Nobody's Family is Going to Change

by Louise Fitzhugh

  “Get your finger out of my face and pass the gravy,” said Mr. Sheridan.

  Emma came back to reality with a bump, pulled her finger back, and passed the gravy.

  “Dipsey picked you up after school, didn’t he?” asked Mrs. Sheridan. Her voice was shaking.

  It’s making her nervous, thought Emma. She feels the way I did the other night after I yelled at him. She’s afraid.

  “Yup,” said Willie.

  “Yes, mam,” corrected Mr. Sheridan. He continued to shovel food into his mouth, never looking up.

  “And did he stay with you the whole rehearsal or did he wander off?”

  “No, mam. He was right there. He made me sit next to him when we had a break. You know, when they want to have a break, you know what the director says?”

  Mrs. Sheridan shook her head. She gave Mr. Sheridan a quick, worried look.

  “He says, ‘Take five,’ and that means—”

  “Pass the potatoes,” said Mr. Sheridan loudly.

  “Oh, William,” said Mrs. Sheridan in a sad little voice.

  “What? All I said was pass the potatoes. What’s the matter with that?” Mr. Sheridan looked like a balloon about to get a pin stuck in it.

  “And you know what shtick means?” said Willie, his voice rising. “And piece of business? And downstage and upstage and stage right and stage left and—”

  “Let’s have some peace and quiet around here,” bellowed Mr. Sheridan.

  He was so loud that Martha, leaving the room, almost dropped the serving platter.

  “Dad,” said Willie, in a sturdy little way, “I have something for you to sign.”

  “Sign?” Mr. Sheridan seemed affronted.

  “You have to sign this thing with my agent. I’m too young to sign anything.”

  “Oh, is that so?” Mr. Sheridan leaned back in his chair and gave Willie a big smile. “So you finally need your old dad, do you?”

  “Well, no, Mama could sign.” Willie looked at his father uncertainly.

  “Oh, is that so? Well, we’ll just see what anybody signs. Nobody signs anything around here until I read it. Is that clear?”

  Willie nodded. Now that he’d asked, he started to eat. He realized he was starving.

  “And furthermore, if you’re too young to sign something, you’d think it would occur to you that you’re too young to be working.” Mr. Sheridan seemed immensely pleased with himself.

  “Dear. We’ll discuss this after dinner, I think, don’t you?” Mrs. Sheridan looked petrified of her husband and yet very definite at the same time.

  Mr. Sheridan gave his wife a long, hard look. Emma and Willie watched, their heads turning back and forth between their parents.

  Emma thought, he doesn’t like her either. He doesn’t like me or my mother. Maybe he doesn’t like females. But he doesn’t like Willie either, so what does that mean? Maybe he doesn’t like people at all.

  Do I like people? she asked herself with wonder. She had never thought of this before. She preferred books, she was aware of that, and she preferred being alone, but the idea that she simply didn’t care for people in a sort of wholesale way had never entered her mind.

  She imagined herself in a world with no people. She saw herself wandering down a street in New York, a street which was ordinarily full of people, a street now totally empty. She went into a building. There was no one there. She went out again, then into an office building. No one. She went up in the elevator to the highest floor. She looked down into empty streets. She was the only person in the world. A noise reached her.

  She was screaming. She was sitting at the dinner table screaming her head off.

  She stopped abruptly. Everyone was looking at her.

  “Emma!” said Mrs. Sheridan. Emma looked at her blankly. “You see there, William. This is upsetting everybody. It’s all this bickering. We can’t have this kind of thing going on every night at the dinner table.”

  “What happened?” Martha burst through the door.

  “It’s all right,” said Mrs. Sheridan.

  “Sounded like you saw a mouse or something,” said Martha, hanging around the door, not certain whether to go or stay.

  “No. It’s nothing. You can clear away now, Martha.”

  They sat in silence while Martha cleared the table.

