Ronnie’s hands were cold and she wrapped them around the thermos cup. A surge of pride in her mother sprouted in her heart. She wasn’t just his victim, she had her own agenda. She wasn’t a slave to love, a submissive adoring servant of the great man, or at least, not just that. She had a private goal and she had succeeded in it, and she knew it. That serenity on her face as she lay dying proved it: she had had and done what she wanted in life. And if Ronnie had repudiated her for a time, had left her hanging in a tortured vacuum for a year, in the end she had been there, hadn’t she, at her mother’s side, tending her with the same loving care her mother had given her when she was a baby. And he had been there too, showing his love in his own peculiar way. Who knows what he said or did when they were alone together. Maybe he held her hand, maybe he smoothed her brow. Maybe he even spoke to her, maybe he told her he loved her.
She tried but couldn’t picture it somehow. But who knows?
It was too cold to go on sitting. She stood up, walked back to where she’d left the wheelbarrow, and wheeled it toward the woodshed. Leaving the thermos behind after she unloaded the kindling, she went back for one more load. She had collected enough for fires for two weeks. If they ever had a fire again.
On the other hand, why shouldn’t she build a fire tonight just for herself? She loved a fire; she had loved sitting there with her sisters drinking her Coke or wine or scotch, watching the fire. She was entitled to have this pleasure alone, why not? She would.
24
A
BOUT A WEEK AND
a half after the sisters had left, as Ronnie sat before her fire in the playroom nursing a glass of wine, the telephone rang. It was Elizabeth. Her voice sounded strained, her tone was distant; everything was fine, she said, hard to get back to work somehow, she’d never had so long a period of leisure before, never knew how much she’d enjoy it. Hard to get back to the grind, the bureaucracy, the politics.
“I miss all of you,” she said finally.
I’ll bet you do. “Me too,” Ronnie said.
“I was wondering …”
“What?”
“What are your plans for Christmas?”
“Christmas?”
“Yes, Christmas. It’s next week.”
“Don’t have any.” Could go see Rosa. Should, probably.
“Well, how would you feel about having some company? For a couple of days? Would it intrude on your work? We could have a tree. I’ve never had my own Christmas tree. Tell me the truth, though, Ronnie, I won’t come if you don’t want me.”
“I’d love it,” Ronnie said in a soft low voice.
Elizabeth’s voice cleared. “All right then. I’ll come this weekend if that’s okay. Sometime Saturday. I’ll call you later this week to tell you what flight I’ll be on so Aldo can meet me. That will give us time to get the tree up and plan our dinner. Is that all right with you?”
“It’s fine,” Ronnie said quietly, trying to dismiss the jubilation in her heart.
She set the phone down in a daze. Elizabeth missed her. Elizabeth cared about her. It hadn’t been just the contingency of the old man’s sickness, the kind of closeness that happens at conferences or crises or vacations, where people meet and come to believe they are best friends, swear eternal friendship, or at least promise to write, but never think about each other again except maybe at Christmas, when they send a card. This wasn’t like that: Elizabeth wanted to spend Christmas with her.
Her heart lightened, she sat and gazed out at the garden, although it was dark now by five o’clock and she could see nothing but the reflection of the room in the glass doors. She mulled, she couldn’t call it thinking, her mind wandering to the night the old man died, the afternoon her mother died, to her childhood, to what she knew of her mother’s. To her mother and Stephen. And her mother’s legacy. Love, she had written.
But if she had her own agenda, if she was using him for her own ends, did she love him?
Ronnie knew Noradia had loved Stephen. She could see it.
And I? All my love affairs failed.
She thought about them, the women she had loved. There hadn’t been many of them—Tania, Susan, Julieta (but that had been brief), Lilah, Sarah. She recalled her posture with them—a posture she had adopted when she realized—how old was she? fourteen maybe? fifteen?—that it was girls she was drawn to, not boys, the way everything suggested—the movies, the ads, television—it was supposed to be. But it was the sight of a girl’s hair lifting in a curl, shining in the sun, a girl’s quick walk in the school corridor, a girl’s delicate hands clutched around her schoolbooks, that lifted Ronnie’s heart, that twisted her head and made her want to reach out, to touch gently—and sometimes, to grab, not so gently.
She was weird.
She was abnormal.
For months she hid her feelings in a tight withdrawal from girls, palling around with the guys in her class, who could not hurt her because she didn’t care about them. She copied them—walked like them, talked like them, cursed like them, showed the same bravado. They had accepted her, seemed to like her, until one evening, hanging out on a street corner with the guys, one of them—Nino—had challenged her, accusing her of not being much of a girl, poking her shoulder, trying to pin her against a telephone pole, to kiss her. She had punched him out—he was only a skinny kid and wasn’t expecting that—and stalked off. After that, she determined to live without friends of either sex.
