Our Father (29 page)

Ronnie wanted to say, you could live more cheaply, get a more modest apartment, learn to drive, sell your sables and minks and that ermine cape, your jewels. You could get a job. She stared at her, trying to imagine Mary in a three-room apartment wearing an off-the-rack dress, hopping the subway to a typing job. The picture wouldn’t come.

“You could sell something maybe,” she managed.

“Oh, I have! All the jewelry Harry gave me. Everything from Paul. All the good stuff. You get nothing for used furs and mine are very out-of-date. I don’t keep a car and driver anymore, I sold the house in Vail after Don was killed. The house in Vermont went long before that. There’s nothing left. And Marie-Laure’s still in college,” she sighed.

“And your son …?”

Mary’s mouth twisted. “Marty feels I was insane to leave Paul and that I deserve whatever happens to me. He’s right, of course.”

“Nice kid.”

“Not very. I didn’t do a very good job with my children. Wasn’t cut out to be a mother. I was trained to be a courtesan,” she said with deep bitterness, “and I even failed at that.”

Ronnie reached her hand across the table and laid it over Mary’s. “You’ll be all right,” she whispered.

“I will,” she said with determination. “I have to be.” She cocked an eye at Ronnie. “How much do you think doctors make? Do you suppose that Dr. Stamp is married?”

12

T
UESDAY MORNING, AS THE
others stood watching, Elizabeth pulled a chair up beside Stephen’s bed and sat down. Looking directly in his eyes, speaking slowly, she informed him of his fate.

“Father, the hospital can’t keep you any longer. They can’t do anything more for you. Your getting better is up to your body now, they can’t speed it along. They’ll release you, probably Friday. Most patients in your condition go to nursing homes.”

Stephen, who had been glaring at the blanket up to this point, suddenly whirled, turning his fierce glare on her.

“They tell us there’s a very nice nursing home on the North Shore,” she continued.

Stephen pounded his left fist on the bedclothes, noiselessly: pound pound pound pound pound.

“There is another alternative,” she said, her glance faltering. She looked up again bravely. “We could take you home and take care of you there.”

He stared at her suspiciously.

“A nurse would come every day to check you out, and we would hire a woman to come in days and take care of your basic needs. We feel you would not care for us to do that. The household staff, at least Mrs. Browning and Teresa, will also help take care of you.”

He held his wary gaze.

“But we’re afraid to leave you entirely in the care of … people who are not family, who sometimes take advantage of helpless people—they’d have to cash checks to buy your food, they’d have control of the money. And we all live too far away to supervise how they’re treating you.”

His forehead furrowed.

“So to make sure you get proper care we’re going to be there with you. All of us.”

The mouth formed a huge O.

No?

“Unless you’d prefer the nursing home.”

Oh that cold voice.

He gave her a look of such malevolent suspicion that Alex drew a sharp breath, Mary winced. Elizabeth remained impassive.

“Will you tell us which you prefer?”

She’s enjoying this, Ronnie thought. Tables turned. Their relation was all about power, and she now had the upper hand. Power of youth. For what it’s worth. Transitory. If Elizabeth were in the bed—and someday she might be—who’d be sitting beside her? Mary? It would be the nursing home for sure.

“You have to decide,” she said calmly. “Since you don’t like the idea of raising your hand, I thought you might prefer to write. I found this in the playroom.” She handed him a board with a plastic leaf over it and a pointed stick. You could write on the plastic with the stick and someone could read it, but when you lifted the plastic, the writing vanished. “You can write on this with your left hand—if you like—or you can tap out your answer. One for yes, two for no.”

She shouldn’t be doing this, Alex thought. She’s doing it without love, doesn’t know how to do it with love, it’s horrible. Humiliating. I should do it.

But can I do it with love? Do I love him?

She stepped forward. “Elizabeth? Shall I try?”

Elizabeth stood up. Her face was strained and very pale, she looked old. “Please,” she said, moving away from the bed. She retreated to the doorway and leaned against the frame. Maybe she wasn’t enjoying it, just didn’t know any other way to talk to him.

