“After I came up here, it started to happen almost every day. Blackouts. I’d be walking along, or bicycling … it’s a wonder I didn’t fall off. See, it wasn’t just in Georgetown. He started doing it here, in this house, when I was still sleeping in the nursery … I don’t know how young I was when he started, but I know it started there … up there, in that room …” She broke off. “How old,” she sniffled, “how old are you when they move you out of the nursery?”
Mary frowned. “I moved my children into their own rooms when they were nine, but I left the nursery at seven. But that was because I was sent away to school and didn’t have a nanny anymore.”
“No, no,” Alex moaned. “I was just a baby! Two or three. I was lying in a crib. I’m sure of that!”
The women were silent, picturing this.
“My mother used to say—all the time,” Elizabeth recalled, “especially after she’d had a Manhattan or two—she’d yell that no law stopped him from framing her and that all the laws in the world were on the side of the Stephen Uptons of this world. At the time, that really shook me because I thought maybe she knew what he was doing to me and was saying she couldn’t stop him, that he had the law on his side. I suppose I wanted to believe that. I wanted to believe she knew because I wanted to think she sympathized with me, felt for me, felt with me—but just couldn’t do anything about it. I didn’t want to feel that I couldn’t tell her because she wouldn’t believe me—or because she’d blame me. …”
She stopped, lighted a cigarette. “Well, of course she never suspected—as far as I know. But she was right: all the laws are on his side.”
“That’s not true,” Ronnie objected. “Incest is against the law.”
“Really,” Elizabeth sneered. “Do you think he would have been prosecuted if we’d accused him when we were little? Do you suppose anyone, anyone at all would even have believed us? The great Stephen Upton, a molester of little girls, his own daughters?”
They pondered.
“Even now. If we accused him now, would anybody do anything?”
“Maybe,” Alex said.
“A sick old man. We have no proof. We waited all these years. We’re afraid he’ll disinherit us. Oh forget it!” Mary cried. “They’d see us as monsters, monster daughters, ungrateful malevolent Gonerils and Regans bent on destroying a poor old man in his dotage.”
“Who’s Goneril and Regan?”
“Oh, characters in a play. Monster daughters called
unnatural
. As if love of parents were built into nature.”
“It is, though, isn’t it,” Alex said faintly.
They all looked at her.
“We do love him, don’t we. All of us.”
“Not me,” Ronnie said fiercely.
“I see the kids at the hospital. The abused ones,” Alex went on. “There they are black-and-blue, with welts or burns or broken bones, cracked heads. But if the parent comes to see them, the one who did it—they reach out their arms to them, they’re
so happy
to see them! The little ones. Even if they’re scared of them. It’s heartrending.”
“What about the older ones?”
“They shrink a bit, they’re more fearful. But they cry when their parents leave. It’s so … There’s no solution.”
“And men do most of the abusing,” Ronnie muttered.
“Not true,” Elizabeth said in a bored voice. “Women do half of it.”
“Women are with them ninety percent of the time,” Ronnie shouted.
“Listen, Ronnie, dominate or submit is a law of nature. …”
“That isn’t a law of nature, it’s a law of patriarchy!”
Mary moaned, put her head in her hands.
“Oh! So lions are patriarchists when they kill anything smaller than themselves?”
“They kill to eat, not to dominate. Only man kills to dominate.”
“Man and woman.”
“Rarely woman.”
“But you’ll admit it happens?”
“Women too have been seduced by power on occasion,” Ronnie pronounced.
“Oh, they’re not a pure saintly sex, immaculate by virtue of their hormones?”
“They’re better than men,” Ronnie said stubbornly. “They take the responsibility for children, they sacrifice everything for their children, they put the children first.”
“Like your mother?” Elizabeth shot in.
“My mother
did
sacrifice everything for me! She wore the same winter coat for fifteen years, she hardly ever bought herself a new dress, and then it was some cheap rag, and she never bought herself anything more than that! She used every paltry penny your bastard of a father paid her to take care of me! God knows
he
never did. He never paid for a diaper, not even a safety pin! Never paid a doctor bill, never bought me a notebook for school! She had to stay here—it was the best way she could protect me!” Ronnie shook her head, tears springing to her eyes. “What a bitch you are,” she muttered. “Just because
your
mother was cruel …”
“Why! Why, why why, if you want to argue about politics or whatever it is you’re arguing about, do you have to attack each other personally!” Alex screamed.
