Our Father (16 page)

Day we had a picnic in the Rockies, I still had my house in Vail then, Paul thought I’d gone out there alone, he didn’t care, he was in Brussels doing one of his superimportant things. Don bought lunch in a picnic basket, wine and cheese and pâté and bread and grapes and apples and we drove out and spread a blanket and ate and made love in a wide gully full of wildflowers. And fell asleep with our arms entwined—never before had I done that—and when I woke up he was gone and I was terrified for a moment until I saw him it looked as if he were rising up out of the earth, he was coming back over the edge of the gully, had gone to pee probably. And he looked like a giant, huge, his arms thick-muscled shapely strong to work the earth, to work machines, to exert control, to work, to use on me, a Man’s arms meant, built to hold me, embrace me, own me, Woman, lying there white and soft and silky and his, oh his, only his. Forever.

Mary wept, rubbing her clitoris in her intolerable need.

7

W
HEN MARY HEARD THAT
Ronnie was planning to go to Boston after the hospital visit on Tuesday, she made some phone calls, then announced she would go too and that Aldo would drive them. Ronnie, surprised and relieved, then surprised at her own relief, puzzled over it: Do I really care that much? What they think, how they act to me? At the same time, she dreaded the drive there and back with the sister most hostile to her. Would it be a long silent ride, bristling with unspoken hate? Better to take the train. There’s no possibility that we can talk to each other agreeably—she hates me, hates my color, my background, my bastardy, my existence. If I tried to be agreeable, would I be acting with admirable restraint or corrupt complicity? Would I be an Auntie Tom?

For the first quarter hour, Mary spoke only to Aldo, commenting on the changes in the landscape from her girlhood. Aldo, in tones of deep devotion, agreed readily with everything she said. Still the quiet hum of the heavy car was becoming unbearable and Mary was examining her hands, her white gloves in her lap, when Ronnie decided to plunge in.

“I notice you read a lot of poetry,” she said.

Mary’s body swelled subtly like a dried fruit dropped into water. “Yes. How … nice of you … to notice.” She fanned herself with her purse. “Elizabeth thinks I’m a dunce. I guess I imagine everybody does.”

“I saw you reading W. S. Merwin. I’m very fond of him too.”

“Really!” Mary looked at Ronnie strangely. “Whom else do you like?”

They discussed favorites for a time, until Ronnie mentioned Adrienne Rich.

“Feminism seems to me so stupid,” Mary said. “You can’t fight nature after all. As long as women have the babies they will need protection.”

“From who?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Who do they need protection from?”

“Really, Ronnie, your grammar. …”

“Fuck my grammar, Mary. Why do women need protection? They wouldn’t need protection if men didn’t attack them, would they.”

“They need support!”

“They wouldn’t need support if men hadn’t grabbed all the property and resources of the world, would they.”

Mary gazed at her. “But that’s the nature of the male, isn’t it. To be predatory, aggressive.”

“I can’t believe nature created a species in which one sex systematically preys on the other.”

Mary considered this, frowning. “But how else could it be? All through history …”

“History is men’s version of what happened in the last five thousand years. They have every reason to tell the story to make it seem that their predation is a natural fact.”

“You must be a feminist,” Mary concluded.

“Damn straight.”

“Well, I can’t argue with you about the past. I don’t know anything about it. All I know is women have to survive as they can, in any way they can. And the surest and safest way is to attach themselves to a man.”

“Through marriage without possibility of divorce.”

“Men just have to be forced to support their children. Of course then I … well, I just would have run away,” she ended mysteriously.

“Or abortion?”

Mary shrugged. “Oh I don’t care about that. But women and children need to be protected. It’s terrible what’s happening to all these single girls with babies and middle-aged women thrown out on the refuse heap. My friend Marge Germaine was fifty-two when her husband decided he wanted to marry a twenty-five-year-old chippie. He cut her off with nothing through some legal manipulations and now she’s destitute. Her children have to support her.” She shuddered. “Horrible!”

“At least her children
can
support her,” Ronnie could not resist saying. “Unlike some.”

“I suppose,” Mary offered vaguely.

“For a nonfeminist, you have a very political view of marriage,” Ronnie commented.

Mary dismissed this. “Anyone with brains knows that marriage is a political affair.
Life
is a political affair, for godsake,” she added. “Feminists are
not
the only women with brains, you know.”

“So I see,” Ronnie smiled.

