nodded her head soberly and Mary looked at Elizabeth.

  “Yes. Of course,” she said.

  “Thanks,” Mary whispered, and picked up her fork to eat her pie.

  Slowly, sadly, Elizabeth folded garments and laid them in her bag. We killed him, and we didn’t even know who he was. All we knew was what he’d done to us. We killed him for what? Thousands of little Stephen Uptons springing up around us all the time like the dragon’s teeth Cadmus sowed, we can’t get rid of all of them so why bother to kill one? Only now we have his money. Three of us, anyway. We can’t even say we didn’t intend to kill him, what had we just done? Condemned him to death. What did Alex say? Can’t remember her words, but what she really meant was he’d die from lack of love, from failure to love.

  The heart dies first.

  His heart must have been near death for a long time. He had only Noradia. Her dying finished him.

  So maybe Alex was only confirming what already existed. If we left, he’d have nothing even resembling love, only his hate to carry him. But he lived on hate, it fed him. Might have fed him for more years, for decades maybe.

  Unlikely.

  And I?

  She laid the last item in the suitcase, walked around the room searching for anything forgotten, checked the bathroom, returned and closed the bag. She bent to look in the vanity mirror, ran a comb through her hair. Look like hell.

  Suddenly, she bent almost double, and retched a huge sob. What have I done?

  Why why why did I do that? Had to attack them, had to attack what we did, what we made, what I loved, what I found I’d needed. Why did I do that?

  She lowered herself onto the bench before the vanity table, back to the mirror, and lighted a cigarette.

  What happened with them made me happier, made my life better. Was it that I couldn’t stand that? I’m not allowed to feel better, I have to keep up the fight, unremittingly, the way he did? But what was he fighting? At the end, us, who were at least partly trying to help him. What do you mean, “at the end,” asshole? He treated you like an enemy your whole fucking life!

  That was because of Mother.

  So he treated Mary better? Well, it seemed so, but look how he undercut her, patronized her, destroyed her confidence in her talents. Is that love?

  And Ronnie? She never told us how it happened with her. I can just imagine. Slave girl, come here.

  His own children, his own genes, what the sociobiologists say men want to pass on as widely as possible, keep alive. Immortality. Hating your children, abusing them, is not survival of the fittest, it’s destruction of the race.

  Ronnie’s right.

  But not all men do that.

  Lots do.

  It’s suicide.

  He must have hated himself. Why, I wonder? I don’t remember his mother but she was a tough woman, all her kids feared her. Family name and reputation meant everything to her. And wealth. Wonder what his father was like? Like him, maybe. Enough reason to hate yourself maybe. Who knows. I’ll never know. I’ll never know you, Father. But—she began to weep silently—I loved you.

  Ronnie sat at her computer while the others packed. She was trying to do statistical calculations on some research data, but her eyes kept flickering shut, she felt sleepy. They were all upstairs packing. Then they’d leave, with nothing said, no effort to reestablish connection. It’s over. I have no sisters.

  You lived without them for twenty-five years, Ronnie, you have lots of other kinds of sisters, you’ll survive.

  Well, of course I will.

  But tiredness overcame her, and she got up and lay down on the bed. Within minutes she was fast asleep.

  Alex was wandering through the downstairs rooms. “Where’s Ronnie, we have to have a last drink together, don’t we Mary, I mean, I know it’s early in the day, but we may not see each other again for months, let’s have some champagne, shouldn’t we, don’t you think it’s a good idea, oh here you are!” She had pushed open Ronnie’s door. “Ronnie, get up, this is no time to be sleeping, come and have a farewell drink with us!”

  Ronnie pulled herself out of a heavy dark-dreamed sleep, shook her head, peered up at Alex. “Okay,” she mumbled, “be right there.”

  Alex disappeared but her voice floated back through the rooms, “Now where’s Lizzie, why has everyone disappeared at a time like this!”

