Our Father (36 page)

He nodded.

“Both?”

Yes.

“The
Washington Post
?” Elizabeth asked.

Yes.

“The
Christian Science Monitor
? A Chicago paper? The
L.A. Times
? We’ll have them delivered. Would you like some magazines too?”

Yes.

“Okay. All the news magazines. Any others?”

He grinned evilly, scrawled: PLAYBOY.

Stephen buzzed seconds after Florence left for the day. Ronnie, who was near the kitchen, heard it and ran up. DRNK, he had written on his tablet. He held it up. She hesitated, then asked him what he wanted. BRAN, he wrote. She poured it, handed it to him, and stood there for a moment. He nodded in dismissal and she left.

“He wanted a brandy,” she told the sisters gathering in the playroom, where they had had the bar moved. Mary liked being able to gaze out the large back windows into the garden, even though it was completely dark by six.

“Watch him wet his bed again,” Elizabeth snorted.

“Who’s going to go if he needs the bedpan?” Ronnie wanted to know.

“Doris. That’s why we hired her.”

“Good!” Ronnie sighed. “As long as it isn’t me.”

“Or me,” Mary said.

“I’d do it,” Alex said.

“What are you, a fucking saint?”

“No. Just used to it. Sometimes, when they’re short of nurses, I help out in the hospital. I’m only a volunteer, but I’ve worked there so many years, they trust me for small things. It’s a little hospital. I often help them.” Alex’s voice was thin and dead, as if her breath came only from her throat, not her lungs. She didn’t look at anyone directly.

They gathered again after dinner, chatting desultorily, but Alex remained as silent as she had been during dinner. Ronnie confronted her: “Are you remembering things?”

She started, eyes alarmed, gazed around at them. “Sorry!”

“Has anything come back?”

She nodded, her brow furrowed, glancing at a spot between the wall and the floor. “It all came back. Today, in the woods, while I was walking. I saw it. All at once.”

“Do you want to tell us?” Mary asked hesitantly, glancing at Ronnie. “I mean, do you feel like talking about it?”

Alex mused. “I guess so. I need to, I think. So many years I’ve blotted it out.

“I was in Mommy’s room, my mother’s room. I was sitting at her makeup table putting powder all over my face. I was nine. She said I could. She said I could use her lipstick too, and her eyebrow pencil. She was lying down, she had a headache. Daddy came in and asked how she was, and she said she didn’t feel too well. He told me to let her rest and come and play in his room. I didn’t want to, I pulled away but he grabbed my arm and dragged me in there. She called out, sort of weakly, ‘Stephen!’ as he closed her door and he opened it again and said ‘I’ll take care of her for you for a while, sweetheart. You rest.’ It was in Georgetown. Their rooms weren’t connected in that house, they were side by side. He took me into his room and shut the door. He said I looked like a grown-up lady with my powder and lipstick. He picked me up and laid me on the bed, and then he started to … do what he did. I was whimpering. I didn’t want him to do it but also I was scared, I knew Mommy was just in the next room, I didn’t want her to hear. So I didn’t whimper loud.

“But she must have suspected something. I don’t know why. God knows he’d been doing it for years, but something must have made her suspicious. Maybe that was why she’d been having so many headaches. Anyway the door opened suddenly very softly, like she was sneaking in, and I looked up and saw her face. He didn’t, he was lying on his stomach next to me, facing me with his hands on me. My heart stopped, I felt so bad, so dirty, so wrong. I cried out and Father whirled around and she was standing there looking at him. Then she marched over to the bed and grabbed my arm, she grabbed it so hard it hurt, and she pulled me off the bed and pushed me ahead of her into my room. She said ‘I’ll be back!’ and she locked me in. She locked me in! I was crying, I was cold, I had no underpants on. I wanted to die and be buried and forgotten forever. I heard them yelling outside in the hall, I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but I remember her saying ‘NEVER NEVER NEVER!’ She was crying. After what felt like a long time, she came into my room with a suitcase. She threw my clothes into it, grabbed my coat and jammed my hat on my head, and pushed me out the door. I wondered why she was taking me away if she was going to kill me. She didn’t say a word to me. She didn’t even notice I had no underpants on.

