Our Father

by Marilyn French

  Sunday, Alex very calmly said, “I know you don’t believe me but look at him! His eyelid fluttered!”

  Ronnie said, “I saw it too.”

  Mary stared at Elizabeth. They gazed at the old man. Nothing. “I think housecleaning has affected your mind, Alex,” Mary said, stalking out. Elizabeth followed her, leaving Alex and Ronnie to walk alone behind them. They contemplated each other.

  “You saw it, didn’t you? You weren’t just humoring me?” Alex whispered.

  “I saw it,” Ronnie said. “They don’t want to see it. They want him dead.”

  “Oh, surely not!”

  “Why, surely not,” Ronnie mocked, “Ms. Pollyanna?”

  Alex punched her arm lightly, grimacing, then put her arm around her as they walked out. Elizabeth was talking to Father’s ICU nurse, Edna Thompson.

  “Certainly, Miss Upton.” She fingered a card. “I’ll call if there’s any change at all.”

  Elizabeth hired two extra women from a temp agency so most of the work got done although Mrs. Browning confessed to Teresa in the kitchen that having Mary help was like taking on an extra job. “Like having your five-year-old help you,” Teresa agreed, and they laughed comfortably. They were discomfited by this breach of decorum, but they also felt a grudging thrust of vengeance at the sight of Mary in cashmere twin set, miniskirt, pearls, and an apron, trying to remove a lace curtain from the stretcher, crying out as she stuck her finger on one of the needles that held them on. It was satisfying on a number of counts—not only did she suffer (you see what we go through?) but she would then go off to suck it and could do nothing until it stopped bleeding lest she stain the freshly washed lace, so she was out of their hair for minutes. Also, they were vindicated: it was impossible to wash and stretch forty lace panels in a week, and Mary finally agreed to leave the curtains in the upstairs rooms for later. But the satisfaction was undermined when Mary walked around the house exclaiming at the refound brightness and beauty of the place, as if she had worked this miracle single-handedly—except that she literally cried about the draperies that had returned from their cleaning with threadbare patches.

  Two days before the party, with several lace panels remaining to be washed and much of the silver yet to be polished, Mary set to work drawing up and discarding menus, flustering Browning anew by demanding sandwiches of cucumber, watercress, and ham, smoked salmon on thin brown bread, artichoke bottoms with shrimp and mayonnaise, caviar with chopped egg, onion, and toast points, pound cake, lemon custard cake, midnight cake, all to be marketed for and prepared in two days.

  But somehow this too was done and the three ladies—for ladies they unquestionably were—arrived together by limousine Monday afternoon promptly at four. Mary greeted them in a high-necked fitted flared-skirt wine wool Trigère adorned with a simple thick gold necklace; Alex wore the best dress she had brought, a pale blue silk shirtwaist (Mary had to admit it did make her eyes look brilliant). Elizabeth had to be dragged out of the study, but at least she had put on a well-cut black skirt and a white shirt, mannish but of heavy silk, cut full. The ladies, dressed more like Mary than the others, saw nothing at which to take offense, and embraced Mary and met Elizabeth with emphatic declarations (Such a long time, Lizzie! or I’m glad to meet you after all these years! I’ve heard so much about you!). They studied Alex unobtrusively and walked around the sitting and drawing rooms exclaiming at the beauty and wonderfulness of “these old houses.”

  Teresa served the tea at a tea table unused for decades, opened in the sitting room where the fading light gleamed on the new gold brocade cushion of the window seat and the newly cleaned but very old tapestry drapes, folded carefully to conceal worn spots. A fire burned high (but not as high as Ronnie’s fires, Mary noted) in the fireplace, the lamps were lighted, the ladies chatted. They talked of children and dogs and vacations, reminisced about events at the Lincoln house years before, about their girlhoods. Everyone had had a friend or relative who had suffered a stroke and recovered, as they were sure Stephen would. Threading their conversation like a lively drone in a septet, Elizabeth noticed, was congratulation, praise. So lovely Mary was and Marie-Laure too, Christina had seen her only a few months ago when her own daughter had a party, Marie-Laure had come down from Bennington, so beautiful so charming. Elizabeth was elegant, and a friend of Mark Lipman, no? They knew him well—he had been in partnership with Christina’s husband years ago. And the secretary, such a fine man, so intelligent, like Elizabeth herself. Such an important job! And surely so difficult! How intelligent she must be.

