The Love Children

by Marylin French

  “What other guys, you idiot!” my mother yelled. Then she said—and I winced, hearing her; she had to know it was fatal—“Money is the only thing binding us now. You stop supporting your daughter, and there’s nothing between us at all!”

  There was dead silence. Then my father rumbled something threateningly and she yelled, “Go ahead! The amount you give me is laughable! You think two hundred dollars a month keeps Jess? Where do you live, in the 1950s? Her food alone costs more than that. You always used money as a weapon, you bastard!”

  I could foresee ruination; we were going to be really poor. I knew what that meant, I saw how Steve and his friends lived.

  My parents had lowered their voices. Then my father boomed, “I will!” and my heart stopped. I knew it was my life they were arguing over.

  I darted down the stairs and into the kitchen and stood there glaring at them. Daddy was sitting at the kitchen table, flushed, and Mom was standing by the fridge, still in her coat. When she saw me, she took it off, and put the kettle on for tea.

  “Hi, Jess,” she said.

  “If you’re disposing of me, I have the right to a say,” I burst out. I hated that they were discussing me like the loot from a robbery.

  “How’d you like to live with me in Vermont?” Dad asked me, showing his teeth, in a kind of smile.

  Mom looked at the floor.

  I looked at both of them. “You don’t mind ripping me in half, is that it?” I said bitterly.

  They both looked abashed.

  “You like Vermont,” Dad urged.

  “I like Cambridge better,” I said. “And I like Barnes, and my friends. I’ve spent my whole life here. I don’t want to move in my sophomore year!”

  “If I say you’re living in Vermont, you’re living in Vermont!” he thundered. “I’m your father.”

  “I’ll just run away,” I said as coldly as I could.

  Mom looked at me, a long look. Did I imagine the hint of a smile on her face?

  My father burst out crying. Oh, God.

  I went to him, putting my arms around him. My mother turned her head away.

  He kept crying. I remembered him crying on other nights, when he was drunk, and gradually I pulled away from him.

  “Are we going to eat tonight?” I asked my mother.

  “Good idea,” she said, moving away from the fridge door, where she had been leaning. “Food,” she sighed. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out stuff. She had made a ton of meatballs the other night, and we were having them with spaghetti and a salad of Boston lettuce and avocado with thin slices of parmesan on top. While she and I cooked, my father went into the living room and threw himself on the couch. When I went to call him to dinner, I found him sound asleep. He seemed dazed during dinner, not saying a word; afterward he went to bed—in my mother’s bed. I knew she’d end up sleeping in her study. She and I cleaned up the kitchen.

  “He can’t make me go to Vermont, can he?” I asked her.

  “He may have the legal right to order you. I’m not sure. He would if we got divorced and he fought for custody in court and won—which he might because he has a lot of money and I have none. I can’t even afford a lawyer. But you’re almost sixteen, for God’s sake. He couldn’t force you to stay there. On the other hand, how could you live if he doesn’t support you?”

  “I don’t want to go! I want to stay with my friends!” I almost screamed.

  “I don’t think it will come to that. He loves you. He doesn’t want to make you unhappy. He’s just pissed tonight. You know how he is when he’s drinking. He’s a tender creature, basically. Still, I think I’d better look for a job.”

  “You have a job.”

  “I mean a real job.”

  “Your job isn’t real?”

  “Honey, I’m part time. I get slave wages.”

  “Tell the department head you need a full-time job.”

  “He can’t do anything. Harvard doesn’t hire women in full-time, tenure-track positions.”

  “But you went to Harvard!”

  “Yes, but even letting us in was a concession. You read about what the president said, complaining that the war has left them with ‘the lame, the halt, and the women?’”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about.

  I was more disappointed in her than I could say. I felt it was her fault. She had let me down.

  That evening, I hated both my parents.