“A cab came and we got in it. We took a train. We went to Grandma’s house. Mommy said the first thing, I had to have a bath. She took me upstairs and put me in the tub. Then she went down and I heard her with Grandma and Grandpa, whispering and yelling and crying. I could hear the way they were talking they were trying to calm her. Grandma came up and got me out of the tub—of course, I was nine, I could get out myself but she helped me anyway. She wrapped a big towel around me and held me close to her, rubbing my body with the towel and hugging me. Then I cried. She kept hugging me. I felt safe then.

“But I never felt safe with my mother after that. Not for a long time. Maybe never. I felt she blamed me. She never mentioned it again, and she was sweet to me, nice to me—always. But I never really trusted her again.

“I realize now she or Grandpa must have made some kind of deal with Father. Maybe she threatened to make it public if he tried to see me again or wrote or called. Maybe that’s what he meant when he wrote
agreed
.”

“Did he support you?” Elizabeth wondered.

“I don’t know. Probably. Mother earned such a pittance—two or three thousand a year. You know how they paid women in those days. Grandpa earned more, but not a lot and then he retired. But we were always comfortable. Of course, we lived modestly. Even after Mother married Charlie. I could ask her,” she added bitterly. “Now that I know, maybe she’ll talk to me.” She turned to Elizabeth. “Did you ever tell your mother about it? Later, I mean. I mean, does she know now?”

“No,” Elizabeth said shortly.

They gazed at her in silence, without judgment.

“I still can’t get over the fact that you stopped him!” Mary said.

“Yes. Ironic—after all those years, it was so easy: I just said ‘Stop.’ I was seventeen, I’d finished high school that June, I was going to college in September, I just couldn’t stand it anymore. He was married to Amelia, you”—she looked at Alex—“were a baby. He’d come up for the Fourth and hadn’t—touched me—and he left a few days later. Every time he left, my whole body would relax, I would feel my stomach unwind. But I always knew he’d be back. It—consumed me, I walked around feeling … evil, as if my body was tainted, contaminated, as if it smelled—because if there weren’t something foul about it—it wouldn’t make him do those things to me. He always said it was my fault, that it was my body that was making him do it. I remember sitting for hours out in the woods trying to figure out what it was about my body that did that …”

“Me too!” cried Mary. “That’s what he told me! My body did something that made him do that! I used to stand in front of the mirror naked at night looking at myself, wondering what it
was
about me … because I was little, you know, like Alex, I was just past babyhood when he started—I wasn’t developed at all. But he always said I was a little tease, that I wanted it.” She pondered for a time, then shook her head brusquely and looked up at Elizabeth. “So what did you do?”

“He came back in August. It was a couple of days after he arrived. He was staying the whole month. My heart sank when I heard that, just plunged right into my stomach. I didn’t
plan
to stop him, I didn’t think about it. It never occurred to me that I could, that I had the power to do anything. At all. One afternoon, you were all in the pool—Amelia and you two, Alex and Mary. I was my usual sullen self, hiding in my room reading. He came in and shut the door. I knew what that meant. I was lying on my stomach on my bed, I remember I had just started reading
The Brothers Karamazov
, about this vile father who gets murdered. Maybe that filtered in, I don’t know. I pulled myself up into a sitting position still on the bed and I glared at him. I held the book out in front of me like a shield, like a crucifix against the devil in a vampire movie. And I yelled ‘NO! NO! NO! No more! I want you to stop!’

“He said, ‘Think again, Elizabeth. You and your mother need my support. Just ask her if that’s not true. And as long as I support you, you will do as I say.’ I stood up, leapt up, I was tall—thin, but strong, I played hockey at school. And I took this posture—I don’t know where I got it—I sort of bent my upper body just a little, and my knees just a little—like a karate posture, you know? But I didn’t know karate, I’d never even heard of it. I said, ‘You support my mother by law, by contract.’ God knows I knew enough about it by then, knew he’d hired detectives to frame her, knew he’d trapped her into divorce. I knew what a louse he was. Still—he was my father. So … anyway, I put on a brave face, much braver than I felt. I was icy cold, I talked like a grown woman. I said, ‘As for me, I don’t need your support, I don’t care about it, I can make my way without you. You are never going to touch me again!’ When I think about it, I have to laugh at myself but I think I may have looked a little fierce.

