Sisters and Strangers, page 29
He was so deep in his thoughts he didn’t notice a car pull up to the curb. Fran was halfway up the walk when he saw her.
“Hi, Dad!” The voice was cheerful. “Lovely morning, isn’t it?”
He was so surprised that, for a moment, he couldn’t answer the breezy greeting. His eldest daughter was glowing. Fran never got up this early. What was she doing out at this hour? When had she left the house? And then he realized she was just coming home from wherever she’d spent the night. Sam’s lips tightened.
“Where have you been, Frances? What is the meaning of this? It’s six o’clock in the morning!”
“Is it? Good Lord! So there really are two six o’clocks in every day. Imagine that!”
Her flippancy infuriated him. “Don’t get smart with me! What will the neighbors think, seeing you come home at this hour?”
Fran refused to be ruffled. “What are the neighbors doing up at the crack of? For that matter, Dad, what are you doing out so early?”
“Never mind me. It’s you I’m interested in.”
“Really? Ah, that’s sweet, dear. I never thought you cared. Now, if it had been Mother …”
“Stop that! Answer me!”
Her smile faded. “Why, Dad? Why should I answer you? What business is it of yours where I spend my nights?”
“It’s my business because you’re under my roof! I won’t have you disgracing us again with your running around! I don’t give a damn how old you are, Frances, while you’re in my house you’ll behave like a lady, not like a tart!”
“Again?” she repeated. “Disgrace you again? Is that the way you feel? That I’ve disgraced you before?”
Angered, he snapped back at her. “Yes, that’s the way I feel. Running off with that actor! Three divorces! All kinds of gossip about you in every unsavory newspaper! I hoped at your age you’d settled down. But no. You never will. You’re as selfish and reckless as you were at eighteen. You don’t care for appearances? Fine. That’s your business when you’re somewhere else. But in Denver, you’ll behave yourself, or, by God, you can just pack your bags and be off again!”
Frances leaned casually against the porch railing. “Nothing changes with you, does it? We were always guilty until proved innocent. You’re doing the same things you did thirty-odd years ago. Jumping to conclusions. Damning me before you know the facts. What’s so terrible about coming home at six in the morning? And why do you assume I couldn’t have been spending the night with a woman friend? Or maybe alone in a hotel to get away from this stifling, dreary house? You’re all over me like some bloody nemesis! And you don’t even know whether I’ve ‘disgraced’ you or not!”
He was still furious but he tried to control his temper. “All right, Frances. Where were you?”
“I told you. None of your damned business! I can take care of myself. I always have. It’s not this daughter you should be worrying about. Why don’t you devote your righteous efforts to finding out why Allie is a battered wife? Or why Barbara has had an affair with a married man for the last dozen years? Why don’t you take some interest in what’s going on around you, Father dear? Or do you prefer to know nothing? Is it easier that way? Of course it is. Let Mother worry about us. That’s always been your attitude.” She stopped. Sam’s face had gone gray and he suddenly looked old and helpless. “Oh, hell, I’m sorry,” Fran said. “I had no right to go blabbing all those things to you just because I was so defensive about being questioned. I really am sorry, Dad. You’re right. When we’re in your house you have a right to know what we’re doing. I’ll tell you where I’ve been. You won’t like it, but you’re entitled. I spent the night with Buzz Paige.”
Sam rallied. “You what?”
“I’ve been with Buzz. We’re in love. He’s going to tell Dorothy this morning. We’re going away together. When she gets the divorce, Buzz and I will be married.” She looked at him appealingly. “Please try to understand. He’s the only man I’ve ever loved. I was foolish once, but I’m so fortunate to discover he still loves me. We’re going to be happy, Dad. I’ve waited a long time to be happy.”
“Get out!” Sam spoke quietly but his teeth were clenched in rage. “Go pack your bags and get out of this house right now! ‘Tart’ is too kind a word for you. You’re a monster. An evil, conniving woman who’s set out to destroy a good marriage. Well, I won’t let you do that. Not while you’re here. No child of mine will have my approval to wreck a happy home. I can’t control what you do when you leave here, but I don’t want you around one more day. Not one more hour! You’ve been trouble since the day you were born. You’ve broken your mother’s heart. Enough is enough!”