“She started it,” Ronnie protested.
“Can’t you just agree to disagree,” Mary said sourly.
“Jesus!” Ronnie jumped up. She danced around in fury, as if her toes were on fire. “You two act as if we’re arguing about some academic matter, angels on pinheads or whose turn it is to do the dishes! But what we’re arguing about is fundamental! It goes to the very heart of everything we believe about life, about people, about how to live! She believes”—she stood still, darting a malevolent look at Elizabeth—“that the urge to dominate is inherent and I’ll bet she thinks men have more of it than women. Testosterone poisoning, no doubt,” she added viciously.
“I’ll thank you not to try to describe my beliefs, Ronnie,” Elizabeth said stiffly.
Ronnie ignored her. “So that life is inevitably a constant scramble for power, with men having more to start with than women—probably because women have the babies—right, Elizabeth?” she sneered. “And if that’s true, then women can’t ever be more than victims, are doomed to scramble for safety from generation to generation, finding protection under the wing of the least rotten man they can find …!” She stopped, out of breath.
“Whereas,” Elizabeth took it up, “you and your ilk
pretend
that domination is not central to the human psyche,
pretend
that if we all just gave it up for Lent, we could create a sweet little cuddly world where everyone shared, cooperated, nourished everyone else—as if you could wipe out, extirpate violence, rage, greed. …”
“It’s a better vision than yours! Yours is a counsel from hell!”
“And yours comes straight from heaven?”
Ronnie sighed, calmed, sat down again. “Look. We both know that the nature of human nature isn’t decipherable, isn’t really knowable. That all definitions of the human are manufactured, that we can’t know the truth about ourselves if there even
is
a truth. So why not choose to define ourselves in a way that makes felicity possible, that doesn’t set us on an endless course of desperate power seeking? Desperate because it never ends, you never have enough power, you never can. Why not adopt a philosophy that allows alternative ways of living? At least mine makes positive action possible.”
“And mine puts women on their guard, prompts them to protect themselves—wisely. In this world, they need to.”
In the silence, Mary stirred. “I hate politics,” she said airily. “Politics is mundane, transient, doomed to obsolescence. I mean, when you read Shakespeare, do you care who was queen? Art deals with universals—which is all that really matters.”
Ronnie glared at her. “If you think art isn’t political, you’re a fool too!”
Alex looked bewildered. “The way you all talk … you sound as if you had no sense of the divine, as if—deity, spirit, whatever you want to call it—didn’t hover over you … as if you invent
yourselves!
How can you believe that?!”
All three groaned.
16
E
VERYONE KNOWS ART IS
above politics, Mary thought, stiffly avoiding meeting Ronnie’s hard set gaze opposite her in the car. How can she say it’s political? Certainly the great classics she had read during her brief formal schooling—
The Iliad
,
The Aeneid
, Shakespeare’s plays,
Paradise Lost
,
The Faerie Queene
—certainly
they
weren’t political. But what Ronnie meant by political didn’t seem to involve Republicans and Democrats or even communism. …
Aldo was driving Mary and Alex to Back Bay to lunch with Eloise, dropping Ronnie at the BU library on the way. Elizabeth had elected to remain at home.
They spoke little during the drive.
