Our Father

by Marilyn French

  At night, they gathered for drinks as usual, but on Wednesday for the first time, they used the playroom, a large room in the rear of the house, with sliding glass doors opening onto a terrace and the back garden. It was isolated so that sound would not carry to the formal front rooms, the dining, sitting, and drawing rooms. Unlike the upstairs nursery, it had been created for children past infancy, and had a big stone fireplace, comfortable plump chintz-covered sofas and chairs, a big television set, stereo equipment, and a Ping Pong table pushed against the wall. Its overcrowdedness added to its easy, comfortable air. The sisters sat in front of the television set watching the evening news, sipping Perrier, cola, wine, and vermouth cassis, watching reports on another spurious effort to end the war in El Salvador, another sharp drop in the stock market, Chilean police rounding up citizens in cities across the country.

  Funny how long silences always feel angry, whatever their cause, Ronnie thought. How we are now, each one of us burrowing inwards. Except Alex, who’s usually the nice one. Now she’s jangly, exploding with frustration. She screamed “Shit!” when she dropped her handbag as we waited for the car. Tears in her eyes as she bent to pick up her scattered possessions. I helped her, but she barely thanked me.

  Dinner was almost as silent. Mary’s suggestion that Father’s bed be moved against the north wall so he could face the windows was discussed at length but without passion, as was Elizabeth’s worry that the new intercom system was not working properly. They moved from dinner back to the playroom and immediately turned on the television again, sat there through something, watched the eleven o’clock news, and each went off to bed murmuring unfelt good-nights.

  The morning of his move, Stephen maintained a stubborn grim silence, looking like a man about to be led to the death chamber. Nurse Thompson, taking his pulse and blood pressure, reproached him gently: “I don’t think you realize how fortunate you are, Mr. Upton. I know it’s upsetting to be in your condition, but believe me, few people are as lucky as you. I tell you, I see it every day: people ship their parents off to these rest homes without a second thought. And here your wonderful daughters want to take care of you themselves. You’re a very lucky man!”

  He was the color of parchment as they moved him. Mary watched the stretcher-bearers slide him into the ambulance, returning him to life, real life, not like the hospital, which was just a transit station, but to his house, his home, his own bedroom, in this shape. Forever in this shape. Forever helpless. Unbearable, it must be, she thought.

  Alex saw the tears in her eyes. She laid her hand on Mary’s arm.

  It took a host of helpers and observers to transfer Stephen to his house, to the tender care of his loving daughters. Poor girls, Dr. Stamp thought, they don’t know what they’re in for. He must be a remarkable man, to have daughters who love him so much. Of course, there may be a lot of money involved. That may be it. He’s probably kept them on tenterhooks about their inheritances. That’s it, has to be it. Dr. Stamp shook their hands and went back to work. He knew he would hear from them again. This could not last long.

  Each segment of the team had its own ideas of proper procedure, so stretcher-bearers argued with nurses, and again with the nurse waiting at the house, who argued with Mrs. Browning and the practical nurse, all on hand to oversee the important event. The daughters stood guard in the hospital corridor, in the courtyard, and again in front of the mansion, saying nothing, although Mary started forward at one moment when she thought the stretcher was tilted too far to one side. But he was delivered safely back to his house, to his old bedroom in the front of the house on the second floor, a room called his for nearly sixty of his eighty-two years, which opened onto a small sitting room shared with a bedroom that had been home to three different wives. Now and forever more empty.

  He didn’t care.

  He doesn’t care, Mary thought. Sex is nothing to him now. “A shudder in the loins engenders there / The broken wall, the burning roof and tower / And Agamemnon dead.” Is that all I am to him, a shudder in the loins? Is that all fatherhood is? All it was to my kids’ fathers. Harry didn’t want more kids, another family. Alberto didn’t want any at all: he never even laid eyes on Marie-Laure. She saw him at a party last year for the first time: so dissipated-looking she was shocked. That was her father? Dancing with some B-movie queen. Wanted to go up and introduce herself and didn’t have the nerve. Poor kid, what must that feel like, your own father doesn’t even have the interest to lay eyes on you. Like Alex. Maybe we should just write off fathers. Still, I can’t blame Alberto for the way she is. I did that myself, harping, carping: posture, grammar, manners, makeup, you must be right, you’re a girl! Hates me for it. Always critical, she says. Tries to avoid me.