Alex sat down, put her hand on Stephen’s useless one. She smiled at him and spoke in a low kindly voice. “Hello, Father. We know how unpleasant this must feel to you, you must feel you have no control over your life. But you know, we’ll be in the same boat someday too, if we live long enough. So we sympathize, empathize. We want things to be as much in your control as possible. We want you to decide the things you
can
decide. At this moment, it’s necessary that someone take care of you, but you can get better, you may be able to speak again. We’ll try to help you. What you
can
decide is who will take care of you and where.”

His face had softened as she spoke, and Ronnie later swore she saw tears in his eyes. Mary scoffed at that; Alex wasn’t sure. She saw a shine, whether of tears or malice she could not tell.

“Would you rather be home in your own house than in a nursing home?”

The old man nodded.

“And would you prefer to have a trained nurse—a stranger—taking care of … you … personally?”

He nodded again.

Alex smiled, patted his hand. “And would you feel better if we were there to oversee that they take proper care of you?”

His eyes glinted, he actually met her gaze. He seemed to nod. Alex decided to take the movement for a yes.

“That’s what we’ll do then.” She smiled, patted his shoulder, and stood up. His eyes went wild, his mouth opened, trembled, tongue strained. He tried to write on the board, but couldn’t hold it steady. Turning back, Alex noticed this, and darted forward to hold the board for him. He scrawled huge misshapen letters; they were illegible. He waved his arm toward Mary and Ronnie standing against the back wall as if he were waving them away.

“You don’t want Mary or Ronnie taking care of you?” Alex translated. He nodded. “Who then, Elizabeth?”

He shook his head violently.

“None of us?” Alex asked, frowning.

He pointed at her with his good hand.

“Me? Only me?”

He nodded.

She walked toward her sisters, turned back, faced him. Her voice was puzzled, but chilled too. “After all those years you didn’t call me, didn’t write, had no contact with me at all, you now want me to take care of you?”

He strained violently, shaking the board at her, bobbing his head wildly from side to side. Alex stood fixed. Mary’s face was dead white. Ronnie walked to him, held the board. “Can you write it,” she ordered.

CUDNT, he scrawled, and held it up askew.

Ronnie examined it. “I think he means
couldn’t
.”

Alex stepped forward, her face tense and vivid. “Why not?”

He tried to write, dropped the board. Ronnie retrieved it and held it for him. He scrawled wildly. Alex stepped around to read as he wrote. It made no sense. He watched her face, and clumsily pulled up the plastic. He wrote again: AGREED … the word dripped off the board.

“Agreed? With whom?”

He laid his head in his left hand.

“You made an agreement? With my mother? Why?”

His head fell back against the pillow. He closed his eyes, nodding yes.

“Why?”

He did not open his eyes or attempt to answer.

Ronnie laid the board and stick on the side table and walked back to her sisters. They stood there together gazing at him.

Alex spoke. “I’m sorry, but I won’t stay without them—all of them. We come together. As a unit. Not separately.”

He opened his eyes then and gazed at her. The fierceness was gone, he was drained. He dropped his eyes, looked at his useless hand, closed his eyes.

Silently, the sisters left.

Ronnie took a pair of work gloves and went out to the old barn. She pushed the wheelbarrow toward the woods, walking to the spot where she had last left off picking up kindling, and began to fill the barrow. She filled it swiftly, wheeled the load back, dumped it in the kindling basket in the barn, and returned for more. She worked fast, hard, trying to push away thought, work up a sweat. After three trips, she was wet inside her clothes, tiring, and had to slow down. Mind tilting into craziness, images crowding in, unbearable, unbearable, but it was all unbearable, all of it, Elizabeth sitting there like a schoolteacher instructing a child in basic history, but it was the future she was talking about, his future, with no more feeling than if she’d been reciting the names of the battles fought in World War II, Mary standing there trembling and white, as if she were about to be beaten.

All so ugly.

What was it about this family? All this beauty around them, the gardens, the house, the furniture. All the beauty bought in marriage, refining skin and nostril, sheening the hair of each successive generation. Yet everything that happened among them was so ugly. Was that what families were like?

Suppose Enriqué were in bed after a stroke: what would Rosa do? Ronnie imagined her sitting beside him, stroking his useless hand. She’d cover his face with kisses, she’d be crying. He’d probably be crying too, but he’d put his good hand over hers, try to act as if he had things in control. The kids would throng around clumsily, knocking things over, making noise, tears in their eyes. If they told him they were taking him home to take care of him, how would it be? He’d cry, he’d grab Rosa’s hand, he’d try to protest he didn’t want to be a burden, but he’d be grateful, happy. …

Was that because they were poor, because money and power had not been issues in their household?