Alex’s mind was a wounded blur wandering in confusion at how other people saw the world. She could not comprehend how they could laugh at, how they could be ignorant of such a huge dimension of experience. Did they never feel it? That powerful sense of connection with something beyond, eternal, hovering, always present, a dimension essential to her, in which she spent much of her time. What would it be like to live without that sense? How could they not feel it around them, embracing them, uniting them, connecting and embracing all humanity, all creatures, the entire created world? She pressed her mind to try to imagine herself without that sense, but managed to blank out only her surroundings, the Massachusetts landscape as they moved from country to city, the road, the cars, the others in the car vanished and she entered the opaque space familiar to her, in which she felt the air brush against her, sensed objects as motes dancing in space, heard their three hearts beating in unison, felt the rhythm of the dance. …
Ronnie, facing two distant, distanced countenances, stubbornly set her mouth. She’d been right to mistrust them, they were exactly what she’d thought in the beginning. How could she have let herself be seduced into caring about them? They were useless, worse than useless. Alex a complete flake, Mary one of those supercilious lightweights who floated on the surface like scum, never touching anything real, seeing only what was fashionable to see. And Elizabeth! Of them all, it was Elizabeth she felt most kinship with, felt most
like
. But god! You couldn’t, you just couldn’t be friends with someone with politics like hers. If Elizabeth had really accepted Ronnie, had learned to care about her, see her, she would have had to question her fascist ideas. So her friendly behavior had no foundation. But then she was capable of anything, even blackmailing her father to get whatever it was she wanted from him. The only thing the four of them had in common was his … abuse.
Maybe that was all women as a sex had in common.
She didn’t need them. She’d been beguiled but now she was wary, warned, aware, awake, at war. She’d lived without them all these years and could go on doing so, thank you very much.
She tried to calm the churning in her mind, concentrate on what she had to do today. A good statistics handbook she should buy. Some bookstores were open Sundays, but which ones? She couldn’t remember, it seemed years since she’d been a student, another life. Before Momma got sick. Before Momma died.
Aldo dropped Ronnie at the library. Mary had arranged for him to return to Back Bay at two o’clock to drive Mary, Alex, and Eloise to the Isabella Gardner Museum, and wait for them there. Then, around four-thirty, he would pick Ronnie up at the library. They separated in near silence.
But some hours later, as they picked Ronnie up, the other two welcomed her warmly, talking and laughing volubly.
“Of course, I don’t know anything about art, but the way she’s arranged things seems really comical to me. What do you think, Mary?” Alex laughed. “Giant candelabra next to some wonderful painting next to …”
“Some piece of kitsch!” Mary exploded, laughing.
Ronnie, more subdued than earlier, sank deeper into glumness.
But Alex wouldn’t permit it. “Did you find what you needed, Ronnie?”
“Oh, you found a bookstore open!” Mary exclaimed, pointing to the brown paper bag Ronnie carried. “What did you buy?”
Both exclaimed in awe over the books with their forbidding titles, joshing Ronnie about their contents. Mary opened one at random, read out “‘Antheridia and Gametes in Mosses?’ ‘Structures and Adaptations of Bryophytes’?” at which even Ronnie was forced to laugh. By the time they reached Lincoln, the three of them had achieved some harmony again.
“It’s nearly cocktail time,” Mary announced when they arrived. “Shall we change for dinner and meet in the playroom?” She poked her head into the library. “Hi, Elizabeth! We’re back!” she sang. “Had a wonderful time! Want to have drinks?”
“I’m busy,” Elizabeth growled. She glanced at her watch. “What time is it anyway. It’s only five-thirty!”
“Oh, please join us, Lizzie!” Alex pleaded, standing in the hall behind Mary. “I want to tell you all about this funny museum we went to. We’re just changing, we’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
The three of them were settled in the playroom when Elizabeth dragged in wearing ratty old pants and a blue cotton work shirt.
“Aren’t you going to dress for dinner!” Mary exclaimed.
Elizabeth examined herself. “I forgot.” She looked at Mary. “Do I have to?”
“Of course! Only Ronnie is allowed to come to the dinner table looking like a plumber’s helper,” she said, grinning wickedly.
“Right. Ronnie isn’t dressed, why should I dress?” Elizabeth sighed, settling in a chair. “I’m exhausted.”
“Let me get you a drink,” Alex offered, jumping up. “Perrier?”
“No. Gin.”
“You seem to have given up Perrier,” Ronnie observed.
“It’s the company. It drives one to drink.”
“Lizzie, you really must change. You’ll shock the servants,” Mary protested.
“Is that what manners are for? To preserve the servants’ sensibilities?”
Ronnie smiled broadly. “Right on! If you want us to treat you as gods, you had goddamned better look the part!”
“Can’t you just put on a skirt and comb your hair?”
“Oh, leave her alone, Mary.”
“We’re disintegrating, descending to the lowest common denominator!”