  Mary stood watching, silent, beside the door, trying to keep out of the way of the many functionaries restoring Stephen Upton to his family home. Father, she thought, trying to connect the word with the helpless gray broken man in the bed.

  Looks like an alien unsure if he can breathe in this air. Old, he is old and frightened, his life no longer in his control, try to remember that, Elizabeth, try to speak to him gently.

  Did he ever speak to me gently?

  So what are you going to do, beat him up? He never beat you up.

  He did worse.

  Elizabeth. Try to be a decent human being. Try to be like Alex.

  But she could not control her drive for efficiency, and kept interfering with the professionals arranging the man, the oxygen tank that would be kept near him in case of need, the nurse making the bed, arranging the furniture. The nurse’s patient long-suffering looks drove Elizabeth back and she went to stand beside Mary. Both of them stood with their hands clasped behind them. Elizabeth jumped suddenly, as something alien, something soft and clammy wormed into her hand. It was Mary’s finger. She clasped it. They clasped hands behind their backs like children.

  Alex felt a ferocious thrust of rage. She could hardly bear to look at him. A hate she did not name, failed to recognize, never having felt such an emotion before, inflamed her stomach, her esophagus, her throat. Hideous horrible old man, a father who never was one, who abandoned me, who never even sent me a birthday card. What did I ever do to him, how could I have done anything terrible to him, I was only nine years old.

  I have a right to feel this way. My father abandoned me, and the truth is, Mother is abandoning me too, always abandoned me, you can abandon someone without leaving. What else is she doing when she refuses to tell me why she left, why she took me away, why she deprived me of my sisters and my daddy? And now he can’t speak. This is unbearable. HE CAN’T SPEAK!

  Ronnie tried to help. Because she blended in with the variegated skin hues of the working staff, they took her for one of them, and appreciated her efforts. Her Indian face remained impassive. She did not speak.

  Sick old man, helpless now. Left to our tender mercies. We’ll probably tear him limb from limb.

  Do I really want to do that? Do I care about him at all?

  A crab clawed her intestines in answer, doubling her over for a moment.

  Throughout the process, Stephen glared. He glared at the workers, and once the workers had left, glared throughout Alex’s recital of the various comforts they had arranged for him (for the sisters had agreed that Alex communicated with him best). See, a remote control button on the table near his hand, to press if he needed someone; a television set directly opposite him, with a remote control; a bed tray and bedside table with everything he could possibly want set upon it. And if not, just press the button. A little computer was coming later in the week, he’d have to learn to use it, but he would and he could type instructions on it. He showed his teeth at that. Well, okay, if you don’t like that idea, here is the plastic tablet with its stick, to write on. “Now,” she said, sitting on the armchair pulled permanently up beside his bed, “tell us what you like to eat.”

  He looked, for the first time, directly at Ronnie. Nodded his head toward her.

  “
‘She knows,’ he’s trying to say,” Elizabeth translated.

  They all looked at Ronnie. She shrugged. “I wasn’t paying attention,” she told them. She looked at him. “I don’t know. I’m not my mother,” she said coldly.

  “You know what you’ve been eating for the last months, Ronnie,” Mary said with irritation.

  “I can’t remember. Anglo food all tastes the same to me.”

  Alex pulled a side chair up beside the armchair, patted it. “Now Ronnie, you sit here, and I’ll sit here, and we’ll ask Father what he likes to eat.”

  Ronnie stood where she was. “He likes Anglo food. Roast beef, baked potatoes, steak, pot roast, leg of lamb well done, lobster salad, omelets. Mrs. Browning knows, not me. Doesn’t he have a diet? Didn’t the doctor give you a menu?”

  “Yes. I think so.” Elizabeth darted across the room to where her bag was, searched it violently.

