This Is My Daughter

by Robinson, Roxana;

  Peter looked ahead, driving steadily, unmoved by the bleak passage, focused homeward. Emma thought of him walking back across the scrubby lawn with her father, carrying the grimy canvas bag of gear, the two of them windblown, ruddy, relaxed. She could see she had been wrong about the shouting: it was different for men. They didn’t mind it. She wondered if all human activity were like this, everything, every gesture, every comment colored faintly by gender. Each side continually astonished, confused by the other’s misperceptions.

  Peter had told her that he had once come into his office to find his secretary crying at her desk.

  “The poor thing,” Emma said. “What did you do?”

  “What do you think I did?” asked Peter, indignant. “I went into my office and shut the door.”

  “How could you? She needed sympathy.”

  “She needed time to pull herself together,” said Peter firmly.

  It was like hearing customs from an undiscovered race: what men thought was unimaginable. How could they not mind being shouted at? Wasn’t that the point of shouting, intimidation? Why wouldn’t they be affected? Why would they do it? And it started early, they were like this as children. Emma had seen them at Tess’s playgroup, at two years old. The girls sat in a tidy row, their legs crossed at their plump ankles, helping each other as they played. The boys tried to kill each other. Wrestling, pounding: they thought this pleasant. The teacher presided calmly, intervened rarely. “No biting, Robert,” she said. “Remember what I told you about biting.” But why not biting? Why not machetes? It was what they wanted.

  She wondered what Robert at work would say about her marrying Peter. It would be something unexpected. Robert was curious about other people, but not really interested in them. He had a rock-solid self-absorption that rendered him incapable of empathy, though he was good-hearted.

  She wondered what the Chatfields would say. She had liked them at once. Mrs. Chatfield had been out in the garden, wearing a pair of huge droopy jeans which she called dungarees. Stepping forward, she had surprised Emma by putting both arms around her and hugging her, a real, warm hug. “I’m so glad to meet you,” she said, then shaking her hand, and Emma had felt embraced. Peter’s father, his eyebrows bristling kindly, had asked her if she would like to come birding with him in the marshes.

  When she and Warren had gotten engaged he had told his parents alone. His father asked, “What clubs do her parents belong to?” Warren told her this in a tone of cheerful contempt: he knew his parents were outrageous snobs. Emma had never liked them, but she had thought Warren was different. She’d thought he saw them as arrogant, gossipy, mean-spirited. She’d thought he condemned that in them. How could she have been so naive? But she had been so young then, young enough to think that if you could see your parents’ flaws you could avoid them. To think that you were different from your parents. Now she knew that, no matter how her parents exasperated her, she was cast in their image. She would duplicate, unwittingly, in a new manner, the ways she least admired.

  The car surged steadily along the highway. Peaceful, Emma shut her eyes. She was surprised by her happiness. She hadn’t realized how different it felt, this emotion, from what she had felt for Warren. This was without question; it came from everywhere, the air she breathed. It was what she wanted. She reached out and put her hand on Peter’s knee. He covered it with his own and squeezed it.

  “I’m right here,” he said.

  “I’m glad,” said Emma.

  When they reached the apartment Tess pushed through the front door and ran down the hall and into the kitchen. Emma followed more slowly. As Tess ran she called Rachel’s name in a blissful shout. Rachel shouted back. When Emma came around the corner, Rachel was crouched on the floor, with Tess between her knees. They were staring deep into each other’s eyes, their foreheads nearly touching.

  “I missed you,” Rachel was saying. “Did you have a good time with your grandparents?” Rachel’s hands were clasped behind Tess’s back, and she swayed the child back and forth as she talked.

  Tess nodded. “And do you know what?”

  Rachel shook her head. “Tell me.”

  “My mommy and Peter are getting married.”

  Rachel looked up at Emma. “Is that so?”

  Emma nodded, smiling, and Rachel picked up Tess and stood. Holding Emma’s child in her arms she leaned forward and kissed Emma’s cheek, formally, hard.

  “Congratulations,” Rachel said.

