Our Father (2 page)

“Had he been sick?” Elizabeth asked.

Ronnie shrugged. “Not that I knew. He took medicine for his blood pressure …”

“Propranolol,” Elizabeth amended.

“How do you know that?” Mary wondered.

“I saw him taking it last time we were here. I asked what it was,” Elizabeth explained shortly, then returned to the interrogation. “How did you get our numbers?”

Ronnie studied her grimly. “They were in his little notebook, the one he kept in his jacket pocket. They gave it to me when they admitted him. They gave me his things.”

“YOU?” Mary exclaimed. “They should have held them for us.”

“He had
my
telephone number in his book?” Alex asked, amazed.

Ronnie stared at the floor. “They’re on the table in the front hall,” she said in a metallic voice. “Wallet, keys, notebook, glasses, handkerchief. I don’t know how much money is in the wallet,” she spat. “I didn’t look.”

Silence.

“She was
with
him, Mary,” Alex offered apologetically.

Ronnie’s head jerked up. She glared at Alex and swung the glare on Mary. “They assumed I was related to him,” she said in her tough little voice.

Elizabeth stood abruptly. “The drapes should be closed.” She walked to the front windows and pulled the drapery cord hard, then walked to the window seat and stood there, a demand. Alex rose and went back to her chair by the fireplace. Ronnie sat unmoving.

“Do you mind?”

“Why not leave them open? No one can see in.”

“Drapes should be closed at night!” Elizabeth’s voice rose shrilly.

Ronnie looked at her without expression.

“Will you move!” Elizabeth shrieked.

Ronnie stood and moved away. Elizabeth tugged the cord brutally, the drapes flew shut over the window seat. She walked away and Ronnie sat down again, pulling her legs up onto the seat, leaning back against the wall.

Elizabeth returned to her chair by the cold fireplace. Her voice was as calm as it had been before the drape closing. “I only hope Hollis has a power of attorney. If not, we’ll really be hobbled. There’ll be decisions to make while he’s in this coma—about his stocks, this house, other properties. And it’s possible he won’t regain consciousness.”

“I suppose you expect us to give
you
that,” Mary snapped.

Elizabeth gazed coolly at Mary. “If he has prepared a power of attorney, he has probably given it to Hollis. It doesn’t matter who has it as long as someone has it. In any case, I am the best qualified to do the job. And I am the eldest.”

“You’re certainly the best qualified to cheat us.”

“That’s absurd. Whatever I do will be recorded. The records will be open. Unless we make the right moves, the estate can lose value. We’ll all lose.”

“Assuming you’re all in his will,” Ronnie shot in.

All three turned and looked at her.

The fourth time the telephone rang—“Margaret Thatcher,” Elizabeth murmured when she returned, “deeply concerned”—Ronnie got up and left the room. “About time,” Mary muttered. Must speak to Elizabeth about her: do we have to let her stay?

“Cointreau,” she told Alex and settled back in the armchair, slipping off her heels and tucking her feet up alongside her. She accepted the small glass with a slight smile and turned to Elizabeth. “Well! At last we can catch up with each other. It’s been so long! I haven’t seen you since Father’s birthday two years ago! You look thinner.”

“Probably.” Elizabeth sipped her Perrier.

“How have you been?”

“Not great. Clare died.”

Mary sat up. “Oh, Lizzie! When?”

“This spring. You know I hate to be called Lizzie.”

“God! Sorry! Oh god! Why didn’t you let me know? I would have come to the funeral, at least stood there with you!”

“I didn’t go to the funeral. His children arranged it, held it in Ohio, where his parents are buried, where one of his sons lives now. Old family house. Town he grew up in. They didn’t welcome his Washington friends.”

“Oh you must have felt terrible! You should have called! You could have come to New York and stayed with me for a while.”

“What for?”

“I do know what it is to lose the man you love.”

Injured dignity incarnate, thought Elizabeth. “Several times over,” she said harshly.

Mary’s fair skin mottled with pink.

Elizabeth relented. “Actually, the best cure for me when I’m upset is work. I just stayed home and worked on my book.”

Mary studied her rings.

No one asked about the book.

“I feel odd one out,” Alex said with a tight laugh. “Is it all right—I mean, may I ask—who was Clare?”

Lips tight, Elizabeth said, “Clare McCormick. The economist. A great economist. On the Council of Economic Advisers. The top government economic advisory body,” she explained at Alex’s blank look. “Consultant to the Federal Reserve and the OMB.”