  Emma felt stunned at herself, and somehow ashamed. My emotions are spilling out all over the place. I don’t know what to make of myself.

  It’s because there’s no place to go. I can’t go to my father. God knows, I can’t go to my mother. I can’t even go to Harrison Carter.

  She looked at her father. He turned into a big rock right in front of her eyes. Her mother was a smaller, thinner rock. They’re not going to change, she thought suddenly. No matter how much I need them to change, they’re not going to.

  They are going to be the way they are the rest of their lives. She saw them sitting, in this same way, in ten, twenty years.

  Willie would be different, bigger for one thing, and then, finally, a grown man.

  She, Emma, would be different, but they would be the same. They would always be the same.

  “That’s what wrong,” she said aloud.

  “What?” said Mrs. Sheridan quickly.

  “Nothing,” said Emma.

  “Emma, do you feel all right?” asked her mother.

  “Sure.”

  Mrs. Sheridan got up from the table, came to Emma, and felt her forehead. “You don’t feel flushed,” she said. “Do you have a sore throat?”

  “No.”

  “No, mam,” said Mr. Sheridan.

  “No, mam,” said Emma.

  During this, her mind raced. What’s wrong is trying to change them. They are not going to change. But I can change. I can change myself.

  I can see them. I can see they’re not going to change.

  She jumped up from the table and started out the door.

  “Emma,” said Mrs. Sheridan. Emma turned back.

  “Ask if you may be excused.”

  “May I be excused?”

  “Yes, you may,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “You don’t feel sick, do you?”

  Emma shook her head. Her mind was going so fast she didn’t want to lose track of her thoughts by talking.

  “Are you going to do your homework now? You don’t want any dessert?”

  Emma nodded to one and shook her head to the other. She had no desire to eat. The idea, in fact, was sickening.

  “All right, dear.” Mrs. Sheridan sounded bewildered.

  Dismissed, Emma fled. She went to her room, closed the door, and sat down in her chair. Now to understand this, she said to herself, now to really understand this.

  She got a piece of paper and a pencil from her desk. I must be organized about this, she thought, and I must calm down or I will lose my train of thought.

  It seemed, for some reason, a hard thing to hold in her mind. She fell back into a familiar pattern.

  “The State of New York against Parents.”

  Emancipation Sheridan, as District Attorney, stood up.

  “Your honor, the prosecution opens its case—”

  “Excuse me, Counselor, but what is the charge?” asked the judge.

  “Breach of promise,” said Emancipation Sheridan.

  “Improper,” said the judge.

  “Eminently proper,” said Emancipation Sheridan.

  “Parents, by virtue of becoming parents, promise to love and accept their children. They do neither.”

  “Throw her out,” said the judge.

  I will always lose, thought Emma. I will be a loser in life, as I am in my dreams.

  The judge was gesturing toward the back of the courtroom. “Mr. Sheridan,” he said, “come forward and take this young woman’s place. You know what you’re doing. She doesn’t. Bailiff, take her from the courtroom.”

  Emma watched her father come forward with a smug look on his face. She felt the bailiff take her arm. She felt herself propelled from the court
room. When the courtroom door closed behind her, she woke up.

  That’s it. If the whole world is my father, I will always lose. I may grow up, I may become a lawyer, I may have a case in court, but I will always lose.

  Unless I change.

  How can I do that?

  She was stumped. Why do I lose? Is losing inevitable? “Nothing is inevitable unless we refuse to look at it,” she remembered seeing on a poster. Or was it, “unless we refuse to face it.” Face what?

  I’m facing that I’m a loser. What more can I do?

  Why bit itself into her brain like a small spider. Why am I a loser? She sat very still.

  Because it pleases my father. The thought flooded over her. She felt relief, a horrible kind of relief, but relief nevertheless.

  She thought again of her father looking like a rock, not just a rock, but a huge boulder, a mountainous expanse of rock settled into the land, never moving.