  Ronnie got up and washed her face and teeth, combed her hair. She wandered out toward the playroom, where a bottle of champagne rested in an ice bucket. Mary was standing stiffly at the glass door, stunning in a formal suit, her hair perfectly coiffed, her makeup exquisitely subtle. The old Mary.

  She turned, hearing Ronnie, and reached out her arm. Ronnie walked to her, and into the arm. She put her arm around Mary’s waist.

  Not the old Mary.

  “I’m going to miss you,” Mary said.

  “Me too.”

  “You still have to finish teaching me to drive.”

  “Have to come back here for that. I’m not teaching you to drive in Manhattan.”

  “How about Virginia?”

  Ronnie looked at her startled but asked no questions. “That’d probably be okay.”

  “She’s coming,” Alex said cheerfully, returning. “We’ll wait to open the champagne until she comes, though, shouldn’t we? Oh, you-all!” She walked to them and stood at Ronnie’s side, her left arm around Ronnie’s waist, her right arm around Mary’s. They stood this way for a moment, then broke apart. Alex walked to the sliding glass doors, and they both followed.

  “Snow’s almost gone.”

  “Yes.”

  “We should have put some food out for the birds.”

  “I did. Early this morning. Mrs. Browning bought some suet for them, and I added stale bread.”

  “Oh, that’s good.”

  “There’s still some snow on the pine branches, lying there as if it were in bed. So lovely.”

  “Beautiful. And the sky is a beautiful blue today.”

  “Beautiful.”

  Elizabeth walked in and stopped, seeing them. They all turned, stood facing her.

  “Champagne, Lizzie?” Alex asked brightly.

  “Sure.” She walked into the room, stood there uneasily, while Alex handed Ronnie the champagne to open (“I never can do it, I don’t know why I’m so inept!”) and Mary walked to an easy chair and sat down. Alex poured the wine and passed it to them. They all sat.

  “Shall we have a toast?” Too cheerful, too bright.

  “I’d like to do it. May I?” Elizabeth’s voice was sober, sad, not peremptory.

  They all nodded.

  “Last night I attacked you. Attacked a whole lot of things. I don’t know why I had to say those things to you, and I can’t repudiate what I said, they’re things I believe, have believed a
ll my life. But I have been thinking—well, not really thinking—thinking and feeling, I guess—ever since then. And while I still believe … I still see truth in what I said … but you all are right too, there is more to life than struggle, and unless there is more … then the struggle is worth nothing. All you have is a life full of hate. And I don’t want to live that way anymore, looking down on the rest of the human race, confined to the company of the one or two people I consider my equals … well, there was only one, really … and he’s dead. Clare was an intellectual snob too, a really cruel one, he would get up noisily in the middle of a concert and walk out if he found the players inadequate, he mocked other people’s ideas … oh hell, what’s the difference. The only other man important in my life was Father, who was a terrible social snob. He never considered me his equal, I didn’t make it into his register, I was like Ronnie, illegitimate in his eyes. But then he didn’t consider any of us his equals, we were girls, female. And I was raised to make those distinctions—well, we all were, except Ronnie maybe. …”

  “I wasn’t,” Alex put in mildly.

  “I learned them better than any of you,” Ronnie demurred, “from the opposite end.”

  “You probably did,” Elizabeth granted, then turned to Alex. “No, you weren’t, sweetheart.” She lighted a cigarette but no one spoke or sipped her champagne. “Anyway, I was raised that way, and I was taught or believed or assumed that the distinctions were all important because life was war and they were your armor. But you-all have taught me … I’ve come to see … that they make life war and they make a person miserable. But I don’t know that I’ll be able to just drop them. They’re habitual now, a lifetime’s habit. But I’ve dropped them with you. And that makes you very precious to me. And so I want to beg you to forgive me for attacking you yesterday and tell you you’ve convinced me that my … morality or whatever it is … is, at the least, lacking. And I ask you to let me back in. And I offer this toast to us. Sisters.”