Saturday's Child (26 page)

Forget it, I ordered myself. What will matter in your life is what
you
make of it, not your ancestors' influences.
There is nothing you cannot be
. Then I would remember who had taught me that. And I would reenter the obsession—the state of mystery, terror, longing, nausea, the place I now felt truly at home.

I glanced at my watch. The delicate gold face—Faith's gift for my eighteenth birthday—announced we were only twenty minutes away from New Brunswick. This was happening. I was approaching the Gates of Mycenae. I brushed a piece of lint from the jade-green wool suit in which I'd carefully costumed myself, and readjusted the collar of the white blouse. Stocking seams straight; I could feel them. Black high-heel pumps, new, still unscuffed, still uncomfortable. Black gloves in lap, along with matching black purse and neatly folded camel-hair coat. The well-dressed young woman, prepared for anything.

I had lied to Faith, of course; the genes showed themselves more than physically. I'd told her I was attending an all-day seminar up at Columbia, suggested by Ken Pitchford, on how to get published. He would have winced at the idea, but I knew she'd find that subject more appealing than a seminar on villanelles and sestinas. Besides, Kenneth was, after a year of casual friendship, now ensconced in her mind as my literary guru (as he was in my mind, but for different reasons). In order to make the appointment, I had lied to the wife-receptionist—although, I told myself,
that
lie
fell more into the category of hint than outright falsehood. But its being a hint depended on how accurate Faith's stories were about my father. Lies teetering on a foundation of truth, or the reverse? At this moment, everyone concerned had been lied to. Only Robin Morgan, riding on a bus in New Jersey, knew whom she was going to meet.

Think tactically, I had directed myself. Plan it. Stage it. Costume it. That's the only way you can get through it. He was a classics scholar, Faith had said, and he loved Greek drama in particular. He'd refuse to see you, Faith had said; he wants no part of you. Calculate. How can you make an appointment but be assured you get to see him? Certainly
not
warn him it will be Surprise Daddy. Faith just might have been telling the truth. But
can
you surprise him totally? The man was a concentration-camp survivor, a refugee. How merciless can you get? What if he has an on-the-spot stroke from your little bombshell? What if you murder your own father out of curiosity?

No. Better to stage it.
Do what you know how to do
. But give him at least a hint, a half-lie yet a clue—the same way you've lived with half-lies and clues all your life. Something with wit, with style. If he's as smart as you hope he is, as educated as you've been told he is, as obsessed with his daughter as you've dreamt he is—then he'll figure it out. He'll know and be prepared for the young woman who walks through his office door.

So I had made the second call. And again got Viga. This time I wore a French accent—but a light one, to safely confuse things. I wished to make an ob/gyn appointment. I hadn't expected to be asked who referred me to Dr. Morgenstern. It threw me. But years of live TV performances, where you improvised if something went wrong, came to my rescue.

I tossed out a made-up-on-the-spot name: an old friend who lived in New Jersey had praised Dr. Morgenstern's skills. Since I had only recently moved to New York from California and had no ob/gyn of my own, why no it wasn't too far to travel an hour or so to find a really good doctor.

But, ventured Viga, the name of the referrer was not familiar as one of the Doctor's patients.

“Ah, yes.” I backed-and-filled rapidly. “My friend married a while ago and I never
can
remember his name. I know her by her maiden name. Doubtless she's registered with you by her husband's name, you see.”

Viga saw. Viga, faithful to her role as a walk-on character unwittingly furthering the plot, helpfully made an appointment for me.

In the name of Atreus.

“First name or initial, please?”

“E.”

If he knew his classics, then. If he remembered. If the House of Atreus put him on alert. If the name
E. Atreus
snapped into place as the final piece of the puzzle; if the magic words opened a passage through the great gates; if Sophocles and Euripides were still read by him for pleasure; if he were brilliant or merely cared, if he were vigilant or merely wary,
if
.

Then he would
not
be surprised. Then he would be well warned that no one in the world but his daughter would be appearing in time to keep the appointment of Electra Atreus.

And if not? If he were stupid or unsubtle, uneducated or forgetful, complacent, dense? If he hadn't ever cared at all?

