Constance Read online

—No.

  I didn’t absorb this immediately. I was on my feet now, standing over him, pushing my fingers through my hair.

  —So who was he?

  —A man your mother knew.

  —Oh, a man, I said, turning away, and Harriet knew him. What a relief that is. So who am I, Daddy?

  He wouldn’t tell me. All he said was, it was important that I know the truth. I disagreed. Pacing back and forth between the window and the fireplace, and weeping now, I said I didn’t understand why I had to be told at all. What good could it do me now, the truth? Oh, the truth—! I spat the word out. I said sometimes the truth is no better than a whip—

  —How can I make you understand?

  I sat down. I was trying not to cry. How did he imagine he could ever make me understand? In my mind’s eye I’d seen a drawer torn violently from a desk and turned upside down so its contents spilled out. Letters, photographs, invoices, checks, objects charged with meaning and others of no significance whatever, all scattered on the floor in disorder. The prospect then of gathering them up and attempting to sort them out. In all the cacophony I was unable to isolate any single thought. Memories arose, each one demanding to be reorganized or reconstructed in light of this new information. Why had he told me now? Then: I’d always known it. He’d always withheld a father’s love and for this simple reason, that he wasn’t my father. Then I understood why he’d been such a vindictive man, it was obvious, it was because I was the living embodiment of my mother’s infidelity, of her sin. I reminded him of Harriet’s sin and, too, of his failure, for no woman ever cheated on a man without it being his own fault.

  He was Iris’s father and he wasn’t mine and he’d told me so a thousand times—

  A question occurred to me. Later I wished I’d never asked it.

  —Does Iris know?

  —Yes.

  I left the room and closed the door. What he’d said had undermined my whole idea of who I was, not a sturdy construction to begin with. Now he’d told me that Iris knew, and she’d never said a word. I stood in the cold corridor with my back to the door. His words kept sweeping through my mind, over and over. Dimly I supposed I should ask him again who my real father was but I could imagine the tawdry narrative he’d produce, Harriet’s secret, her exposure, his anger, her shame, her eventual capitulation to his insistence that I never be told. Her early death, doubtless hastened by his corrosive rage. All this flooding through me as I stood with my back to the door, my heart racing and my breath coming in shallow gulps. I wanted a cigarette, where could I get one now? I was about to go upstairs when the front door opened and a still colder air entered the house.

  Sidney told me later that he realized as soon as he walked through the front door that Daddy had upset me. I went to him. He took me in his arms.

  —I want to go back to the city now, tonight, I whispered.

  —What’s happened?

  I think I was close to hysteria. All I wanted was to leave that cold house and return to New York. I didn’t want any details or any background. I just wanted to forget that the conversation had ever occurred.

  —Constance, tell me what happened.

  —It’s too cold here.

  —Let’s go in to the fire, he said.

  He was concerned for Howard, who was peering up at me, his little face parched with cold.

  —You go in, I said, I’ll be in later. Close the door behind you. Don’t let the heat out.

  He didn’t want to leave me but Howard’s teeth were chattering. I went down the hall to the kitchen and left the house by the back door. My breath was like smoke in the night air. A mist was rising from the river. There was frost on the snow already, it crunched beneath my boots as I ran across the grass behind the house and through the trees, then made a rapid, reckless descent, slipping and stumbling down the slope to the marshy stretch by the railroad tracks where ice had formed in the puddles between the clumps of sedge. It splintered under my boots and then I was running across the railroad tracks. I paused, panting, at the edge of the river. It was crowded with jagged chunks of ice.

  I stepped onto the dock with caution. Some of the planks were firm, others were splintered and rotten. The pilings were unsteady. Gingerly I walked to the end. I was calmed by the mist all around me. A few yards out a low escarpment of shale broke the surface of the water, a clump of skinny sycamores sprouting from cracks in the rock. I felt an impulse to give myself to the river but I was put off by all the ice. I could imagine drowning, but what I couldn’t face was going down in that icy water and freezing to death.