  Alex’s credentials they researched almost immediately.

  “Where are you from, Alex?” Eloise asked. “Wilmington, oh you must know the Mountjoys, of course you do, Caroline Mountjoy is just about your age! Really? But surely you know the Rosses, they live out at Glen Ross, another wonderful old house like this. No?”

  No unkind word said, not even a look exchanged, but they all knew and with a wry smile, Elizabeth registered their knowing: NOT one of us. Dismissed as insignificant.

  Bitches. Her heart heated in defense of Alex, she began to prepare her case.

  But Alex seemed oblivious both to the meaning of their questions and their dismissal. It was as if she simply did not feel it. Truly dense, Mary thought, not unhappy with Alex’s failure to pass muster. That loved-child syndrome, Elizabeth decided. Can’t conceive of people not liking her, so doesn’t ever feel rejected. Alex, expansive and happy with company (COMPANY!), listened to them and questioned them with such interest and warmth that despite her unworthiness, they allotted her a share of praise—lovely hair, her father’s brilliant eyes. Warming even further in this female climate so familiar to her, Alex spoke more calmly, less compulsively than she did with her sisters, about her children, her husband (that poor David was clearly not in their husbands’ league was acknowledged in the visitors’ tight smiles), her house in Newark—pronounced New Ark—Delaware, her poor widowed mother who had no one. With a grateful smile, she breathed more deeply and evenly than she had in days as she accepted their assurances that her mother indeed had someone, she had Alex and her lovely children, she was not alone.

  Women are the same everywhere, Alex thought. Even if they are rich.

  Alex discovered they did volunteer work, like her. She worked with poor people, mainly women and children, hands-on work in a shelter. This did shock them a bit.

  “You work in one of those places?” Christina frowned. “Isn’t it—depressing? grimy? dangerous?”

  “It’s depressing and grimy,” Alex admitted. “I never feel endangered. You know”—she glanced at her sisters briefly—“I know it sounds sentimental. But every time I make a child laugh, help feed a baby, let a worn-out woman get some rest, take some of her burden—you know, people act as if these women are just parasites on the public the way they talk about welfare mothers. But these women are doing a hard job, they are working! They are raising children, and they don’t get paid for it or even supported, they are destitute—well, I go home every Wednesday feeling so good, feeling I matter, that my life matters. …” She gave up.

  The women stared at her soberly.

  “I worked in a soup kitchen last winter,” Francine offered. “So I have some idea what you mean.”

  “So many poor people,” Eloise murmured. “The streets are full of them.”

  “I tend to stay out of the fray. Mainly I raise money for the hospital,” Christina said quietly. “Maybe I should do more.”

  In fact, Alex proved to be the hit of the party, Elizabeth thought afterward. She didn’t need my defense. Her naiveté, her ignorance of their standards, their language, the way their minds worked, gave her an advantage with those supersubtle Venetians. They enjoyed her far more than Mary, whose constant references to Gstaad, Capri, Paris, to Alberto, long-past parties with the Duchess of Windsor and the Duke of Marlborough, gossip about Princess Di and Prince Charles recounted with a full measure of “definitelys” and “certainlys,” only underscor
ed how far she had slid from such glories. The women were clearly aware of her decline. Aware too of how tenuous their hold was on the things they insisted defined them. A knowledge they resisted. Willful blindness. I am superior, one of the elite. I am! Knowing they were a man away from Mary’s situation. Most of them had nothing of their own—unless some man had died and left it to them. Of course, in this overblown economy, their men might soon be only a decimal point away from poverty. Hah! Her mouth twisted in scorn.

  God I can’t stand the dictatorship of women’s niceness. All that smiling, embracing, kisskiss, coocoo, cuckoo, that’s what it makes you. Yet, as she walked back to the library she had come to think of as hers, Elizabeth found herself humming. She felt cheerful, her heart light. Why should that be? It was unthinkable that that stupid conversation, all those nicenesses could have cheered her. It must be she was happy they had left.

