The Things We Know Now

by Catherine Dunne

  She nodded, her elfin face paler than usual. I loved how she looked: slender, her bones finely wrought, her hair glossy and dark. Even in my mid-fifties, I was still a big man: tall, robust, with no suspicion of the stoop that would later develop – but there are reasons for that, reasons other than the natural processes of ageing.

  I answered the door. Rebecca and Adam stood there, he holding a bottle of something or other, she with a large dish covered in tinfoil. I had always felt a little sorry for Adam – although, as events later transpired, I should have tempered my sympathy somewhat. It turned out to be misplaced.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ I said. I could hear my too-hearty tone, but there was no time to wince.

  ‘Hello, Dad,’ Rebecca said, giving me her usual perfunctory kiss. ‘We’ve brought a salad with us. Will I leave it in the kitchen?’ Rebecca took after her mother: tall, vigorous, competent, with a mane of russet curls and those startling brown eyes.

  I felt a small itch of annoyance. I had told all three of them not to bring anything at all, that Ella and I were happy to prepare everything ourselves, delighted to treat them to lunch. But I think I hid it well. ‘Fire ahead,’ I said, cheerfully. And then, as a deflection, ‘This looks wonderful, Adam – I’ll put it in the fridge straight away.’ I hurried after Rebecca.

  When I reached the door, I saw Ella make her way towards her, one hand outstretched. ‘Hi,’ she said, with one of her shy smiles. ‘You must be Rebecca. I’m Ella.’

  Rebecca shook hands. ‘It’s nice to meet you,’ she said.

  ‘And you. I’ve heard so much about all of you.’

  ‘Really?’ This time, I could hear the slight edge to Rebecca’s voice. Time to intervene. I crossed the room and stood beside Ella, facing my daughter. I rested one hand lightly on Ella’s shoulder.

  ‘Ella was very interested to hear about your PhD,’ I began. ‘Your fields are quite closely related.’ It was awkward, and it didn’t come out as I meant it to. There was only the most tenuous of connections between psychotherapy and conflict resolution, but I was grasping at straws here.

  ‘Oh, it’s kind of been on hold for the last while,’ Rebecca said, looking at both of us. She allowed a long silence to develop, one that seemed to stop all of us in our tracks. Particularly Adam, who stood in the doorway to the kitchen, one foot across the threshold, the other not. He looked uncomfortable, as if he was holding his breath, apprehensive of whatever grenade his wife might toss in our direction next. Having secured everyone’s undivided attention, Rebecca spoke again, this time holding my gaze. ‘I haven’t really had the heart for it since Mum died.’

  So there it was, out in the open already. Another unfurled hand, another slap across the face.

  ‘It takes time,’ Ella said, gently. ‘Concentration returns slowly after such a profound loss. And sudden death is always devastating.’

  For a moment, I could see that Rebecca was taken aback. Before any of us could respond, the doorbell rang again, and there stood Frances and Sophie. I could make out their shapes through the glass. I felt giddy with relief at their timely arrival. Frances is open and kind and full of good humour. Sophie is more reserved, but friendly and thoughtful. I had never been so glad to see them.

  ‘Excuse me, please,’ I said, and hurried to let them in. I was aware that I was leaving Ella and Rebecca alone together, but I had no choice. I glimpsed Adam as I passed, slinking his way back into the living room again.

  I threw open the front door. ‘Come in, come in, come in,’ I said, hoping that in some absurd way the warmth of my greeting would make up for what had just transpired in the kitchen. ‘Where are your men?’ I asked, responding to my daughters’ hugs and kisses in the hallway.

  ‘They’ll be along shortly,’ said Frances, throwing her eyes up to heaven. ‘Someone, somewhere in the world is playing cricket, so they’re glued to the telly. We’ve given them half-an-hour’s grace.’

  I didn’t believe it. Martin, Frances’s partner, wouldn’t know sport if it came up and bit him. Peter, Sophie’s boyfriend, was a bit of a fan, but I had never known him to be stuck on cricket. I thought that this was a kindness on Frances’s part, and I was moved by her gesture. It meant that Ella would not be overwhelmed. Even at twenty-two, Frances displayed all the emotional intelligence that her elder sister seemed to lack.