Alex looked stupid.

“The Office of Management and Budget. A government agency that sets the country’s economic policies.”

Alex had the look of a seventh-grader trying hard to memorize a Latin declension.

“You do know that I am an assistant secretary of the treasury, don’t you? We just don’t count the money, Alex, we set the nation’s economic policy.”

She doesn’t know that I don’t even know what that means. What is an economic policy anyway? Don’t ask. “And you and Clare were married?” she said sympathetically.

“They were … very good friends,” Mary explained.

“My best friend in the world,” Elizabeth murmured.

“I’m so sorry,” Alex breathed. “What did he die of?”

“Pneumonia.”

“Oh,” Alex said mournfully. “How old was he?”

“Pneumonia?!” Mary exclaimed doubtfully.

“Seventy,” Elizabeth said. “A young seventy.” She lighted a cigarette. “It’s what happens in middle age, people start dying,” she said brusquely. “We can expect to hear news like that daily. Death and sickness, loss on all sides. That’s all we have to look forward to.”

“Oh, Elizabeth, you’re always so negative!” Mary snapped. “I definitely don’t feel that all I have to look forward to is death and loss!”

“No, you’re probably looking forward to another husband.”

“I certainly am. And why not! You’re just as nasty as ever!”

A long silence fouled the air like musty cigar smoke.

Alex stood abruptly. “Another drink, anyone?” she chirped, walking to the small sideboard and refilling her wineglass. She turned, began tentatively, “Do you remember me at all? I mean, I remember you both, but very—vaguely—I guess. You seemed so grown up to me. I remember your wedding,” she said to Mary. “So grand! The striped tent and the men all in cutaways and crystal stemware on the tables and all the flowers, flowers everywhere! You had six maids of honor and six ushers. You were so beautiful, like a movie star, I thought you were a goddess!”

Mary sat silent. Elizabeth went to England, left me here alone. Desolate. “Yes,” she said finally. “That was 1955. I married Harry Burnside. You were my flower girl. You wore pale pink and carried pink lilac flown in from Canada.”

Faraway voice, remembering. “Nineteen fifty-five: I would have been seven, eight that Christmas. I still have that dress, anyway Mom has it in the attic, I saw it a few years ago when I went up to look for a steamer trunk for Stevie when he was going to camp. But I don’t remember Harry.”

“He died. In 1960.”

“I remember he was much older than you.”

Elizabeth grinned nastily. “Same age as her daddy.”

Mary shot her a look but Alex was staring upward, remembering something, exclaiming, “Didn’t you marry somebody famous? I remember my mother reading about you out loud from the papers one day. Much later.”

“Probably Alberto. Alberto di Cenci. That made all the papers. He was famous for being gorgeous, rich, and a playboy, nothing else. He never
did
anything!”

“He
really
got famous,” Elizabeth drawled, “when he left you for Nina Newton.”

“The movie star?” Alex exclaimed excitedly. “I remember her! I’ve seen her old movies on TV.” She glanced at Mary’s face. “She must be very old by now,” she added quickly.

“She must be very dead by now the way she hit the booze and drugs,” Mary snapped. “She lived on a cocaine circuit even then. Cocaine was the drug of choice for high society for decades.”

“For the Eurotrash set, anyway,” Elizabeth added primly.

“You were well out of that, then,” Alex said warmly.

Elizabeth smirked at Mary. The room was silent.

Alex tried again. “Oh, I envied you both—so beautiful and grown up and you had each other and this wonderful house. You”—she turned to Mary—“used to come to Father’s house in Georgetown, but you”—she turned to Elizabeth—“never did. Why was that?”

“My mother was dead,” Mary said shortly. “I had no place else to go on school holidays. I had to stay with Father—at Georgetown at Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter, and here summers.”

Alex frowned, pushing her memory. “Did you have a white room? All white?”

Mary nodded.

“But
you
never came there?” she asked Elizabeth.

“My mother was divorced from Father, she was alive, she still is. I lived with her. He had custody of me summers, so every summer I had to come to Lincoln. The rest of the time I lived with my mother in Boston,” she said emotionlessly.

“Oh!” Alex breathed out deeply, as if these bits of knowledge appeased some hunger. Her voice reached out to them, heated, urgent. “My mother—Amelia—you knew her, didn’t you? Yes. Well, she remarried, a sweet guy but they never had children of their own. I think Charlie was … well, I know she would have liked to so I guess he couldn’t. I mean, it couldn’t have been her. Could it. I mean, she’d had me.”

