The War of the Roses: The Children (3 page)

Victoria was often critical of her mother's vocal outbursts on the subject of the male gender. Their clashes were heated, angry, and often abrasive, but they never reached the point of total separation. Their relationship, Victoria had concluded, had been forged on the pitted anvil of single parenting and the resultant condition of fierce and often obsessive mutual need. Who else was there to turn to in crisis and trauma? Who else could listen with such profound concern?

“Of course he's telling the truth. A mother knows.”

“Who can argue with that?”

“You seem to be questioning it, Mother.”

“He's still a
he
, Victoria.”

“Not that old drumbeat, Mom. Not now, please. This is about your grandson.”

“Was Josh with you?”

“No. He was working.”

“Never there when you need them, are they?”

“Mother, please. Not today.”

Victoria's mother had been a nurse and moved with her daughter to numerous cities working for various hospitals, always leaving because of some altercation with the hospital administrator or a doctor who had somehow treated her unfairly. The result was that Victoria had never known any permanence at all, chasing around the country from apartment to apartment and school to school.

When Victoria was two, her father had left their house. Her mother insisted it was desertion, which seemed logical since he had literally disappeared. Eventually, she was granted a divorce on those grounds. In further protest, she had taken back her maiden name, Stewart, and had applied it to Victoria as well.

Aside from removing her husband's name, she had taken steps to eliminate any lingering reminder of his presence. There were no photographs of him, no possessions, no memorabilia, except her own words and gestures of derision and contempt.

As Victoria grew older and more knowledgeable about sexual relationships between men and women, her mother embellished the story with additional revelations. Apparently Victoria's mother had caught her husband
in flagrante delicto
with a neighbor, the big bang of betrayal that had triggered in her a blind antagonism for the male sex. In her mother's view, all men were satyrs, adulterers, predators and marauders, disloyal liars and incorrigible villains.

At some point, her mother had also turned the idea of fathering into a biology lesson. The male has a single function in the chain of life, she had preached. Take the elephant, her prime example. He performs his function then is banished from the herd. We females take care of our own. This explained why she had more stuffed elephants than other children, more elephant books, more Dumbo stories.

From overhearing telephone conversations as a child, Victoria had learned that her father had run away from Belfast as a teenager, escaping some sort of trouble, the implication being, as she learned later, that he was never loyal to anyone, not even his birthright.

While in her teens, her aroused curiosity motivated her to surreptitiously apply to the King County Bureau of records, where she learned that her father's name was Thomas Edward Holmes. In an effort to discover even more about him, she would rummage through her mother's drawers looking for clues. For some reason, Mrs. Stewart had kept her marriage license or had forgotten to destroy it. Victoria found it hidden away in a bottom drawer. Her father had signed his name merely as T.E. Holmes.

Victoria's remarkable memory for numbers caught the discrepancy immediately. She had the date of her birth and her mother's marriage date, which was merely four months before. This meant her mother was five months pregnant when they had married. As the years passed, the fact grew in importance, offering yet another clue to her mother's obsessive anger.

She had also absorbed the notion that somehow she was at least partially to blame for her father's desertion, as if her conception and arrival had raised the stakes of responsibility that he had not the character to tolerate.

Yet who could fault a working mother who had struggled and sacrificed to raise a fatherless daughter? It was bad enough to have an absent father. Her mother had escalated the condition to a disease of gender. It was the foundation of her martyrdom.

When Victoria was twenty and an undergraduate senior at NYU, she received a postcard from a man identifying himself as her father.
I am Thomas Edward Holmes, your natural father
, the postcard began. It was sent through the college administration office.

He wrote that he was terminally ill and wanted to see her, giving an address in Boston. Without telling her mother, who would have exploded in anger and forbidden her to do so, she went up to visit him. It was the address of a boarding house in a seedy part of South Boston. The landlord told her that he had been taken to Boston Holy Mercy hospital. She found him in a ward smelling of decay and filled with sick and indigent men in various states of disintegration.

“You came,” he croaked, his first words when he saw her. “I took a chance. It wasn't easy finding you.”

