Our Father (30 page)

Her politics are her real legacy from Daddy.

Couldn’t keep arguing with her, she looked so awful. Like she was the one going to die not him, skin yellowish-gray, hair limp, face somehow twisted. In pain. Alex went over and sat on the arm of her chair and put her arms around her, held her. I hate her politics but I felt like doing the same thing.

Odd, for me.

Elizabeth permitted Alex’s arms but her body stiffened a bit. She tried to relax into the embrace. She closed her eyes. A tear trickled down her cheek and Alex wiped it away with the back of her hand. She patted Alex’s hand, acknowledging her kindness.

She pulled herself up. “It’s been a hard day,” she said.

Hard life. Supporting the devil, advancing his cause. Like Momma. But she couldn’t recognize the devil. He presented himself tall and slender and gorgeous, wearing white shoes and a tennis sweater, gracious over drinks. He stood by the pool at a garden party on his own estate drinking with the president of the United States, joking, laughing, easy. Manly, eschewing the comfort of the green-and-white-striped tent even though it’s starting to rain, then becoming thoughtful, considerate of some people anyway, easing the president toward the tent, holding his elbow, asking if he wouldn’t like to go inside. Doesn’t notice me running toward the tent carrying that beautiful platter of poached salmon parsley cucumber lemon and radishes laid just so around it Momma sweated over it, getting spattered by rain. Almost walked right into me. It would have been my fault. I swerved, saved it, the salmon shifted on the plate, my heart in my chest, but I saved it. Terror.

Legitimacy is being easy. Anywhere everywhere.

No one is easy anywhere everywhere.

Ergo, no one is legitimate.

Is that good Socratic logic?

Start again.

Legitimacy is having the manner of appearing easy anywhere and everywhere. And avoiding any situation in which you won’t. Therefore, legitimacy is constricting—there’s so much of the world you have to avoid. So many people, situations, places!

Like Mary. Terrified in my old neighborhood, studying my apartment the way I’d study a Mongolian yurt. Kept her gloves on the whole time. Bet she even flushed the toilet with them on.

She doesn’t feel legitimate, she feels stupid, small, timid, frightened. Clutching at her straw of legitimacy makes her mean. But she can pass for legitimate, one of the elite. She’s
in
in a way you never can never could be no matter what you did or do Ronalda Velez.

She snapped her fingers. That for you and your Ph.D. you stupid ass.

She ground out the cigarette, tossed a twig in the wheelbarrow and raised her body. It hurt, and she stretched and rubbed her back.

When will you learn you can’t think your way out of a paper bag? You think you’re so tough. You don’t begin to know tough. Now Elizabeth …!

Only Ronnie looked normal when they gathered for drinks that evening. She built a fire without being asked, and she was the one who made the drinks.

“Jesus, I feel like I’m tending three zombies. We don’t have to do this, you know. We haven’t even told the doctor yet.”

There was a long silence before anyone spoke. Then Elizabeth said in a dead voice, “No, I want to do it.”

Mary’s face, usually clear and white as porcelain, was crisscrossed with shadows. “Yes,” she said faintly.

“We
have
to do it,” Alex said fiercely. She looked the worst, her usual blonde pert sweet prettiness drained and lined.

“What, am I the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on?” Ronnie asked suspiciously.

“What’s going on?” Alex asked angrily.

Elizabeth stirred. “Don’t be paranoid.”

“Well for chrissake, what is it?”

The sisters looked at each other.

“I can’t speak for anyone else,” Elizabeth said. “I have my own problems.”

“So what are they?”

“Just memories. The past.”

“Or lack of memories,” Alex exploded. “I called my mother this afternoon. I told her what he said. In the hospital. I asked her what he meant by an agreement. And you know what she said? She said she had no idea what he was talking about, that the stroke must have addled his brain! Do you believe that? My mother! I CAN’T TRUST my own mother!”

“Join the club,” Elizabeth grunted.

“I barely knew mine,” Mary said sadly.

Momma.

“She’s lying to me! I know it! I know it!” Alex cried.

“Maybe you’re lucky,” Elizabeth said with a mean smile. “The worst things I ever heard were the truths my mother told me.”

“My mother never talked to me at all.”

My mother loved the devil.

“And you were no help either,” Mary whined to Elizabeth.

“I’m not your mother,” Elizabeth said between her teeth.

Ronnie held her head. “Jesus, are we back there again? I thought we’d moved beyond that.”

