Our Father Read online

  Our Father

  A Novel

  Marilyn French

  To my coven sisters

  E. M. Broner

  Carol Jenkins

  Gloria Steinem

  With love and gratitude

  Contents

  Part I: The Sisters

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  Part II: The Father

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  Part III: The Legacy

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  About the Author

  Part I

  The Sisters

  1

  “WOMEN CAN HURT YOU just as much as men!” Ronnie muttered fiercely from the shadowed window seat. The others sat around the tireless hearth in lamplight that glittered the golden threads in Mary’s blouse, a gold chain at Elizabeth’s neck, the gold of Alex’s hair. Gold: his gift to them.

  The phones had stopped ringing. Elizabeth took all the important calls. Wanted to be sure she was the one who spoke to the president, the secretary of state, the president of West Germany. She let Mary take the personal ones. They didn’t let Alex take any of them. That Elizabeth: mean mouth, skinny, the eldest. Acted like a big important person. Guess she is. Secretary of the treasury or something. But Mary is just as snotty. What’s her excuse. She’s good-looking but she’s getting fat. All she ever did was get married, I think. Married a lot of rich men. Legal prostitution. Alex is meek and mild compared to them. Ditzy little housewife. How did she get into this family? Hah! How did I?

  No one responded to her. Alex turned around to look at her, lingeringly, but turned back without speaking. Ronnie abruptly swiveled to face the window. Dark out. She could see only a swathe of lawn and the dark mass of trees that concealed the house from the road a third of a mile away. Bare limbs ghastly stretching into darkness: November. Thanks to the goddess for evergreens—no sounds, not even car lights penetrated them. Few cars traveled this back road anyway. Road looked as if it traversed just old forest but was really lined with mansions.

  Have to get out of here. Should leave, don’t belong here, they don’t want me here.

  The telephone rang. Mrs. Browning entered.

  “The governor,” she whispered to Elizabeth, who leapt up and left the room.

  What is the girl on about? Mary wondered. Was that outburst because of what I said about men? From the look of her, how would she know? God knows I have the right to comment on men: who’s had more experience with them? Besides, Father is a tyrant and a baby at the same time, it was stupid and childish of him to go on using salt when he knew he had high blood pressure. They are all little boys, they never grow up. All my husbands were boys with toys: Don and his hateful motorcycle, Paul and his plane, Harold and his Rolls, Alberto—well, he played with women. And I got stuck with all the kids.

  Strange girl, her face a fist, flushed, dim in her dark corner, tacky jeans and sweatshirt, sneakers and heavy socks, feet up on the window seat, looks like a dyke for godsake, does she know how she looks? Does she care?

  Funny Elizabeth hasn’t closed the drapes, she always does, shutting out the darkness, nothing else, nothing out there but trees. Never was. House in a void, emptiness, emptiness …

  Stop.

  Good heavens, those drapes look tacky and faded. When was I here last? Summer party, his eightieth birthday. Two years ago. Things weren’t seedy then, that I noticed anyway. Window seat cushion is tatty, needs recovering, brocade faded, frayed cording. Father has let things slip. But did he ever pay attention to such things? I wonder who did. Housekeeper maybe. No one here but that woman … perhaps she didn’t comprehend keeping up appearances but he should have. Surely some of his friends visited. Unless he outlived them all. Eighty-two: not so old, men like him live into their nineties, a hundred. They are so well taken care of all their lives long. They never take risks. Don.

  Elizabeth returned, a self-satisfied smile on her face.

  “The governor is deeply worried.”

  She sat down, giving Ronnie a sharp glance. She had already noted and filed away the fact that the girl was mad in some way uncategorizable at the moment but still noticeably insane. Probably we are too. But at least we put up a front. Maybe Alex is sane, middle-class housewife type, never thinks further than the next bridge party. Only way to stay sane, ride the current, let yourself be borne along. Still, you read about all those housewives on tranqs. But Alex is stupid, best protection against madness. Of course, Mary’s stupid too. Only brilliant when it comes to advancing herself through men. All driven mad, no help for it. Our Father. Father, oh Daddy Daddy. Our father which art not yet and perhaps never will be in heaven. But who knows, if the one up there made up the rules we follow down here, he may approve of him. In His will is our peace.

  I wonder if his will is in his desk.

  What do you suppose Ronnie meant by that? Alex wondered, her eyes flitting from object to object in the room, strange room, yet I must have been in it many times before. Barely remember. My curse, no memory. Of course it’s probably been redecorated since then. A few glimmering images from long ago—I remember that Georgian side table, I think. Was she criticizing Mary for criticizing Father? But Mary was really expressing rage about some other man, I think. She’s been married more than once, I think. Sad, divorce. That’s probably what Ronnie is saying too, she’s upset with some woman, some woman hurt her, her mother dying maybe, maybe us, sitting here so coolly when Father may be dying. But we’re sitting in the quiet of shock, it seems to me. Not uncaring. Are we? Especially me, summoned to the perhaps deathbed of my father when I never knew him living, can barely remember except for that day I came up here with Stevie, so terrible, but maybe it was because I never came to see him all those years, never even sent him a card or anything. But he never called me either. Ever.

  But there were different times, weren’t there? Don’t I remember him crowing out with a great grin, Where’s my little Alexandra, where’s my girl? Hugs, whiskered cheeks, smell of tobacco, lap, I’m sitting on Daddy’s lap. Didn’t that happen?

  Summoned by Ronnie, the sisters had arrived almost together Friday evening around six, Mary on the five o’clock shuttle from New York, Elizabeth on the four o’clock plane from Washington, Alex from Wilmington half an hour later. The car was waiting at Logan to drive them out to Lincoln—crawl really—through rush-hour Boston traffic. Ronnie met them at the front door.

