He probably did, but not in my sight.
Try to think of him ever showing any emotion at all. …
Desperate, angry he was all the time, insisting Momma was getting better when she was obviously dying.
When she died. She just put her hand on mine, I was sitting on her bed, and she stopped seeing, just stopped, you could see it, and I cried out, I put my hands over my face, I was crying hard, noisily. He was standing behind me, standing there because I’d told him I thought he should come in … and he put his hand on my arm, felt like a steel claw, I pulled away roughly, it reminded me … but he wasn’t trying to get me, he was shouting in my ear, yelling at me, no, at her, “No! No! No!”
23
IT WAS RONNIE IN the Alfa, not Aldo, who met Elizabeth’s train from Boston at the Lincoln station Sunday afternoon. It was warm for December, like a day in early autumn, and she had put the top down. Lizzie surprised her by hugging her—a little stiffly—when they met, but then subsided into almost complete silence. She was still wearing her funeral dress, a well-cut black suit with a high stand-up neck, but she was carrying a large unwieldy box in a shopping bag. Elizabeth never even carried a handbag, only a thin wallet in a suit pocket, like a man. At most, she carried an attaché case.
“Never could stand the Thatcher handbag look,” Elizabeth had muttered once.
“She’s always trying to imitate the dear old Queen,” Mary had drawled, adding, “Although such a gift for dowdiness must be genetic.”
So Ronnie blurted, “What’s that you’re carrying?”
“Something for Mary,” Elizabeth said and closed her lips.
“So how was your visit with your mother?” Ronnie asked more carefully.
Elizabeth took off her small black hat and unloosed the chignon she had tied together at the nape of her neck. She flung her head back and her hair flew out in the wind, loose and straight, a dull brown streaked with silver. She lighted a cigarette.
“Okay,” she said. “Better than I could have hoped. Or even imagined.”
“What does that mean?”
She was silent for a time. “Something’s happened. She’s changed. Of course, I haven’t seen her in a long time. Over a year. And for years we’ve had only brief visits—drinks and dinner before I caught a flight to someplace or other. We haven’t spent a whole evening together in I don’t know how many years. She may have been changing all along and I didn’t know it.
“She lives high up, in a boring box of a place but with windows overlooking the whole city, they’re almost glass walls. We could see the skyline and the sunset and the lights turn on across the city—it’s very splendid, but somehow off-putting, maybe not what I’d like to look at every night, not a view that makes you feel serene, at home. She was still dressed in her fake Chanel, Mary said it was—I wouldn’t know the difference—those Nancy Reaganish suits with gold braid and all those cheap-looking chains look equally real and equally ugly to me. …
“We were having cocktails. … Jesus, she doesn’t even drink Manhattans anymore! She was drinking white wine, while I was so anxious, I had a scotch, for god’s sake … and she began to lecture me on abortion. She kept referring to Catholics for Free Choice. Full of fervor she was, so I said, ‘Does that mean if you had it to do now, you’d do it differently?’
“She leaned back and lighted one of these long white cigarettes with a gold tip and blew out smoke and thought. Then she looked away from me. She was staring toward the window, she’s thin, her profile had a kind of—tough-bird nobility almost—you know, that some older people get?
“She said, ‘You know, you are what you’ve become, what your life has made you. I could no more wish I’d done differently then than I could wish I didn’t exist or that you didn’t exist. And I’m very proud that you exist.’”
Elizabeth’s voice faltered but Ronnie carefully did not turn her head. Trees whirred past on the curving country road. Elizabeth leaned back and breathed in deeply the cold piney air.
“Then”—Elizabeth gave a deep gurgle of laughter in her throat—“she became the mother I remember! She said, ‘But whatever I am, whatever I’ve become, I’ll tell you one thing—I am fucking glad I’m alive and he’s dead, that I lived to get his money and use it for my purposes! We Callahans never had a pot to pee in—not in the old country and not here. Maybe we would have if some British killers hadn’t decided that everything we had was theirs—maybe not. Maybe then it would have been some Irish killers, or some Roman Catholic Italians decided the same thing. But one thing I’ve learned these last years—killers get the money, the rest of us get tsuris!’