  I stared at the old boathouse, derelict now, and that night it seemed more sinister than it had before. I turned away and as I did so those awful words from my mother’s funeral came back to me: He didn’t know what hit him.

  When I got back up to the house I went straight into the sitting room. The two men fell silent at once. The air stank of bad faith. Sidney had already taken Howard up to bed.

  —Would anybody like a drink? I said in what I hoped were neutral tones. I wished not to give the impression of being hysterical or in any way out of control. Daddy, is there any drink left in the house?

  There was a bottle of rum in the kitchen cupboard. Sidney rose to fetch it but I insisted he stay with Daddy. I sat at the kitchen table by myself. I took a long swallow from the bottle. It was a mistake. It brought the questions crowding in. With them came emotions I had no intention of dealing with that night, in that house, and if I could manage it, not ever.

  Sidney came to the kitchen but I told him to leave me alone. I wasn’t ready to talk to him. I woke in the morning, in bed, in my coat, shivering with cold, and Sidney woke with me. Daddy had told him about our conversation. That he wasn’t my father, this had never occurred to Sidney, but he understood at once why I’d been treated with such coldness all my life. I think he understood.

  —I don’t want to talk about it, I said. You have to let me deal with this by myself. The best thing you can do is leave me alone.

  —Are you coming back with us?

  —I want to see Iris. I’ll get the train.

  We lay there in silence. Neither of us wished to leave the warmth of the bed. Through the gap in the drapes I could see the lowering gray sky outside. There was more snow on the way.

  —Your father said you didn’t want to know the circumstances.

  —Did you hear what I said? And he’s not my father.

  —He was very upset.

  What was he trying to do, effect a reconciliation? Fat chance.

  —You’re making me angry, I said.

  He climbed out of bed and rapidly got dressed. He paused at the door and said he didn’t think I should blame my sister. Then he left the bedroom. The effect of his words was to awaken the anger I’d intended to suppress. My family had lied to me all my life, this was how I saw it, so why should I care that the old man was upset? I was upset, I, Constance! I heard Sidney in the corridor with Howard. He wanted to get in bed with me again but Sidney told him he couldn’t.

  —Why not?

  —She’s upset.

  Later I packed the boy’s suitcase while Sidney gave him breakfast in the kitchen. I came down to see them off. I’d scraped my hair back off my forehead in a tight knot and I’d never before felt so distant or so very severe as I did then. Daddy looked exhausted. He hadn’t slept. I was indifferent to him. I had a splinter of ice in my heart that morning, oh yes. I knew he was suffering. He’d handled it badly, and doubtless he was asking himself how you handle such a thing well. How do you break the silence of almost thirty years in a sensitive manner?

  —When’s Iris coming?

  He’d just said good-bye to Sidney and Howard. I was with him in the kitchen. I was making fresh coffee. I didn’t trouble to tell him when Iris was coming. Let him rot in hell.

  I took the truck to the station. When I saw my sister on the platform I felt a brief pang of the old protective affection but I hated that she knew. A cold fury had raged inside
me ever since Daddy told me. I’d thought: How could it not be Iris’s fault that she’d kept it from me? She must have acquiesced in some notion of the old man’s that it was for my own good. Then through perverse loyalty to him, or just sheer laziness, or carelessness, she’d failed me. Wasn’t Iris more than a sister to me? Wasn’t she my best friend? Hadn’t I been a mother to her after Harriet died? But here she was, striding down the platform with a bag slung over her shoulder. She was in a dirty old fur coat she’d picked up secondhand in the city, it was flapping open, also velvet trousers tucked into a pair of ridiculous cowboy boots. She had a cigarette between her teeth and she was grinning.

  —Hello, captain.

  —Give me one of those.

  She handed over the pack and clicked her lighter. Driving back to the house not once did I look at her. I’d decided the old man could tell her what had happened. When she was getting out of the truck she asked me if I was okay.

  —What do you mean?