  “Thank you,” said Emma.

  “And I,” began Tess, but stopped.

  The two women were looking at each other and smiling.

  Tess patted Rachel’s shoulder insistently. “Rachel, you are not looking at me.”

  “What is it?” Rachel rocked her.

  “And I,” said Tess, “am going to be in the wedding.”

  “No!” said Rachel.

  Tess nodded, proud.

  “When will it be?” Rachel asked Emma.

  “In September. We thought the eighteenth,” said Emma. “We need some time to get organized.”

  “September eighteenth,” Rachel said, and laughed. Her smile was suddenly huge, her old smile. “That’s a good day. A very good day. That’s my mama’s birthday.”

  “Your mama?” Tess said, sidetracked.

  “Would you like to go down to see her for her birthday?” asked Emma impulsively. “Shall we give you the trip as a wedding present?”

  “Oh,” said Rachel, smiling.

  Emma would have offered Rachel anything, anything.

  The next day, at her office, Emma called Francie to tell her. She waited until noon, to be sure Francie was up. Emma was by then on her second mug of coffee. She drank this with cream, from the carton she hoarded in the small office refrigerator. Two mugs was all she allowed herself; Emma would have liked to give up coffee altogether, and drink only herb tea. She would have liked to give up the chemical jitters for a more peaceful state of mind. She would have liked to eat only whole grains and organic vegetables; she would have liked to heal the whole polluted planet herself, but so far all she had been able to do was to cut down on her coffee to two mugfuls a day. Actually, she liked the chemical jitters.

  While she was waiting for Francie to wake up, Emma had been trying to edit an article called “Connecting the Vertices: The Early Iconography of Jedson Cray.” It was senseless. “These early pristine images—Unintentionally self-conscious—exquisitely presage the abrupt and deliberately, almost fiercely conventional interiority of the later, more subtly convoluted work.” Why couldn’t art historians write a title without a colon? And what in the world were vertices? And why not write in English?

  At twelve Emma took a chalky chemical sip and dialed. Francie answered.

  “Hi,” said Emma. “It’s me. I wanted to tell you I’m getting married.”

  “Again?” said Francie.

  Emma frowned. “For real.”

  “Who is it?”

  “You know who it is. The man I’ve been seeing. Peter Chatfield.”

  “But what’s he like? Another stockbroker?”

  “Actually, Warren wasn’t a stockbroker,” Emma said coldly. “And Peter isn’t either.”

  “You know what I mean,” Francie said. “That type.”

  “What type?” Emma asked, nettled.

  “Come on,” said Francie. “Does he wear a gray suit and black wing tips to work?”

  “No,” said Emma. “He wears a bathrobe and a jockstrap. He’s a sumo wrestler.”

  There was a pause.

  Emma looked up to see Robert in the doorway. She waved, pointing at the phone. Robert raised his eyebrows. Emma shook her head and turned her back.

  Francie finally laughed. “Good. We could use a little genetic diversity.”

  “So, will you come to the wedding?” Emma asked.

  “When is it?”

  “September. The eighteenth.”

  “Are Mother and Daddy coming?”

  “Well, yes,” sai
d Emma.

  “Then I’m not,” Francie said firmly. “I’m not speaking to them at the moment. You can’t believe how rude Daddy was to Rex.”

  “Oh, yes I can,” said Emma. “He took a couple of swings at Tess, when we were there, and at Warren, and there was a moment when he sort of thought about going after Peter. He’s a nightmare.”

  “Then why are you asking them?”

  Emma closed her eyes. “Come on, Francie. They’re our parents. We can’t just cut ourselves off. Even if we never spoke to them again, they’d still be our parents.”

  “Thank you for reminding me. But we don’t have to put up with them, and I, for one, am sick of it.”

  “Okay,” said Emma. “Fine. But I still want you to come. You don’t have to talk to them.”

  “I don’t want to be in the same place with them.” Francie sounded pleased.

  There was a pause.

  “So you won’t come to my wedding,” Emma said.