  Ronnie, who was relieved to be excused from the tea party, did her part by remaining invisible and silent. Same old role she had always played in this house. But this time, a throng of questions buzzed around her head—what are the rules of this world? what do you wear? how do you act? are you allowed to sit with your legs up on the chair? are you allowed to say “fuck”? do you eat those little sandwiches with a fork? is holding out your pinky when you sip from a cup good manners or bad? do you squeeze lemon into your tea with your fingers? do you have to wear white gloves to do it? where do I find white gloves in Lincoln? what happens if the gloves get wet when you squeeze the lemon? Reduced to giggles, she comforted herself at being excluded: she was happy not to have to sit for two hours listening to what she knew would be trivial snobbish superficialities, two hours in which she could get some work done.

  Still, when she started to hear bustling in the kitchen, she got up from the computer and opened her door a fraction. Mrs. Browning was frantically telling Teresa how to hold and pass the silver sandwich tray. Through the open swinging kitchen door voices drifted from the sitting room. And something twisted in her stomach, twisted and hardened. She picked up a journal and lay on her bed but she could not concentrate.

  Suppose I just wander in there, hello everybody, how do you do? I’m the bastard sister. Ronalda Velez my name, invisibility my game. Even Alex would be shocked much as she pretends to be tolerant. Takes the position that’s easier for her, that doesn’t strain her brain or her moral sense. At least the others have the guts to say what they mean. They’re honest, the bitches. She reached for the sneering smile she always used when feelings like these overcame her, but it wouldn’t come, her mouth only trembled. Instead, a blanket of feeling spread across her body, like a flush suffusing a face.

  DON’T.

  This feeling made her weak, made her mouth tremble, her eyes wet, her hands limp.

  DON’T.

  But she sank into the warm, liquid, mushy, comforting forbidden underwater realm. Poor Ronnie. Exiled then, exiled now, called a bastard—well she was wasn’t she. Big-eyed little golden-brown child hidden in the kitchen, don’t disturb The Man. Little brown person in a white world where brown people weren’t considered people.

  Remembering, she wept. And weeping made her feel as if she were blowing up into a soggy weakling.

  For twenty-five years she had avoided self-pity. Sign of weakness. Made you weak. Have to be tough, tough it all out. But the stuff ran out of her uncontrollably, like pus, like pee.

  I hidden, they in the light. The color of my skin makes me unwelcome at a tea party where six women sit making trivial conversation. “You are excused from the tea party, Ronnie,” talking to me like an inferior, known certified inferior, Mary’s superiority equally known and certified. Her birth certificate proves it. How can she go on believing that she and her ilk are superior and everyone else inferior? What gyrations must she go through to maintain such a delusion in the face of fact? Superior? She’s better-looking than most, fatter than many, stupid or smart but she’s accomplished nothing in her life and has no thought for anything but herself.

  Don’t do that. She’s had kids. Stick to your principles: bearing children is the most important contribution anyone can make to society.

  Yes but she didn’t raise them herself. It wasn’t that much of a contribution.

  Don’t do to her what she does to you. She sobbed aloud. No one needs a justification to be alive. No one! Remember that! Don’t do to others what they do to you! Not looks or smarts or morals or strength or accomplishments or religion or color or sex or …

  Why! She was crying softly, but aloud. Why would it be such a shocking invasion for me to eat the same sandwiches, drink the same tea, use the same cups as them! It isn’t even the illegitimacy: if my mother had been some madcap bohemian British noblewoman who simply refused to marry some Isadora Duncan type, some movie star, they’d parade me at their parties, crowing over their marvelous sister conceived on the wrong side of the blanket. It’s class and color. Even if my mother was lower-class but white I’d be acceptable if I was educated, a bastard with a Ph.D. They wouldn’t like it but they might pass me off with a joke: Father was such a roué! But there’s no cloud without a silver lining, look we have this brilliant sister, a surprise we just discovered, she’s getting a Ph.D. in ecology, isn’t she wonderful?

  Well, maybe they wouldn’t. But they could.

  Is that why you are getting a Ph.D.?

