I didn’t realize how
tolerant
Anthony was of Elspeth until Tony was walking around. And then I saw how she had been able to do things, to toddle around touching things, putting things in her mouth, bang on tables, cry, demand, refuse to eat something: whereas Tony caught hell for all of that. Tony caught hell for everything and anything. The only time Anthony scolded Elspeth was at the dinner table, especially on holidays, and then he yelled at both of them, sent both of them to their rooms. It was just general disapproval.
On the other hand, all Anthony’s attention was focused on Tony, after he was born. He paid no attention whatever to Syd. And that meant of course that all his
anxieties
were focused on Tony, but also that he
cared
about Tony in a way he didn’t care about the girls. He largely ignored them, although once in a while they got swept up in one of his purple fits too.
We’d been married about ten years when I gradually realized that there was something wrong with Anthony, something beyond mere bad temper. It was then I began to have my first thoughts of divorce. Tony was eight then, and I could see that Anthony was getting worse year by year, that he’d make Tony’s adolescence a pure hell. And Anthony wasn’t making me very happy either. But I only thought about divorce, I wasn’t ready to act on it. I still thought, idiot that I was, that if we kept
talking
, if I could make him see, that things could improve. And it was around that time that things began to happen. For one thing, I began to teach, which meant that Anthony didn’t know where I was every minute of the day, and that made him extremely anxious.
And, in anticipation of my salary, Anthony bought himself a sports car. We couldn’t really afford it, and I resented it, and it left us broke for two years, which enormously increased Anthony’s bad temper.
And then his father died. Anthony was calm all through it, through his father’s illness, through the death and the funeral. Except for one thing. He insisted the doctor who attended Aldrich was responsible for his death. The doctor was an old-fashioned man, very kind, and he didn’t keep Aldrich in the hospital after he recovered from his coronary. He let him stay at home, because he thought Aldrich would be happier at home, would be more relaxed at home and would recover more quickly. So Aldrich was at home when his heart failed, and he died before the ambulance could arrive. He died, in fact, instantly, but Anthony thought he might have been saved. So he went around shouting about the irresponsible doctor, and kept threatening to go round and punch him out. But after a couple of weeks, he calmed down.
And then—all this occupied a couple of years—Elspeth began to menstruate. She was young, only eleven; she developed early. I made a bit of a to-do over her menstruation: I had a puberty party for her and invited the family. Jessie was horrified, but she said nothing. By then she was living with us, and Anthony was grimmer than ever. He’d leave the dining room as soon as dinner was over. He didn’t want to talk to his mother. Anyway, I wanted Elf to have a positive feeling about her body, about womanhood, and in the early years, that seemed to happen. She never had cramps, or anything like that.
Anthony said nothing about all of this, but he acted different. Normally, it takes a long time before you can perceive a pattern, realize that something is recurring or something has vanished. But this change of his was so striking that I noticed it immediately. Overnight, literally, Anthony stopped picking on Tony and started in on Elspeth. I remember that day Tony spilled some soda on the tablecloth—he was
always
spilling something, understandably—and I tightened my stomach, preparing for Anthony’s blast, and he said nothing, nothing at all. But ten minutes later he was blasting Elspeth for spilling some salt
It was astonishing, and it continued. From the day of that puberty party until he left the house, Anthony tormented Elspeth and left Tony fairly much alone. He was even nice to him sometimes. I pointed it out to him, he said I was crazy. His answer to everything. I mentioned that Laura had died at eleven and he said I was crazy. I pointed out that now Elspeth was one of
us
, a woman, and he couldn’t bear that. He said I was crazy.
Anyway, things combined: money troubles, his mother’s presence, my being away from the house so much, Elspeth…. He seemed to be furious all the time. You’d think he couldn’t keep it up, that he’d crack, but he never did. His rages simply escalated more and more. I don’t know where his breaking point was. His face came to seem continually purple. We’d have knock-down, drag-out battles night after night every time we went anywhere he’d come home in a jealous rage. And the weekends were hell.