  Alex leaned toward Stephen. “Okay. Now, Father, suppose I start naming things and you write on the tablet—here, let me lay it on the tray for you—you write—let’s see—you write a number when I say the thing, you know, one to five, according to how much you like it. You know? If you like a thing very much, you make a one, and if you don’t like it at all, you make a five. We won’t give you any fives. Okay? That shouldn’t be too hard.”

  Stephen glared at her. He picked up the stick with his left hand and scrawled on the tablet: LAWYER. He pulled up the plastic and scrawled again: WILL.

  “I knew it, I knew it,” Elizabeth muttered to Mary.

  “If you knew it, why did you let it happen!” Mary’s hair, usually flawlessly composed, was in tangles; curls popped up all over her head. Her face was damp with perspiration and she was breathing heavily as if she had been running.

  “It’s my fault,” Alex said, near tears. “I was treating him like a child. But I didn’t know what else to do, how else to do it!”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault,” Elizabeth said anxiously. “Not even mine!” she said, whirling on Mary. “There’s no way to be right with him, no way to be kind. …”

  “What do we do now?” Mary wailed.

  “Call the goddamned lawyer, why not?” Ronnie shrugged. “Jesus, you’re being a bunch of fucking saints, why do you feel so guilty?”

  “Suppose he disinherits us!” Mary cried. “Suppose he’s so angry at us for taking care of him that he cuts us all out!”

  “Don’t you think this lawyer—is his name Hollis?—don’t you think he’d see that as insanity? Because it is.”

  Mary reached out behind her for the arms of the easy chair and let herself down into it slowly. “It is?” she asked shakily.

  “Well, of course it is, Mary!” Alex said heartily, reassuringly. “I mean, we’re doing a good thing, a kind thing!”

  “We are?”

  Elizabeth smiled her grim smile and sat down beside Mary. She patted Mary’s hand. “Mary always goes by the emotions. And she knows we have subversive intentions. That we’re not being kind.”

  Ronnie was sitting at the glass sun room table gazing out at the dry-gray sunlit field behind the house. “What a champion game player he is,” she said. “He knew just how to reverse the power arrangement. How to bring you all to your knees.” She hooted a laugh.

  Elizabeth stared at her. She lighted a cigarette. “Of course, Ronnie’s absolutely right, that’s what he’s doing. Trying to intimidate us. And succeeding. I’m going to call Hollis. And then we’re all going up there and tell him we’ve done it.” She stood up and left the room.

  Mary still sat trembling, sweating and pale. Ronnie gazed at her, went and sat beside her. She put her hand on Mary’s arm.

  “Listen, Mare—can you hear this? You can live without a lot of money. You can learn how. Sell what you can, and invest what you get and live on the interest. You can do it, I can show you how.”

  “You don’t understand!” Mary cried. “If I don’t live the way I’ve always lived, I’d lose all my friends! Who would I be?”

  Ronnie’s body jerked against the chair back.

  Elizabeth returned. “Okay,” she said briskly, “let’s go.”

  Alex stood up, at attention. Ronnie looked up, unwound her legs, stood up. She looked at Mary. “Come on, Mare.”

  Mary appealed to Elizabeth with eyes like a child about to be fed cod-liver oil. “Do I have to go?”

  “Yes. All of us have to go. Up!” Elizabeth ordered.

  Ronnie reached out her hand, Mary took it and stood. “I won’t be any use. I’m too … destroyed.”

  Elizabeth grabbed her arm, put her hand around it hard.

  “Ouch!” Mary whimpered.

  “Now listen,” Elizabeth whispered. “You are going to behave like a person! He’s trying to intimidate us, and we’re going to tell him he can’t. Show him he can’t. Understand?”

  “But he can!” Mary cried. “He can hurt me! He always could and he still can! Don’t you see?”

  Elizabeth stood stock-still. She turned to face Mary, who was inches shorter, and moved back a little so she didn’t have to look down. “Mary, the only power he has now is money. And I promise you: if he cuts us out of his will, I will buy a house in Virginia. In a good neighborhood. I can afford it. You’ll come and live with me. There are society people in those towns, I have a high-level, visible government job, a high-status job. You have old friends there. You will be accepted.”