Still, she continued to maintain her masculine posture, and oddly enough, it attracted a number of girls. She became popular, to her own astonishment, sought after; girls were chasing her! And eventually, she began to respond to them with more than grunts, let her face show something more than bland indifference. She began to make friends. The girls adored her: they accepted her as different from them, as the tough girl, one who could defend them, who was unintimidated by boys. But she never kissed a girl, never held a hand or caressed a head. Until she was nineteen, a freshman at BU, and met Susan at a BU party. Susan was older, a psychiatrist who taught part-time at the university but had her own practice. Ronnie was in her course, Intro to Psychology. Susan was grown up: she wore her black hair smoothed back in a knot and dark suits, and she looked at Ronnie with hungry eyes as the girl paraded her boyish ways before her. Amused, delighted, and admiring, Susan invited Ronnie to her apartment for drinks.
What a place! Ronnie had never seen such a place, all chrome and glass and slate, with windows facing the Charles, paintings on the walls (all very modern, Ronnie didn’t care for them), a stereo and a huge record collection. She put on some music she said was Mahler, and she made Ronnie sit on the couch next to her and she gave her brandy in a big wide-bowled glass like those Ronnie had seen Stephen hand around to guests. And she asked her how the music made her feel, which was hard to express, it was at once so silly and so dramatic and made her think of death, and then she took her hand, and pressed against Ronnie, leaning her back against the couch, and kissed her so so delicately. Ronnie, having crushed her longings for years, was overwhelmed, responded with fervor, and soon was in Susan’s huge bed, lying on satin sheets. Satin sheets!
Susan loved Ronnie’s boyishness. She insisted that Ronnie move in with her and gave her a closet and dresser of her own. She had Ronnie drive her car, an antique MG, when they went out in it, and she handed Ronnie her credit card to pay for dinner when they ate in restaurants. And they ate in nice restaurants, places Ronnie had never expected to see the insides of. It was a luxurious life, but Susan liked Ronnie to hurt her in sex, which Ronnie did not enjoy. And there could be no deviation from their roles. Ronnie was the male, Susan the female.
Ronnie began to feel uncomfortable, and the night Susan demanded she handcuff her to the bed and spank her, Ronnie rebelled.
“I don’t want to do that.”
Susan went white with fury. “Who do you think you are, you little spic! I picked you up off the streets, I support you, keep you in luxury! You do what I want or you get out! Just get out!”
Ronnie packed her few belongings, managed to catch the last T and walked the long blocks to Rosa’s at one in the morning, banged on the door asking for a bed.
Still, somehow, her role was set by then. Ronnie was the girl who could change a tire, fix the toaster, who could lift and carry heavy weights, drive the car like a pro, and who never cried, nor showed ever any ache or need for tenderness. She was tough. She could give love but did not need to receive it. Stroking Sarah’s back when Sarah was upset had caught at her heart, but when Sarah put her arms around her, tried to console her after she heard the news about her mother, her back and neck stayed stiff, her voice taut. She pulled away, insisting, “I’m okay, it’s okay.”
Always insisting on giving sexual pleasure first, and then sometimes refusing to receive it. “Seeing you enjoy yourself is enough for me.” The crushed look on Lilah’s face. Maybe it wasn’t that she didn’t want to share her new salary with Ronnie that had drawn Lilah away from her: receiving is giving and she had refused to receive, refused to give Lilah the pleasure of pleasuring her, of consoling her, of touching the tenderness hidden beneath all her layers of armor.
How do I know that now?
Momma had been able to love a man she knew was in some sense her enemy, a man who refused to acknowledge her child, his child, who kept her a servant, whose money she took and hid, refusing to spend it on anything that would increase her attractiveness to him. He must have known that, must have seen the rebellion in her. But maybe not. She always wore a uniform when the family was in residence. She wore those cotton housedresses only when they were away. She dressed up for Mass on Sunday, he might have seen her then in one of her rayon things, dresses bought for a few dollars in Filene’s basement. And when she took her rare trip to Boston to see her old friends and—although Ronnie did not know it at the time—Rosa.
She stopped to consider this for the first time, the way Momma—once she had heard from Ronnie and knew where she was—had respected her abandonment by leaving her alone, but had visited Rosa from time to time to find out how she was, what she was doing, to make sure she was all right. How did Momma learn such delicacy, how did she know how to juggle things in herself to keep them in balance?