  3

  My father stayed on, and for a while we were a family again. I prayed we would stay that way. I closed my eyes tight and wished really hard that he would stay and not go back to Vermont, but also stop getting angry all the time. I don’t know who was supposed to be listening to the wishes and I don’t know why I wanted him to stay, with the way things were. He didn’t stop getting mad, and he didn’t even work in his studio; he sat in the kitchen every day, drinking. By the time I got home from my job at the dress shop, he was pretty sloshed. Mom took to working in her office until six every night, which really pissed me off. I felt like she was dumping him on me. I got home a little after five, and I didn’t like arriving there before she did, because he didn’t care whether he blasted Mom or me. Either of us would do; since I had started my period, we seemed to be the same person in his mind.

  It was just before my menstruation party that Dad first talked to me in a nasty way. I was thirteen, almost fourteen; many of my friends had had their periods, and I was beginning to worry. But it finally came and Mom said I was a woman now and we had to have a party to celebrate. Dad didn’t like the idea, and it was a strange party: Mom invited her friends, not mine, as if her friends were good fairies come to shower gifts. And they all did bring me presents, really nice ones, beautiful books and a leather three-ring binder and a gold locket and a fountain pen. Mom even had a cake made. I was mortified at the idea, thinking it would say “Happy Menstruation!” or “Congratulations for Falling off the Roof!” But it just said “Good Luck, Jess.” Dad went out for the whole day and never said anything to me. And soon after that he left. So what was I supposed to think?

  Now, every night he would be sitting in the kitchen, reading the newspaper, ready to jump down my throat as soon as I walked in the door. Whatever I did was wrong. And he smelled of booze and slurred his words and was disgusting. After he passed out one night after dinner, I gave my mother an ultimatum.

  “I can’t take this anymore. Daddy’s always yelling at me for something, he’s always sloshed, and he’s mean. I’m going to stay at Sandy’s for a while.”

  I’d already asked Sandy. She never even asked why. “I have twin beds,” she said. “My parents love you. Come for a while.”

  But my mother looked stricken. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. What can I do to make things better?”

  “You could come home a little earlier,” I said indignantly.

  “I’ll do that. I didn’t know. . . . I’ll get home by five every night. Promise.”

  I considered asking her to be a little nicer to him, but didn’t know whether this would hurt her feelings. I felt so sorry for my father, I don’t know why exactly—he seemed so . . . hurt. I didn’t know how to fix him, but I was sure my mother did. In the end, I just blurted it out. “You could be nicer to him, you know.”

  “Well, he could be nicer to me too,” she said angrily. I closed my eyes in despair. She turned away from me. “I’ll try,” she mumbled.

  “I feel like he’s dying,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Jess, our relationship is dying. It hurts. We were crazy about each other once.”

  “Does it hurt you?” I asked incredulously. She sure didn’t act as though it did.

  But her eyes filled up. If they loved each other, what were they fighting about?

  “If I were nicer to him, he’d think we still had a chance. But we don’t. Too much has happened.”

  “What has happened?”

  She grimaced. “Oh, you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Maybe I would.
”

  She lit a cigarette. “I’ll come home earlier, Jess. Will that help?”

  “I hope so. It’s going to be an awful Christmas if he’s like this.”

  “I’ll have a talk with him. Tomorrow. Before I leave, before he starts drinking. I’ll tell him how upset you are.”

  “Don’t put it all on me!”

  “He has to see he’s distressing you. He’s distressing me too, but he wants to do that. I can’t believe he wants to distress you, though.”

  “Okay. But Christmas is a week from Sunday. Are we going to celebrate it?”

  She stared at me. For the first time, I saw how pale and strained her face was. I never thought my mother could be hurt. She had seemed impervious, impermeable, invulnerable.

  “We should do something, shouldn’t we? Invite people.” She named some of her friends. “Okay? Want to invite Sandy and Bishop?”

  I began to feel a little better. My father didn’t act up in front of other people. It was against his code of manners. I’d already bought Mom and Dad their Christmas presents, and I’d bought a Hanukkah present for Sandy. I got a little thing, a toy car, for Bishop, as a joke Christmas gift, something small, because I was afraid he wouldn’t think to get me anything and I didn’t want to make him feel bad. It was nice having a little money, and working near the Square, near the Harvard Coop and all the other stores. I smiled. “Okay,” I said.