“She doesn’t care how I’m suffering!” Alex cried. “She doesn’t care that I feel as if I’m going crazy. I told her, I told her, I said, I have to know! But she goes on lying!”

“Mothers fuck,” Ronnie said with a grim little smile.

“Obviously,” Elizabeth murmured, and they all laughed.

A laugh. Good, thought Ronnie.

“Listen,” Ronnie said, “it’s intolerable, it’s going to be unbearable if you all keep on being this way. We can’t do this if you’re going to be like this. You have to get past whatever it is that makes you all fight all the time or else we can’t do this. You know I’d really like to stay here with you for a month or two, but I can’t stand this.”

“I’ve told you what’s upsetting me,” Alex complained.

“We are all upset, aren’t we. It’s understandable: we’ve made a life-changing decision. How come you exempt yourself from this conflict?” Elizabeth asked Ronnie.

“Argh!” Ronnie cried. “I’m not fighting with anybody am I? And I’m not as upset as you-all. It isn’t that I don’t have my own difficulties with it. It’s—I mean, he’s coming back here in such a different position, I’m in a different position, I’m not here as his servant’s daughter, I’m here … with you … as another … daughter. But I am upset by … the whole thing seems so ugly, his … incapacity and his rage—and our … terror, or whatever it is … and …” She stared hard at the fire, trying to find words. “It’s so strange to see the past being turned upside down. We have the power now. Parents treat kids any way they want … but now we’re the parents. In a way. I feel as if we’re sliding down a tunnel into hell. …”

“Power corrupts,” Alex said, sententiously.

“A tunnel into hell. Yes,” Elizabeth said in a low voice. “I feel that too. But I also feel—you know—being here this way—with Father gone, without a houseful of servants and guests—but with you”—she glanced at Mary—“and you”—she glanced at Alex—“it throws me back into past summers when I was a child. That wasn’t the happiest time of my life. It hurls me backwards as if in my body and emotions and whole sense of myself I’m still ten and eleven and twelve … I
feel
like that child. But I’m not one, I expect more of myself. These feelings are terrifying and terrible. Here I am, fifty-two—well, almost fifty-three years old …”

“Oh! That’s right!” Mary exclaimed, “your birthday is soon. The thirtieth, isn’t it? When is that?”

“Umm, Friday, I think,” Elizabeth said indifferently. “Do you remember how you felt as a child? It’s horrible! Childhood is the most terrible time of life!” She stopped pulling at her hair and looked up at them. “Wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Mary murmured.

“I was happy as a child,” Alex said vaguely. “I think. I have a lot of happy memories, mostly about Grandpa and Charlie after he came into our lives. … Funny, I don’t have really happy memories of my mother—or unhappy ones either. Charlie and Grandpa are the ones I had fun with, they played with me.”

Ronnie smiled. “It’s ironic—here I am—a
chicana
bastard whose mother was a servant, who didn’t have a dime. Of course, we had a place to live and enough food, without which—nothing. But I had a wonderful childhood. I was really happy—outdoors, anyway. Not at school. But I loved coming back here after school and running outdoors. You know, for a while there were horses. …”

“From my mother’s time,” Mary said softly. “I don’t remember when he got rid of the last of them. Do you?” she asked Ronnie.

“I remember horses!” Alex cried in excitement. “I gave them sugar! There was a man …”

“Mcsomething,” Mary said. “He took care of them. McDonough?”

Elizabeth frowned. “McCormick?”

“Yes,” Alex said dreamily, and drifted off.

“No,” Mary argued. “MacTavish?”

“That’s way off! He was Irish. MacTavish is Scottish!”

Mary shrugged. “Whatever. He really knew horses. When did Father sell them, Ronnie?”

“I was little. Don’t remember. Just one day, they weren’t here anymore. I cried and cried. Momma bought me a little horse made of clay afterward, to try to make me feel better, and I threw it on the floor and smashed it in a fit of temper. I’ll never forget her face. Like I’d slapped her. I’ll never forget that. Cruel, I was.”

“Kids are cruel,” said Alex.

“So are parents,” Mary said coldly.

“Anyway, I liked parts of my childhood. There were dogs and cats and normal wildlife—birds and butterflies and chipmunks and squirrels and raccoons, but there used to be deer, wild turkeys, foxes, pheasants, quail here too. And the plants! Flowers and the vegetable garden, and trees to climb or swing on. When no one was here, I’d play in the swimming pool … And Momma—she always had a lap for me to sit on, cookies and milk, a hand to stroke me. I was happy until I realized he …”

“It was beautiful. I wasn’t able to see all that,” Elizabeth mourned. “Take pleasure in it.”

