Our Father (24 page)

It never occurred to her to tell him. He was the seigneur, such things not his problem.

She was twenty-eight years old, old for a Mexican woman to be single, childless. Wouldn’t tell me if she was a virgin when she came here, refused, set her mouth. She loved Stephen, admired him profoundly, the rich powerful Anglo, one of the gods who ran the world. And who seemed to care about her. A relation such as they had would never happen to her again. She knew it. On the other hand, if she had the baby, he might well just throw her out.

“But I would have the little one, eh, Ronnie? I would have you. And no matter what, I can always work. And my
amigas
, one has a spare room, I could live there, work. So that was good.”

She decided to go ahead and have the baby. Even though Upton groceries were mainly ordered over the telephone, word must have gotten out. What the local shopkeepers thought about the Upton housekeeper having a bulging belly, Noradia didn’t know. Maybe thought Simpson was the father, or some guy she shacked up with in Boston on her day off. Shocking, but no more than you can expect from people like that. Maybe some of them thought she had a husband somewhere. Her accent was so thick, they didn’t try to hold long conversations with her. She went to Ronald Wanger, an elderly, kindly local GP long dead now, who didn’t press for a father’s name, didn’t act as if she was scum. Named me after him. Better than after Him.

Stephen knew nothing. Even after He came up a few days before the July Fourth party, He didn’t know. Noradia was thin again, kept the baby in the kitchen or her bedroom on the third floor in which he never set foot. Until the day He heard wailing, the day before the big party. Elizabeth and Mary already here, Pru and Samuel too, a slew of temporary servants around the house. Hit the intercom, summoned Noradia, thundered: there’s a baby in this house! Whose! Whoever it is, I want her out of here! This house is not a baby-sitting agency!

“
Sí
, Cabot,” she said, eyes down. “Is mine, Cabot.”

Dumbfounded. Stared at her.

She kept looking down.

Finally: “When was it born?”

She looked up. “April, Cabot.”

He counted back. “I see.” He considered. “Boy?” Was there hope in His voice? Would it have been different if I was a boy?

“Is
niña
,
señor
. Girl. I try to keep quiet,
señor
.” Did the fact that she was begging filter into her tone?

He nodded. “All right, Noradia. See that you do.”

End of subject. It was never brought up again. He never asked to see me, never held me, and even when I was walking around, never looked at me. She didn’t mind. She was so grateful that He let us stay, didn’t throw us out, that He could not offend her. He must have looked at me once or twice when she wasn’t around. Didn’t like what He saw, presumably. Little brown baby with blue eyes and black hair.

So hardly surprising that He stared at me with malevolence. But the hatred He directed at His legitimate daughters!
Why
, she wondered, why? What had they ever done to Him, how could they have let Him down, betrayed Him, to deserve such hate? And why were they all so terrified of him? Because they were. Even Elizabeth!

By cocktail hour, the sisters had calmed but were irritable.

Mary attacked Ronnie for drinking cola—“You’re an ecologist! What’s the matter with you? How can you drink that awful stuff? Don’t you know it can rot metal? You have to take care of yourself!”

In response, Elizabeth sneered at Mary’s drinking habits: “Look at who’s talking! The one who always has to have something sweet, just like a baby!”

Mary retorted, “At least I take the risk of imbibing alcohol. I don’t sit there like a dried-up prune so terrified of losing control that I drink only water! And expensive water to boot! If you’re going to drink water, why don’t you take it from the tap? Talk about saving pennies!”

Later, when Ronnie bummed a cigarette from Elizabeth, Mary protested, “You must be a great environmentalist! How can you take up such a filthy disgusting habit!”

Even Alex seemed edgy and frequently stood up, moved about the room, poured herself more wine, looked out the window, sat down again. Finally she burst out, “Oh, Ronnie, build a fire, will you!” as if, without a fire, they would all perish.

Mary complained it was too hot for a fire, it was hot in here tonight, but Ronnie got up and crouched before the hearth. She leaned back on her heels. “Well, which is it? Fire or no?”

“FIRE!” Alex shouted. “Turn the damn heat down if you’re too hot!”

Mary flinched, fell silent.

Ronnie piled up newspaper and kindling, set them alight, laid on a few small logs. When the fire flamed high, she stood up, wiped off her hands on the sides of her jeans, and turned around. “What in hell is the matter with all of you?”