  My mother must have spoken to my father, because he wasn’t drunk when I got home the next day; he wasn’t even there. He came in at about six, crowing about the Monets in the Museum of Fine Arts. My parents had dragged me to museums when I was little, back when they did things together, so I knew the museum and those Monets. He was full of enthusiasm, but it seemed to be an act. It didn’t feel real. At least he wasn’t drunk—although the first thing he did when he walked into the house was pour a whiskey on the rocks. The next day, he went to the Isabella Gardner Museum, and then came home in a rage about the way things were organized there. The day after that, he went to the Fogg Museum and raved about the Rembrandts. I began to wonder if he had really gone to these museums, or if he was spending his days in a bar on Mass Ave.

  Mom did get home every day before me, and cooked dinner, just like the old days. Every afternoon, I found her standing there, smiling, in an apron, which was how I liked her most: safely tucked away in motherhood. I have to laugh at myself, looking back. Now I’m the one in the apron. We had delicious meals, and they slept in the same bed at night, and there were no quarrels that I heard. But the house was full of tension, and at times I wished I’d gone to Sandy’s after all. But I felt I’d made a bargain with Mom. She’d looked so hurt at the thought I’d leave.

  How had my powerful parents turned into these hurt birds? I didn’t like it; it made me feel like a big bad wolf.

  Christmas was nice, though. The Wednesday before Christmas Day, Dad brought home a tree, and the two of us decorated it, the way we used to when I was little. For Christmas dinner, Mom cooked a ham and roast beef and made scalloped potatoes, which I love, and lots of vegetables and everybody brought dessert.

  Mom had invited Sandy’s family—her parents, her two sisters, and her brother—although the Lipkins didn’t celebrate Christmas. Only Sandy and her parents and her sister Naomi came—Naomi was twelve and cute—since her other sister and brother were in grad school. I liked them all a lot. The whole family was tall; the four of them looked funny getting out of their car, a Volvo, like clowns in the circus, one giant after another getting out of this little car.

  My parents had invited Annette and Ted Fields also. The Lipkins and the Fields didn’t really mix, but being mannerly, they didn’t collide either, so the afternoon was filled with little fits and starts of conversation that dribbled off into nothing, as if they kept trying but failed to find one song they could sing together. Of course they would have had something to talk about if the Fields had told the Lipkins about their disabled children, Derek and Marguerite, but they didn’t. Or maybe if the Lipkins had told the Fields about how bad they felt about Israel being militaristic, but they didn’t either. Or if anybody had brought up Vietnam, but everybody stayed away from that. Ted and Dr. Lipkin talked about music, about composers I’d never heard of who lived before Bach; Annette and Mrs. Lipkin talked about volunteer work, which Mrs. Lipkin did a lot of, and Annette would have liked to do but couldn’t. Mom and Mrs. Lipkin talked about books, because Mrs. Lipkin read a lot. So did Dr. Lipkin, but the books he read no one else in the room had ever heard of, on physics and astronomy and mathematics.

  The meal was delicious, and everybody brought a little gift for Mom or me; and Mom had small gifts for all the young people, and the grown-ups drank wine and got mellower, and at the end of the afternoon the atmosphere was convivial. Thank goodness, because Dad had had enough wine that his manners were beginning to slip. All it would take would be if some man looked at Mom the wrong way.

  Bishop didn’t come; he spent Christmas with his family. He had invited me the night before to Christmas Eve mass. The Connollys and five of their seven sons all went, with a few guests, including Sandy and me. We took up a whole pew in the church. Mr. Connolly was a big burly man with white hair and a red face. He was much older than my father: Bishop’s sister, Maggie, was thirty-one and married and had four children of her own. Bishop’s two oldest brothers were in Vietnam; Michael was in his first year at Holy Cross, and Bishop and the others ranged down from him. The Connollys were nice, but you couldn’t tell what they thought about anything. Mrs. Connolly was constantly worried about something and asking one of the kids if this or that had been done. You could see she had been pretty once, but she now looked worn down.