“No,” Mary murmured.

“What are you, an echo?”

“I’m just agreeing with you, Lizzie,” Mary said in a hurt voice.

“Tell your own story then.”

Mary’s fingers were twisting her rings. “It’s the helplessness I remember most. Feeling little, feeling like a nothing. Knowing I was sad but knowing too that I couldn’t do anything to make myself feel better. Because I was a child. I wanted to be grown up, so I could get away from here. …”

“Me too. I wanted to take command of things, of my life. And I knew that to do that I had to get away. From him, from my mother. My mother was bad, she didn’t mean to be, she was just totally obsessed with the injustice done her. But I tried to be sort of frozen around her, to keep her from getting to me. But when I was here, the things that happened—oh, Father, or the servants, or the aunts and uncles, your mother”—she glanced at Mary—“somebody would say or do something. Maybe not even to me or about me—to or about you, maybe, you were such a golden girl … And the difference in the way we were treated was so striking, I couldn’t not feel it. I tried. I wouldn’t cry or say anything, I was ashamed of my weakness, humiliated that they could hurt me. I’d go out in the woods. I could never cry. Sometimes I even tried, but I couldn’t. I’d imagine being grown up and getting away and doing things that would make people love me, acclaim me, think I was wonderful. And now, I’ll be out walking in the woods and suddenly feel overwhelmed, just the way I felt back then. …”

Mary leaned forward, staring at the floor, her hands clasped loosely in front of her, almost as if in half-prayer. “It was different for me. Everybody paid attention to me, I was always being picked up and kissed and fondled. But then I was always trundled off out of the way with some nanny or other. Some of them were nice. But … And then after Mother died … Father wasn’t around much, you know. … And even when he was, he didn’t really pay attention to me except … He paid attention to me when other people were around. The only other time … the only way I could get him to pay attention to me was if I acted a certain way, if I was coy and teased him, flirted with him, really. … So …”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said sadly. “I tried to be brilliant at the dinner table. He mostly laughed at me.”

“No he didn’t Lizzie! When you were young, he talked to you! He’d laugh at you but in a nice way. He thought you were really smart. He’d mock me when I tried to join in, say, ‘What are you doing, trying to be smart like your sister!’ And laugh at me for a fool.”

“I don’t remember him talking to me.”

“He did, though. Before you went to London, before you took the job in Washington. Not later. I wondered why. It seemed as if he was frightened of you, the way he sneered, he wouldn’t let you get a sentence out. But when we were little, I used to try to talk like a smart person, talk like you. I’d sit out in my playhouse and pretend I was a grown-up lady, but I could never figure out what to say. I’d say things you’d said, but I knew I didn’t have them right. And it wasn’t much fun because I didn’t know what grown-up ladies did besides have tea and chat with other ladies about clothes and the ladies who weren’t there. And I was all alone. …”

“I stole your dishes,” Elizabeth said.

“What?”

“Your little tea set. In the playhouse. After you went back to school one year, I stole it.”

Mary sat back. “My dishes!”

“Don’t you remember, that little tea set you had, pink roses on white, with a gold band?”

“I remember a tea set …” She broke off, stared at Elizabeth. “But why?” she asked in a soft bewildered voice.

Elizabeth burst into tears. “I guess I was trying to steal the love I felt you had.”

The three sat appalled. Elizabeth crying? She sobbed in hard dry wrenches, briefly, pulled a hankie from her pocket and blew her nose. She raised her head.

“Sorry,” she said stiffly.

“Oh Lizzie, I would have given it to you if I’d known you wanted it. I would have given you anything. …”

Elizabeth’s eyes shone wet. “I know.” She burst into tears again, burying her face in her hands. No one moved.

It was a long time before anyone spoke, and then it was Alex, musing, “God, how important mothers are! I don’t think I ever realized. Don’t you think it’s hard? I mean, I’m a mother, and I know how hard I tried, how hard I worked, but I bet my kids have complaints like this. Can any mother live up to what we need of them? Is motherhood possible?”

“Oh, my mother didn’t mean to be rotten,” Elizabeth said. “She was so wretched herself. She never got over what Father did to her. What Father did just sank in there with what her father did and her mother did or didn’t do and stewed itself up into a poison broth. She wanted things to be better for me. But she had no idea of what it was to be a child. From the time she was five years old she’d had to take care of one baby or another. She had no childhood.”