Our Father (46 page)

Shit I took a shower with my watch on. It read four-fifteen.

It’s not waterproof but it’s still working. Is that a sign?

Wearily, she walked back to her room, picking up clothes as she went, tossing them onto a chair. She pulled down the spread and climbed into bed naked, something she had never done before.

It had to be me because I was only a baby when he. … So he poisoned my entire life, everything touched by that forgotten event. So they reserved me, always they intended me to be an instrument, half alive, without memory, an instrument to be switched on and used when the moment came. Why I always felt I hadn’t lived. I don’t feel that now.

Is being alive having this terrible guilt? I killed my father. I will never be, can never be, clean of this crime.

Is this what you are, you things, you gods, you Shechinah or whatever else they call you? How dare you, how dare you! Using people to punish other people?

That can’t be.

Nature works harmoniously within chaos, works to enable natural processes to survive, works interactively. It is not, cannot be, personally punitive. That’s a human imposition on it. Disaster and death are accidents, they have nothing to do with justice, a human concept, yesterday I could have been a woman living in Bhopal, a good woman, a woman of virtue, a good man, a child, and still be dead or dying. …

I was only the accidental cause of Father’s death.

Why couldn’t he see that all he had to do was reach out his arm to us, scrawl SORRY on his pad, and all of us, all of us, well, maybe not Ronnie, but Elizabeth and Mary and I … oh, we would have thrown ourselves on him, hugged him, loved him, we all loved him, didn’t he know that, couldn’t he feel that, we loved him and that had nothing to do with justice either, it is the work of nature that the infant loves the parent. …

So he killed himself, he made my verdict come true, the verdict, the words put in my mouth by the Shechinah. The Shechinah worked through me, I am not responsible, I was her instrument, I was a mere working of nature, a hurricane, a spontaneous forest fire, a flash flood, a sunset, a sunrise, a blade of grass that pierces through concrete and the concrete was Father and he cracked. She endowed me finally with my true nature, made me alive, I’m alive now, now I can be who I am, now I am Alexandra. I am a blade of grass. I grow in the world and crack concrete.

Dead dead dead forever never always always for the rest of my life illegitimate bastard by-blow misbegotten baseborn wrong side of the blanket bar sinister but surely only men had those only men had shields come home with it or upon it nice message but you need a shield to have a bar sinister women never have them no defenses not even underpants. And in his eyes a spic nigger wog spade jigaboo coon wetback mulatto half-breed there must be others I probably even know them can’t think of them now. How can I respect myself, find any way to stand erect without repudiating half myself, how can I do that, can I cut off my arm, my leg, which one?

Fuck off, Ronnie. You’ve been repudiating his half all your life.

She lay fully dressed on her made-up bed, stiff as a corpse, hands folded piously on her stomach, staring at the ceiling. Suddenly aware of her posture, she smiled.

Hope my coffin is more comfortable than this mattress.

What a fool he was. Couldn’t he see they were dying to forgive him? At least Alex was, and probably Mary too. Killed himself rather than take their love, offer them love, what a person, what makes a person like that?

Terrible, incredible, overwhelming fear.

Jesus H. Christ, one of the richest families in America, one of the most powerful men in the country, you mean he lived in fear?

Fear he didn’t deserve it. Fear he’d lose it.

You mean it’s true, the poor are happier than the rich? Ronnie laughed out loud, a hard hollow laugh, then stopped suddenly.

Stupid ass.

So it’s over. I’m free of him.

You’ve been free of him for years.

I’ll never be free of him. What would I have done if he’d reached out his arm and included me? Huh?

No. Couldn’t.

No.

Suppose he’d said he was sorry?

I could have walked toward him. I could have looked at his face without hate.

Taken his hand?

No.

If he’d held it out to you? Specifically to you?

She burst into tears. She let herself weep, no one could hear, wept for a long time into the pillow, heaved, sobbed, then rested, drawing her breath in long deep pulls. Then she sat up and rummaged in her shirt pocket, found a rumpled pack of cigarettes, a few left, lighted one. Have to stop this. Will. As soon as I leave here. She inhaled deeply and got up off the bed, walked into the kitchen, the hall, the playroom, looked out the back windows into the dark garden.