  “I came to the last one,” Francie offered. “I’ll come to the next one. I’m only skipping this one.”

  “Very funny,” said Emma. “This is the real one. This is the last time I’m getting married.”

  There was a silence. Emma took a sip of her coffee.

  “I really wish you’d come,” she said. “You’re my only sister. You’re my only anything.”

  “Emma, those people are harmful. They are out to do damage. I choose not to put myself in their way.”

  Emma rolled her eyes. Why did people start talking like that as soon as they crossed the California border? “You make them sound like the body snatchers,” she said. “They’re just our parents. And they have no control over you. You’re a grown-up. Why do they upset you so much?”

  “Don’t be so smug,” Francie said. “Don’t pretend he doesn’t make you mad.”

  “Okay, he does, I admit it,” said Emma. “He makes me furious. But so what? He’s still my father.”

  “You’re afraid of him,” said Francie. “You don’t have the nerve to cut yourself loose.”

  Am I like Warren, Emma wondered suddenly, admiring something despicable? Should I be cutting myself off? But her parents were annoying, her father infuriating, still they were not bigots or snobs, they were normal infuriating people.

  “I don’t think cutting yourself off is the answer,” Emma said. “I think you just put up with your family. Okay, they’re flawed. So what? So are we.”

  There was another silence.

  “Look, I came to your wedding,” Emma offered. “I’ll come to your next one if you have one.”

  “If?” Francie repeated coldly.

  “When,” said Emma. She would, too: nothing could be worse than Francie’s first wedding. It had been in an orange grove, in the blazing sun. It was a hundred degrees. Everyone had been stoned, stumbling across the dusty furrows: the ground under the trees was plowed, not lawn. There was nowhere to sit down, and nothing to drink but bottled water, since at the time Francie had taken against alcohol and used only drugs.

  “But how do I know Daddy isn’t going to throw a scene?” demanded Francie. “How do I know he won’t insult Rex again?”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Emma promised. “Mother and I will talk to him. I really want you to come.”

  “Okay,” Francie said, “but you’re responsible. And you have to find us somewhere to stay.”

  “Fine,” said Emma. “Fine.”

  Emma hung up, pleased. She was moving forward. She would start making lists, she would tick things off. She could now tick Francie off.

  “Em?”

  She turned. Robert was still there.

  “Come in,” she said, waving her mug. “Congratulate me. I’m getting married.”

  “Again?”

  “That’s what Francie said,” said Emma. “I have to tell you it’s not polite. You’re supposed to say something nicer than that.”

  “Sorry,” Robert said, interested. He came in and stood with his hands in his pockets. “Who is it?”

  “His name is Peter Chatfield.” She liked saying it.

  “What’s he like?”

  “An angel in human form.”

  “Well, you are lucky,” Robert said. “As well as realistic.”

  “I think you ought to think your spouse is perfect, at the start, don’t you?”

  “No,” said Robert. “You should think your spouse is a nightmare. Then, if you want to marry them anyway, you have some chance of its working out.”

  “If I thought Peter were a nightmare I wouldn’t consider marrying him,” Emma said. “I did that once already.”

  “They say you repeat your mistakes. Is he different from the last one?”

  Emma shook her head. “In every possible way. You cannot imagine. For starters, Warren was a child. Peter is a grown-up.”

  Robert shrugged. “Okay, then. But is he nice? Rich? Unmarried? Smart?”

  “All those things.”

  “Good,” Robert said, nodding. He tipped his chin up and looked at the ceiling. “I wonder how my wife described me, before we got married.”

  “Just like that,” Emma said, “I’m sure.”

  Robert grinned at her. “Doubtful,” he said. “Okay. Now. The article,” he said, looking down at her desk. “What do you think?”

  “Unreadable,” said Emma. “Like his last one.”

  Robert frowned.

  “Just a joke,” she said. “It’s fine.” Stupid of her to make fun of something Robert took seriously. And if she thought this stuff was unreadable, why was she here?

  “The David Salle show,” Robert said. “We need someone to review it.”

