Our Father Read Free Page B

everything about them, him, their lives. My family. They are my family, aren’t they? Alex put her hand over her heart, which seemed to hurt, and rubbed it gently. I wonder if it’s really in your heart that you feel things. There are people in the world who think feelings reside in their stomachs or their livers. Do we feel things in our hearts just because we’ve been told that’s where we feel? Who was it told me that if a chimpanzee suffers a terrible loss, like its mother dies or something, when it dies and they cut it open, they find lesions on its heart? Could that be true?
    Pain suffused her body, and she turned on her side.
    Back here again. Haven’t slept in this house since I was nine. Twenty-seven years ago. Glorious then, the trees a mist of green, the gardens glowing, the house so luxurious, so much room. The Georgetown house was more crowded. I think. The Baltimore house sure was, she smiled. This house looks different now, like grade school if you go back after you’re grown up, corridor walls crowd in on you, things that looked huge then look dwindled, little. Am I remembering wrong? Idealizing? Elizabeth was so tall and she knew everything, sometimes she read to me or pretended to play tennis with me. A few times the three of us went for walks, Mary was so fun, teasing, playing tag, she taught me to swim. Mommy would have lemonade and cookies served on the screened porch every afternoon for all of us. Sometimes Daddy would come too and sit with us, hold me on his lap, stroke my hair. I remember that! He did do that! And he bought me a puppy, called it Charlie Chaplin, then everything seemed to stop all of a sudden. We went to live with Grandma and Grandpa. I remember Momma’s lips tight, Grandma and Grandpa so pale, hardly speaking. Everyone treating me as if I was sick. Then later Momma married Charlie … we went on living in the little rowhouse in Baltimore.
    Yes, fits I had. Some kind of fits. Maybe I was sick. Maybe that’s why Momma won’t tell me. Maybe I have some congenital incurable disease that won’t show up for another year or two. Some horrible degenerative thing that will wither my limbs, make my hair fall out, something that runs in Father’s family that he didn’t tell her and that was why. … Oh that’s crazy. The others are healthy enough and they’re not young. Elizabeth is in her fifties.
    Eighteen years since I last saw Father. Suppose he never speaks again or hears or is conscious again I’ll never be able to tell him … he’ll never tell me … I’ll never find out. Did he hate me? Why did he abandon me? He didn’t abandon them. Mom could tell me, why won’t she? Why is there this empty place in my memory? Maybe there’s nothing to tell. That would be worst of all. Nothing happened at all. Just a couple splitting up. But Momma’s so sweet, why would anyone want to leave her? He was a run-around, I guess, but he never married again after Momma. But it was Noradia, the housekeeper, he was sleeping with her, that’s what all the business was about with Ronnie. She must be his child, look at her eyes, her mouth. But Noradia can’t have been responsible for their splitting, was she even here then?
    Something happened. No one will tell me.
    They despise me, why do they despise me?
    She tossed in the bed.
    They don’t want me here, I won’t stay, I’ll go home as soon as I can. She turned onto her other side, burrowed into the mattress, tried to sleep. It must have been the starlight that bothered her, that seemed to penetrate her closed lids. It was not moonlight, the moon was gone, sunk on the other side of the house. The insides of her eyelids were punctured by tiny brilliant lights.
    Elizabeth removed her contact lenses by feel, not looking in the mirror. She laid them in a tiny box, and poured liquid over them. Then she undressed systematically, carefully avoiding the mirror. Does Ronnie know something? Is it possible he left everything to her mother? Noradia