  It pleases him because he can go on seeing me the way he wants to see me, he doesn’t have to change any ideas he has. He thinks women don’t have good enough minds to be lawyers. He’s said so. He tells stories about women lawyers in court and he laughs at them. My mother laughs too. They like to think that.

  If I become a good lawyer, he’ll have to change what he thinks. He won’t be pleased at all.

  But, still, when I hate him so, why would I want to please him?

  I want him to love me.

  This thought went through Emma like a hurricane, leaving her, afterward, as peaceful as a green lawn after a storm.

  Oh, I do not, she said to herself then, but she knew she was lying.

  Yes. I want him to love me and he won’t. He just won’t.

  Her brain felt exhausted. She leaned over and turned on the television, picking up her homework at the same time.

  Emma put down her book only once during the next hour, and that was to think, who am I kidding? I’m only eleven years old. I can’t move out. I have no money. I’m trapped here. I might as well be a slave. Who am I kidding, saying I will change? She remembered then: INNER PROGRESS BEFORE OUTER PROGRESS.

  Did this apply? Yes. If she could stop wanting her father to love her, she would stop being a mess to please him, because if she stopped wanting him to love her, she wouldn’t care if she pleased him or not.

  There was a knock on her door. “Emma?” her mother said from the other side.

  She got up and opened the door. Her mother came in.

  “Emma, I’d like to talk to you a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  Her mother sat down on the bed. Emma went back to her chair.

  “Emma, I’m worried about you. I see that you’re very upset.”

  “Who, me?”

  “Don’t pretend, dear. It was obvious at dinner that you’re upset. Now, what is troubling you?”

  Obvious, yes, thought Emma. It’s obvious that you don’t love me any more than he does. It’s obvious that you’re not going to change either.

  “Answer me, dear. Is something at school troubling you?”

  Emma shook her head.

  “Well. I didn’t think so. You always make such good grades. What is it, then?”

  “Mama, I want to be a lawyer when I grow up. What do you think of that?”

  “Why, Emma, I think that’s just fine. I mean, I think if a woman can raise her children and take care of her husband, then I think it’s admirable if she also wants to go out and have a profession.”

  “I don’t have any children, Mama,” said Emma.

  “I know, dear, I mean, after you are married—”

  “I’m not getting married, Mama.”

  “Oh, well, now, you’re a little young to be saying things like that. You wait until you’re a little older. You’ll see. You’ll feel different.”

  “If you mean sex, I didn’t say I didn’t intend to have sex. I said I didn’t intend to get married.”

  “Emma!” Mrs. Sheridan’s expression was one of total amazement. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Mama, if I turned out to be a woman who lived in a way you didn’t like, would you still love me?”

  “Why …” Mrs. Sheridan began to splutter. “Emma, what, why of course, but you can’t—”

  “I can and I will,” said Emma. “I can decide my life.”

  “You can’t just decide to do anything you want. You can’t—for instance, you can’t break the law. You can’t run through red lights whenever you feel like it.”

  I don’t think we’re even in the same conversation, thought Emma. What is she talking about, red lights?

  “Mama, I saw you help Willie. Will you help me now?”

  “Oh, darling, certainly. What can I help you with?”

  “I want you to tell Dad that I want to be a lawyer.”

  “Emma, you can’t be a lawyer at eleven.”

  “I am aware of that,” said Emma, getting another surprised look from Mrs. Sheridan. “He could help me, though. He could teach me. He could give me a head start over everybody else. He could show me how to look up precedents, he could explain things to me. He could stop acting like he’s acting.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You do too know what I mean. He hates me.”

  “Oh, darling, how absurd. Your father loves you.” Emma shook her head. There was no way around their crazy thinking. They think what they like to think, and what they don’t like to think they just don’t think that.

  “In other words, you helped Willie, but you won’t help me?”

  “Honey, I’ll help you in any way I can. This thing with Willie is something entirely different. It was just a matter of a misunderstanding with your father, and it’s been cleared up.”