  “Let’s get a woman,” said Emma.

  Robert gave her an admonitory look. “I’m not running a bad review.”

  “I just think a woman might have interesting things to say about it,” said Emma. She herself thought Salle’s work was callow and sexist.

  “Emma, I’m not going to run a review that makes a fuss over sexist issues. This is art, not sociology. Picasso was a shit to women, it’s a fact. He’s still a great painter.”

  “I’m not talking about Salle’s private life,” Emma said. “I don’t know if he’s a shit to women in private or not. It’s his paintings I mind. I think they’re prurient and humiliating to women.”

  “You’re taking the images literally. There’s more to them than that.”

  “But the literal images are there. You can’t ignore them, just because there are metaphorical ones too. Deeper meanings don’t contradict the literal one, they expand it. These paintings are about brutalization. They’re big and voluptuous and they celebrate the brutalization of women. Everyone pretends they’re ironic comments on it, but how do you tell the difference? Blacks wouldn’t let a white artist paint big voluptuous images of blacks being trussed and lynched—there’d be a huge fuss.” Emma’s heart was pounding; she alarmed herself by disagreeing. “Women should complain about it, but they don’t dare. Women in the art world are jeered at unless they sound like men. They’ve trained themselves to think like men.”

  Robert shook his head dismissively. “Salle does powerful stuff,” he said loftily. “Maybe it’s too much for you.”

  “I don’t think it’s powerful, I think it’s just shocking in a superficial way.”

  But Robert only shook his head. “You see everything as moral issues, Emma. The world is full of ambiguity. Yours is not the only way to look at this. And I don’t want a woman to review this. Women take everything personally.”

  “Women take personally things that are meant to demean them,” Emma said. “Try substituting another minority group for women in these images, and see if anyone complains.”

  Robert shook his head again. “You’re so intolerant,” he said mildly, and left.

  Alone, Emma waited for her alarm to subside. Her voice probably had been shrill. I probably am intolerant, she thought, disheartened. I suppose I do take things personally. But was she wrong about Salle
? It was so unsettling for her to disagree with a man that she couldn’t tell, afterward, if what she’d said had any merit, or if it were foolish. Pull yourself together, she told herself. You have an opinion, Robert has his. Why do you feel so threatened? But she did.

  She thought again of Francie. She no longer felt pleased and effective about her conversation. Now she felt dismayed: why had she promised to restrain her father? She imagined his outrage at her broaching the subject. His mouth would draw down at the corners, his chin would lift. She could no more control her father than she could Rex, with his mangy ponytail, his unbuttoned mule driver’s shirt, his crystals and his New Age certainties about channeling and other lives. She should have made Francie promise to make Rex wear normal clothes, and behave like a human being.

  Her mother had told her that when Rex and Francie had been there, her father had innocently mentioned that his neck was stiff. Rex had sprung into action, given him a loony gaze and offered to lead a series of mind-body exercises that would allow him to “unclench” and rid himself of his poisons.

  Emma could imagine her father’s cold stare.

  “My poisons? Would you mind explaining to me what you imagine my ‘poisons’ to be?”

  The inconceivable suggestion: her father upstairs, stretched out on the bed—naked? would even the insane Rex go that far? Her father lying stiffly supine, holding his long bony feet together, tensely upright. Her father taking orders from an undertrained, overfamiliar pipsqueak who chanted tyrannically at him to let everything go. Emma saw her father pink with outrage at the idea of having poisons, or of giving them up on command. She saw his outrage at the idea of letting anything go, letting one single unimportant thing slip from his grasp.

  Poor Rex, she thought, thrilled at last to think he could make a contribution, use his skills and powers. Emma sipped the last cold creamy dregs from her mug and decided not to call her parents right away.

  Nor did she want to tell Warren. He had no secretary, and she wondered, in a cowardly way, if she could leave the news on his voice mail. Reluctantly she decided she could not, and instead left him a message asking him to call her. He didn’t call back for several days. He never called back the same day she called him, he always made her wait.