Mary burst into tears. Elizabeth gazed into space. Alex looked at the floor and chewed her lower lip. “The old man really has you all corralled, doesn’t he?”

“It was a shock,” Elizabeth said.

“What? His recovering?”

“The way he looked.”

“Fuck that. This ain’t worry. You were terrified in there. You’re still terrified. All of you. Even before we went in there, you were quaking.”

“We were tense. Not knowing what we’d find,” Mary said in a stiff formal voice edged with exasperation at Ronnie’s denseness.

“
You
were terrified too,” Alex accused Ronnie.

“I was not!” Ronnie yelled, but stiffened, trying to remember. “I don’t think I was,” she added.

“Why! Why, why, why!” Alex exploded. “I haven’t seen him in eighteen years but he’s my father, why should I be terrified!”

“Maybe because we betrayed him,” Mary said.

They all stared at her. “How?” Alex cried.

“By making friends with each other. He knew it, he knew it the minute he looked at us.”

“We’re not allowed to make friends …?” Ronnie wondered.

“No, of course not! Don’t you see! He never allowed it.” She put her head in her hands and moaned, a long deep moan of dread.

Elizabeth swung her head toward Mary. “You’re right,” she said slowly. “He set us against each other. Comparing us. He’d castigate me for not being charming and lovable like you. …”

Head in her hands, Mary seemed indifferent to what Elizabeth was saying.

“And he told you you were stupid—unlike me,” Elizabeth continued. “My mother did the same thing. Always setting me up against you, then later, against Alex. I was either better or worse.”

“Me! I was just a baby!”

Elizabeth shrugged. “Didn’t matter.”

“Why?” Ronnie asked in wonder.

They looked at each other. Elizabeth shrugged.

Mary raised her pale face; it looked lined, almost gray. “I don’t know about your mother. But he did it because he had to be the
one
,” she said. “Not just our center but the only one we had. If we liked each other, we might band together, might rebel against him, ally against him. He had to keep us at war with each other.”

They considered that.

“That’s very smart, Mary,” Elizabeth said in a low voice. “Very smart.”

It was a measure of Mary’s distraction that she said dismissively, “Oh, about some things.”

Ronnie’s voice asked anxiously, “Do you think it was me? Me being there that set him off? That he thought we were together—friends?”

“That didn’t help,” Mary said dryly.

“And here I was saying we should take care of the old bastard so he shouldn’t have to go to a nursing home,” she mused.

Alex shuddered.

Ronnie took one of Elizabeth’s cigarettes without asking. She glanced at Mary. “Can’t help it. I’ll stop as soon as I leave here. Promise.”

They watched the fire.

“It’s good to recognize that, though,” Elizabeth said thoughtfully. “It changes things somehow.” She looked at them. “Affects the way I feel about you all.”

“Yes. When we’re at each other’s throats, we’re doing just what he’d want us to do,” Alex said. “We should support each other,” she added a little pompously.

“How, when we hate each other,” Ronnie said glumly

“Not anymore,” Alex argued. “I never hated any of you anyway. And I don’t believe you hate me.” She gazed at Mary and Elizabeth.

Mary looked at her appraisingly. “I never hated you, I just looked down on you.”

Alex laughed. “I know you look down on me. But that’s not hate.”

“It’s just—habit. A habit of mind. I’m trying to change it. You were so nice the day of the tea party. My friends liked you so much. I think they liked you better than me,” she concluded with a little sorrow, a little indignation.

“But you like to think there is such a thing as superiority,” Ronnie said nastily.

“Yes.”

“And you had it because of your class.”

“Yes.”

“And color.”

She nodded.

“And money.”

Mary stared silently at the fire. “I’ve always believed that. I was taught that. It’s hard to unlearn. Not in your head but … in habits of mind, you know? It’s comforting, somehow.”

“But doesn’t it make you feel….”—Alex paused—“separate? Alone?”

“Of course not!” Mary said haughtily. “I am part of a class, a group, there are others like me!”

They gazed at her. She kept staring at the fire. She sipped her drink. “But I have to admit—the day I went to Boston with you”—she turned to Ronnie—“and met your friend. Linda?”

Ronnie nodded.

“She really loves you, doesn’t she. You could see it, she hugged you and offered help and if you were desperate, Ronnie, she’d take you in, give you a bed, wouldn’t she? She’d even feed you.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t have a single friend like that in the world,” Mary said bitterly.