  —I feel sad here too.

  —You feel sad for Daddy?

  —I guess so.

  We went into the house. The old man emerged from the sitting room, carefully closing the door behind him. The long, flinty face grew soft, or as soft as flint gets. Here was Iris, home at last. How impatient he must be, I thought, to get her to himself and give her the bad news. And ask her please to sort it out. I left them to it. I went out through the kitchen and walked down to the river. I had Iris’s cigarettes in my pocket. I smoked two of them on the dock and felt ill.

  I reported all this to Sidney when I got back to New York. I told him I was grateful that he’d left me to deal with Daddy and Iris by myself. It was family business, I said, it didn’t concern him, he was better off out of it. Of course it concerned him, he told me. Oh, I’d made him angry. If it concerned me then it concerned him, he said. What did I think it meant, being married?

  —Please don’t do this now, I said.

  We were eating lunch in the dining room. Wintry sunlight drifted into the room and the city was quiet for once in its life. I’d come in from Penn Station late the previous evening and been too tired to talk. My mood had hardened overnight. Sidney set down his knife and fork.

  —Listen to me, he said. This is a bad shock you’ve had and I want to help you make sense of it. So don’t, please, say it doesn’t concern me.

  He wanted me to understand that we had to face it together. He said that this news had tipped my world upside down and I wasn’t strong enough to deal with it. I might wear a mask for others, he said, but with him I must express the confusion and pain I was feeling.

  He then said that maybe it was a good thing, what had happened, because now there was a chance I could abandon Daddy and face the world like an adult.

  —Do I have to tell you everything? I said.

  —I’m your husband, so yes, Constance, you do. That’s our deal.

  So I told him that when I got back up to the house Iris was in the kitchen. She told me she didn’t know what to say. I said that telling me what she knew would be a start. She was surprised. Hadn’t Daddy told me? No, I said, Daddy hadn’t told me anything.

  We’d sat across the table staring at each other. I could hear the old man shuffling around somewhere above us.

  —He didn’t tell you anything? said Iris.

  Again I told her no, and she asked me if I really wanted to know. I was suddenly filled with dread. I knew bad news was coming at me fast.

  —He committed suicide.

  —I’m sorry, said Sidney quietly.

  He’d been afraid of this, he said. He’d hoped there was some way I could be shielded from it but there wasn’t. He asked me how I’d handled it and I said I didn’t handle it, that I was numb before it sank in. I’d asked Iris why he’d done it.

  —That’s all I know. Daddy wouldn’t tell me his name.

  I felt a gust of anger. Then I asked her how old I was when it happened.

  —You weren’t even born, darling!

  As though that would make me feel better!

  —So I never knew him? But why do you know this and I don’t? Why was it a secret? Why was I never told?

  Iris said that Daddy had told her not to say anything about it. She felt ashamed now. But he’d been so insistent.

  —Yes, Iris, but why did he tell you that?

  Yes, why? Now we were getting to it. The numbness was starting to wear off. Iris fell silent.

  —What do you know?

  Nothing.

  —Iris, why wasn’t I told?

  —He said you weren’t strong enough.

  I’d felt a kind of wildness then, as though something was breaking loose inside of me and threatening to burst out in a flood of destructive rage. I’d risen from the kitchen table. I wanted to go upstairs and tell him what he’d done. Iris stood with her back to the door.

  —Constance, wait, please—

  —Why should I care what you think? You were in on it! You all were!

  —I know—

  Iris still had her back to the door. Suddenly I felt drained. I sat down at the table. I lit a cigarette then crushed it out.

  —Who was he? No, you don’t know, anyway I don’t want to hear it from you.

  Then I put my arms on the table and lay my head down and wept for a while, and Iris had the sense not to say anything or try to touch me.