  ‘Hi, Dad,’ Sophie said. She took my hand. ‘Great to see you. You are looking really well.’

  I found that I couldn’t speak. I squeezed her hand in reply, my eyes suddenly moist. That’s two in my corner, I thought. And I felt a surge of gratitude, a great welling of love for both of them.

  ‘Come and meet Ella,’ I said, leading the way into the living room. As I crossed the threshold, Ella was standing with her back to the window. August sunlight streamed all around her, making her hair shine, her face glow. Rebecca was off to one side, but it was obvious to me that she had just spoken. For a moment, the scene looked frozen, with something suspended in the air above them, and then it was over. Our arrival seemed to release energy into the room. Everyone moved towards everyone else, there were handshakes, hugs, words of welcome, glasses of wine were poured.

  And then the afternoon proceeded pretty much as such afternoons will do. Ella was bright and friendly, and I could see that both Sophie and Frances were taken with her. I was glad to see that Martin, in particular, was attentive to Ella from the moment he arrived, and I felt grateful to Frances all over again. I could see her hand once more in this: that talent she had for making people comfortable, putting everyone at their ease, something she had inherited from her mother.

  Even Sophie, whose reaction had also concerned me – but for different reasons – seemed calm, responding with warmth and humour to Ella’s lively conversation. She was my youngest by twenty minutes: a fact that used to incense her when she was a child. She hated being ‘the baby’. She and Frances had been barely nineteen when the cataclysmic events of that awful day shattered all of us.

  Sophie had come to visit her mother and me during her reading week in January, taking a rare day off from her studies. It was she who had discovered Cecilia, slumped forward in the conservatory over the morning newspaper. I’d gone out to pick up the dry-cleaning. It haunted me afterwards – and still does from time to time – what if I had been there, at Cecilia’s side? What if I had been the one to discover her? Might there have been a different outcome?

  ‘Absolutely not, Patrick,’ Eugene had been very firm. ‘It was a massive heart attack. Even if she’d been sitting in my surgery, there’s nothing I could have done for Cecilia. Death was instantaneous.’

  Nevertheless.

  I’d returned home, several plastic-covered garments swaying against me as I struggled with the front-door key. At first, I thought that the wailing I heard was something on the television, or the radio. Then Sophie appeared in the hallway, her face streaked with tears. What then flashed across my mind was that she and Cecilia had had another set-to. They had been known to go at it head-to-head from time to time.

  ‘She’s gone, Dad! Mum’s gone!’

  ‘Gone?’ My initial response was an inappropriate irritation. ‘What do you mean – gone? Gone where?’

  The rest is a blur. Disbelief. Shock. The police calling. The burly ambulance men, whose kindness eventually made me break down. Sophie’s strength on that day had impressed me, and it impressed me all over again on the August afternoon of which I write. She looked over at me, catching my eye on several occasions, and smiled. She could not have been more articulate had she spoken. I was glad – proud and glad.

  But Rebecca angered me. Perhaps nobody else noticed, but I did. I saw the monosyllabic replies to Ella’s questions, the polite rebuff of all attempts at conversation. Ella handled her well – didn’t pay her too much attention, chatted easily to the others, laughed at all the usual sisterly lore that is spread out like the family silver on occasions such as this.

  Rebecca and Adam were the first to leave, at around six
. I wasn’t sorry to see them go, could read the future plainly in my daughter’s cool goodbye to both of us. Adam looked vaguely embarrassed, and as he turned to go – instead of my usual sympathy – I felt a flash of anger. Be a man, I wanted to shout at him. Stand up to her. Stop doing your passable imitation of a doormat. I simmered for the next hour or so, mulling over all the things I was now determined to say to her. Frances and Martin were the next to leave, and finally Sophie and Peter. It was almost eight o’clock and, frankly, I was anxious to be alone with Ella. Nevertheless, I would not have wished Sophie to catch my furtive glance at my watch. She deserved better.