“Oh, right,” Elizabeth said in a mocking voice. “I mean, right on, I mean.”

It went right past Alex. “And I used to wish, oh, I wanted sisters so badly, I thought about you two all the time. I’d think about where you were and what you were doing, I’d beg my mother to invite you to visit us. But she’d always have some excuse: you were grown up and far away, you had children of your own to take care of”—she addressed Mary—“or you were living in France or Switzerland.” She turned to Elizabeth. “You had some important government job and couldn’t leave.” She paused. “I used to wonder how she knew about you but somehow I never got to ask questions about you beyond that. She’d always hug me or try to distract me. I came to recognize this tactic,” Alex laughed.

The others gazed at her.

“Fuck sisters,” Elizabeth said. “Consider yourself lucky. You had a mother who hugged you.”

“Consider yourself lucky you had a mother,” Mary said coldly.

Alex lay in bed, the drapes and curtains pulled open, looking out at stars. I finally find them, am finally in the same house with them and I might just as well be in Newark, Delaware. Her eyes filled. Would it have been different if I’d found them years ago, if they’d visited me, if I were allowed to visit them? Why weren’t we? Of course, they’re so much older, and with different mothers. … Oh, why do I care so much about them when they don’t care about me at all?

Oh they didn’t want to talk or maybe they didn’t want to talk to me it’s just like Mom, why won’t anyone tell me when there’s so much I want to know, need to know, why do I need to? but I do, I do, I want to know everything about them, him, their lives. My family. They are my family, aren’t they? Alex put her hand over her heart, which seemed to hurt, and rubbed it gently. I wonder if it’s really in your heart that you feel things. There are people in the world who think feelings reside in their stomachs or their livers. Do we feel things in our hearts just because we’ve been told that’s where we feel? Who was it told me that if a chimpanzee suffers a terrible loss, like its mother dies or something, when it dies and they cut it open, they find lesions on its heart? Could that be true?

Pain suffused her body, and she turned on her side.

Back here again. Haven’t slept in this house since I was nine. Twenty-seven years ago. Glorious then, the trees a mist of green, the gardens glowing, the house so luxurious, so much room. The Georgetown house was more crowded. I think. The Baltimore house sure was, she smiled. This house looks different now, like grade school if you go back after you’re grown up, corridor walls crowd in on you, things that looked huge then look dwindled, little. Am I remembering wrong? Idealizing? Elizabeth was so tall and she knew everything, sometimes she read to me or pretended to play tennis with me. A few times the three of us went for walks, Mary was so fun, teasing, playing tag, she taught me to swim. Mommy would have lemonade and cookies served on the screened porch every afternoon for all of us. Sometimes Daddy would come too and sit with us, hold me on his lap, stroke my hair. I remember that! He did do that! And he bought me a puppy, called it Charlie Chaplin, then everything seemed to stop all of a sudden. We went to live with Grandma and Grandpa. I remember Momma’s lips tight, Grandma and Grandpa so pale, hardly speaking. Everyone treating me as if I was sick. Then later Momma married Charlie … we went on living in the little rowhouse in Baltimore.

Yes, fits I had. Some kind of fits. Maybe I was sick. Maybe that’s why Momma won’t tell me. Maybe I have some congenital incurable disease that won’t show up for another year or two. Some horrible degenerative thing that will wither my limbs, make my hair fall out, something that runs in Father’s family that he didn’t tell her and that was why. … Oh that’s crazy. The others are healthy enough and they’re not young. Elizabeth is in her fifties.

Eighteen years since I last saw Father. Suppose he never speaks again or hears or is conscious again I’ll never be able to tell him … he’ll never tell me … I’ll never find out. Did he hate me? Why did he abandon me? He didn’t abandon them. Mom could tell me, why won’t she? Why is there this empty place in my memory? Maybe there’s nothing to tell. That would be worst of all. Nothing happened at all. Just a couple splitting up. But Momma’s so sweet, why would anyone want to leave her? He was a run-around, I guess, but he never married again after Momma. But it was Noradia, the housekeeper, he was sleeping with her, that’s what all the business was about with Ronnie. She must be his child, look at her eyes, her mouth. But Noradia can’t have been responsible for their splitting, was she even here then?