Read Online The Love Children by Marylin French - Free Book Online Page A

thought I didn’t know. When I was in the room, he used a knife and fork. Whether he finished something or not, he left the pot on the stove. Unless I happened to go in and see the leftover food and wrap it in foil and put it in the fridge, it would get so dried out that the housekeeper, Mrs. Thacker, would have to throw it out the next day. I thought about my mother’s horror of waste and shuddered, but I knew it was useless to say anything to my father. He was in another world. Like Mrs. Blake said about Mr. Blake, he was always in paradise. Only I felt my father wasn’t in paradise but maybe hell. It made me feel so bad for him. Like being an artist was some terrible doom.
    After he ate, he’d pour a fresh drink. I’d hear the ice cubes tinkling in the glass when he came into the living room, and I’d look up from my book or the TV and say, “Hi, Dad,” and he’d say, “Hi, Jess,” and sink into his armchair and after a while he’d fall asleep. I’d wake him before I went to bed and tell him to go to bed. He either did or he didn’t. I couldn’t stand the way he lived, but he didn’t give me a hard time. He always spoke gently to me, always seemed a little surprised that I was there.
    Working at the café, which I had dreaded, was fun. It drew college kids from New York who spent summers in Vermont. I made some friends and became pals with a girl called Gail, who lived in Manhattan and went to Brearley. She came in every day for a cappuccino. She smoked pot right out in public. She reminded me of Phoebe a little. When we met after work, we usually shared a
joint or two, and often I just stayed at the café, hanging out with Gail and some other kids. There was nothing else to do there.
    Mom called me every week. At first I wouldn’t talk to her; I was so mad at her for sending me up there. But after a while I relented; I knew she missed me and was sad without me. I never told Dad she’d got a job, or said anything about her wanting a divorce. Some things you just didn’t mention to my father; it would be like lighting dynamite. At the end of August, she called to say that she was flying to Mexico in a few days to get a divorce. I asked if Dad knew and she said no. I didn’t understand how she could get a divorce without his knowing, and she said he’d signed a power of attorney. She said that when he had been home at Christmas, he’d been in a rational state of mind for a few days and she could talk to him about their separation without his having a tantrum. She even got him to go with her to see a lawyer; she’d borrowed five hundred dollars to pay him. The lawyer called Dad and asked him to come into the office to sign a separation agreement, and Dad did. But judging from how he acted later, he must never have believed Mom would go through with it.
    Dad was always a paradox: he regularly blew up at her or me, shrieking absolutely hateful things in tantrums that lasted whole weekends, but when she would mention divorce, he would laugh. He would say how happy they were together and that he never loved anybody but her. He constantly suspected her of infidelity, but even when he was in a rage, he assumed she was utterly bound to him and would not leave him, no matter how horribly he behaved. At the meeting with the lawyer, he promised to give Mom generous child support. She and the lawyer urged Dad to get his own lawyer; he refused. He signed the papers and stormed out of the office.
    Mom knew he’d never pay the child support. That was why she knew she had to get a better job before she left. I was happy
I had a job, so I could buy my own clothes and not ask Mom to do that, knowing how thin she was stretched. It’s odd to think of money being love. Someone told me that Freud said money was shit, but that’s crazy. It’s love, doled out or withheld. It made me wonder how my father felt about me that he wouldn’t