  “Why is she here?” Mary whispered to Elizabeth in the upstairs hall. “Why was she here when it happened? Has she been living here?”

  Elizabeth shrugged ignorance.

  “Do you think she expects something? Do you think he might have said something?”

  “No,” Elizabeth said sharply.

  “She definitely must expect something,” Mary persisted, “or she wouldn’t be hanging around.”

  Alex, overhearing, interrupted. “Is it Ronnie you mean? Why shouldn’t she be here? Doesn’t she live here? Isn’t her mother the housekeeper?” The others looked at her scornfully and turned away without answering. Alex watched them retreating from her and slumped.

  Two unfamiliar women served them dinner. The sisters spoke only desultorily over the meal: Elizabeth and Mary, the two elders, set the tone and they would never discuss serious matters with servants walking in and out. But now they were gathered in the drawing room, alone.

  Elizabeth wa
s speaking, saying her name sharply: “Ronnie?” Slowly, she turned her face back to them.

  “When exactly,” she asked again, “did it happen? How is it you were here?”

  “I’ve been living here for the past four months. My mother was sick.” Ronnie turned her face away from them again.

  “Isn’t your mother Noradia, the housekeeper?” Mary asked. “Where is she?”

  “She died,” Ronnie told the window.

  “Oh!” A collective breath or just Alex? Then silence. Alex turned in her chair, her face warm in the lamplight. “I’m so sorry, Ronnie. We didn’t, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

  “I wondered where she was,” Mary defended herself.

  Alex stood and walked toward the window seat, perched on its edge beside Ronnie and put her hand on Ronnie’s arm. “You must be devastated,” she said warmly. “First your mother, then—this.” Ronnie sat rigid, staring into Alex’s face, which gleamed into hers.

  “What did she die of?” Alex asked solicitously.

  Elizabeth’s deep voice overrode Alex’s light one: “When did she die?”

  “What’s today?”

  “Friday,” said Elizabeth.

  Ronnie thought. “Tuesday.” The word emerged strangled. “She died on Tuesday,” she repeated.

  “What was it?” Alex repeated.

  “Cancer.”

  “Oh dear.” Alex patted Ronnie’s arm. Ronnie quietly moved her arm away, but Alex refused to take offense. “Had she been sick long?”

  “A while.”

  “Can you talk about it?”

  Ronnie’s voice was truculent, her words an attack. “She started to feel sick about six months ago I guess and had an exploratory at Mass. General in June. It was breast cancer but it had spread all through her body. She wanted to die at home. Here,” she amended bitterly. “We buried her yesterday.”

  “God!” Alex breathed. “She was so young!” She hesitated. “Wasn’t she?”

  How would you know anything about her? Ronnie thought, gazing at her with scorn. And why pretend you care? “She had a hard life. If any of you understands what that means,” she said flatly. “She was fifty-four.”

  “Fifty-four!” breathed Alex.

  “Here?” Mary asked in surprise. “You buried her here? In Lincoln?”

  “In Boston. Where my grandmother is buried.” Friendly company in the grave at least if not on earth. “Your father insisted I come back to Lincoln with him. He said it would be more convenient” (Mary and Elizabeth raised their heads at the word) “for me to come back and clean out her room. He wanted her things out of here.”

  Mary frowned. “Who are the servants now?”

  “Mrs. Browning—the older one with the gray hair—she cooks and runs the house. He hired her when Momma got sick. Teresa is the one with the thick body. She’s worked here for years, comes in days. You’ve seen her before.” Or would have if you ever noticed such trivial things as the help.

  “How kind of you to stay here and nurse your mother!” Alex gushed.

  Ronnie glared at her.

  “So what happened?” Elizabeth continued.

  “He said I should come back with him and pack up her things and he’d send the car back to Boston so I wouldn’t have to come all the way out here again and lug her things back on the bus.” Lug her things: a half-dozen shabby dresses, a few photographs, a broken comb.

  “He might have waited. Given you time to recover,” Mary said with sweet condescension.

  Ronnie shrugged. “What’s the difference? I didn’t want to come back to this house again.”

  “So Father had his stroke right after your mother died,” Elizabeth said thoughtfully.

  “Right after her funeral. The funeral was at eleven-thirty. We didn’t get back here until almost two. Heavy traffic. He was used to eating lunch at twelve-thirty and he’d gotten very rigid—more than I remember, anyway. He was hungry and irritable, he snapped at Mrs. Browning. He had a drink while she fixed his omelet, a bourbon and water. He was in a terrible mood.

  “I ate with him while I was here.”

  Mary looked meaningfully at Elizabeth. Ronnie noticed. “He ordered me to,” she announced angrily. “Not that he enjoyed my company. He hardly spoke to me. But he seemed to want company.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Please go on,” she said.

  “He ate like he was starving but he kept grumping, the soup was watery, the omelet was dry … I don’t know, mine wasn’t. Weren’t. But he gulped everything down, he gobbled four pieces of toast, then he turned to me to say something, sneer something about my mother, I don’t know what, and all of a sudden he jerked in his chair and yelled ‘My head!’ He grabbed his head and collapsed. I thought he was dead.”

  The emotionless recital held them transfixed, knowing the man.

  “And you …” Elizabeth continued to lead the interrogation.

  “I called 911. The ambulance took him to the hospital in Concord. I told them who he was and they called the head neurosurgeon. He wasn’t there, but a staff neurosurgeon came down almost immediately to work with the emergency room specialist. They tended to him right away gave him steroids, took him up for a CT scan. When they took him away, I called you.”

  “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. Unl
ess 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.”