His eyes were sunken and glazed, although she imagined they had lit up slightly when he saw her. Studying his wasted and gaunt face, she was startled to see the familiar shape of her own mouth and the equally familiar almond contours of her eyes. The obvious genetic kinship shocked her. There's him in me, she realized, noting, for the first time in her life, that her mother's demonization of her father had carried with it a curse upon her.

“You said you wanted to see me,” Victoria told him, pulling a chair beside the bed. It was obvious that the end was near.

“Victoria. It was me that named you for Gramma Holmes, my father's mother. Loved the royals, she did. We were Orangemen, you see.” Victoria caught the faintest hint of memory, the old brogue speech rhythms. She hadn't heard his voice since she was two years old.

“Drove me away, your mother did. You were the light of my life.” He swallowed hard and grimaced in pain. “Look at you. So beautiful.” He coughed weakly and stared at her for a long time without speaking.

“She said you deserted us,” Victoria said, feeling a compulsion to further plumb the truth of her mother's rage.

“She gave me no choice. Swept me away like yesterday's rubbish,” he shrugged. “I did love her once. Too much, perhaps.”

“Did you really?” Victoria asked, perhaps seizing the opportunity to hurt him. “I saw your marriage license. I was a bit of an early bird.”

“She never loved me, you see. Never wanted to marry. But there was no choice for her in those days.”

Hearing this sad, wasted man talk of love appalled her. She didn't believe a word of it, but she couldn't bring herself to dispute him.

“She became a hard, bitter woman. I was no match for her.”

She wanted to nod agreement, but desisted. Too much had intervened to make him an ally now.

“She said you broke the marriage bond.”

“Some people can make hell happen on this earth. Couldn't be worse on the other side.” With difficulty, he sucked in a deep breath and expelled it. “It was from her I ran, daughter. Not from you.”

Unsaid rebuttals crowded into her mind. But you could have stayed close. You could have visited me. You could have made yourself available. Hugged me. Comforted me. You ran from that as well. You made us struggle and suffer. You could have provided a presence, been a dad. Why didn't you challenge her total possession of me? Defend yourself?

Such questions had long been planted in her mind, like tendrils and shoots growing at random, twisting and turning in the fertile soil, nourished by fatherly deprivation and motherly rage and denial.

Instead she rebuked him silently: I am your daughter. You are my long-absent father. How dare you summon me out of the blue to give you solace on your deathbed. Where were you when I cried out for your touch in the night? No, I will not forgive you. Never.

He seemed to be studying her face, perhaps reading her thoughts.

“I'm sorry, daughter. Truly sorry.”

He began to cough and turned his head away. She waited until he recovered from his coughing fit. Taking a tissue from a box beside the bed, he blew his nose and wiped his eyes.

“Looks like your mom did a damned fine job without me,” he said when he had recovered, forcing a thin smile.

“She tried….” Victoria had struggled to emit the word that hung unsaid in the air. Amazingly, it came out right. “Dad.”

“Dad,” he repeated, his sound a wispy gargle. Tears again streamed down his whiskered and wasted cheeks. Finally, he was able to speak again.

“I had a lousy life, Victoria. No good came of me. But you were never out of my thoughts. From the looks of you, I did what was best. You were a good girl to come see your old dad.” He paused again and studied her. “Your mother know you've come?”

She shook her head. It was a secret to be kept forever. Her mother would never have forgiven her for consorting with the enemy, and she couldn't bear the thought of that maternal bond broken. However weird, it was the only parental bond she had, and she clung to it tenaciously.

She saw her father's Adam's apple rise and fall as he struggled to speak again. Then he looked at her, squinting, searching her face, reading her mind.

“You're right, Victoria. I don't deserve it.”

It was a moment, she would remember later, when even the most oblique mutter of forgiveness, however insincere, was called for. Yet, despite the ease with which it could have been given, she could not bring herself to offer it. She had come hoping this visit might represent some kind of closure. It didn't. This last painful snapshot of her father rose periodically in her mind, especially when she interacted with her mother.

Like now.

“I'm hanging up, Mother,” Victoria sighed. “I'm getting too old for elephant stories.”

“You can't deny the natural order.”

“I'm not an elephant, Mother.”

There was the long expected pause.

“Keep me posted, Victoria. I hope everything works out the way you want it to. But remember….”

“Please, Mother.”

