“I was so worried about you, I didn’t know where you were, or when you were coming …,” Mary continued. “How did you get here?”
“I didn’t know when you were arriving, so I went to Abbie’s for a couple of days. She and Duff dropped me off.”
“Oh, you should have asked them to stop in for a drink!”
“They have a do tonight, they couldn’t stop. They have to get back.”
“A do? At their house? Oh, I suppose you would have liked to stay. …”
“No, it’s at Chip Waylan’s. On Charles Street. I didn’t particularly want to go,” she shrugged. “That crowd’s a little raunchy … well, not my scene.”
Her face was a pale white oval of indifference in which the perfect features were set like marks in a mask. She examined her mother and raised her eyebrows. “You’re wearing an apron!” She turned slowly and noticed the aprons on the others, but did not blush or look embarrassed at her remark.
“Oh, we’re all cooking Christmas dinner! It’s so much fun. Come out into the kitchen …”
“The kitchen?”
“Oh, of course, you probably want to freshen up first. Although you look fine.” The girl’s slim legs were encased in tight jeans and boots and she wore a heavy fur-lined leather jacket. “Teresa will carry your bag upstairs. Your room is all ready!”
Mary’s excitement spun around the still center that was her daughter, who simply watched as she ran toward the kitchen calling Teresa.
She’s thinking her mother sounds like a fishwife, thought Elizabeth. There goes our Christmas.
The girl turned politely toward her. “How have you been, Aunt Elizabeth.”
“Oh for god’s sake, call me Lizzie,” Elizabeth said sharply, in a tone she had not intended. But the girl did not blink.
“And I’ve been fine, working hard,” Elizabeth said in a softer tone. “We put up a tree in the playroom, and the lights outside. Did you see them?”
“Oh. I didn’t notice.” Faintly.
“Actually, they’re Ronnie’s work,” Elizabeth said, trying to include Ronnie in the conversation.
But Marie-Laure merely surveyed Ronnie as she might an article she was thinking of buying.
Then Teresa entered hurriedly, Mary behind her as if she were driving her forward. The maid picked up the girl’s bag and packages and led Marie-Laure up the great formal staircase to her bedroom.
“We’ll be in the kitchen when you come down,” Mary called cheerfully.
As they returned to the kitchen, Ronnie and Elizabeth exchanged looks. But Mary was too excited, distracted, to notice.
“She may be hungry, maybe we should give her tea, oh, I know that would be so much work after all this cooking, I’m so sorry, Mrs. Browning, but could you …”
“We don’t need a formal tea,” Elizabeth said shortly. “She’s family, not company. Why not just give her a soft drink and some cookies. We’re almost finished here. When we’re done, we’ll all sit down and have a drink.”
“You’re right, Lizzie, that’s a good idea,” Mary said to Mrs. Browning’s relief.
“I’ll set out the cookies,” Ronnie said, as the rest of them returned to the chores they’d been doing. Ronnie found a round cake platter, lined it with a doily, and set out almond crisps, shortbread, some cheese crisps. She carried it into the playroom. But Marie-Laure did not appear.
They finished in the kitchen and debated whether to change before drinks, or after them—“or not at all!” Elizabeth suggested.
“Oh, Lizzie! It’s Christmas Eve!”
“Okay,” she sighed. “Then let’s get it over with first.”
Mary took her usual leisured time dressing and working on her face and hair, and by the time she finished, Elizabeth’s door was open, her room dark. Marie-Laure’s door was still shut. Mary knocked, then opened the door. The girl was sitting at the windows, smoking and staring out at the darkness; the smell of pot was strong in the room. She hurriedly put her joint out.
“Darling?” Mary said, then stopped at the smell. “Do come down. We’re about to have drinks.”
The girl turned her head indolently. “I’ll be down in a while.” She was still wearing her jeans, with a heavy white sweater.
“Aren’t you going to dress for dinner?”
“For god’s sake, it’s just your sister, Mom, just a bunch of women. Do I have to? And who is that Ronnie, anyway. She looks foreign, she looks like some wetback or something.”