“I’d take you in, Mary,” Alex said warmly.

“So would I,” said Elizabeth.

Mary looked at them startled. Then she smiled and turned to Ronnie. “I notice you’re not offering.”

Ronnie laughed. “Mary, I don’t have a bed to offer you and you wouldn’t sleep on it if I did!”

Mary grimaced, smiling. “You’re right.” She got up and walked to the bar. “Does anyone want a refill?”

“A unique occasion!” Ronnie cried. “Mary’s doing the serving! I’ll have a Coke—no! I’ll have a glass of wine!” They all wanted refills.

“But I’m not the only snob in this room,” Mary defended herself, returning. “What about Elizabeth.”

The three of them examined Elizabeth.

“What is this, retreat time?” she snapped. “A bunch of nuns preparing to flagellate themselves?”

“Elizabeth believes in the superiority of mind over body,” Mary announced airily.

“Male over female,” Ronnie shot in.

“That would be self-defeating, wouldn’t it?” she asked coldly, lighting a cigarette.

“Maybe all snobbery is self-defeating,” Alex offered timidly.

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Wisdom of the simpleton.”

“That’s not fair, Lizzie!” Mary protested. “Alex isn’t a simpleton.”

“Really?” Elizabeth swung her head around. “When did you start to believe that?”

Mary flushed.

Alex shook her head. “Oh, don’t bother being embarrassed, Mary. I know you all look down on me. Think I’m stupid. I do myself. In some ways. There are ways though …”—she gazed off, dropping her eyes—“ways I trust myself. Trust what I feel. Like I knew I had to come here even though—I was full of dread about it. I mean, I was thrilled at finally getting to see you two again,” she said, glancing at Elizabeth and Mary. “But … Father. I had a terrible experience with him eighteen years ago. I haven’t been able to forget. Or forgive.”

Mary raised her head. “What happened?”

“I never told anyone. Not Mom, not even David. I came up to introduce him to my first baby, to Stevie. Mom didn’t want me to come, she really argued against it. But I challenged her to give me one good reason why and she backed down. I thought it might please him that I’d named my son for him. You know, maybe it would make up for whatever made him act as if I didn’t exist all those years.

“David, my husband, is Jewish, his name is David Stein. I converted to Judaism when I married him, not because he asked me to, but for Sam and Lilian, it was so important to them that they have Jewish grandchildren, and they couldn’t unless I converted. And I love them and I wanted them to be happy. I didn’t care. I mean I feel something I guess you could call religious, but it isn’t attached to any particular church. It isn’t connected to anything, except maybe the outdoors, nature. … Anyway, Father knew nothing about that, but I guess he knew I’d married a Jew. He was okay when I called, he said I could come, he’d be here. It was July, David’s vacation. And Father was polite when we arrived, he acted polite to David, he shook his hand, he patted his shoulder, said he was glad to meet his son-in-law even a few years late. Stevie was asleep in his car bed, so we carried him into the house but left him sleeping in it in the front hall, the foyer or whatever you call that big entryway. We didn’t want to disturb him, he’d been so fussy the whole trip up.

“Then David went upstairs to wash up and Stevie began to fuss and I lifted him out of the car bed and carried him in … in here …”—she looked around—“and handed him to Father. He was seven months old, still little and pink and adorable but alert, he could sit up. I’d dressed him in a little white cotton knit suit and wrapped him in a blanket I’d embroidered with scallops all around the edges.

“And Father took him sort of awkwardly, he didn’t know how to hold a baby. And I said, I whispered really, I guess I stupidly expected him to be moved, well I was, so I said, ‘His name is Stephen.’ And he just thrust him back at me, almost threw him at me, he had a big grin on his face and he said ‘So now some little kike has my name,’ and then he turned away.”

Long silence.

“That’s Father,” Elizabeth said finally.

“And I … I did something so terrible! I threw Stephen in a chair, I just tossed him and ran out of the room, I was so upset but I refused to cry in front of that man, I didn’t even want him to know he’d made me cry. I just threw the baby on the chair, I shocked him, he screamed but I kept running until I couldn’t hear him anymore. I threw
him away
! As if I felt that if Father didn’t value him then neither did I. I can’t forgive myself for it. I can’t forgive Father for it.”