“He was furious and cold—you know he couldn’t bear to be brooked in anything, especially by us, his kids. But I think he was a little amused at the same time.” She lighted a cigarette, cleared her throat. “I started to move toward him, my fists raised, getting ready to sock him. God knows what would have happened if I had. I shouted, ‘GET OUT! OUT OF MY ROOM!’ And he did.

“He did! He snarled, ‘You’ll regret this, Elizabeth,’ but he turned on his heel and left, slamming the door.
I’d made him leave!
That was the greatest moment of my life. For the first time in my life, I felt I had some power. I wasn’t just a Ping Pong ball, a counter in other people’s game, something everybody, anybody could toss around. Father, Mother, grandparents, relatives … teachers. I had something to say about my life! It was a wonderful feeling. I felt so great I put on a swimsuit and ran down to join you guys. But you’d already left the pool. I dove in anyway and just swam by myself. I must have swum for half an hour. I had so much energy. …”

She gazed at the dark window for a long time, then wiped her cheek, damp with perspiration. She laid her hands in her lap quietly. “I knew he’d never trouble me again. And he never did. But he never forgave me, and I did something—almost as bad as what he’d done. I didn’t care, you see. I have no … had no … scruples. Not where he is concerned. I went to him when I needed a job and informed him, simply informed him, that I expected him to help me. He did that time, half smiling at my chutzpah. But then I did it again, when Clare came back to the States. He had a harassed job at a small college, but he needed and deserved something much more, something prestigious. There was no way he could get it without political pull. So I went to see Father again; I told him it would redound to his credit, that Clare was a brilliant economist, a Republican in sympathy, oh I built it up. I shouldn’t have had to do more, that’s the way the system works, it’s—well, they call it networking now, but it’s a buddy system. He should have helped me without question. Helped Clare. But he wouldn’t. He sneered at me, asked why he should do one fucking thing on this earth to help
me
. Just as if I weren’t his daughter. I guess he thought Clare was my boyfriend. I saw red—literally—the insides of my eyes filled up with red. Actually, a blood vessel did break in my eye that day, I had to go to the doctor. I spat at him: ‘Because you owe me.’

“Oh, the look! Well, you can imagine! He picked up his pen, asked me what kind of job I wanted for Clare, wrote down his name and phone number. He said we’d hear from his secretary. Then he put down his pen and stared at me with that malevolent glare, you know, you’ve all seen it. And he said, ‘I never want to see you in this office again. You are never to contact me again.’ I stood there for a minute. Do you know,”—she turned to them with an anguished expression,—“I felt like crying? Isn’t that crazy? Here I’d just blackmailed him, but what I felt was that I’d been thrown out by my father—as if none of the rest had ever happened, as if he were just an ordinary father and I just an ordinary little girl and he’d thrown me out of his life. I thought I’d never see him again. She turned back to the window, her cheeks damp. “I wanted to throw myself at his feet, grab him around the knees, plead, beg, please Daddy, don’t throw me away!

“I didn’t. I pulled myself up and marched out of there—somehow. And I was still invited to the family parties. By his secretary. But he never spoke to me personally again. Only in front of other people.” She sighed with a deep shudder, like someone laying down a huge burden she has carried for many miles. She leaned back her head, gazing at the dark window. “And that enraged me. Deeply. I still can’t forgive him. That’s why it’s so hard for me to talk to him now. I don’t think he ever said a kind word to me his whole life, except when he was in my bed. And when he was in my bed he was doing something to me that I didn’t want done, that made me feel I had no will, no
self
—that I was just a thing he owned. So for me, to this day, kindness, love, sex—mean annihilation.” One by one, tears gathered and spilled over the ledges of her eyes. “He ruined my life,” she said in a faint voice.

They were silent together.

“Please don’t say that,” Alex pleaded. “Please. I can’t bear it.” She sat very straight in her chair, staring at the wall.

No one spoke.

“He ruined all our lives,” Elizabeth insisted. “Look at us—a bunch of miseries.”

“I’ve been having these blackouts,” Alex said. “Something triggers them, I guess, some memory or association, and I just go into a—cloud. I don’t know what happens while I’m there, I don’t faint … except once I did. I just come to suddenly and know I’ve been away.” She paused. “I began to think—I was possessed. You know? That I was having visions—religious visions—although I never remembered one afterwards. Then I thought—maybe I was sick. That I had a brain tumor or petit mal or something like that. That terrified me.