Frances looked straight at him. “Yes. Enough is enough. You’re certainly right about that. You’ve never attempted to understand the fuzzy areas of life. It’s all good-versus-evil to you, and anything you don’t approve of is evil. Poor Father. How incredibly naïve you are. ‘Wreck a happy home.’ Don’t you know that’s an impossibility? The unhappiness is already there, for God’s sake! I couldn’t take Buzz away from his wife if he hadn’t been unhappy for years! But you wouldn’t understand that, would you? My happiness doesn’t mean a damn to you if it violates some middle-class, moralistic code. Yes,” Fran said again, “I’ve had enough. Enough of wishing I had a father who cared more for me than for his damned pride. I’ll leave. No problem. They still have hotels in this town. But I won’t leave Denver until I leave with the man I love.” She started for the door and then turned to face him once more. “I take it back. I’m not sorry I told you about Allie and Barb. Mother’s out of her mind with worry about them, but she wouldn’t let you know. She’s used to protecting you from unpleasantness. Or perhaps she knows, as I do, that you and your moral judgments would only make things worse. Goodbye, Dad. I didn’t say it before but I can this time. Goodbye and good luck.”
He stood staring at the door after Fran vanished through it. He had to do something. Get to Buzz Paige before he talked to his wife. Jump in the car and go over there right now. Tell Buzz it was a mistake. That Fran left town. Anything. But even as he thought it, he knew there was nothing he could do. He had no authority. He was not dealing with juveniles. Sam sat down weakly on the front steps. All those things Fran said about herself. About her sisters. About him. God help him, was that what the mystery was all about—Allie married to a wife-beater and Barb in love with a married man? Was he to blame for any of it or, somehow, for all of it? Dimly, he heard Laura’s voice from the doorway.
“Sam? What’s the matter? Are you all right?”
He turned slowly to look at her, to see the genuine concern in her eyes. He got up like a very old man, and when he spoke it was with the voice of defeat.
“I think we’d better have a talk, Laura. There seem to be a few heavy crosses you’ve been carrying alone.”
We were born fifty years too soon, Laura thought, as she finished her “confession” to Sam and saw the pained, incredulous look on his face. If only we could face these problems by today’s standards, we wouldn’t find it so horrifying that we have a thrice-divorced daughter about to run off with a married man. It happens every day. A man leaves his family for another woman, usually a younger one than Fran, but people accept it because it’s become too prevalent to shock any group except us “senior citizens.” She shuddered involuntarily at that phrase. Why do those of us in our late years have to call ourselves “senior citizens” or “gray panthers” or “elder statesmen” or anything except what we are—old people. We act as though it’s indecent to have lived a long time. It isn’t indecent. But sometimes it’s damned inconvenient. We just can’t accept the changes all around us. We cling to the old standards, the old values, stubbornly rejecting the new ones.
It’s the same with Barbara and Alice’s problems. These days, it’s unsophisticated to be shocked when two mature people have an affair. Or even when it’s discovered that your son-in-law is one of thousands of deranged men who regularly beat their wives. But Sam and I are old-fashioned. Such unorthodox behavior doesn’t happen in our family. It’s something you read about in magazine articles. Something that happens to other people. Like cancer or heart attacks or strokes. We don’t believe they’ll ever touch us. Scandal is in the same category, as far as we’re concerned. Not so terrible, perhaps, but equally unacceptable.
And it is unacceptable. No matter how casually younger people treat infidelity and immorality, Sam and I cannot support it. Not when it comes to one of our own. Remembering her own anguish when she heard these stories from her girls, she was sympathetic to Sam’s stunned reaction. It was like receiving a rapid series of body blows. You reeled from them, dazed, incapable of fighting back. Sam sat immobile at the kitchen table for a long moment after Laura’s recital. And then he slowly shook his head in unmistakable bewilderment.