“You can't outwit destiny.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Never mind. No matter what, I love you.”

“Sure you do.”

Victoria flipped the cell phone shut, furious that she had reached out for succor in what was, as always, the wrong direction.

Once again, she tried Josh's cell number. Once again it failed to connect. This time she called his office directly.

“We are terribly sorry, but all lines are busy,” a voice said. “But stay on the line. Your call means a great deal to us.”

“Fuck you,” she cried, breaking the connection as she arrived at the ballet school.

“Sorry, Victoria,” Josh had told her when she mentioned her earlier call. “I keep forgetting to charge the damned thing.”

It was after eleven when he had gotten home, drained to near exhaustion from the day's events and the additional burden of heavy-duty guilt.

“Chill out first, Josh,” she said, inspecting his face and frowning. “We've got a bit of a problem.”

His pulse thumped in his throat, his anxiety level rising. Had she discovered his transgression?

“Sounds ominous.”

“The case of the purloined candy has escalated,” she sighed.

“That again?” His relief was palpable. It was an issue of importance, but not the potential train wreck that never left his thoughts.

“I'm afraid so.”

“You could have hit my office voice mail.”

“I was in no mood,” she said. “Besides, I decided to cool off. I was only venting. I called my mother instead.” She shook her head. “Bad idea.”

“I'm sorry, darling,” he said, deliberately avoiding proximity for fear that her nose would pick up the moist sexual scent of his afternoon. “Humungous day. Big pressure. Pour me a scotch, and we'll sort it out after I wash away the dust of battle.” He rushed off to the shower.

It wasn't only the guilt of his affair with Angela Bocci that was nagging at him. His sister Eve's latest boyfriend had left the comfort of her ample flesh and she was about to sell yet another among the last few remaining pieces of their parent's antiques, her only recourse for financial survival.

It had turned out to be a bitter irony. Her parents had fought over their possessions in a furious contest with many valuable antiques destroyed in the combat. As children, they had been indoctrinated into believing that the pursuit and acquisition of material things was a paramount necessity and a sure sign of success. The memory of their parents' futile battle over possessions had finally disabused them of such ideas.

Eve had insisted he meet her in the coffee shop across the street from his office where their most recent conferences were usually held.

There she was sitting at a table in the rear, four jelly doughnuts on a plate in front of her, one half eaten, drinking a mug of coffee. He looked at the doughnuts and shook his head.

“Don't say it, Evie,” Josh said.

“We'll leave it unsaid then, Josh love. If he had meant harm, God wouldn't have given us taste buds and all those other pleasures of the senses. Why can't people understand?”

She was at least a hundred pounds overweight and counting, a mass of soft, breathing flesh. Numerous shrinks had theorized that ingesting food was her way of preserving their mother's love. Food and its preparation had been their mother's passion, which provided the logic for every shrink's diagnosis. Evie had completely agreed with their findings, embellishing it further.

“Food does trigger fond memories, and yes, food is pleasure. Food is love. Mom knew.”

Their parents' trauma had left her impaired in this way, although Evie saw it differently. Even their maternal grandparents who had raised them were her allies in the idea, further indulging her, encouraging their dead daughter's passion in their granddaughter. The difference, of course, was that Barbara Rose, Evie and Josh's mother, loved the preparation of food more than the consumption of it.

“Food is her coping mechanism,” they argued. “Look how sweet and loving she has turned out.”

“And dangerously fat,” Josh had countered. But the health argument had little effect on Evie or their grandparents.

“She has a healthy soul and that's what counts,” they pointed out.

Who could argue? Although she was older than he by four years, Josh had taken over the caretaker role when their parents had died, and he loved her with protective zeal. His children loved her as well, despite Victoria's obvious disapproval. For the past couple of years, fearing Evie's influence, she had severely limited their exposure to her. To keep the peace, despite the strong emotional bond he had with his sister, Josh had acquiesced, but under protest.

“Why can't you be more tolerant?” Josh had begged her.

“Because it's her religion, Josh. Don't you see? She has given food mystical powers. Food protects. Food is godly. She is a living icon for food. Her view is beyond nutrition, beyond health, just more and more, all kinds, the more fat-laden the better. It is a seduction for the children. She proselytizes.”

And, indeed, she did.