“‘Tsuris!’ I burst out laughing. ‘Where’d you learn that word!’
“‘Oh, didn’t I tell you I have a new friend, well, we’ve been friends for a few years now. She lives two floors up, Gloria Abzug, she’s a widow but she doesn’t play cards. She gets involved in community things, she’s really helped me a lot, taught me a lot, she gets me out and doing! When I think how for all those years I sat around waiting for some society woman—any society woman—to call me to play bridge, to have tea or cocktails! Gloria ACTS! We help out at the Rape Crisis Center, at the shelter for battered women, and every Sunday we help feed the homeless in the church. I want you to meet her, you’ll love her, she’s so full of energy.’
“She stopped, then, looked almost wistful, looked in my eyes. ‘She has hope,’ she said, as if that were a staggering fact. ‘Hope for the world. It’s her word, tsuris, it means trouble, pain, it’s Yiddish, it’s a great word, isn’t it?’
“I said I knew the word, but that the Catherine Callahan Upton I knew would have bitten a little piece off her own tongue before she’d use a Yiddish word. She said so much the worse for the little bigot!” Elizabeth crowed. “How do you like that?” She caroled laughter, and Ronnie gave her a little smile.
When her laughter subsided, Elizabeth put her hand on top of Ronnie’s, resting on the gearshift. “Ronnie. I don’t want us to lose you when this is over. I don’t want to lose you. I mean that.”
Ronnie almost hit a hedge as she turned her head slightly to see Elizabeth’s face while cornering fast. Looking away, she corrected swiftly, and by the time she glanced back, Elizabeth had turned away.
When they reached the house, Mary and Alex were standing under the portico waiting for them, and embraced Lizzie as if she’d been away for months.
“How was it, how was it!” Alex cried.
“Oh, Liz, poor baby, was it awful?” Mary embraced her.
Elizabeth had missed lunch and they needed to talk so they decided to have a full if very early tea in the sun room, with sandwiches and cakes.
“Was she awful?” Mary asked sympathetically.
“No, she’s changed. She thinks about other people. She’s been seeing her family again. She wants to use her inheritance to help them. The Callahans have fallen on hard times. One of her sisters had to go out and clean houses after her husband was laid off. Their daughter was going to have to go to work even though she had a scholarship to Boston College. So Mother is going to buy a garage for her brother-in-law, she thinks she’s going to save the family. It’s amazing how playing Lady Bountiful enlarges the spirit. I don’t imagine it can continue for very long. Resentment is bound to boil up. But at least she’s being useful.”
“So money heals. Is that the message?” Ronnie asked in a rough voice.
Elizabeth shrugged.
“Did you tell her?” Mary asked.
Elizabeth shook her head. “It was my one merciful gesture.”
Ronnie glanced at Elizabeth. “Did you tell them that she supports abortion now?”
Elizabeth lighted a cigarette and sat forward. “She said, ‘Nowadays girls had better have abortions.’” Elizabeth minced her mouth, speaking in a tough deep monotone, becoming her mother: “‘Because, Elizabeth Catherine, you know as well as I do that what happened to me couldn’t happen today. Nowadays, families like the Uptons, if they can’
t buy a girl off, they have her killed. Look at Teddy Kennedy and Chappaquiddick. Look at the Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe. And Stephen wasn’t a married man—these days it isn’t considered scandalous for a single man to get a woman pregnant and refuse to marry her. Don’t they do it all the time?’
“‘Thing was, they were grooming him for a political career, Mother.’
“‘Oh, I know, I know, I see it all now, I saw it years ago actually, if not at the time. Then all I could feel was my own broken heart, my wrongedness, all I could see was the injustice. You know I don’t go to Mass anymore, I don’t feel like a Catholic anymore—any church that would sell a Protestant the annulment he wanted even though it harmed one of their own … But I think the Catholics are right about sin. Sin is what you do that hurts yourself. It may or may not hurt others—that’s incidental—but mainly, it is a violation of the self. My sin was—well, I don’t know what it was. I mean, I don’t know what the church would call it. But I know I hurt myself, sinned, by eating away at my own heart for years and years. And I know that hurt you.’ Then my mother, queen bitch of the world, leans forward toward me and puts her hand on my knee and says, ‘And I am profoundly sorry for that’ and bursts into tears.”
