Our Father Read Online Free PDF Page A

personal physician, Dr. Biddle?”
    “Yes, the young lady”—he glanced at Ronnie for the first time—“suggested we call him yesterday, and he came down and looked at your father. He took care of your mother, is that right?” he asked Ronnie, who nodded.
    So everybody knew, Mary thought.
    “Yes, surely we’re happy to have all the cooperation we can get,” he said in a strained voice, and led them to the old man’s room. Stephen lay, a white distorted lump in the bed, his face askew, a mask over his nose, an IV attached to his forearm, another inserted in his neck above the collarbone, a catheter attached to his nether parts and dripping into a bag hanging on the side of the bed. Mary gasped when she saw him, tears filled those great brown eyes, the doctor was moved, he edged closer to her, he put his hand on her arm. But she ignored him, grabbing the old man’s hand, “Father! Oh, Daddy! It’s your little Mary! Mary Mary quite contrary!” she cried, but the hand did not respond, the eye did not open. Elizabeth too looked distraught, but she did not touch him. Alex’s voice dwindled as she spoke, ending in a whisper, murmured, “Hello, Father, it’s Alex. …” Ronnie said nothing.
    They stood beside him as over a corpse for some minutes, then the doctor led them out. Elizabeth asked a few detailed questions about medication and nursing, then they left. They piled back into the limo. They did not speak.
    Elizabeth stared out the limo window. Horrible: him so helpless. How he would have hated us standing there looking down on him, he never let anyone look down on him if he could help it, always stood when he spoke. He was taller than we of course, taller than lots of men too, but he always liked to stand when he spoke to someone. If he had to sit, he looked for a chair with a high seat, he sat high anyway, long from the waist up. The quiet forceful voice, the stillness of his body, no superfluous gestures, for years I copied him not to be like Mother, always with a hand on her hair or fiddling with her rings or waving her hands around. I wanted to command attention the way he did, learned how to do it too, Clare said I had it down, but not the same, they don’t listen to me the same way, it’s different. They liked listening, looking up to him, elder statesman. They don’t like listening to me.
    “Father would have hated us standing around looking down on him,” Elizabeth said into the silence.
    “Yes. And with his mouth open like that, and his face drooping …!” Alex rushed on, “ Anyone would hate that, it’s so demeaning! I only hope he doesn’t remember his condition when he comes to.” Poor thing, poor man. Feeling oozed around her heart. Why can’t I think of him as my father?
    No one responded.
    No one ever responds to me.
    Elizabeth and Mary sat side by side in the back seat; the two younger women sat facing them in the jump seats beside the bar.
    Mary turned to Elizabeth. “Did you get an impression of what the doctor really thought the prognosis was?”
    Elizabeth shook her head.
    Alex said brightly, “David’s father, Sam, had a stroke and was in a coma for about forty-eight hours, but he recovered and is fine now, really, he can even speak and walk now. Of course, it took a few years.”
    Silence.
    “It’s true,” she answered her own objection, “he was a lot younger than Father.”
    “How old?” Mary wanted to know.
    She spoke to me! “In his sixties, sixty-one or -two. Sam’s sixty-seven now, he can even drive again! He drove himself and my mother-in-law to Stevie’s high school graduation a year ago.”
    “Our father never drove himself anywhere,” Elizabeth said brusquely.
    Ronnie took pity on Alex. “Who’s Stevie?”
    Alex smiled on her gratefully, poured words out. “My son. He’s almost nineteen, he’ll be nineteen next month, the day after Christmas, I had both my children right after Christmas, which is really amazing because I was born on Christmas Day