“Has the obsession with thinness made the world a better place?” Evie would argue. “Are we less violent and hateful to each other because we have taken the fat content out of food? Has the denial of pleasure from food made humanity better or worse?”

No one was sweeter, more caring, more loving to others than Evie. Never once, in the years after their parents' “accident,” had Evie ever been known to utter a harsh and unkind word. She was like a big, beautiful, cherubic porcelain doll, with cerulean blue eyes and lovely blonde hair and a smile that reminded everyone of a bright and happy “Have a good day” face. To look at her made one feel cheerful.

But her capacity for loving had its dark side as well. Despite her girth, she attracted men and her sexual appetite was apparently on a par with her love of food. Men seemed to revel in her flesh and she in theirs, but the relationships were never lasting and never resulted in matrimony.

“Too much of a good thing,” seemed to be the common complaint when Josh had probed.

“Your sister is an angel,” one of her boyfriends once told him. “But after awhile you feel trapped in a fleshpot of goodness and pleasure. Living with her is like being in heaven. Constant paradise can get pretty boring.”

Despite these endings, Evie accepted them with good humor, generously offering those of her ex-lovers who were economically disadvantaged a golden parachute, which had considerably reduced her own financial situation.

Unfortunately, Evie had never developed any marketable skills. Knowing this, Josh had turned over almost his entire inheritance to her. Ironically, their parents' remaining antique collection had grown in value, and even the home in Washington, which they had willfully destroyed, had been more than adequately insured. But generosity and profligacy had seriously depleted what was once a comfortable nest egg. Evie's future was now a worrisome concern.

There were remnants of this nest egg in her rent-controlled Westside apartment, some excellent pieces of antique furniture, a collection of their mother's prized copper pots as well as her extensive library of recipes, most of which Evie had replicated, devoured, and prepared for countless others.

Victoria and Josh's earlier visits to Evie's home had always included rich gourmet delicacies in the form of cassolettes, pâtés, galantines, and helpings of exotic breads, fine expensive wines, and mega-caloried desserts. Evie was particularly proud that she had preserved their mother's old apron, on which was emblazoned the word “Hausfrau.”

Since she was rarely without a live-in lover, the children had been introduced to a long series of “uncles,” which eventually spawned confusion and questions requiring oblique answers. Josh, loving his sister as he did, was far more tolerant of this lifestyle, relieved that Evie had someone to share her life, fill her considerable needs, and assuage her loneliness.

Eventually, the children developed a healthy curiosity about Evie's many male friends, and Victoria and Josh's explanations became increasingly less believable. How many interchangeable uncles could there be? Besides, Victoria had also come down with a galloping case of digestive rebellion and had begun to lobby for fewer family exchanges.

While not happy about the growing estrangement, both Josh and Evie understood Victoria's attitude and did not make it an issue between them. This did not mean that there wasn't occasional tension between Josh and Victoria on the subject of Evie, but it never reached a level of confrontation that could not be resolved by either talk or deliberate avoidance.

Josh had never ceased to marvel about how differently their parents' terminal behavior had affected Evie and himself.

Although he had learned a great deal about food and its preparation from his mother, he took no obsessive pleasure in its ingestion. That, too, he could trace to the traumatic effects of the terrible war between his parents. Although he had not been present, he had heard about the pâté that his mother had made out of the hapless Benny, his father's adored pooch. Although Josh had long forgiven her this particular excess, it had left its scars. Pets, in every form, were barred from his household, and eating for him was more a ritual of survival than an exercise in sensual pleasure.

For Evie, the reaction to this seminal event in their lives had been completely counter to his own. Aside from her passion for food, Evie shared her apartment with a Siamese cat named Tweedledee, sparing no expense to keep her well groomed, and, like her mistress, overnourished.

With deep regret, Josh had seen many of their parents' antiques fall to the auction hammer. Items such as the carved nineteenth century armoire, the rent table, the leather Chesterfield, the Hepplewhite secretaire, the jappaned commode, and the elaborate crystal glassware were disposed of one by one to keep Evie financially afloat.

Miraculously, the much worn Sarouk blue-and-red Persian rug had escaped the auction block, although, owing to its condition, its present value was suspect.