Elizabeth stood up suddenly. “Got to get out of these clothes!” she announced, disappearing from the room.
In her own room, Elizabeth stood frozen, remembering how, stock still, she had stared at her mother and listened to her sob. Pity scraped its nails across her heart, but she could not move. Her face was gray, stony, eyes dead. The older woman sobbed, her head resting in her hand. When she finished, she raised her head. Her mascara streaked down her face, which had broken out into patches of deep crimson. Mucus rolled down her upper lip, and she wiped it away with her hand. She did not look at Elizabeth. They sat there in silence, neither moving, for a long time. Only now did Elizabeth allow a few tears to trickle down her cheeks.
The packing had begun. Alex walked around the house almost sulkily, picking up the few remnants of herself she had strewn around it—a book on El Salvador (the only book the sisters had seen her read), some mission pamphlets, a hankie stuck in the cushion of a chair, a purse. She piled them on the staircase, a disregard of the rules of the house which Mary noticed with a shudder. Alex’s shoulders slumped, her hair hung limp, she looked like a woman heading for jail rather than home. Occasionally, she would gather up a pile and carry it upstairs, where they could hear her clumping around suitcases, dropping piles of shoes.
“I don’t know why you don’t get Teresa to help you,” Mary chided, passing her room. “She came in today—it’s her Sunday off—just to help us pack.”
Mary herself had strewn her belongings across the house—it would be impossible to pick up all her remains and she didn’t even try. Videotapes, notebooks, 33 rpm records she’d found at a used-book shop in Concord to play on the old stereo, cassettes and many books. She’d sprinkled around a handbag or two, scarves, earrings missing mates, magazines she wanted to keep, magazines she was discarding. She gathered and sighed, dumping the load in Teresa’s arms, then fell into an easy chair, sighing “Oh, I can’t do any more now!” Teresa dutifully carried the pile up to Mary’s room, where she tried to order and pack the even greater disarray of Mary’s possessions. Every once in a while she’d creep into the playroom, where Mary lay on the couch listlessly watching a documentary on whales, and ask: “The white satin underwear won’t all fit into the satin bags, ma’am. Is it all right if I put some of it into the case without a bag?” or “I’ve filled up the shoe bag, but there’re three pairs left over, ma’am. What should I do with them?”
Finally Teresa announced, “All the dresses don’t seem to fit into the dress case, ma’am.”
“They don’t? Oh, right,” Mary recalled. “I have bought a few things in Boston. Just do the best you can, Teresa—I’ll come up in a minute. Maybe I’ll leave some things here. In fact”—she gathered energy, rising, “I’ll come up now and sort things out. Might as well leave some things here. I’ll probably be coming back, sometime,” she added in an undertone.
Elizabeth, who had spent days repacking her father’s papers for the archives for which they were destined, packed her own books and papers efficiently and swiftly, and closed the study door on an immaculate room by five that evening, her word processor packed, her books boxed, her disks secure in a lead container—although she was no longer planning to fly back to Washington. She had decided that with all their gear, it would be easier for the sisters if Aldo drove them all home.
She announced this at six over drinks.
“No, no!” Alex insisted. “I’ll take the plane. Wilmington’s way out of your way.”
Elizabeth looked crestfallen.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.” She sounded it.
“Well, we’ll drop you at Logan then.”
But Mary was delighted to be driven home and quite cheerfully described the rather extensive wardrobe she was leaving behind. Alex paced the room with her arms wrapped around her body. Her packed bags were already set by the door.
The playroom suddenly looked spartan, although it still held the piles of games and records, the Ping Pong table, the card table, the overstuffed chairs. Once they had all gathered in the room, they were silenced by a sudden sense that the house had cast out their detritus, their droppings, their spoor, had turned its back on them, forgotten their smell and taste and feel, even though they were still physically present. Mary sighed faintly, Ronnie put down her paper, Elizabeth her book. Alex plunked into a chair.