“What are we going to do?”
At least he isn’t going to rant and rave, Laura thought with relief. It tore her apart to see him so defeated, but it was better than the monumental anger she’d expected when he finally found out what she’d known for days.
“I don’t see that there’s much we can do, dear. They’re grown women. We can’t direct their lives. We never could, really. Not even when they were young. But certainly not now. All we can contribute is our presence, I suppose. Perhaps it helps to know that we love them, even if we don’t really understand. We’d best stay quiet, I think. Let them work things out for themselves with our silent support.”
He gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Too late for that, at least where Frances is concerned. I caught her coming in at six this morning. She told me she’d been with Buzz Paige and that he was going to get a divorce and marry her. I told her to pack her bags and get out.”
“Sam! You didn’t!”
“Afraid I did. We had a whale of an argument. She said I’d never been much of a father to any of them. She’s right. I never was. I never took time to find out what they were thinking. It didn’t occur to me that they needed both of us. Maybe if I had. they’d have turned out differently.”
“That’s nonsense,” Laura said. “You’ve always been a good father, a good provider. You can’t blame yourself for what’s happened to them. If you believe that, you have to blame me even more. I was in a better position to influence them. You were busy. Your job was elsewhere. Do you blame me for the way they turned out?”
“No, of course not. You’re a wonderful mother.”
“And you’ve always been a good father. Sam, dear, we tried to give them a good foundation. That was all we could do. All any parents can do. I don’t hold with this business of people blaming their troubles on their early lives. I’m sure it’s not always true. There comes a time when they have set their own course of action and they’re influenced by all kinds of outside things.” Laura sighed. “All you can do for children is try to teach them what you believe is right and decent. If they don’t apply your standards to their own lives, it can’t be helped. I love them as you do. I’m terribly disappointed in the way their lives have turned out. My heart breaks for them. But I can’t solve their problems and neither can you.”
Sam frowned. “But I have to do something about Frances. What she’s doing is wrong. Terrible. It makes me ashamed. But I took the wrong approach with her. I see that now. She might have responded to reason, but I didn’t even try that.”
“I’ll go up and see her,” Laura said. “I’ll explain that you were just terribly upset, and that we don’t want her to leave this way. She’ll understand. She’s an intelligent, worldly woman.”
“No. You’ve been doing that for almost fifty years, making excuses for my stubbornness, smoothing over problems I’ve caused. I can’t let you do that any more. I’ll talk to Frances myself. Don’t worry. I won’t fly off the handle. I hate what she’s doing because it is wrong. No one can convince me otherwise. But I have to let her know that no matter what she does she always has a home here. All of them do.” He took a deep breath. “What’s going to happen to the others? What’s Barbara going to do now that that man has thrown her over? And Allie. We can’t let her go back to that sadist.”
Laura patted his hand. Such a big hand with strong, blunt fingers roughened by endless work in the garden. Once Sam’s hands were smooth and soft when they touched her. “White collar hands” they were, belonging to an executive. Now they were as tough as a laborer’s, and it had been a long, long time since they’d stroked her. Odd I should be dwelling on that now, she though. Crazy that a woman in her “sunset years” should be thinking of romance long gone. It was simply that the change in Sam’s hands reminded her of the changes in the man himself: As his will to live weakened, his body became stronger. Physically he had toughened, but emotionally he was spent. All this is killing him, she realized. In many ways he’s more devastated than I, more filled with remorse.
“We’re all going to survive,” she said at last. “You and I and the children, as long as the Lord allows. The girls will find their way out of their situations. Ways they can live with. We just have to try to accept what they do.” She smiled sadly. “We can’t play God, Sam dear. We don’t know enough to even try.”
The slamming of dresser drawers in Fran’s room a little after six in the morning awakened her sleeping sisters. Neither of them had slept well after their talk. Allie, almost ashamed of her new-found happiness, was sensitively reluctant to announce her good fortune when Barb was so miserable. That was silly, of course. No one would be more thrilled for her than her younger sister. Convincing herself of that, she’d finally drifted off to sleep.