But of course Elspeth didn’t understand what pressures were on him, or the ghosts he carried. She loved Anthony the way children automatically love the people who live with them, who help them tie their shoelaces or tell the time, who pick up the spoons the babies fling from their high-chair trays. The kind of love that is never really erased, no matter what happens later. The kind of love you don’t have to do anything to earn, that is simply given. Even if you are abusive, even if you’re cruel, your children go on loving you. That’s when they get sick—when they love and hate you equally intensely. Even when abused children grow up and run away from home, they look back with a passionate hatred that is so strong because it’s informed with love, that childish unremovable love.
It is the profoundest thing on earth, I think, that love. Despite all the years of torment, Tony loved Anthony, and so did Sydney, despite all the years of indifference. And they loved him in the same way, to the same degree, that they loved me, despite our very different behavior. Syd and Tony tell me now that when they look back, they find it hard to differentiate between Anthony and me. They don’t remember one of us a tormentor, the other as the shield. They remember torment and they remember love, but not where either came from. And in a way, perhaps they even loved Anthony more. He was mysterious, withholding so much from them; he was superior, a judge.
But of all of them, Elspeth had been the one with a special relation to Anthony. She knew she could walk up to him as he sat reading his paper and he’d smile. She knew that if she came running in with something wonderful to show—a pebble, a seashell, a hair ribbon—that he’d smile and say
isn’t that pretty.
He wouldn’t instantly begin to scold or shout, the way he would to Tony—who therefore never went running up with anything;
Elspeth could
trust
him, in some ways. When the children’s dog was run over and killed by a garbage truck one day, Anthony insisted he be the one to tell Elspeth. He said she would be able to take it better from him, and I think he was right. She cried “Oh, Daddy!” and threw herself sobbing into his arms. She never threw herself into
my
arms.
Well, then, here was this man who had seemed to love her, suddenly, unexpectedly shouting at her, screaming at her because she’d come to the table with dirty fingernails, had let her elbow rest momentarily on the table, forgot to put her bike away, dallied with her peas, hadn’t cleaned her room, was a lazy slob, yes, he even began to call her names, the same names he called me—she was a slut, a bitch. I don’t think he ever called
her
whore.
It was so blatant, I don’t know how Anthony could not see what he was doing. But no matter what I said, no matter how angry I got, he saw nothing and he continued. I was crazy, was all.
Anthony would be sitting in the family room watching television on a Saturday around noontime, when he’d spot Elf sidling past on her way to her room.
“Elspeth!” Man leaps to his feet, throws newspaper aside. “You come back here!”
Halfway to her room, she pauses, turns reluctantly, looks at him with impassive face.
“Now you go to your room, young lady, and don’t you come out for the rest of the day. You’ll go to bed without supper and no TV tonight!”
Tears. “But, Daddy! …”
“Don’t
but Daddy
me! Get in there!”
Rising hysterics. “But, Daddy, the kids are all going to the movies this afternoon. It’s
Goldfinger!
Daddy!”
“I don’t care if it’s the man in the moon!”
“Anthony, what did she do?”
Whirls around. “I told her this morning to clean out the cat box and she still hasn’t done it! She wanted the goddamned cat, you told her she had to take care of it, and I’ve been walking around this house the whole fucking morning smelling cat shit!”
“Elspeth, clean out the cat box.”
Darts past us, heading for the kitchen.
“It’s too late! She didn’t do it when she was told! She has to learn, what does she think this is, some nigger shanty?”
“
Anthony!
”
Stands, hands on hips, watching her, waiting for a mistake, waiting to pounce if she should spill a drop of the litter.
“Anthony, she’s a good kid. She forgot.”
“Honey, don’t do this. Forgot, my ass! She defies me, the little bitch!”
“
YOU MAY NOT TALK ABOUT HER THAT WAY! YOU MAY NOT
!”
“
I’LL TALK ABOUT HER ANY DAMNED WAY I PLEASE
!”
It would go on from there: rage from me, rage from him, screaming, slammed doors.
He stormed out of the house and went outside to mow the lawn. He worked on the garden when he was furious. I knew that his threats were bluster. All the years of threatened bed-without-supper and it had never happened. I wouldn’t let it All the years of no cookies, no candy, when he himself forgot ten minutes later, and who was going to enforce it? I used to thank god Anthony was not a mother. And the children had to know that too, after all these years. They did know it, I assume, but they never
acted
as if they knew it. I don’t know (Dolores’s throat clogged up), maybe they didn’t want to know it …
Because after she’d finished her chore, I went to her and put my arms around her and I said: “That’s nice and clean now, honey. I think it would be okay if you went to the movies.”