  She stood up at once, nudging her boyfriend. ‘Come on, Pete – it’s time we were off. Another Monday morning looms. The ironing awaits!’

  Peter groaned and grumbled good-naturedly. ‘Dunno which is worse. Monday mornin’ or the bloody ironin’.’

  I liked Peter. He was solid and unimaginative and devoted to Sophie. He was just what she needed. He was a good five years older, too – closer to Rebecca’s age, in fact. I felt that he was a steadying hand; I knew that he would look after her well: my youngest, gentlest girl. As she was leaving, Sophie hugged me close, whispering into my ear. ‘She’s a sweetheart, Dad. Don’t let her go. And never mind the Wicked Witch.’

  I grinned. ‘I’ve no intention of letting her go. And I’ve no idea to whom you’re referring.’

  She laughed. ‘Wicked Witch’ was Sophie’s childhood nickname for her older sister. It was years since I’d last heard it. ‘Okaaaaaaaaaaaay,’ she said, waving back at me over her shoulder as she and Peter walked down the driveway, hand in hand.

  I stood in the porch, looking after them, watching until they disappeared from sight. Her words about Ella had touched me deeply. I waited until the wave of emotion had subsided, and then made my way back to where Ella awaited me on the sofa, her feet curled under her in the way that I loved. Without a word, she handed me a snifter of brandy, and we clinked glasses.

  ‘That went well,’ she said. ‘The twins are very like you, in all sorts of ways.’ She leaned towards me, kissed me on the cheek. ‘And thank you for keeping the afternoon so low key. Today was not the day to spring surprises on your family.’

  I had to ask her. ‘Something happened earlier with Rebecca, didn’t it? When I was answering the door to the others?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, without hesitation. I loved this directness of hers: this belief that, no matter how painful something is, it is better to look it in the eye, to articulate it, give it a shape. She often reminded me of a jeweller, intent on examining all the facets of a stone, careful in judging its authenticity.

  ‘What did she say to you?’

  Ella smiled. ‘Pretty much what I had expected, given your excellent preparation.’

  I could feel something inside me begin to fall, as though from a great distance. It was hope, I realized. I had wanted desperately that Rebecca would give Ella a chance; give both of us a chance. I should have realized, should have known. I waited for Ella to continue.

  ‘Rebecca was quite straight with me. She said, “I will never accept this, you know. My mother was an exceptional woman and my father does not know what he is doing. He never has.”’ Ella took my hand. ‘We knew that this was likely to happen. Now it has – so we know what we’re dealing with. She’s angry, and she’s grieving. We have to give her time.’

  ‘And if time doesn’t work?’ I felt furious, being held to ransom like this.

  ‘Then we accept it.’ Ella’s voice was quiet. ‘We can’t make her like our relationship, but maybe she’ll come to terms with it in her own way. Eventually.’

  I thought about my daughter’s words. Yes, her mother had been an exceptional woman: I have cause to know it and I would never dispute it. And while I accept that there have been times in my life when I clearly did not know what I was doing – other than, in Rebecca’s words, making ‘my Mummy cry’ – I resented her summary dismissal of me, the contempt that fuelled her words.

  Loving Ella was my second chance, at a time in my life when I thought that love and sex and intimacy were all over for me, that I would live out my days a sad and lonely and bereft old man, enduring dutiful visits from my daughters, being shopped around from one to the other at Christmas and Easter, like some latter-day King Lear. Ella had saved me from that. And I loved her for herself, too, of course: for her quiet presence, her sensitivity, the exquisite emotional articulacy that she displayed, first as a professional, and afterwards as a lover. I was a fortunate man, and I knew it.

  But Rebecca’s words stung, and I know that Ella, too, had hoped it would be otherwise. But it was beyond us, in all senses.

  The only thing we could do was wait, and continue to hope.

  But I am not very good at waiting.

  Rebecca

  FRANCES AND SOPHIE must both be idiots. Either that, or they are cowards. Personally, I tend towards the latter view.

  Our father – or in this case, my father, given that the other two do not share my opinion – has finally lost the plot. And last week’s sham little happy family get-together has only reinforced my long-held view of him. He is a selfish man, both shallow and spoilt.