  The next day I returned to New York without making peace with either of them. They’d tried. The old man, Daddy—what else was I going to call him?—in his halting way repeated, when we were alone together, that he wanted me to know the truth before it was too late. It took some effort not to voice the clamor of angry responses that sprang to my lips and I pretended not to hear him. I waited for him to get up the courage to say why he’d done this to me but no, he couldn’t. He sat at the kitchen table waiting for Iris to walk through the door. When she didn’t he shuffled to his feet and left the room without another word.

  Iris tried harder. She was dismayed by the chill that had sprung up between us. But any sympathy I may have felt for her, I crushed it out. I had no intention of letting her down easy. And when she looked at me in that imploring way I felt the anger rising and I didn’t trouble to stem it. I was more hurt by my sister’s complicity in Daddy’s deception than anything else.

  —We all washed up?

  I was in the bedroom, packing. I was catching a train back to the city and Iris was driving me to the station. I didn’t trouble to straighten up and turn around.

  —I don’t know, are we?

  —I hate this, said Iris quietly. You don’t even know if it’s true.

  I didn’t respond to this. My mind was made up. It made sense of everything. Iris left the room, saying she’d be out in the truck when I was ready. I went downstairs. Daddy stood in the hall. He was angry now.

  —Constance.

  —Daddy.

  —I’m very disappointed you won’t try to see this from my point of view. I did what I thought was right.

  —But you got it wrong, didn’t you?

  I was at the front door. In the driveway Iris sat in the truck with the engine running. She was resting her forehead on the steering wheel. I seized the old man’s arm. I gripped it hard. I drew close to him so he wouldn’t be in any doubt as to what I was telling him.

  —You’ve always hated me and now I know why. You bastard.

  I walked out to the truck and tossed my suitcase in the back and climbed in. As we drove along the river I saw tears suddenly spill down Iris’s face and I was glad.

  —You were glad, said Sidney.

  —Yes, Sidney, I was glad!

  I glared at him, my face pushed forward and my hands laid flat on the table. He moved to the chair beside me and I let him hold me for several minutes. Then I stood up from the table without looking at him. I left the room and went down the hall, then into the bedroom and closed the door quietly behind me.

  It was grotesque, what Sidney proposed. My life had been devastated by
a doctor and he wanted me to see a shrink. Even to suggest it—! The idea that he should hand me off in this way, commit me to the care of a doctor, it showed the limits of his imagination. I told him it would do more harm than good. Shrinks, doctors, I said, they do more damage than anyone. I was sick at what Daddy did to me. Why would I give myself over to a psychiatrist? Sidney said he understood. He said sometimes there’s virtue in not knowing. I let him think it. He had to think something.

  For several days after my return he didn’t mention what had happened upstate. Then one night he apparently thought I might be receptive. As we sat at the kitchen table he suggested in a studiously offhand manner that my father was at an age when he wanted to get last things cleared away. It was a primal human need, he said, to put matters in order before a journey. He meant death. I’d been distracted earlier but hearing this I became at once alert and angry.

  —Yes, but why didn’t he figure out what it would do to me? And Sidney, he’s not my father.

  —Are you sure?

  He wasn’t sure. He didn’t think the old man was reliable anymore.

  —Yes.

  We sat in silence. I’d cooked us a couple of steaks and opened a bottle of wine. Howard was asleep and Gladys had gone home.

  —So what about Iris? he said.

  —I don’t know.

  —I don’t think you’ll be estranged over this.

  It was important to him that we not be estranged. He thought Iris was one of my very few sources of support and he didn’t want me to lose her. Sidney liked Iris. He wanted to get her in bed. I think he felt he’d married the wrong sister but he was too repressed to do anything about it.

  —Listen, I said, how many times have I said something about Daddy and Iris thought, Constance still doesn’t know. It must have happened a thousand times. Her silence was an act of betrayal every single time.

  —She’s young to face a dilemma like that. Her father tells her one thing, her heart tells her another.

  I shrugged.

  —That’s not my problem.

  Then I said I didn’t know what Iris could say to make it right, and it would have to come from Iris.

  —It’s not my responsibility, I said.