Mary’s heart gave a little lurch. She smiled at the back of Aldo’s head.

They dropped Ronnie at Boston University, then Aldo drove Mary to the Ritz, where she was meeting her old friend Christina for lunch.

Ronnie visited Professor Madrick at BU and arranged to get a research assistant’s library card. The paper-work took forever and she didn’t have time to eat lunch. She went to the polls, then hopped the T to Cambridge to shop at the Coop. Aldo was to pick her up in front of it at four-thirty.

Mary was pink-faced and happy with wine and companionship: “It was lovely to see Christina again, I haven’t seen her in years! And oh but it’s good to get out of the house! Such an oppressive house!”

“It is.”

Mary looked at her in some surprise. “For you too?”

“Yes.” What did she think, that luxury could make up for everything else?

Aldo then drove them to Ronnie’s old apartment near Copley Square to pick up the belongings she had been storing there. The neighborhood was vibrant and shabby, the broad avenue lined with old brownstones transformed into cheap shops with apartments above them. Mary was appalled. “You lived here?”

Ronnie girded herself for attack. “Yes.”

Mary peered out. “It looks frightening.”

“It’s not bad. It’s alive.”

Ronnie directed Aldo to her building.

“Here?” Mary cried, seeing the brownstone, the basement and first story given over to a tiny shop selling records and tapes, a travel agency, and a restaurant offering genuine Mexican tacos and enchiladas. Ronnie’s stomach was tight waiting for the comment; her hand was on the car door. “I’ll just run up. I won’t be a minute.”

Mary stared around as if she were in a foreign land. “You weren’t frightened living here?”

“No. Why?” Ronnie was bewildered. “I’ve lived in much worse places.”

Mary gazed at her. “May I come up with you?”

Ronnie stared back. “Why?”

“I could help you. You have things to carry down.”

“I’ll be glad to help her, Miss Upton,” Aldo said, turning in his seat. He called all the sisters Miss Upton except Ronnie, whom he called Ronnie.

“I can do it alone, there’s not that much. It’s all right,” Ronnie said, trying to escape.

“I’d like to see how you lived.”

“It’s just a grungy apartment.”

“I’ve never seen a grungy apartment.”

Ronnie shrugged. “If you like.”

Aldo jumped out to open the door for Mary, a service he did not feel obliged to offer Ronnie. Ronnie pulled her face down into her jacket, keeping it bowed. She hoped no one she knew would see her emerging from a limousine, see the chauffeur opening the door for an exquisitely dressed woman in a sable coat and white kid gloves.

“You’ll have to walk up three flights,” Ronnie warned, still hoping to dissuade her.

“I’m not an invalid yet,” Mary said, but she tottered on her high heels and was breathless by the second landing.

Linda answered the door, cried “Hi!” and hugged Ronnie, looked amazed at the woman Ronnie introduced as Mary Scott. “She drove me out here,” she said without further explanation. Mary studied the large bright room furnished with odd pieces in varied stages of disintegration—a couch with wooden arms, the stuffing poking out of one of its cushions, a shaky table, an old standing lamp with a fringed shade, a couple of nondescript armchairs, a broad table holding books and papers with the remains of a meal pushed to one side, and an unmade bed.

“So, sit down!” Linda cried. “Want a Coke or something?”

“Thanks. We can’t stay. They’re driving me back to Lincoln.”

“Oh.” The girl seemed really disappointed, as if she actually
liked
Ronnie. Mary peered down the hall leading off the front room.

“Well, I’ve got your stuff all together here,” Linda said, pointing to some plastic bags lined up against the wall.

“I really appreciate your keeping my stuff for me, Lin. How’s the new roomie working out?”

“Pretty good,” Linda said, nodding. “She pays her share on time and doesn’t steal food. Can’t ask much more,” she laughed.

“I wonder …,” Mary began. Both stopped and looked at her. “May I use your toilet?”

“Sure.” Linda led her through the room to the hall and pointed at a door.

Ronnie stood in shock. Mary using the toilet
here
? Mary the finicky, of the white rooms, the white food, the fastidious aversion to a whole host of contaminants? But her face revealed nothing as she chatted with Linda waiting for Mary to return.

