Our Father (17 page)

Mary was the least fixed in her habits, the most restless. She read, lying in one chair or another, in whichever room was lighter and brighter—usually the sun room in the morning, the sitting room afternoons. Sometimes she scribbled in a notebook; Elizabeth laughed that Mary was writing love letters to herself. And one day she opened the great old Bosendorfer, which hadn’t been touched in years, played a scale lightly, exclaimed in horror, and demanded Elizabeth call a tuner. It was in such bad shape that the tuner was not able to bring it to concert pitch and Mary complained.

“Oh the princess and the pea!” Elizabeth said irritably. “You’d think you had perfect pitch.”

“I do,” said Mary.

Still, she sat down every afternoon and stumbled through scales and exercises, causing doors to slam throughout the house.

But she daily complained of boredom and several times over the following days had Aldo drive her into Boston. She had searched her address book for the names of old school chums or friends who lived in the area and met them for lunch, a visit to an art gallery or the Gardner Museum or the Museum of Fine Arts, or a matinee, while Aldo contentedly waited for her in the car, reading his newspaper, knowing she was doing the proper thing for a lady and was therefore safe.

Without discussion, the sisters also adopted a division of labor. Elizabeth took care of business—dealt with the groundsmen and Aldo, called repair people when something broke, and paid the bills. Mary dealt with Mrs. Browning, supervising the menu and the marketing, and on occasion, instead of merely having her telephone, accompanied the housekeeper in the car (driven by Aldo) to Donelan’s market or to Concord to make sure the items chosen were of the proper quality. But so much fish, chicken, turnip, potato, celeriac, and parsnip grew boring, and so much caviar (the only nonwhite food Mary favored) expensive, and Elizabeth assigned Alex to go along and supervise, with a side note to keep Mary within their budget. After protesting that after all, she allowed green food too, Mary only shrugged.

Alex spent most of her days outdoors, but after Teresa left at four, it was Alex who helped Mrs. Browning chop vegetables and clean salad greens, set the table. She helped clear the table after dinner and prepare the night’s leftovers for soup for the next day’s lunch. One Wednesday—Mrs. Browning’s day off—she baked a pie.

Only Ronnie did nothing or so Elizabeth thought until one day she looked out the study window and saw Ronnie outdoors with Aldo putting up snow fencing. She mentioned this to Mary, who said she’d noticed Ronnie raking leaves earlier in the month. It appeared she worked outdoors every day, had helped rake up the rotting fallen apples, cover the sensitive plants for winter, and turn the mulch pile. This knowledge filled Elizabeth with a deep contentment. It was, she thought, as if they were living in a little convent, each contributing in her own way, enjoying the days passing in near silence, solitude, apart from the world. Their work gave them a sense of peaceable order, harmony that offset their angry comings-together.

And every day at eleven, the four of them were ready when Aldo pulled up to the front door to take them to the hospital. Every day they stood together at Stephen’s bedside and gazed down at him, saying only “Hello, Father, how are you today?” Ronnie never said anything at all, and none of them ever touched him. Dr. Stamp always turned up to chat with them. After twenty minutes, they would leave.

Stephen had been in a coma for a week when the doctor met them without his usual smile, his sober look seeming to bear import. “After you visit your father, I’d like to speak to you,” he said, and when they came out, he led them to the lounge. He explained that they had done several CT scans since Stephen’s stroke to check on the dissolution of the hematoma and that there was some infarction of the brain.

Elizabeth lighted a cigarette. Mary batted her eyelids and tilted her head up to Dr. Stamp. “Could you explain that?” she asked like a sweet ignorant child.

“The brain tissue is damaged—has been destroyed. So that even if he does regain consciousness, the outlook is not … hopeful.”

“You mean Father will be an idiot!” Mary cried.

The doctor smiled benignly at her. “Not exactly … but he may not be able to speak or move. I just wanted to warn you that the outlook is somewhat pessimistic. The longer he remains in coma, the less hope … I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” Mary said.

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said, rising.

The others echoed her and left, no expression on their faces. Strange women, thought Dr. Stamp. Not what they seem, somehow. And why did they always bring that colored girl?