A little awed by her mother’s approach to life, she sat feeling her mind gaping open. Then the phone rang again, and she cursed: here she’d built the fire, but was having to leave it every minute. It was Mary, her voice as tense and hollow as Elizabeth’s, but far more enthusiastic. Things were fine, wonderful really, she had been able to pay some bills and hire a real maid again, she’d bought some new clothes, she’d been lunching out, going to the theatre. It was wonderful. But—and then she grew tentative—she missed Ronnie, missed the others, and didn’t, really didn’t want to spend Christmas at Martin’s. How would it be if she came up there? Maybe they could even put up a tree together, something she’d never herself personally done, but look, she’d learned to make tea and French toast and even coffee, hadn’t she, she’d almost learned to drive, so Ronnie could teach her how to put up a tree.
They all assume I know, Ronnie thought, amused. Actually, I do: every Christmas at Rosa’s, it was a major celebration, the putting up of the tree.
“Elizabeth’s coming too,” Ronnie said.
“Lizzie’s coming?” she cried, and sounded near tears. “Oh wonderful! Wonderful!” Her voice was thick. “When?”
“Saturday. I don’t know what time.”
“All right, I’ll call her and find out, so I can get a shuttle that arrives around the same time. That way, it won’t be a problem for Aldo.”
Mary, worrying about troubling a servant?
“Have you heard from Alex?”
“No. Not a word.”
“No. Well, she has a family. Actually, Ronnie, I thought I’d invite Marie-Laure too. She hates to go to Martin’s as much as I do, and she was going to a friend’s house—but maybe she’ll come with me instead.”
Is she asking my permission? She owns the fucking house.
“Sure,” she said unenthusiastically. Probably a spoiled-brat snob who would complain about everything. Well, she’d better not think she could treat Ronnie like a servant, that was all.
Mary’s voice was high and gay. “Wonderful! I’ll be in touch then. Soon. Good to talk to you, Ron!”
She was still somewhat in shock from this phone call when the phone rang again. It was Alex, sounding a little wistful.
“How have you been, Ronnie? How’s your dissertation going?” She sounded as if she really cared. “Good. I’m glad to hear it. Yes, everything’s fine here. It’s the first night of Hanukkah tonight, so we’re having sort of a party. My in-laws are here and David’s uncle and aunt and cousins. But I keep thinking about you—all of you.”
“So are the others, it seems. Elizabeth and Mary just called. They’re coming up here for Christmas.”
“THEY ARE?” Silence. Then a mournful, “Oh, I wish I could be there.”
“Why don’t you come?”
“Oh, I wish I could. Christmas is the last day of Hanukkah. Well, maybe I can. It’s the last day, after all. We don’t celebrate Christmas, David doesn’t approve of it, even though I think the kids would like to celebrate both … but why not? Why shouldn’t I be allowed to spend Christmas with my sisters? I’m coming. I may not be able to come until the last minute, probably not until Christmas Eve, but I’m coming, tell them I’ll be there. With bells on! I’ve missed you all so!”
Ronnie could not resist revealing her curiosity. “How have things been at home?”
Alex was silent for a long moment. “Hard,” she said finally. “But not cruel. David is really … he’s a dear man and he understands more than I thought he would. My mother … well, it’s been hard for her. And the kids don’t understand at all. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. I’m so happy I’m coming!”
Ronnie set the phone down with an amazed smile on her face. All of them, all of them, it mattered to all of them. This had nothing to do with money. This was love.
Love!
Presents would be required, and for once she had enough money to buy them, decent presents, presents chosen for people, forgetting price. So on Friday, she asked Aldo for a lift to the station and took the Boston train—it was easier to travel by train than to worry about parking a desirable car that was not her own in the car-theft capital of the world. She got off in Cambridge, walking from Porter Square to Harvard Square, where she wandered from shop to shop, knowing exactly what she wanted for her sisters, feeling she knew exactly what would please them. Then she took the T to Boston and shopped in the department stores for more practical gifts for Rosa, Enriqué, and the kids. She had everything wrapped in gaudy paper. She had called Rosa the night before to make sure the family would be home this evening, and Rosa had ordered her to come to dinner. It was after five when, laden with parcels, she took the T to Somerville, where they lived now. Following Rosa’s directions, she walked the long blocks lined with wooden three-deckers. Theirs was on a quiet street with some trees remaining on it and a patch of garden in front. Someone had taken the trouble to plant some roses and chrysanthemums in it, and although everything was brown and dead now, it looked like a garden, not a waste patch like some of the others. Much better than the last place they lived, she thought.