Free Our Father by Marilyn French Page A

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,