But money and power
were
issues in their family. In every family. Rosa and Enriqué argued over how to handle the kids, especially Tina, over Raoul’s hanging out with a gang, over Enriqué’s Friday-night drinking with the guys he worked with: they weren’t even really his friends, Rosa complained, and he spent so much money. He couldn’t explain it to her, he couldn’t make her understand. He was trying to say those guys are all I have that makes me a man, all I have besides you and the kids, and this place, our home, our kids, all this belongs to you. Here I’m not a man but only part of you, it. After Raoul was killed, after Tina went on the street, Rosa hardened. She stopped giving him all her earnings to pay bills with, she was determined to save some to get Téo out of there, send him to college. They had a big fight. He needed her money to make ends meet, he said. She was enraged, said he’d drunk up enough money to save Raoul. That pushed him over the edge, he loved Raoul, probably felt guilty about what had happened to him. He hit her. She told him to get out. He cried.

But that was the only time he ever hit her. Enriqué was pretty good for a man. What did Linsey say that night? When Emily Tedesco said she’d gotten married but was finding it difficult living with a man. “It’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it.” Hah! Enriqué loved his family, he was loving to them most of the time.

And suppose Enriqué stayed helpless for months, years, he’d become a terrible burden. Would Rosa still tend him lovingly, would the kids help? Suppose it was Rosa had the stroke. Would Enriqué take care of her?

He would, he would.

I have to believe he would.

Everything reversed, baby grows up, parents grow old, now the baby has to change the parents’ diapers, feed them, put powder on their bottoms, carry away their bedpan. … Horrible. Most people sent them to old folks’ homes. To die.

Natural economy of life. Old people weren’t going to get better and become productive, reproduce, raise children again. Elizabeth says life is naturally cruel. No. What did she say? “The natural economy of life is cruel.”

Ronnie sat down on a cold damp stone, pulled a cigarette out of the pack in her pocket, and lighted it, taking a deep drag.

It was Monday, yesterday, the day they made their pact. Having drinks in the sitting room last night. Alex was upset, she looked pale and her whole body was shaking, but she wouldn’t say why. Come to think of it, it was after she went up to the nursery, after I found the key for her … She wanted a fire, I built it. Mary pale and restless, twisting her string belt around her fingers—what a dress she had on, silk, now that really was silk, pale pale bluish green, cut low, sort of drippy, whatever they call that dress style. Looked regal. Long long long pearls. Real? Maybe she could sell them. Elizabeth smoking one cigarette after another, tight, her thin face pale and lined.

She’d been talking about some disaster in the newspaper, was just musing, and she said, “The natural economy of life is cruel.” Went on rambling, a long defense of her economic theories it sounded like: wonder who she was defending them against. Survival of the fittest, which she stupidly equates with the physically strongest—only muscles and money in her economy. Fittest elbow the less fit out of the way, take all the food, take all the women—who don’t seem to have anything to say about any of this. Went on and on about individual liberty. I said she seemed to me to be defending a few men’s liberty to rob and kill all the others.

She didn’t even hear me.

Craziness, neo-Darwinism drummed up to support capitalist exploitation of the entire world by a tiny elite. Created a way of life that’s insupportable. Can’t last, we’re all dying, the world being poisoned. Groups need cooperation, adaptation to survive. Individuals don’t survive, after all. Aggression destroys the aggressors
and
the victims. People don’t realize that. A higher proportion of slave traders than of slaves died on the slave ships. Every militaristic society overextends, goes down in a heap, real sudden. Assyria, Athens, Sparta, Rome, well that took some time I guess, dwindled down by coffee spoons. Is that in a poem? Freshman English? England, Germany, the United States. On our way out. She knows that too. End of an era, she said, end of western civilization as we know it. God knows it deserves to die, with all its hero-killers and their monuments spanning the globe testifying to their triumph over, destruction of brownyellowredtanblack people, whites too if they were poor. But she was mourning it like it was something glorious and noble. Mourning her father? Defending him, his politics. Defending the devil. That guy she loved, whatshisface, Clarence?