  I have never understood what a woman like my mother saw in him – never. All I can remember throughout my early childhood is her tears, her suffering; his bad behaviour. He made me furious, even then. Frances and Sophie’s memories are different, of course. Well, they would be. I think that by the time they came along, our father had at least learned to be circumspect. They still try to persuade me that our parents doted on each other, that our father had been a model husband and dad. That, as their childhood had been idyllic, my memories have to be suspect. We’ve had far too many conversations on the topic.

  And my sisters still refuse to accept that each child, notwithstanding the fact that they belong to the same family, has different parents. But in this case, in this firmly held belief, I am in a minority of one.

  I have never fully trusted my father. I still retain a shadowy memory of a promise he made when I was a small child: an undertaking of good behaviour given after I had slapped him when he arrived home late one Christmas Eve. I remember my mother sobbing by the Christmas tree, on her knees as she tried to find the one faulty light that was preventing all the others from working.

  At first I was frightened: mummies don’t cry. I know better now. But the sight of her tear-stained, swollen face told me everything I needed to know. My father had promised to fix the lights, to be with us on that special day, to make everything right for ‘his best girls’ as he called us. But he hadn’t. The lights still weren’t working and he still wasn’t home. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together – even as a small child. Children have, I believe, inbuilt antennae. They track down lies and broken promises faster than you can change a light bulb.

  I’m sure my mother tried to say something, to give some explanation; if she did, I wasn’t listening. Or I have forgotten that part. What I have not forgotten is the rage I felt. Had I been older, I might have articulated it thus: there goes my Christmas. At almost five years of age, however, all I knew was that things were not as I wished them to be: and I knew who was to blame. And so, the giving of that slap is a recollection that is not at all shadowy. I can still feel the intense, sharp satisfaction of my small hand on the smooth, always-smiling plane of his face. And his reaction, too, of course. That is not to be forgotten. I can still see the astonishment. For once, someone else had, quite literally, got the upper hand.

  I have remained watchful ever since. My teenage years in particular were suspicious, and not without good reason. I am still convinced of that. My father was away a lot – Africa, India, South America: long absences that I welcomed. The house was always calmer without him. There were no sudden flurries of tidying up, no elaborate dinner rituals to endure, when he wasn’t around. We were all somehow less on high alert when he wasn’t home. My mother missed him, I know, as did my sisters. I did not.
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  He has always been a charming man, my father, smooth, articulate . . . seductive. He had the kind of clichéd good looks that made women fall for him: the tall, dark, broad-shouldered kind. I recognized seductiveness in him even then, although I might not consciously have understood it, or known the word with which to name it. As I grew older and got to know the world a little more, I did not believe that my father denied himself female company during all those times he was away from home. And I still believe to this day that he was not what he claimed to be, despite his tearful assertions to the contrary shortly after my mother’s death.

  ‘You know that I was faithful to Cecilia for all these years,’ he said. ‘I need you to know that. You above everyone.’ We were standing in the kitchen of my old home – that same kitchen since colonized by another woman – and it was shortly after Mum’s funeral. My father had followed me from the front room, where we had all gathered after the brief, almost brutal ceremony at the crematorium. When he stood beside me in the kitchen, I felt for just a moment that he was going to reach out and take my hand. He didn’t, but the room around us filled with silence: it was one of those strange lulls in an otherwise crowded, intensely emotional day. Although he and I were alone for just a moment or two together, I remember feeling the oppressive presence of so many unsaid things between us. The whole kitchen felt inhabited by ghosts, swirling around us, offering tempting little morsels that might now be spoken. I felt panic gather, like millions of atoms clustering at the base of my throat. I tried to make my getaway, laden with yet another tray of sandwiches. I had almost made it to the door when he chose that moment to speak.

  ‘You know that, don’t you? I loved your mother. I kept my word,’ he said.

  Even I could not bear to see his ravaged face. I was filled with a mixture of fury and compassion, and could hear Mum’s voice inside my head, urging me towards gentleness. ‘Of course I know that, Dad,’ I said. ‘But we don’t need to talk about it today.’