She had also managed to hold on to the high Chippendale bed, which had for years taken her weight with or without lovers, although Josh knew that the day would soon come when even that would go. Indeed, he half expected that that would be one of the pressing subjects of her urgent visit to the coffee shop and he was right.

“Not the bed,” Josh had exclaimed. “Oh, Evie. That too?”

“It's no tragedy, Josh. I had the use of it for nearly twenty years.” She laughed, her chins vibrating. “Very good use.”

“You really don't need my approval, Evie. It's yours.”

“Not really, Josh,” she said pleasantly offering him a jelly doughnut. He shook his head. Shrugging, she took one of them in her pudgy fingers, lifted it, and took a dainty but generous bite. “It's part of our heritage.”

“All of it was part of our heritage, Evie.”

She was right, of course. But he saw it more as that other heritage of pain and loss. It was their bond and their agony. He could never erase the memory of Evie and him standing together, arms around each other in the morning rain, looking into that grave that was swallowing their yesterdays. Despite all their parents' flaws, they knew that they had been loved beyond judgment and reservation. To lose that, Josh had discovered, was the greatest loss of all.

“I just wanted to tell you so that you wouldn't be surprised when you found it gone, and to apologize,” she said. “I know how you disapproved of me selling all the other things.”

“That's not what I disapproved of, Evie. It was giving so much of the proceeds to your friends.”

“My boyfriends, you mean. But they gave me such pleasure. They deserved it.”

He suspected then that her latest, Alfred, had either left or given notice. He calculated that Alfred, a pleasant man who sold furniture at Bloomingdales, had been with her four years, sparing Josh the worry of her well-being.

“Alfred's gone, isn't he, Evie?”

“A lovely man.” She took another bite of the jelly doughnut and gracefully removed an errant crumb from her upper lip. “Yes, he's moved to Florida. Hates the weather here.”

“Why don't you join him there, Evie?”

“You know how heat affects me. I'm perfectly content where I am. I'll find another beau, Josh. No need to worry about your little Evie.”

“Easier said than done,” he sighed.

“Such a dear brother,” Evie said, caressing Josh's arm with a pudgy hand.

“I hope you get a good price for the bed,” Josh said, patting her hand. “But please, Evie, you must be more careful with your money. It doesn't last forever.”

“I wish I was as good a manager as Victoria,” she mused.

“A tall order, Evie. I don't know what I'd do without her.” Victoria handled every detail of their finances.

“I just wanted you to know about the Chippendale bed, Josh dear,” Evie said, polishing off the last of the doughnuts. He felt heartsick. Food might, by Evie's lights, be love, but it was also her assassin.

He got up and kissed her on both cheeks.

“Give my deepest love to Victoria and the children,” she said.

He turned away, barely able to contain his tears.

***

Although he knew Victoria awaited him with bottled-up emotion, she showed sensitivity and understanding about the pressure of his job. From the beginning, they had scrupulously analyzed their roles and apportioned their labors accordingly. Every move was carefully considered with a view, always, to preserve and enhance their relationship as a married couple, then as parents. They had committed themselves to the concept of a family, a family fortress, each member interdependent on the other.

Both had acted contrary to their expectations. Josh's fear of entanglement stemmed from the awfulness of his parents' demise. For his parents—for reasons he would never understand—terror had replaced tranquility and hate had replaced love. They had turned on each other like predators over carrion, causing a bizarre mutual death scene. The weapon had been, of all things, a crystal chandelier. He could never ever look at a crystal chandelier without a chilling reaction.

Until Victoria came into his life, Josh did not think it possible that he would ever overcome his reluctance to risk marriage. He and Victoria considered it a miraculous irony that both of them were blindsided by attraction strong enough to erase their unwillingness to find a mate.

Contrary to what was now politically correct, Victoria had given up her law practice when Michael was born. By then, Victoria had eschewed morally ambivalent negligence law as a career choice and was working for a large law firm on Wall Street. Because she was giving up a lucrative salary, her resignation was met with raised eyebrows. Nevertheless, with skill and good management, she had parlayed their net worth into a secure nest egg, and Josh's excellent earnings were more than enough to support a fine suburban lifestyle. One day, they had both agreed, when the heavy early load of child nurturing was over, Victoria would return to the practice of law.