  “A misunderstanding!” Emma clapped her hand to her head.

  “Don’t get agitated,” said Mrs. Sheridan.

  “But can’t you see that it’s all the same thing? Willie wants to do a girl’s thing, and I want to do a boy’s thing, and our father hates both of us.”

  “That is absolutely absurd. Dancing is not a girl’s thing, as you call it—although being a lawyer, I guess you’re right, that is a boy’s thing. I agree with your father. I don’t think you’ll be happy that way either, and I think you should stop all this nonsense. Just stop thinking about it.”

  “You’re in the Middle Ages.” Emma stood up and walked around. She didn’t want to look at her mother.

  “I may very well be in the Middle Ages, as you say, I don’t care about that. I know that I’ve been very happy being a wife and raising you two. I don’t go along with this liberation thing all the way. I think a lot of women are happy doing what they’re doing, and that if anything is making them unhappy, it’s all this agitation about women not being fullfilled if they don’t have a career. I think that’s true for some women, but not for others.”

  Emma stopped walking. “How about me? I’m not going to be happy being a wife.”

  “Emma, nobody is doing anything to you. Nobody is making you get married at eleven.” Mrs. Sheridan looked arch. “I doubt that anybody has even asked you!” Emma felt, suddenly, like a huge lump of clay, ungainly, unattractive, in fact, ugly. She sat down. She fell into despair.

  “I think you kids these days get yourselves all worked up over nothing.”

  I have to hold on to this train of thought, Emma said to herself, feeling mush-brained. Why had it all seemed so clear before she came into the room?

  “He is too doing something to me,” she said loudly, everything coming back to her. “He’s ruining what I think of myself!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “And you are too! You both make me feel like I’m a big lump that doesn’t know what I’m talking about, and I do! I do know what I’m talking about!”

  “What are you talking about?” repeated Mrs. Sheridan.

  “I’m talking about me and what I think of myself. I think I’m some big fat loser.”

  “Oh
, so it’s what you think of yourself, so we’re not doing anything. You’re doing it to yourself!”

  Boy, thought Emma, that takes the cake. Anything to get them off the hook. Anything to make them look good. They’re not going to change came insistently into her brain like a sad tune. They’re not going to change, I have to change; they’re not going to change, I have to change; like a hurdy-gurdy played for a monkey on a summer afternoon.

  “Forget it,” she mumbled.

  “What?”

  “I said never mind.”

  “I think you should give some thought to what I’ve said tonight. I think you’re thinking about a lot of things you don’t have any business thinking about at eleven years old. I think you ought to do your homework and get to sleep. You’re very overwrought tonight. Do you have your period?”

  “No.” Emma covered her eyes. If there was one thing she hated to talk about or even think about, it was that.

  “Couldn’t you see”—Emma took one last desperate chance—“couldn’t you see tonight that he even hated you?”

  “No. Your father doesn’t hate me.” Mrs. Sheridan smiled. She put her hand on her daughter’s head. “Is that what’s bothering you? Do you think he hates me? Well, I can see why you’re upset. Did you worry we might get a divorce?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” said Emma. Her mother was way off the track.

  “Don’t talk like that. Now, was that what was bothering you? Well, I’ll tell you something, Emma. Your father may be just the slightest bit upset, but that’s temporary and it doesn’t upset me, it doesn’t even upset Willie. The person it seems to be upsetting the most is you. I think that’s because you’re getting the wrong things in your head about this. It doesn’t mean divorce. It doesn’t mean your father hates me. It doesn’t mean your father hates you. It doesn’t mean any of those things.”

  “Okay,” said Emma wearily.

  “What’s that?”

  “Okay, okay.” There was no point in talking about it any longer, because no matter how long she talked, there wouldn’t be anyone to understand her.

  She thought of Goldin. Goldin would understand her, so would Saunders. Ketchum was another matter. Ketchum looked as though she had such a hard time just getting through the day that understanding would be beyond her.