Mary explored. She peered with fascination into a small dark kitchen with sink and stove from another age, as she entered the long narrow dark bathroom cluttered with the legion of toilet necessities of two young late-twentieth-century women. She of course would not sit upon that toilet or wash her hands in that sink; with her gloves on, she used her handkerchief to flush the unused toilet and run the tap. She crept out quietly trying to get a glimpse of the other room, its door partly closed. She pushed it lightly, to catch sight of a dim room furnished with a bed, a table that doubled as a desk, an old plush sofa, an armchair, and an assortment of old-fashioned but not antique lamps. Smaller and darker than the main room, it seemed to face an air shaft or alley.

“Thank you!” she announced, returning, and offered to help Ronnie carry some of her bags. Both women looked at her.

“It’s okay, I’ll make two trips,” Ronnie said.

“It’s okay, I’ll help her,” Linda said.

But Mary insisted, and was handed a light bag of clothes. Ronnie and Linda each grabbed four bags of clothes and books.

“I sort of hate to see your things go, Ron,” Linda said as they descended the stairs. “It’s like you’re really leaving, you know, for good. You know how it is around here, people disappear. I’m afraid I’ll never see you again. Promise you’ll stay in touch?”

“Promise. I’ll be coming in to use the library. I’ll call you, we can have coffee or lunch or something.”

“Great. Don’t forget now.” Linda kissed her good-bye, held her in an embrace while Aldo leapt out of the car, snatched the bag Mary was carrying and stowed it in the trunk, and helped Mary into the car. He stowed the rest of the bags as well, slammed the trunk lid, and got back into the car. Through her good-byes to Linda, Ronnie could sense his outrage that Mary had been pressed into service, and she got into the car with a sarcastic smile. Only then did Linda take in the car, the uniformed chauffeur, and her eyes popped. Ronnie waved good-bye, happy not to have to make any explanations.

“I’d of been glad to come up and help, Ronnie,” Aldo growled. “You didn’t have to ask Miss Upton.”

“Don’t be upset, Aldo,” Mary purred. “I insisted.” And she patted Ronnie’s hand. With her gloves on.

Alex, having a lonely tea in the sun room, glanced up at an exhilarated-looking Ronnie, loaded down with clothes and books and brown bags marked THE COOP, as she vanished into her room without offering an explanation. Good to get out of the house, Alex decided. It’s funny: home is so important to us, we sacrifice everything to buy a house or rent an apartment, to furnish it, fix it up just the way we want. Then we feel oppressed if we can’t get out of it.

Me too.

Mary too seemed more cheerful than usual, after a large lunch at the Ritz with an old friend, and some strange trip into the wilderness (isn’t that what she said?). Some joke or other that I didn’t get, that’s not unusual. Maybe she meant the polls: no, she couldn’t vote, she said. New York. David said last night that he was voting, so I shouldn’t feel too guilty about failing in my duty as a citizen this year. But the truth is, I don’t really want to vote this year. I’m not so sure David’s right about Reagan, I don’t like the way things are going, so many more women at the shelter. … Still, I wouldn’t want to cancel out his vote.

Maybe I should have gone with them today, but what would I do? Mary didn’t want me with her at the Ritz, and Ronnie was too busy to worry about me. I could have just walked around, I guess. I’ve never been to Boston.

Oh, why didn’t I go?

Nobody asked me.

By the time Elizabeth returned late Thursday afternoon, the sisters had been in residence in the house for a week, and had settled into habits as fixed as if they had lived there—together—all their lives. Everyone knew for instance that Ronnie would never be found in the house proper except at meals, but would be outdoors or in her bedroom. Everyone knew that Alex was given to long periods of solitude, walks into town, bicycle rides through the countryside and—Mary insisted (having one day when Aldo drove her through town seen Alex emerge from St. Joseph’s)—visits to the Catholic church. Ronnie and Elizabeth received this shocking information with shrugs.

Elizabeth spent hours in the library either at her computer or lying on the couch reading some awful huge tome, a pencil stuck behind her ear, half-glasses perched on her nose, a pad at her hand. Why she had brought clothes back with her, Mary couldn’t conceive, since she seemed to have been influenced by Ronnie and now wore nothing but old corduroy pants and saggy cashmere sweaters with sneakers. Running shoes, Marty called them. Elizabeth’s slimness, it was true, invested these clothes with some kind of seedy elegance, but she was also given to early morning walks in the woods, on rainy days wearing an old poncho she had found in the mudroom. She rose at six and went to bed at eleven-thirty every day. Rigid as a post, Mary said.