Remember the beautiful things. Once the funeral is over, you’ll probably never enter this house again. Or any house like it. Not from the front door, anyway. Have to do something now. Find a job. Haven’t made much headway in the thesis, either. A little. Another five six months’ work. At least.

Ah, so what. So you don’t finish. So what? What difference does it make if you have letters after your name? Will that change anything?

A little, maybe.

Is that what you need to be a person? Letters after your name?

Legitimate, illegitimate, white, black, brown, tan, red, yellow, all that stuff, female, male, all that stuff: why do you let it matter so much.

Because it does.

To them. To them.

And to me.

To you?

She smoked the cigarette down and stubbed it out in an ashtray. She wandered back to her bedroom and began to take off her clothes. She opened her window. She got into bed naked, it was warm tonight, warm for December, maybe they’d forgotten to turn down the hate turn down the heat I mean should I go check the thermostat, the hell with it I’m so tired, tired. She crawled into the lumpy bed and lay there.

I’m not a saint for Christ’s sake. I can’t pretend what they think doesn’t matter to me. It affects me. Every time they look at me, speak to me, don’t look at me, don’t speak to me, give me a job don’t give me a job let me rent an apartment don’t let me rent an apartment. …

You could go to Mexico. No better there, though: Indian blood, Spanish blood, mulatto. Maybe they’re even worse. Anyway, it’s your insides you have to heal.

If they … if Elizabeth and Mary and Alex …

Forget that.

Forget that. It’s over.

It’s over.

She turned on her side and closed her eyes and fell into a turbulent sleep.

20

H
AVING ALL SLEPT PAST
ten, Elizabeth, Alex, and Ronnie were still hanging over their coffee cups at ten-thirty later that morning when Mary came trailing in in a white satin gown and robe and white satin mules. Alex looked up startled.

“No breakfast in bed this morning?”

“Just decided to come down and have my second cup of coffee with you,” Mary said airily. She noticed Elizabeth eyeing her robe. “Father’s dead. I can come down in my robe now if I want to.”

Ronnie got up and went into the kitchen, returning with a clean cup and saucer, which she set before Mary.

“Thanks, Ronnie, that’s kind of you.”

Alex poured coffee from the carafe and offered cream, which Mary rejected. Alex and Ronnie glanced at her in surprise.

“I’m starting a diet.”

Elizabeth folded the newspaper she’d been reading, removed her glasses, sat back and lighted a cigarette.

“Anything about Father?” Mary asked.

“No. Too soon. Tomorrow. It was on the local television news this morning, though, Mrs. Browning said. We may have reporters.”

“I suppose there are millions of things to be done,” Alex said anxiously. “I have to call David. And my mother. But what else can I do? Are you planning the arrangements?” she asked Elizabeth. “Is there anything I can help with?”

Elizabeth did not seem ready to organize anything. “I guess so. But I imagine—well, I’m guessing the funeral will be taken out of our hands. But we need to call Florence’s agency, the home nursing service …”

“Right,” Mary agreed. “And we have to call Hollis.”

Still, they all lingered at the table. Teresa poked her head in to see if she could clean up, grimaced and turned back to face Mrs. Browning pointing to her watch. “It’ll be lunchtime before I can clear up the breakfast table,” she complained.

“They were up all night, Tess,” Mrs. Browning chided. “Why don’t you start upstairs? I’ll clear the breakfast dishes.”

Still the sisters sat on. They remarked on the weather, a hardy sparrow on a bush, their tiredness, Mary’s headache, but they all seemed to be waiting for something, their eyes on each other with a certain hunger.

Mary ended it. “Well, I’m going to get dressed. I’ll call Hollis. When do you think they’ll complete the autopsy?” she asked Elizabeth, who shrugged ignorance.

“Probably tonight or early tomorrow,” Alex said, rising too.

“Excuse me,” Ronnie interrupted, and they all turned to her. “Do you want me to leave now?”

“Leave?”

“Now?”

“Why?”

“I mean, there are going to be a lot of people coming in here. Public people. There’s going to be a funeral. I want to know what you want me to do.”

“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that,” Mary said.

Elizabeth gazed at Ronnie, pondering.

“Why should you do anything?” Alex blurted.

Mary looked hard at Ronnie. “No, well of course, you wouldn’t want to be …” She turned to Elizabeth. “Lizzie?”