  Of course, she’s also a lesbian.

  Ronnie laughed out loud.

  Still, the feeling would not blow away, would not budge. The room shimmered in front of her eyes as she did something even more forbidden than pity herself, let herself imagine Elizabeth’s arm lightly on her back, ushering her into the sitting room miraculously clothed in something acceptable, with a good haircut, introduced as the long-lost sister. Saw Mary rise, come across the room, kiss her cheek, dear Ronnie. Felt Alex embrace her, so glad you came. Sat in the warmth, the four of them together by the fire asking each other what their lives had been like, lamenting the sorrow each had suffered—and she now knew there had been plenty of sorrow even for them—holding each other in a shared embrace, weeping, saying we love you. Because you’re my sister.

  She sobbed out loud.

  Love you. Because you are, not for anything you do or own or know.

  Like Rosa’s little ones, everyone loved simply for existing. I hadn’t been there two days before they were crying out when I came home, running to me, clinging to me. I looked up at Rosa, astonished. She smiled, said, “Ronnie, that’s the wonderful thing about babies. They love you. You don’t have to do nothing, they just love you.”

  But not my real sisters.

  The vision was unendurable and she sat up, wiped her cheeks hard with the back of her hand. She reached for a cigarette and lighted it, inhaled deeply.

  Shit, you asshole, they don’t even love each other and you expect them to love you! Elizabeth and Mary are full of hate and rage and Alex is full of bubbles. And it can’t be one-way, you’d have to love them too, how do you feel about that? Be like loving Him. To be happy in life you must love, Momma said. Formula that’s upheld every tyranny since the world began. Love God who torments you, love the king who takes your wheat, makes you build his wall, drags you into the army or makes you bear his child. Love him, celebrate him, honor his name.

  Fuck’em all.

  8

  ACCORDING TO THE SCHEDULE they had silently established, the four of them lunched together every day at twelve-thirty in the sun room, where they met again for tea at four. Before dinner at eight in the dining room, at about six or half past, they meandered into the sitting room for cocktails, although Mary insisted Elizabeth and Ronnie could not call what they drank cocktails. But on Monday evening, after the guests left about six, the three sisters sat on.

  “There’s no way we’re going to eat dinner tonight,” Alex moaned.

  “No. I told Browning just to serve us some soup,” Mary agreed.

  Ronnie remained conspicuously absent until Alex went into her r
oom and ordered her out, pulling at her arm until she joined them. Elizabeth, glancing at Ronnie’s face as she entered the room, thought she was simmering with resentment about her exclusion from the tea party. As would I be.

  “I’ve enjoyed today so much!” Alex cried. “It’s just as much fun having sisters as I thought it would be! I’m so glad we’re getting to know each other.”

  “To know us is not necessarily to love us,” Mary said.

  “The two may even be mutually exclusive,” Elizabeth said.

  Alex didn’t seem to hear. “But Ronnie should have been with us today! You would have loved it, Ronnie,” Alex went on, immune to Ronnie’s look.

  “I doubt that,” was all she said. Quietly.

  Alex stopped, suddenly, seemed to think. “We’ve never asked you. Never talked to you about … I mean, we all talk about our childhoods except you. And I would really like to know about your mother’s relation to our father.”

  “That seems clear,” Ronnie said dourly. The others laughed.

  “Oh no!” Alex put her hands alongside her head. “I’m sorry sorry sorry, that was stupid, that wasn’t what I meant!” She leaned toward Ronnie. “I mean,” she said, “were you all happy when you were here alone?” She searched Ronnie’s face, which remained impassive, then stared at the fire. “I used to picture him here summers with Elizabeth and Mary. And after I saw you, I wondered about him in, you know, this other life, this cozy little family no one really knew about, the three of you happy and content together. …”

  “Sitting around the hacienda eating rice and beans?” Ronnie mocked her. “Stephen in a poncho strumming a guitar and smiling paternally at his little brown child?”

  Alex flushed. “That isn’t what I meant,” she protested. “By the time he got involved with your mother, he was older, more settled maybe. Maybe he could be—I don’t know—easier, more relaxed, comfortable—with a woman of …”