  Mary’s eyelashes dampened. She bit her lip. She looked up at Elizabeth like a naughty child. “Suppose you lose your job. Suppose the Democrats win in ’eighty-eight. What will you do then?”

  Elizabeth smiled. She really isn’t a dope. “I’ll be fine. I’ve been saving money all these years, I’ve never spent all of my salary. I’ll get a university appointment, or go to work for a think tank or an investment firm, and make a fortune. I’ll be fine and so will you. If you add what you have to what I have, we’ll live like queens. We don’t need him, Mary. Try to believe me!”

  Mary threw her arms around Elizabeth and buried her head in Elizabeth’s bosom. Elizabeth stiffened, looked uncomfortable. She put her hand on Mary’s back, patted it automatically. “Okay? Ready?”

  Mary stood up, wiped her eyes. “Ready.”

  And upstairs they marched.

  The television set in Stephen’s room was tuned to a news program on CNN. Stephen’s eyes were at half-mast. The practical nurse, Florence, an almond-colored woman with oriental eyes and a northern British accent, looked up from her knitting and smiled as they entered. “He’s been just fine,” she said reassuringly, putting down her needles. “Watching the telly.”

  “Thank you, Florence. Perhaps you’d like some tea? Mrs. Browning is in the kitchen, I’m sure she’d be glad to fix it for you. Will you excuse us? We need to talk to our father.”

  “Of course!” the woman said heartily, put her work down and stood. “I’ll be glad of a stretch,” she said, arching her back and stretching her arms out behind her substantial body. She smiled apologetically, darting around them to leave the room.

  Elizabeth switched off the television set. Only then did Stephen acknowledge them, looking up sharply, angrily.

  “Hello Father, how do you feel?” Elizabeth began, walking to the bedside. The others followed her, stood there like sentinels.

  He glared at them.

  “I called Hollis. He couldn’t come this afternoon and he’s going sailing this weekend, but he’ll drive out to see you Monday around eleven. He knows you want to discuss your will. He wondered if you want him to bring a secretary with him?”

  Stephen shook his head heavily. No.

  “I’ll inform him. Now, about your meals. Mrs. Browning says she knows what you like, and she has the diet the hospital suggested. She’ll draw up your menus and we’ll stay out of it. If you want any changes, just let us know.

  “We’ll leave you alone now, but we’ll come up and visit with you after dinner. Is there anything you want? Anything we can do?”


  He shook his head, and hit the power button on his remote control, turning the television set back on.

  When they reached the downstairs foyer, Mary whispered, “Why did we all have to be there for that?”

  Elizabeth shook her head, put her finger on her lips. She led them through the sitting room to the library and closed the door. Even there, she spoke softly, just above a whisper.

  “I want him to know we’re united on everything. That he can’t divide and conquer. That we’re strong. Okay?”

  They all nodded.

  “I also want the nurse to see a picture of four concerned daughters tending their father with loving care. If he chooses to respond with anger or malignity—well, that’s his business. I don’t want them to see us in any way divided among ourselves and above all I don’t want them to see us as plotting against him.”

  “Are we?” Alex asked.

  Ronnie grinned, shook her head, patted Alex’s head, and wandered off to the French doors. She stood there looking out through the glass panes at the empty terrace and the graybrown garden and bare trees beyond.

  “But why?”

  “Alex! You want something from him, don’t you?” Mary cried. “With Father, you have to plot to get something. Anything!”

  “All I want is some answers,” she protested. “I don’t care about the money. What’s wrong with that?”

  “We all want some answers. That’s the last thing he’ll give us. He’d rather give us money.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said plaintively. “I don’t like feeling like a conspirator.” She threw herself into a chair petulantly.

  Ronnie turned and looked at her. “You want to feel innocent, like a good girl. But you want him to give you what you want. You’re quite insistent about that. But you can’t have both. Don’t you see that?”