“Ronnie is our sister,” Elizabeth said. “Whatever anyone says.”

“Yes. They can’t shame
us
, only him,” Mary said doubtfully.

Ronnie flushed; close to tears, she hardened her face into an angry mask.

Alex gasped. Mary turned to her. “You know what I mean. I’m talking about the world. People don’t usually have illegitimate children at their funerals. The press. …”

Ronnie fled, made it to her own room before the tears burst out. Give with one hand, take away with the other, she thought, throwing herself on her bed.

“Really, Mary,” Elizabeth said.

Mary looked back at her firmly. “Lizzie, I am not being mean! Have you any idea of what the press is going to make of her? Do
to
her?”

Elizabeth fell silent.

“I’m not just thinking about us. I’m not sure she’d want it.”

“I don’t think she understood that.”

“Then I’ll explain it,” Mary said rising.

She knocked lightly on Ronnie’s door. Ronnie mumbled something.

“It’s Mary. May I come in?”

“It’s your house. Do what you want.”

Mary stepped inside the small shabby room, drew a breath at the look of it—not that she hadn’t been there before. But somehow, she felt, she hadn’t seen it till now. Ronnie stood by the bed. When Mary approached her, she recoiled.

“Oh, Ronnie, don’t be angry! When I said they couldn’t shame us, I meant that no one of us deserves to be shamed for their behavior except Father. Not us. Not you.”

Ronnie watched her warily. When Mary put her hand on Ronnie’s arm, Ronnie shook it off.

“But Ronnie, that’s not the way the press works. Ron … if they know who you are, the press is going to have a field day. With you, with your mother. You know it doesn’t matter that the men are the ones who do these things. Whatever men do, it’s always the women who are the focus of the … attack, really. The persecution. The objects of curiosity. It’s mainly women in the photographs. Photographers might follow you, question people who went to school with you, any friends they discover in Boston, people who used to work here about Noradia. I’m not sure you want that. If you want his name, that history, following you around the rest of your life. If you’re willing … I’ll support you. It’s up to you.”

Mary approached her, put her arms around her. “But whatever you do, however we handle this, we don’t want you to leave. I don’t want you to leave.”

Ronnie buried her head in Mary’s shoulder, Mary’s arms around her, Mary leaning her head against the top of Ronnie’s. “We’re sisters,” Mary whispered.

Ronnie pulled away gently, wiped her eyes with her shirt sleeve, sat down on the bed and lighted a cigarette, pointing Mary to the only chair, a hard-backed wooden chair at the desk. “We’re sisters,” Ronnie said in a nasal voice. “Now. But once we leave here … your life … my life … maybe you aren’t going to want to know me.”

Mary dropped her eyes. No way, no way on this earth could she incorporate Ronnie into her life, her friends, her world. Ronnie would hate it anyway. She looked up.

“Our lives. Well, our lives can never be … you know … we don’t live in the same world. And you wouldn’t want to live in mine. Sometimes I don’t even want to live in mine but it’s the only one I know, the one I’m used to, the one I feel comfortable in. But I don’t want to lose you. I want my daughter to meet you, Marie-Laure, I think you could help her, well, I’m not asking you to help her, but she needs help and I can’t give it to her, I’ve wrecked my chance. It would be good for her to meet someone like you.”

“You’re not afraid I’ll seduce her?”

“Maybe that would be good for her,” Mary laughed, “if it weren’t incest. There’s enough incest in this family already.”

Ronnie laughed, kept laughing, with an edge of hysterical relief, a threat of tears.

“Do you know what I realized last night?” Mary asked proudly.

Ronnie shook her head.

“I don’t need to get married again! I don’t need another husband! I never have to sleep with a man again unless I want to!”

Ronnie smiled wryly. “Yeah, marriage is a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.”

Mary didn’t get it. “… And you did that. The three of you. That has nothing to do with … this … with Father. … But now that Father … well, I can come downstairs in my robe if I want! I can send my poems out to poetry magazines …!” She wore an easy unself-conscious grin that Ronnie had never seen on her before.

“I wonder,” Ronnie said, only dimly understanding the particulars of Mary’s new freedoms but utterly perceiving their essence, “if I’ll ever be able to walk around this house as if I belonged here.”