  The church was decorated with statues and embroidered linens and flowers everywhere. It had stained-glass windows and it was beautiful. I’d never been to a mass before. It was pretty long and you had to stay alert to know when to stand up or kneel or sit down. Afterward, we went back to Bishop’s house and there was cocoa with whipped cream, then a huge feast, spread out on the dining-room table. A lot of the people who had been at the mass came to the house afterward; it was a big party. There were two maids and a man in a black suit to serve drinks, and there were two Christmas trees, one really tall one in the front parlor and a smaller one in the back parlor, both elaborately decorated. After the midnight supper, the grown-ups stood around drinking, and Sandy had to go home. Her father came for her. Bishop took me up to his parents’ room—they had their own living room upstairs, connected to their bedroom, and they had their own television up there, Bishop said, to avoid the arguments the boys always got into over the other two, one in the living room and one in the rec room in the basement. Before Bishop, I’d never known anybody with three television sets. Bishop’s older brother had gone out with friends and the younger ones had gone to bed, so we sat up there and he gave me a Christmas present, a little silver bracelet; it was really beautiful, and I was so embarrassed because all I had for him was that stupid toy car. But he loved it, or he said he did, and hugged me. I kissed him and told him I loved him, and he said he loved me too.

  It was a great Christmas, except for the fact that I was dreading what was going to happen when it was over. But then it was over. Time is so strange; events approach so slowly and go by so quickly. After Christmas, Dad went back to Vermont and our lives settled down again.

  4

  I don’t know when I realized there was another war going on, right here in our own country. I should have known the year John Kennedy was killed, because Medgar Evers was murdered that same year, and white people bombed a church in Birmingham, killing four little girls at Sunday school. I should have remembered how upset Mom got when Malcolm X was killed in 1965. But I didn’t read newspapers, not even after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in 1968. It wasn’t until Steve explained it all to me that I saw it—all of a sudden, in one glimpse. It all made perfect sense to me then. I’d been seeing it without noticing all my life. I was fiftee
n by then, old enough to know how white people treated black people. I’d often thought that if I were black, I would be mad as hell at white people. I was pretty mad anyway. I just didn’t realize it was a full-fledged war.

  Steve went to public school, but through me he became part of our group—well, sort of. Sandy and Bishop really liked him, but there were kids in my school who didn’t want to hang out with him. I didn’t care about them. Neither did Steve—he had plenty of friends of his own.

  We didn’t do much. We hung out, we smoked weed, we talked a lot. We shared books and music, and we went to parties, all over the place. Steve had friends everywhere. He had to support himself and soon after New Year’s, in 1969, he got a job in Monaghan’s, a little store on Bow Street that sold cigarettes, newspapers, magazines and, it was rumored, drugs. Maybe because of the drugs, he didn’t want me to visit him there. He said cops watched the place and it wouldn’t be good for me to be associated with it. I worked afternoons myself now, so the only time I could hang out with my friends—unless we cut school—was on weekends. I hardly saw Phoebe anymore. Every time we got together she wanted to shoplift or shop; I didn’t want to steal and I couldn’t afford to shop all the time, and it got tired. I wondered why she had to shop so much. She didn’t need more clothes, I thought; her closets were bursting. So I started to hang out mainly with Steve or with Sandy, Bishop, and Dolores. After we started the gallery, kids showed up there afternoons and weekends, wandering in at odd times. Most of the time, the air mattress in the corner had sheets and blankets folded neatly on it, a sign that Dolores was hiding out there again. Poor Dolores. We just didn’t know what to do to help her. We didn’t even know what was wrong.

  One rainy Saturday Steve and I were alone there. We were sitting against the wall, drinking Coke and smoking and listening to music, when Steve said, “Want to try something weird?”

  “Sure.”

  He pulled a little plastic bag with something brown in it out of his pocket.