That day at lunch Mary announced she felt she had to repay her friends’ hospitality and wanted to invite them to Lincoln to tea. Alex was delighted, Elizabeth groaned, and Ronnie looked appalled until Mary added that Ronnie would be excused—which somehow did not make Ronnie any happier.

But, Mary added without taking a breath, before they came, the house had to be made presentable. She opened a beautiful leather binder, displaying a pad covered with lists, and whirled into action. First, she demanded Elizabeth call an upholsterer to recover the window seat cushion within ten days (which no one could do of course, so Mary made a trip to Boston to buy fabric and Teresa made the cover). She herself called a dry cleaner to clean and rehang the drapes in the downstairs rooms. This could be done in a week for a premium price. She told the servants to wash all the lace curtains in the house, upstairs and down,
by hand
(they were handmade after all, she argued) and stretch them in the old way. Mrs. Browning and Teresa were dismayed: there were only two stretchers and forty panels of lace. It would take much longer than a week, they argued, trembling. Mary insisted. She pressed Aldo into service to help the women wash all the windows in the house, polish all the wood floors, clean the crystal chandeliers, shine all the silver. But to do all this in a week was almost impossible: Teresa began to talk about quitting and by Tuesday, Mrs. Browning with heavy sighs gave them canned soup and sandwiches for lunch.

“This is ridiculous, Mary,” Elizabeth yelled. “You can’t drive these people this way! All this for a bunch of silly women who won’t even go upstairs?”

“It needs to be done!” Mary yelled back. “It hasn’t been done for years!” Glaring at Ronnie, whose mother’s fault this presumably was. “And they’re not silly! How dare you call them silly! Francine is married to the richest importer in Boston, they have one of the finest pop art collections in the country! All the museums woo them! Christina is …”

“DON’T tell me who these broads are married to,” Elizabeth cried, putting her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear, I don’t want to know!”

Mary stared at her uncomprehendingly.

Ronnie leaned back with a malicious smile. “She seems to think that being married to a rich man is not a guarantee of nonsilliness,” she explained to Mary.

“Well then, I don’t know what is!” Mary exclaimed in outrage. “To marry and stay married to a rich man takes more skill and cleverness than any other job I know!”

Ronnie burst out laughing; Alex smiled uncertainly; even Elizabeth grinned sidelong. When Mary let a small smile escape, all the sisters laughed out loud. It was edged with hysteria, but it was the first laugh they had ever shared.

“Mary,” Elizabeth said more kindly, “it’s just too much for the staff. It’s inhuman, what you’re asking.”

“Well, then hire some extra people!”

“I’d be glad to help if …,” Alex began tentatively, “if that’s all right with you. You seem to—people who live in houses like this seem to have strict rules about what you can and can’t do, but I’d be glad to help. To have something to do.”

“In fact, wasn’t that you up on the step stool the other day wiping a globe of the chandelier?” Ronnie smilingly betrayed her.

She flushed. “Well, Teresa and Brownie were struggling so with the curtains. …”

“Brownie?!!!” Mary cried.

“That’s her nickname,” she said innocently.

“One doesn’t call servants by nicknames, Alex,” Mary scolded, then considered, weighing her options. “Well. I guess it’s all right if you help,” she decided. “Why not. We’re living in a different age, aren’t we. I don’t know how to do these chores but I’ll try to help too.” She looked expectantly at Elizabeth.

“Don’t look at me. It’s your party.”

“And
I’m
not even invited,” Ronnie threw in, escaping from the lunch table.

“Well but Elizabeth, you have to get someone to help poor Browning. We can’t be having canned soup and sandwiches for lunch!” Mary concluded.

Fifteen days after his stroke, two weeks after their arrival in Lincoln, on the morning of the Friday before the tea party, Alex cried out that Father’s left eyelid was fluttering. They froze instantly, studying him. Nothing. Saturday, she said his left hand moved. Again, they froze and concentrated on the hand. Nothing. Mary rolled her eyes at Elizabeth.

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.