Barbara dropped off at last from sheer exhaustion. She had no idea what time it was when she closed her eyes in merciful unconsciousness, but it must have been only a couple of hours before the racket next door awakened her. She and Allie sat up almost simultaneously when the noise began.
“What on earth is going on?” Allie asked. “What’s Fran doing crashing around at this hour?”
For a moment, Barb forgot her own troubles. She got out of bed and put on her robe. “Let’s go see.”
The two of them entered their sister’s room. All Fran’s suitcases were out and she was feverishly packing, the contents of the closet and bureau making the place look like some elegant but disorganized dress shop. She didn’t even look up when the other two came in.
Allie stared at the disarray. “What’s happened? Where are you going?”
“To a hotel. I’ve had it with this house. I hated it before and I hate it now. I can’t wait to get the hell away from all this god-damned middle-class morality!”
Barbara and Alice looked confused. Of course Fran wasn’t at home here. Neither were they. But there was more than that to this precipitous departure.
“To a hotel?” Barbara repeated. “I don’t understand.” For the first time she noticed Fran’s untouched bed. “You must have just gotten home. What is all this?”
“All this,” Fran said acidly, “is that once again I’m getting out of here to live my own life without being told I’m a tramp and a tart and all those other attractive things. Who needs it? I’m going on fifty years old, for God’s sake!”
“Calm down,” Allie said. “Let’s make some sense out of all this, Fran.”
“Who can make sense out of a crazy old man who thinks he’s still living in the nineteenth century? Your father is the same sanctimonious, self-righteous bastard he always was! He’s ordered me out of the house. How do you like them apples? Caught me coming in a few minutes late again and did a rerun of ‘Orphans of the Storm.’ Too bad I’m not penniless or that there isn’t a blizzard he can toss me out into!” She sat down suddenly on the bed. “I’m sorry,” she said more quietly. “I’m behaving like an Italian soprano. The fact is, I spent the night with Buzz. We’re going to be married. I ran into Dad on my way in and told him. He’s turned my picture to the wall. Again. It wasn’t a very pretty scene on either side, but it was inevitable. Tom Wolfe was right: You sure as hell can’t go home again. Anyway, I’m leaving, kids. Sorry to run out on you when you both have troubles, but I’ll be sticking around Denver for a little while until Buzz can get his affairs in some kind of order, so we’ll be able to meet away from here. That is, if you want to stay friendly with the black sheep of the family.”
“Don’t, Fran,” Barbara said. “Don’t do it. It’ll kill Mother to see you leave this way. You know Dad. He flares up. He’ll come around when he’s had time to think it through.”
“I’m sure he will,” Fran said sarcastically. “Maybe he’ll let me come back to celebrate his Diamond Jubilee. No, Barb. Sorry. No go. He doesn’t want a ‘fallen woman’ under his roof. Might contaminate him, ruin his respectability. God forbid he should harbor a strumpet who sleeps with somebody else’s husband! They’d probably drum him out of the Kiwanis!” She stopped, seeing the pained expression on Barbara’s face, remembering what she’d said to Sam. “Oh, Jesus, I’ve blown it for both of you too, I guess. I’m afraid I said more than I should have about Tallent and Spencer. He’s probably getting the story of our lives from Mother right now and will come charging up here like the wild bull of the pampas. I’m really sorry about that. I shouldn’t have involved anyone else.”
Alice was trying to absorb what she’d heard. Fran and Buzz Paige were going to be married? It was incredible. She had no idea her sister was contemplating such a thing. Apparently it was not surprising to Barbara.
“Are you sure, Fran? Sure this is right for you, I mean.” Barb looked pleadingly at her sister. “It’s a fierce responsibility you’re taking, separating a man from his wife and children, asking him to chuck everything for you. Are you so sure he won’t regret it? Or that you won’t?”