In that case
—some Sophoclean chorus intoned inside my proscenium brain, an ancient menace of revenge hissing its sibilant cunning—
in that case, let him be surprised
.

I was suddenly sleepy. It was absurd to be sleepy now, when we were entering the outskirts of this quiet suburban town—neat snow-patched lawns, skeletal trees that would be lush in summer, tidy white houses, window boxes sporting miniature evergreens, and here and there a few Christmas lights and porch decorations not yet dismantled in early January. But I was sleepy. It was as if the years of lying awake were now taking their toll. Years rebuilding his face from one faded photograph, tracking him down—his daughter the post-war Gestapo. Years of Electra living under Clytemnestra's ruthlessly loving hand, hunching at the palace gate on guard for the encounter that would set in motion a final avenging of her father's honor—the meeting that might tell me who I was.

I live life far too dramatically
, I thought absently,
but it's because that's all I know. Which makes me weird. But that's not the whole of it
, I had to admit to myself.
It's also true that the great dramatists depicted the deepest reality of how life really
is
lived, even if that intensity is unspoken or denied. Which is why their work can still move us 2,500 years later
. Still, I felt a newfound sympathy for all the people who chose
not
to risk realizing that. All I
wanted was to pass the stop, let it slide past the window, and stay on the bus so its motion could rock me to insensibility. Stay on the bus and get off someplace else, become someone else.

“This isn't me,” I whispered to the gold watch face. “I don't want to live this. It's all the fault of a bad script.” But the bus stopped. There was no way out but to rise, listing slightly on the new heels, and straighten my spine as if I were about to make an entrance.

And so you are
, I added silently.
You will get down this aisle
—
and off this bus
—
good. Now you will look around for a taxi. There's one, that's it. Now you will give the address. There
.

This was really happening. The taxi reached its destination with distressing speed. Two blocks to the right, three to the left, and the houses became larger, the front lawns broader, the juniper bushes luxuriant even in winter. There was no mistaking
the
house. I sensed it ahead just as the taxi began slowing down. The corner house. There, in polished brass swinging from two posts on the lawn, his shingle. The Doctor's House.

Not the Gates of Mycenae, but formidable. The Doctor's House differentiated itself from the uniform white of neighboring homes on the block. This one was painted a soft gray; the sunporch at the back was half visible from the side, glass-enclosed for year-round use. A back-lit stained-glass panel—imported, from the looks of its quality, possibly an antique—had been mounted in the front door: jewel tones of garnet inlaid on sapphire. The block, the neighborhood, the town itself might be suburbia, but the Doctor's House was still trying for Old World.

I tried to focus and fix the moment as I paid the cab driver. Twitches of emotion—excitement, terror, elation, urgency—were now so rapid in their quicksilver shifts that I could barely separate them one from another. But there was no time for self-examination. I didn't dare linger on the sidewalk; I was still afraid of telegraphing my identity before I got to him, and it wouldn't do to appear suspicious. The twitches jerked their puppet up the front walk.

The doorbell didn't buzz like most American doorbells; it chimed, echoing from somewhere inside the bowels of the house. A respectable wait. No answer. I pressed the bell again, watching my own gloved hand begin to tremble slightly. Get control, I scolded myself, what is this—stage fright, like a baby? Had I—or Viga—got the date or time wrong? Had all
those damned fake accents confused the facts? Had Mates read the Atreus clue
too
clearly, and left the house rather than face his Electra? Or was he at that moment hiding inside, refusing to grant her admittance?

The door swung open. A plump, dark-haired woman in her early fifties stood there, offering a tentative smile.

“Ya?”

“I have an appointment with Dr. Morgenstern?” It came out as an appeal. Correct the tone. Needs more authority. And don't forget the French flavor.

“Ah. You are Mrs. Ahtraiyeoos?”

“Miss Atreus, yes.”
Stupid
, Robin. Let her think you're married. And why repronounce the name more accurately? Maybe nobody got the clue just because of Viga's mispronunciation. Because this, decidedly, was Viga. The Other Woman. No mistaking the voice or, for that matter, the type.