Mary closed the door behind her and approached her daughter. She sat on the chair opposite her. She made no comment on the roach Marie-Laure still clutched.
“Ronnie is your grandfather’s illegitimate daughter. She’s part Mexican and part Upton, just as you are part Italian and part Upton. You understand? She’s very wonderful and I love her and I expect you to treat her with respect.”
Marie-Laure looked at her mother as if she were a stranger.
“I can’t believe you were working in the kitchen,” she whined.
“Yes,” Mary laughed lightly. “I’ve been learning the joys of domesticity! Oh, more than that! Companionship! Sisterhood!”
Marie-Laure stared at her.
“I thought you inherited all that money,” she said sullenly.
“Yes. I did.”
“So you don’t have to be grubbing in the kitchen, do you? You don’t have to hang around with chicana bastards.”
Mary’s face hardened. She restrained the hand which rose of its own volition, which wanted to strike out, slap that pale cheek, leave a red mark.
“Marie-Laure, I know I’ve neglected you. Your education especially. But I’ve made up my mind to correct that. You’ve been trained the way I was, to be an unfeeling snob, pervaded by a sense of superiority to which you have no right. Social superiority. But you are not superior. To anyone. You’re a callow little girl in training for the marriage market. I was trained the same way. It never made me happy and so I don’t imagine it makes you happy. I’m going to try to repair that. But I will ask you, while you’re here, to try to act like a human being. If you know how.”
She stood up. “I also ask you not to show up stoned at the dinner table. Now get rid of that roach, change your clothes, and come downstairs.”
She turned and left the room swiftly, so Marie-Laure could not see her face.
Ronnie was dressed again in the wool pants, but tonight she wore a deep orange sweater very becoming to her golden complexion. She looked—well, they all looked, Mary thought (knowing she did)—very beautiful in the glow of the fire, the Christmas lights, the few lamps on the bookcases. Age did not wither … or there were beauties in age that were different from those of youth, different from Marie-Laure’s, for instance, who did appear in a silk dress and pumps, her face made up, but as sullen and vapid as before. She grudgingly accepted a cookie, asked for a wine spritzer, contributed nothing to the conversation. The sisters dragged up some funny tales from their cooking orgy, but Marie-Laure barely smiled. Mary asked her about her friends and what she’d been doing the past few days, but she sighed, “Just hanging out, really, it’s a bore, Boston, compared to New York,” and was unforthcoming.
The sisters’ conversation sagged. The girl was a dark hole, gradually sucking them in. Then the doorbell rang again. By now, the servants had left except for Doris, who went tearing out cursing at having to leave the sauce on the stove, but tore back with a broad grin—“It’s Miss Alex!” Followed by a voluble, laughing, grinning Alex still in her coat, rushing to them, embracing them. “How do you like that, I got the last plane out of Wilmington!”
“How did you get here? Why didn’t you call? We would have sent Aldo!”
“Oh, it’s Christmas Eve, why shouldn’t he have it off, doesn’t he have it off? Yes, you see, so I took a cab, it was just as easy, it carried me right to the door! And who’s this? It must be your daughter, Mary, she looks so much like you, Marie-Laure, isn’t it, I’m Alex, I’m so happy to meet you, oh, I’m so thrille
d to be here, isn’t it wonderful? David was so understanding, I think all these years he’s felt he was depriving me of my Christian heritage, isn’t that a joke, when I never had one, really, my family hardly ever went to church, but I do love Christmas, I don’t think about it as the birth of a god, just the solstice, the change in the year, the start of longer days. The worst time of year, the darkest, the shortest days, but it’s also the beginning of the change. Don’t you feel that?”
By then, Ronnie had taken off her coat, Mary had led her to a chair, and Elizabeth had poured her a glass of white wine. She giggled increasingly over these attentions. A rapt Marie-Laure sat still, observing an alien species.
“Oh, the tree! It’s gorgeous! Oh I could weep, I wish I’d been here to put it up with you, maybe next year, I have to check the calendar to see if next year I can get away a little sooner, it all depends on when Hanukkah is, you understand, I have to be home for that. It’s so exquisite, just the right size, and those darling ornaments, they must be antique, look at that one with the white snow all over it and that little gold and white one.” She leapt up and began fingering the ornaments, oohing and ahing over special beauties. “What are we having for dinner? I’m starving!”
“Alex, I couldn’t remember, do you eat pork?”
“Yes, we don’t keep kosher. David doesn’t believe in it. I do what he wants about these things, you know. I think the real reason is he hated his mother’s cooking. They keep kosher, his parents, but they will eat at my house. Just I’m careful what I cook when they come. The rules are very tricky even if you don’t keep two sets of dishes and all that. So what are we having?”
“Seviche, baked fresh ham, roast filet of beef, mashed potatoes, yams, white turnips pureed with celeriac and leeks, white onions in cream sauce, applesauce, beet and horseradish sauce, carrots in honey, melted goat cheese salad, and apple pie with ice cream and cheddar cheese: enough for you?”
“God! What a feast! We’ll have so many leftovers. We should take them to the homeless!”
“They won’t take leftover food,” Ronnie said.
“Oh, my! What a waste!”
“Nothing goes to waste in this house,” Ronnie said. “What doesn’t get recycled and fed to us, the servants will eat.”
“Oh! That’s all right then! I can eat with an easy conscience!” Alex giggled.
And she did, all of them did except Marie-Laure, who picked and pushed her food about, but managed to drink two glasses of wine and two of champagne, and who then, to their relief, announced her exhaustion, and went up to bed.
Silence followed her.
“You have a problem kid, Mary,” Elizabeth said finally.
“I know. I’ve known for a long time. It’s all my fault. I’ve been avoiding facing it. They were all difficult. They never got any real parenting. They’re unlikable. All of them. Even I don’t like them.”
She frowned. “The way she eats,” she began tentatively, anxiously, “or doesn’t eat. It’s so like me. The way I used to be. Did you notice? Do you think …” She searched their faces, mouth trembling.
“Father?” Elizabeth asked, horrified.
“I watched her like a hawk when we were here. I always insisted she sleep in my room. But that man … you know, he had such sneaky ways. Do you think it’s possible …?”
They exchanged gazes.
“He was so old by then … Do you think he still …?”
“He screwed my mother until she was too sick,” Ronnie said in a low murmur.
“How do you know that?”
“She told me.”
Cabot, he so loving, so sweet. And when I get sick, loving different. With that serene smile. Complacent. Loved.
“What can I do?” Mary was digging her fingernails into her cheeks.
“Nothing right now. You don’t even know it happened. She could easily be the way she is without that,” Elizabeth said, lighting up.
“Maybe you could ask her,” Alex suggested.
Mary was appalled: “Propose that her grandfather raped her? Suppose he didn’t?”
“Maybe you should tell her about you,” Alex went on, “or we should tell her about us. I’m all for openness now. I really yelled at my mother. It did me a world of good, I don’t know about her. She walked around wounded for a few days, but then she went right on being the way she was.”
“And how was that?” Elizabeth asked with a sidelong grin. “Indefatigably cheerful?”
“Yes! How did you know?”
“Wild guess.”
“Yes. She’s always nice. You know? Very nice. Makes it hard to stay angry at her. But I did. All week. She was upset anyway at not having a Christmas tree, so she went off to stay with a friend in the middle of Hanukkah. She didn’t even know I was coming up here. And David and the kids are at his mom and dad’s tonight, the last night. They’ll have a good time. So they won’t miss either of us. You see, it’s going to work out fine.”
“And what about David and the inheritance?” Elizabeth asked.
“Well, he was shaken. He had no idea Father was so rich. He had no idea anyone was so rich, really. Not in reality, only in magazines and newspapers, you know? And he was upset. He felt it was obscene for anyone to have that much money. He didn’t want to burden our kids with it either. He thought it would be fun to buy a boat, and the bay’s right there, but we don’t need a bigger house now the kids are about to go away to college. And he agreed with me, we don’t need anything, nothing material. He was wonderful. He’s my true husband, I married the right man.” She sighed, sipped her wine.
“I thought it would be worse when I told him about the nuns, the clinic, all that. But I offered to share the money with him, he could send it to Israel for the Ethiopian Jews. But he said it was my money, and I didn’t need to share it with him, I should do what I wanted with it. And I said I wanted to. So he said he’d take some, not half. And he understood about the nuns.” She stopped, stretched her glass out for a refill, and Elizabeth poured it in automatically. Her face was gilded by the firelight, shadowed by her golden hair, and she sat far back in her chair, reminiscing.
“We were sitting in our den, it was late, the news had gone off, we usually go up to bed then, but we were talking, sitting on the couch, holding hands. And I tried to explain what I wanted to do, explain it so he wouldn’t feel I was abandoning him and the kids, explain it as a force of my passion, but you know me, I’m so inarticulate, I just meandered and blabbed and his face looked so dark to me, shadowed. And he put his hand up over my mouth, very gently, he just said, ‘Stop.’”
“And he said, ‘For a long time now, I’ve felt I was losing you. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t think it was another man. I didn’t even think it was the nuns, or your volunteer work. It was almost—as if you were going into a private world that no one else could enter—almost like madness. You were so shut off. From all of us. We’ve all felt it. You haven’t noticed.’
“I turned in some surprise. ‘I have noticed the kids have become—well, more yours than mine. More yours than they used to be.’
“‘I’ve been worried,’ he said. ‘Sort of sick about it. I even had a talk with Stan Allen, the shrink at work. Just sort of a general talk. He mentioned menopause. That didn’t sound right to me.’
“‘It’s a little early for that, David!’ I said. ‘I’m only thirty-six!’
“‘Yes. I guess. But this sounds right. Some kind of passionate mission you feel inside. There’s always been that quality in you. Something interior, buried, profound.’
“‘You’ve felt that in me! When I didn’t myself? That’s amazing. Oh, David, I love you so much!’
“Well, we kissed each other and went upstairs and that was the end of that conversation. It was the end of the subject. I just have to make the practical plans, and he’s as engaged in it as I am, he wants to help, so it’s all wonderful, I’m so happy, all my fears were for nothing, isn’t life a miracle?”
If theirs w
ere not, they were full of joy for her, the little one with the mission, the incomprehensible one, the mad one, the golden-haired child who was a blade of grass, and they toasted her, and David, and the blessing of knowing what you want to do in life. So there were embraces, and a few tears on Alex’s part, and more drinks all around—champagne this time—and then she wanted to know about them.
And suddenly Ronnie wanted to share her news.
“Well, I’ve had a kind of surprise,” she began shyly. All looked at her attentively. “After you left, I felt somehow out of sorts and I decided to clean my mother’s room. She had nothing, of course, just old junk, and I was tossing it all out, she bought herself nothing all those years. And then I found the reason. She had put almost every cent she earned here in a bank account, and as soon as I was old enough, she made it a joint account so it belongs to me now. It’s not a lot of money by your standards, but it’s a fortune by mine, over two hundred thousand dollars, and it means I’ll be able to be self-supporting from the minute I get a job, I’ll be able to live with some comfort—which I’ve never done in my life! Is that great or what!”
“SHE did it,” Elizabeth exploded in triumph. “Without him. Without his help! She took care of you! Here’s to Noradia, a true heroine!”
“To Noradia!” the others cheered, lifting their glasses, laughing, what a benison, what a blessing, what a great thing for Ronnie.
“It almost consoles me for Father,” Elizabeth concluded.
“Oh, Lizzie, how could I have taken his money?” Ronnie asked sadly.
“You’re right.” Grimly spoken.
“Well, that’s sort of how I feel too,” Alex said. “As if I don’t want the money he left me, not for myself. I’ve made my own life, I don’t want that—opulence—for myself. It’s too hard to maintain and too unsatisfying. But oh, I do want to help those poor people in El Salvador.”
“Well, let’s hope you do. So many charitable efforts backfire. Turn ugly. Watch it, Alex.”
“Yes. And be careful of yourself. They don’t just shoot their own down there, you know. They even shoot foreigners. Even Americans! Even nuns!” Mary warned.