Archibald Full Frontal, page 14
My hair is standing up on the back of my neck, trapped in the high-voltage current that passes between them. It has the force to melt plastic, break glass, burn wood, bend spoons.
Archie’s cronies file out of the dining room. Rita surveys my mother admiringly. Leo keeps his eyes downcast, pinned to his hands. Dorothy links her arm through Edna’s as if to offer moral support. I back away slowly out of an instinct for self-preservation. Nobody breathes, save Mi Tie, who has plunked down by my mother’s feet and begun purring.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve showing your face here. But I have to hand it to you, you always did.”
“Well, I had a good teacher, didn’t I?” My mother bares her teeth slightly.
“You invited her,” I remind Archibald in a small voice. “She’s your guest.”
“It was a dare,” he says without peeling his eyes from her.
My mother turns in a semicircle, as if critically surveying the room, momentarily breaking the tension.
“So this is how you live,” she says. “I was expecting something a little less ordinary.”
“This from the queen of the hospital corner.”
“And you would know a queen.”
Archibald’s eyes narrow until they are slits.
“We should really be going,” Edna pipes up. “This is for family.”
“Family?” I repeat.
She avoids my gaze and scurries past Archibald and my mom, followed by Dorothy, Rita, and Leo, who pauses and squeezes my arm slightly.
“Want to get some fresh air, Maggie?” he says.
“No thanks,” I say tersely. My feet are glued to the spot. It’s like watching a car accident, unsure of what the aftermath will be. My mother and Archibald stand as though caught in a duel.
“You’ve changed your hair,” Archibald observes.
“And you’ve gotten old.”
“But my teeth are still razor sharp.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“What is going on?!” I ask, but again go unanswered.
“You should be horsewhipped—” she says, her hands clenching and unclenching as she turns her stare back to the picture.
“Was that a question?” he interrupts.
“—for hiding that painting all these years!”
“It belongs to me. And it was her best work.”
“She wanted me to have it!” She struggles to control her voice.
“She never told me that.”
“She never told you a lot of things. Because you were elsewhere,” she counters.
“And I guess you’re an expert on marriage and commitment?” he retorts. “Didn’t your devoted husband remove himself to a different continent?”
“At least I understand the general concept. She was always an afterthought for you.”
“And what was she to you?” he throws back.
“Who?” I interrupt. “Who are you talking about? Answer me!”
My mother looks at me as if just now remembering I am there. “Your grandmother.”
Archibald glances at me, too, as though noticing me for the first time. I stare between them. I have never noticed how similar their eyes are. Two sets of blue eyes, one light and one slightly darker, fixed on me.
“My grandmother?”
“Yes, my mother and Archibald’s former…”
“Wife,” Archibald finishes impatiently.
“But that would mean…”
“That Archibald is my father. And your grandfather. That’s right. I’m sorry to tell you like this, but it’s the truth. The ugly truth.”
“You have to give it to the girl. She is as naïve as they come. All this time, and she had absolutely no idea.” Archibald lets out a maniacal laugh.
I sink into the couch, winded. My mind feels bloated and helpless. This can’t be right. I had not been working for my grandfather all this time. I could not be related to Archibald! “But how … how is that possible?!”
“If you can’t figure that out, then you really are hopeless,” Archibald says dryly. “Now I know why you sent her to me. You wanted me to repair your useless job of parenting. At least you had that sense.” He is a snake now, slithering.
But my mother isn’t running. “I sent her to you because I thought she was ready. To make up her own mind.”
“About what?” I ask, again forgotten.
“Even I can see the girl is an emotional orphan, likeable enough, but her few good qualities are in spite of you,” he says as if I’m not there.
“And you are an expert judge of character?”
“At least I have character.”
She snorts. “You are bloodless.”
“And you are a bloodsucking, heartless cunt.”
“Stop it, both of you!” I yell. “Stop this right now!” They look like two gladiators ready to fight to the death. I turn to my mother. “You told me he was dead. You said my grandfather was dead. Why … why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know,” my mother says. “I guess I wanted to give you time to get used to the disappointment of having him as your only other surviving relation. Let’s face it. He’s not exactly grandfather material. I hoped he had changed. I hoped he would grow some redeemable qualities. At least mellow with time if not gain a conscience. I was wrong.”
“And I see you are as heartless as ever.”
“And you! You knew all along?” I demand of Archibald.
“Yes,” Archibald says, irritated. “I knew all along. It was our arrangement.” He turns to my mother. “It was almost bearable talking to you over the phone. I was curious to see if I could stomach your offspring. Luckily, you are almost nothing alike. She seems to be artistic. She paints, you know.”
So he knew I had been painting.
“But I knew you were just using her to get to me. Because of your guilt. Did I mention I’ve written you out of the will?” Archibald says.
“Oh, Archibald, surely you can hit harder than that? You’ve gone soft. Like your weak old body.”
He looks to me. “Did you know your mother was responsible for your grandmother’s death?” I can barely keep up.
“What? You’re lying—” I jump to my mother’s defence.
“You can’t still believe that,” she says.
“It was you, you who drove her to it.” His voice is low, a creaky whisper. “And then, after everything, you sent her back. There of all places. No wonder she ended it.”
“They could have helped her. If anyone is to blame, it’s you.”
“And what set her off in the first place?”
“It wasn’t my fault. I never knew she would go that far.”
“Oh, daughter, you were always so good at denial. Why do you think your husband left you? Not just because you weren’t any good in the sack.” He grins cruelly.
“You are a horror show.”
“Why did you come here, then? Surely it wasn’t for the entertainment.”