And Elspeth stares at me sullenly, resentful eyes, slumps off to her room and slams the door. Later I overhear her on my bedroom phone: “No, I can’t go, my father won’t let me.”
I go outdoors and speak to Anthony, I urge him to tell her she can go. Tell her what you want, I don’t give a damn, he says, and goes on mowing.
I go back to Elspeth and tell her Daddy doesn’t mind if she goes. I tell her: “Daddy has a sudden temper, but he doesn’t mean half of what he says. He’s forgotten all about it by now, you might as well have fun, go ahead. Call Nancy back and say you’re going.”
Sullen resentful eyes, glares at me, storms off into her room.
Doesn’t come to the dinner table. I call her three times, and finally have to go to her room and fetch her. Anthony ignores her until it’s time for dessert, it’s lemon meringue pie, her favorite. Suddenly he notices that her nails are dirty, that she is a scandal, a shame, a disgusting creature, that’s probably cat shit under her nails, she is to go to the bathroom immediately and brush her nails and then go to her room and stay there. She jumps up, near tears, runs into her room, and slams the door.
I am near tears myself. I slaved over that pie, mostly for her, because she’d lost out on going to the movies with her friends. I pick it up, I can’t stand another minute of him, I throw the pie at Anthony.
After the shock, after he has cleaned himself up, he laughs. I am moaning, I am crying, I can’t stand anymore. Tony and Sydney are walking around with big eyes.
They
missed out on dessert too, and their mother is crazy.
Later, I go into Elspeth’s room. I sit on her bed and try to talk to her. She is lying on her stomach, her soft pink child’s cheek against the pillow. She is not crying. But when I enter, she looks at me with hate, and when I try to talk to her, she turns her face away.
“Just leave me alone,” she says in a cold, adult voice.
N
OTHING IS EVER SIMPLE
, single. I know that now but I knew that then too. Elspeth had been such a good little girl, as I told you, that I was worried for her. But when Anthony began to hurl his thunder at
her
, she became sullen and sulky and resentful—the way you expect an eleven-year-old to be. But I couldn’t stand it, I simply couldn’t stand it. So I began to interfere between them the way I’d always interfered between Anthony and Tony. I felt I had to. Anthony had no restraint. I saw that the day he was smacking Tony on the behind for not shutting a drawer. He’d done that before, when Tony had left his wagon outside and Anthony wanted him to put it in the garage. He never knew when to stop. He never stopped. I feared for my children. And so I interfered. But that came to be the pattern: his thunder, my interference, thunderbolt delivered but no harm done. What I mean is, over the years I became Anthony’s restraint. Which meant I had to be there, all the time. And it also meant that I made it impossible for him to have a direct relationship with his children.
But maybe my motives weren’t as selfless as I thought. Maybe I resented their love for him and wanted to come between that too. And maybe Elspeth knew that and hated me for it. Maybe she wanted it, their relationship, no matter what it was. Maybe she wanted to live it out with him, horrible as it was. Horrible, but passionate, on both sides. And although this sounds mad, maybe in some ways Anthony was a better parent than I was. His behavior left him no option but to get angry with him, to talk back, to sneak around … which is supposed to be normal, isn’t it? Whereas my loving restraint perhaps left them incapable of anything but sweet docility. Because when I was alone with them, they were sweet and docile children. I didn’t ask much of them, but what I asked, they did.
“I don’t know. I’ll never know.” Her voice dwindled away. “But that day, the day Anthony wouldn’t let Elf go to the movies, was the day I decided I had to get away from him. He was killing me, killing some part of me. I hated him so much my stomach was sick all the time. And I hated myself for staying with him.
“The following week I called around, spoke to friends who had lawyers, got a name. Couldn’t find a woman lawyer, no one knew one. I went to see him, he was a slimy creep. All he really wanted to know was whether I’d been screwing around, and whether I’d screw around with him. But he had a reputation for being strong in divorce cases, and I thought I’d need that. I didn’t put it past Anthony to threaten my lawyer.