Mates Morgenstern was in one thing, then, consistent. He had a weakness for a distinct type: The Doctor's Woman. Short, zaftig, with dark hair and large eyes. Viga and Faith could have been sisters. But I couldn't avoid noticing the milder quality of this woman, an almost deliberately projected pliancy—or was that perhaps required to conceal the strength of the woman who had won? The vibrant, sometimes offensive, sometimes electrifying energy my mother radiated was lacking here. Where Faith would confront and defy, Viga would manipulate and appease. Where Faith might be compelled to appease, Viga would concede. And where Faith would—hard to imagine—concede (which she would do only with privately articulated vows of vengeance), Viga would surrender tractably. She was a more unsavory, because more pretentiously genteel, version of my mother. Even her physical features, I thought with some satisfaction, were coarser: the eyes not so lustrous, the hair not so fine. The complexion was ruddy, unlike Faith's alabaster skin. The voice was a shade too high-pitched, too cheerful in its hausfrau poise. Following the jelloid hip motion of Viga down the Persian-carpeted foyer, I was startled to find in myself such unforeseen loyalty to Faith. Nevertheless, I couldn't help thinking that Mates Morgenstern had settled for a Roman copy of the Greek original.

Viga ushered me into the waiting room. It was Modern American Doctor,
an abrupt departure from what little I had been permitted to glimpse of the rest of the house. This room might have been moved intact to any professional building of doctors' and dentists' offices: pastel yellow walls, the wifenursereceptionist's desk toward which Viga homed like a contented pigeon, a leather sofa. The coffee table displayed copies of
Time, Ladies' Home Journal
, and
McCall's
, plus two stacks of pamphlets: “How to Raise a Healthy Baby: What Every Mother Should Know” (in a pink cover), and “Fathers Can Help, Too” (in a blue one). A spray arrangement of pink silk carnations stood stiffly on Viga's grey metal desk, where that pudgy dovelet now sat, offering me a clipboard and pencil with her ladylike menial air.

“You will please to fill out the information form, Mrs., uh—”

“Yes. Thank you.”

I glanced at the form and swallowed a bubble of panic. Mother's name. Father's name. Date of birth. Medical history. But the Greek chorus remained steadfast inside my brain, swaying in rhythm to its chant.

It's a standard form. Make up any answers you like. He'll have his answers soon enough. What matters is how close you are now, all but inside the door, that door, there, which must lead to his office. You're inside the gates. Now get inside that door
.

I scribbled my answers rapidly and handed the board back. Viga disappeared with a courtier-like scuttle through the door to the inner sanctum. Every second of waiting for her return seemed interminable. Finally the door opened and she emerged. I stood up.

“He will see you soon, Miss Iytreeoos. The Doctor.”

Viga pronounced his title with such veneration one could hear the undertones: Herr Doktor. Poor Viga. Had she, like her predecessor Faith, once dreamed of a different life? Had the handsome doctor swept her off her feet, too, promising romance and a vicarious career as the soulmate of an altruistic physician and chatelaine of his manor—only to set her down here, in however fancy a house on a suburban New Jersey street, doubling as his receptionist? Surely this demure creature had never envisioned herself a second wife, co-conspirator for years in the Gothic-novel plot of her husband's skeleton-child rattling in the closet of his past.

But Viga seemed the essence of gemütlichkeit, puttering contentedly at her desk among his papers. I tried to picture them in bed together, my
father and this placid woman, an exercise complicated by my ignorance of what he looked like. It wasn't possible to imagine anybody making love to Viga without sinking into her ductility like a dazed child into a featherbed. Whereas Faith—whom I had never seen in an erotic situation with anyone beyond the flirtations conducted with brokers, agents, and headwaiters—Faith was as clearly, and with as little evidence, capable of grand passion: ever-hyperbolic Faith.

“Please to be patient,” Viga simpered. With an effort, I slowed my pacing. Viga pantomimed formally toward the couch—she tended to make gestures out of a badly directed Schnitzler play—but I declined and continued to stroll around the room. The windows looked out onto a carefully landscaped lawn punctuated by yew shrubs. The pictures on the walls were stock prints of landscapes, not worth a second glance.