“I don’t know … I thought … I thought…” My mother’s face shows her turmoil.
“I knew all I had to do was wait and you would come prancing in here. And the second I saw you, I knew you hadn’t changed. Still hiding from the truth. But like a whiny little child desperate for forgiveness in spite of everything.”
“And whose truth is that?” Mom asks. “Yours? That truth could drive a person insane. Insane.”
Archibald’s face reddens and then blanches. Whatever she had said had really hit a nerve. “This is your last chance to atone.”
She takes a step back, her face a maze of confusion, uncertainty, and finally anger. “Atone? To you? I don’t think so.”
“So be it. You will never have anything of hers. Not now. Not as long as I live.” He pronounces this as if it is an edict, final and unshakable. “And I will never see you again.”
“Well, looking at you, I’d say time was running thin.”
I gasp. Archibald flinches as if slapped.
Even my mom looks momentarily shocked at what she said, but then she stiffens again. “And who will forgive you, I wonder? I hope you rot in hell.”
“I’ll see you there.” He revels in the threat.
My mother takes one last longing glance at the picture as if willing it off the wall, but her attempt at telekinesis fails. It stays where it is, a gentle landscape, a moment of family affection, caught on canvas. Painted by my grandmother. Was she somewhere watching all of this in dismay, like me?
My mom turns towards me, her eyes flickering to my face. I look at her blankly. I am numb with shock. Everything I had understood about my family has been uprooted and spilled at my feet in a manner of minutes. And the room still vibrates with the massive tremors of all the lies. She has lied by omission. He has lied because he is good at it. They both claim to be protectors of the truth. But the truth is gone, buried like my grandmother.
And somehow Archibald and I are family. We share DNA. Common blood flows through our ventricles. The thought makes me nauseous. I instinctively turn away from her. She seems to understand that I am beyond reach. I hear her walk to the front door and shut it behind her. I slump to the couch and sit motionless, head in my hands. My brain is on spin cycle, tumbling in endless circles.
Archibald collapses into a nearby chair. The meeting has taken its toll. His face looks grey and spent. He looks older than I have ever seen him.
Grandfather. I test the word inside my head.
He looks at me then, as if I had called him, as if he had read my thoughts. And I swear something like sadness falls across his face. And something else lingers there, a passing shadow fading in the cold, sun-streaked day: regret.
She opens the door wordlessly. Her skirt and blouse are now rumpled, and she has removed her shoes. I have spent the last four hours wandering the streets, leaving Archibald to his own devices, whatever they might be. I walked across the bridge, through dense fir tree–lined streets, and finally wound my way to her hotel room. So many questions had been raised. Now, she owed me concrete answers.
She lights a cigarette and sits in a chair in the corner of the room. I don’t remember the last time I saw her smoke. She sits there silently, smoking, staring out the window at the wispy clouds, her feet tucked beneath her. She looks young and vulnerable.
“Smoking will kill you,” I say.
She smiles wryly, her eyes heavy and smeared with mascara. “Everything will kill you one way or the other.”
On my way to see her, I had felt angry, like a betrayed child. But standing here, I am protective. That she had suffered is only too obvious. I feel a flash of pity. And then my stomach churns. Why did she have to lie? Why couldn’t she have just told me the truth?
“That went well,” she says. How had I never noticed how easily sarcasm came to her? It made her his daughter if I ever had doubt.
“What were you expecting?” I ask.
“I don’t know. We talked on the phone, like he said, and things seemed … under control. And you deserved to know who he really was. I couldn’t let you go on believing he was just some old author with a bad hip and a bad attitude.”
“You told me he was dead.”
“I know, and he was to me, for a long time. But I made the mistake of thinking twenty years could change a person. Most people it would, but not Archibald. Nope. I guess after your father left, it was in my mind that he was always there as a last resort. A way for you to have more … history. I wanted to give you two a chance.”
“I can understand how you would want to hold back that we were related … but letting me find out like that? Mom … it was just … awful.”
“It was a mistake. I am so sorry.” She has wound her gold necklace around her finger so tightly the tip has turned white.
“So tell me about her,” I urge. “My grandmother. For real.”
“Your grandmother was an artist, a painter.” She looks at me, as if that explained everything. “She was talented, creative, even successful. Yes, she was successful. But she could be melancholy. And she and Archibald were, well, as you must know now, less than ideally matched. Anyway, she died in a car accident, like I said…”
“You are going way too fast. Back up!”
She sighs. “After Archibald left her, which was inevitable, she spiralled into a depression. I talked her into committing herself, into getting some professional help. But when he found out, he objected violently. He just showed up and signed her out. He was not a fan of modern-day psychiatry, to say the least.” She speaks in a flat voice, as though she has rehearsed this in her head for years.
“She seemed okay at first. And I had you. And your father of course. You were just a toddler. I was busy with my day-to-day life. And one day … she just disappeared. There was no warning. No goodbye. She was just gone without a trace, gone for months. When I found her, she was destitute, sick, living in a hole, a hotel on skid row. She had changed so much. Her hair was falling out, she hadn’t washed in months, she was … barely recognizable. I convinced her to come home with me.” She hesitates. Her eyes have a haunted look.
“Did she? Come home?” I press.
“Yes, but she was … sick. So, I talked her into returning to the hospital. I promised her that if she went, Archibald would visit her there. He was waiting for her there. I made it up. All of it. None of it was true. He was off cavorting with his latest flame. Not answering his phone. But she finally agreed to go … on one condition, she would drive herself there, and we would come with her. She wouldn’t go alone. And I was desperate. I agreed. I never should have.”
“And?”
She exhales. “And then she drove off the road. