Mary studied her rings.
“I mean, if you want to be conservator, just tell me. I’ll call Hollis in the morning and tell him to draw it in your name. It’s a lot of work for nothing, and I’m not about to take it on if you are going to pout and sulk about it afterwards. I don’t need that.”
“Oh I wouldn’t think of standing in your way, Elizabeth,” Mary snarled. “I know what happens to people who stand in your way. You just cut them out.”
“And I know how you whine and sulk!”
“Even Father said you were a bitch,” Mary cried.
Elizabeth whirled. “And he called you a cunt!” she screamed. “I was right there at the breakfast table, I heard him!” Summer before she left for college, long dark hair in a pageboy, pouty lips ruby-red, begging, Daddy, please let me take driving lessons and buy me a car, any little car, an MG maybe, so I can get home to see you. Father smiled his sneer: “Any time you want to come home, I’ll send the chauffeur with the limo.” Mary’s face fell, she whirled out of the room. He puffed on his pipe, watched her go. Cunt, he muttered. Was it because of her mother, because of the way Laura died that he wouldn’t let her drive? But why “cunt”?
Mary screamed, “He loved me!”
Elizabeth saw the tears in Mary’s eyes. Palpable hit. “He respected me,” she smiled coldly.
Mrs. Browning came in and announced dinner.
Elizabeth prepared for bed automatically, but her mind was racing. Oh god why did I have to come back here, why does she have to be here, remembering everything, it’s like drowning in a wave. All these years, I managed to forget. Why Jesus Christ why should I hate her so much? She’s nothing, means nothing to me. My life has gone on, she’s stuck where she was. I have accomplished something, have even a degree of fame, the book maybe someday, soon, yes. All she has is three kids after four husbands. Typical woman, life in her cunt and uterus.
Did I really have to make her cry.
Oh Christ, she cries at the drop of a hat. Always did.
Alex sitting there looking white staring at us, well so what, who cares what she thinks or feels. Stupid housewife like her mother, Amelia.
Amelia, slender, young, long honey-colored hair, plain clothes, nothing like Mary’s mother, Laura. Must have been hard for her, stuck up here all summer with Stephen’s daughters, her own baby, Alex, only about six months old. That day she laid her hand on my knee, me sitting in the sun room reading, face looking up to me just the way Alex looks up at people, will you be my friend, Elizabeth?
Why on earth would I want to befriend my father’s third wife, only four years older than I?
I already have a mother, several sisters, and aunts, none of whom love me very much. What in hell do I need with you? But my insides were crying, can you help me? Save me? Made me hate her—she was just a stupid woman, what could she do. “Sure,” I said, in a tone that meant don’t be ridiculous. She smiled a little, turned away. She was trying to embrace me, help me, I guess, but what could she do. And she was Father’s wife. I was relieved he married her but jealous jealous.
Mother asking about them all, I probably know more about Stephen’s life than anyone, watching all those years, Mother’s spy on all his later wives. With each new wife: what does she look like, how tall, what color hair? God she was splenetic about Laura, society girl, dark and slender, beautiful to Mother’s pretty, her family rich and old like his. How she crowed when Laura had Mary, another girl! Hah! She didn’t give him a son either! Maybe it’s his fault! He wouldn’t have thrown me out the way he did if I’d had a son, believe you me Elizabeth Upton. Five I was. What did she think she was saying to me? Didn’t notice, didn’t care, driven by hate, I a mere weapon in her war against him, against her own boozing heavy-handed father, little Irish Catholic girl never got no respect. I wrecked her life, and my being a girl compounded the ruin. Oh god. …
I would lie in bed figuring out ways I could redeem myself. When I grow up, I’ll be rich and famous and take care of Mother. I’ll buy her a big house on Beacon Street and a long car and pay a man to drive it. That will make her smile. She’ll be happy. She’ll love me then.
But after all the golden Laura killed herself in a drunken accident, suicide if I ever saw one, spoiled brat angry at him for never being around, for working day and night for the War Effort. Laura a selfish little princess, Mother had that right, she paid little attention to Mary, cared about her ladies, her admirers, her cocktails, her fittings. She would stroke Mary’s head, kiss it, call her sweet names—on her way out. I knew that. Still I hated Mary for having her, having even that much sweetness in her life. Mary hardly knew her. Raised by nannies. For Mary, her mother was a yearning. Me too: Lizzie please play with me.
The baby’s heart yearned after me.
But Father always made so much of her, looking around for her, crying Where’s my Mary? Where’s my baby?
Heah I are, Daddy! Leaping into his arms. He always caught her, hugged her, kissed her. Me a bad smell hanging in the air, one people were used to, barely noticed. He built the playhouse for her. Gave her everything she asked for. I had to fight to go to private school. He never held me when I was little. …
Mother’s fault.
But if Laura made her crazy Amelia really threw her, hah! Amelia was ordinary, not upper-class, didn’t even go to college, Stephen forty-four to her nineteen. Mother’s teeth clenched when I told her (how I enjoyed that) (yes, but you ached for her too) Amelia’d been a secretary in his office like Mother. I didn’t tell her the rest. That Amelia was a sweet kid, that he seemed to love her and she him. The soft way they looked at each other, the way she laid her hand over his so lightly, careful not to disturb, just to touch. Holding her breath. And he sitting back, a glint in his eye with no cruelty in it, all pleasure. But Mother triumphed when Amelia had Alex, another daughter. So much crowing about girls, you’d think people were glad to have them. Hah!
What happened there? Was Mother right: her sin was having another daughter and no sons? Suddenly Amelia was gone, taking Alex with her, never came back. Did Father summon them to the July Fourth party the way he did us? Did he not ask or did Amelia not allow her to go? Did he pay her alimony? Child support? What was the deal? I was long gone myself, no longer had to report to Mother. Mother lost some of her interest in me when I had nothing more to tell her about him. Still calling herself Mrs. Upton, Mrs. Catherine Upton, no claim to the Stephen Cabot part anymore, dressing in Chanel suits and necklaces but the suits were ready-made, the necklaces faux as they say, smoking, drinking Manhattans, living in that Back Bay apartment, playing bridge, going to any party she was invited to, woman alone not all that acceptable, not many invitations, trying to keep up her standing with her lady friends. Scorned her family, the boozing old man, the worn-down old woman. Why not? Her father in that three-decker in Somerville couldn’t lay eyes on her without starting to rail, here’s Mrs. Highhorse. We only went there at Easter and Thanksgiving and Christmas. That was enough. Her brothers and sisters resented her too. And me.
I astonished her, I think, ambitious as she’d been herself. The most she could aim for was a good marriage—which meant marriage to money. I was in another solar system. “London School of Economics: what’s that? Why in the name of all that’s holy do you want to be an economist, what do they do?” Looked at me as if I came from another planet. Still does. Seventy-four, voice grating with whiskey and cigarettes, still good-looking, still as bitchy as ever, saying she’s determined to outlive him so she can inherit something from the bastard. Reconciled to me in her way: “You may be a frigid bitch but maybe you were smart after all not to marry and have kids. At least you never went through what I went through.” Wentthroughwentthrough.
And I escaped?
Mary woke in terror, wet, got her bearings: Lincoln, Father’s house, Father not here. She pulled herself up, looked around the room, then rose and went into the bathroom. Dripping, she was. She dropped her nightgown to the floor, turned on the shower a
nd pulled a plastic cap over her head, then stepped inside. Lincoln, Father’s house, Father not here. He’s in a coma. Same old nightmare: car over embankment, Father driving, me in flames. Don. She started to cry and let herself sob, no one could hear her over the shower. When would it end? Cry Mary baby poor Mary. Oh god Don, how could you? How could you die, how could you leave me, how could you? When you knew how I loved loved loved …
After some minutes, her sobbing abated, and she turned off the shower and stepped out, wrapping the bath sheet around her. She dried herself vigorously, walking back to the bedroom. She felt her bed sheets: still damp. She drew back the blankets to let the sheets air, then went and sat on the chaise near the window. Her purse was lying on the floor nearby and she dragged it over and took out a cloisonné box and some cigarette papers. She opened the box, pulled out a lump of hash and crumbled some inside a paper. She took a cigarette from an open package, broke it and sprinkled the tobacco over the hash. She rolled it up, licked the ends, and twisted them tightly. She lighted it. Ah.
When she had smoked it down to a tiny nub, she put the roach back into the box. Have to find a connection here. Probably have to go to Boston. Aldo might know. Ronnie probably knows lots of sources. Can’t ask her.
Why am I so upset? Elizabeth, Elizabeth’s fault. So full of hate, so hateful. And I loved her so much, needed her, no mother to speak of, Laura always off at some do, luncheon, tea, cocktails, whatever. Led in to say good night before she went out for the evening, in my nightgown, my hair brushed, oh my pretty girl, my adorable girl. She smelled of powder, perfume, stroking her dresses to feel silk, taffeta, velvet, wool soft as velvet. Good night Mama, have a good time.
Sometimes she had a funny smell, sometimes Daddy did too, strong and sour, funny talking, words drawn out heeeer’s my liille giiirl, Mommy’s baaaby. …
Only thirty when she died, papers full of pictures of her, Laura Upton, society matron dead in automobile crash. Nanny hid the newspaper but I saw it, I could read, I was seven, “DEATH IN ACCIDENT” it said. Nanny Gudge’s mouth tight when she told me, holding me on her lap, Mommy won’t be coming back anymore she’s gone to heaven to live with the angels, she’s an angel now looking down at you protecting you, Maudie across the room making the bed, the way she looked at Maudie her eyes a warning when Maudie said “I’m not surprised.” How come I remember that when I didn’t understand. Aunt Pru sweeping in from Boston in a felt hat with a feather and a carved jade ring, Uncle Samuel behind her like a thinner shadow, she grabbing me, poor child, and Daddy so angry crying his face red and white, his eyes red. He had the funny smell. Aunt Pru scolded him, she wasn’t afraid of him, her baby brother.
She’ll have to go away to school, he told Uncle Samuel, I can’t be here to look after her there’s a war on I’m needed State Department works day and night, had my bags packed shipped off to Miss Peabody’s.
Everyone I’ve ever loved has abandoned me.
But at least at Peabrain’s there were other girls, friends—Amy, Caroline, Elena, Catherine, all unwanted children. Happier there, children to play with be with. But lonely in the summers, long lonely summers at Lincoln, all those years. Only Elizabeth here and she hated me, always hated me. Well, most of the time. When she didn’t—the day we got cook to fix us a picnic lunch and sneaked off, all the way down to the brook. We played let’s pretend, Elizabeth was Rosalind and I was Celia, that was Shakespeare she said.
Amy married a French count, Catherine turned bohemian and opened an art gallery in New York, Elena dead of a drug overdose at thirty, Caroline lives in Boston now, married again, like me divorced four times well I was only divorced twice, widowed twice. Widow. Relict.
She got up and pulled the quilt from her bed, returned to the chaise and wrapped herself in it. She lay back staring out at the sky, really black here in the country never saw it that way in New York, like the sky over Vail or Gstaad but no stars tonight just the blackness, clouds like smoke, like pale light.
Oh Lizzie probably couldn’t help it, given the way things were. Her mother thrown out to make way for mine, she thrown out to make way for me. She was always alone here, always, hanging about in corners, pale, holding a book, looking at us with those pale cold eyes, me and my momma and my nanny and my maids, I a cute little baby, where’s my little girl, Daddy’s home and he wants his Mary! Barely spoke to her, she tall and gangly and charmless. Alone always. What else could she feel, she was only a kid.
But I loved her. Couldn’t she feel that? She hated me for loving her, what’s the matter with her?
You’d think she would have told her mother she didn’t want to come here! Why would anyone want to be where they clearly weren’t wanted? And she’s not a kid now. She’s a hateful adult. I should just shrug her off, what does she matter? I will. I’ll simply ignore her, she doesn’t matter, she isn’t important to me. She doesn’t matter, she’s insignificant. Forget her. Jealous bitter dried-up old maid. I’ll bet she’s never had an orgasm in her life.
4
A RABBIT DARTED SOUNDLESSLY across the path into the underbrush. Terrified, little heart racing, afraid of me the way I was afraid in England. Held myself stiff and superior when Clare took me up to Oxford to meet his friends. Why was I so terrified? They all seemed so brilliant, that Oxbridge accent and scathing British wit, I didn’t don’t have it, couldn’t keep up my end. My jokes come out heavy, sarcastic, nasty. Jokes of a child nourished on hate. Elizabeth trod heavily on the forest mast.
Oh, why do I keep thinking about those days, being a child, all that? Ever since I got here. Spent my life burying it. Transcending it. It’s being here with Mary, feeling the way I so often felt in those years. Same hate and jealousy even without Father around to put us in our place, terrify us. Your mother does not educate you socially, Elizabeth, but of course how could she, shanty-Irish that she is. Uptons do not use salad forks for their fish or fish forks for their meat; they do not chew with mouths open, drink until they have finished chewing, pick up a dropped napkin, blow their noses at the dinner table, speak about personal matters in front of servants, make requests of servants who expect to receive orders, hold a piece of bread in the palm of their hand while they butter it, eat with their forearm upon the table, slurp soup. They do not show themselves outside their rooms in their dressing gowns or attend to personal hygiene in public; no Upton woman would ever think of combing her hair or refreshing her lipstick in a public place, much less try to fix a flaw like a hanging slip in the front hall of the house as I saw you doing last week! Uptons avoid slang and Upton women never never never use words like “damn” or “shit” and I don’t want to hear them cross your lips again young woman.
Another age. Gone but not lamented.
Upton women are gracious, they defer to men at all times, they remember their lineage. Your ancestors were ministers, one the greatest preacher of his day, held the Colony in the palm of his hand. Your great-great-grandfather was governor of this state, your great-grandfather was majority leader of the Senate, your father, miss, is more powerful than the secretary of state. …
Men in limousines came and went, all superimportant. Whispers and Secret Service men. Library door closed for hours, the butler—we had a butler then, I’d forgotten—knocking with his white-gloved hands, carrying in trays of booze, a Secret Service man sitting on a hard chair in the hall. Another outside the French door to the garden, sitting in the hot sun on a folding chair. But I eavesdropped from the toilet off the playroom. Mary never found that out—not interested, probably. Long arguments for or against bombing railroad lines leading to some camps or other, must have been the Holocaust. Father against it, he carried the day. Was it after the end of World War II that I heard Father argue that we should drop an atomic bomb on the Soviet Union? Me maybe fourteen, fifteen. He was yelling that Bertrand Russell and John von Neumann were both urging preventive nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union. Goddamn Reds have nuclear weapons, Father growled. Better to get rid of the commies befo
re they corrupted the whole goddamned world. Commies powerful in Germany before Hitler, could arise again. Strong movement in China. Did they want to see that here?
Made sense I suppose. Look what’s happened. Soviets, Eastern bloc, China, Africa, spreading to Central America, South America if we hadn’t got rid of Allende. …
Still, that seemed a drastic step. …
I wonder if he supported Hitler. In 1939, say, or earlier.
Later Russell turned into a Red himself. Father hated him. And I heard that when von Neumann was dying, he spent his nights screaming in uncontrollable terror.
What goes around comes around.
That’s all over now, everything over now. Father’s dying, and the CIA reports I’ve seen show the Soviet Union collapsing from the inside. We’ve won. I suppose I should include myself on the winning side. Capitalism has won. Still there are things I don’t agree with, things I can’t seem to work into the theory, things Clare never dealt with, did he think about them? I need him now, I need him to talk to.
I don’t know why I’m so … Father isn’t here and his demands aren’t important anymore are they. Only Mary’s here and Alex. The way it was most summers, Father down in Washington, Mary here, then Alex, little towhead. Sends my mind back, not my mind, my mood, feel childlike somehow, as if all the years I’ve lived since are part of a movie and this is real, I’m home again. My adult life only a movie. I walked in these woods day after day when I lived here. Walked in them before I went to England that first time, so frightened so determined my teeth clenched with it like Mother, I would would would. Would what? Show him. Escape. From Mother. From him. From my sense of not having any place. Would make a place for myself. Would end my helplessness.