Elizabeth spoke first. “Shall we have champagne tonight?”
“Wonderful, darling,” Mary fluttered.
“Sure, why not,” Alex muttered.
Ronnie shrugged. She did not want to admit she had never had champagne and as she saw them accept their fluted glasses was careful not to copy the way Mary and Elizabeth held them, but grabbed the goblet like a water glass.
Elizabeth leaned forward, holding out her glass: “To us,” she said, and stretched her glass out to clink against theirs.
They followed, sipped, and Mary threw herself back against the cushions of her chair, tossed off her shoes, sighed, and said, “I want you all to know I never expected anything like this! It’s the second-best thing that ever happened to me, getting close”—she leaned forward—“finding my sisters.”
Alex blew her nose.
“What is the matter with you today, Alexandra,” Mary scolded. “You’d think you were being sent to Coventry.”
“Coventry?”
“To—punishment, instead of home to your loving family …”
Alex burst out in a teary voice, “It isn’t the same for me, you know. As for you. You’re happy to have that money, you need it, you wanted it, I didn’t. All it does is complicate my life, make things hard. I probably will have to fight with David and I don’t want to fight with David, I don’t want to be angry with him, I don’t want to …” She lowered her head. Her voice emerged anguished. “I don’t want to dislike him.”
She raised her head. Her eyes were tormented. “And what about my mother? Do I tell her what I know? I know it would be kinder not to, but I don’t think I can stand not to say it, to scream at her, why did she obliterate my memory? Why did she lie? Years of lies!”
She wiped her face with a hankie she held crumpled in her hand and blew her nose. She sipped champagne. She drew a deep breath. “And then I have to tell my family—find the strength to tell my family …” She stopped.
“WHAT!”
“What I intend. Want. To do.”
“What do you intend to do?” Mary was sitting on the edge of her chair.
“I want … to build a clinic. In El Salvador. For the peasants. With the nuns.”
Three faces gaped at her. “And do what?” Ronnie gasped.
“Live down there. Part of the year, anyway. Running the clinic. I can do it, I know I can, I’ve worked in hospitals for years as a volunt
eer, and I learn fast. I’ll have the best help—the nuns are terrific doctors, nurses, administrators—and I have the money. I want to be a blade of grass,” she almost wailed, “but I don’t know how any of them—David, my kids—they’re not going to understand, I know it!”
Ronnie looked at her in awe. “God,” she whispered. “Are you serious?”
Alex sat back roughly, threw her sweater off her shoulders, her face set. “Of course I’m serious! I’ve been mulling things over all these weeks! I know what I need to do, what my life is about now. David—oh, he’s sweet, we have a good marriage, the kids are adorable, but they don’t need me, not really, not anymore. And maybe the truth is, I don’t need them—I need something else now, I need this.”
“But you’d sacrifice your life!” Mary cried.
“SHIT, Mary!” Alex exclaimed. “This isn’t a sacrifice! That’s the point! If it were, maybe I could feel easier about it, isn’t that what women are supposed to do, sacrifice? This is what I need to do, what my whole being longs to do. What kind of life do you think I have? I get up and make breakfast for my family, I clean up the house, I shower and go off to some volunteer work, I come home, I go marketing, I cook dinner, I talk to my kids and David, I clean up, we watch television … that isn’t a life! It’s—marking time! I want more! I want to use myself!”
She emptied her champagne glass at a swallow, leaned forward, holding it out for more. Elizabeth refilled it.
“I never feel as alive as when I’m working in the hospital, helping people—but what can I do, I’m not a doctor or a nurse or a therapist, there’s a limit to what I can do. But with money and medicine and a clinic—I can do so much!”
“So it’s a kind of power you want,” Elizabeth concluded unjudgmentally.
Alex sat back. “YES! YES! That’s it, exactly.”
“Well”—Mary still seemed nonplussed—“it’s certainly admirable.”
“It isn’t admirable! It isn’t anything! It’s just what I need. A kind of power, as Lizzie says. That’s in me and needs to come out. It’s no more admirable than Lizzie wanting to become secretary of state or Ronnie trying to become an environmental scientist, or you writing poetry. It’s just what I need.”
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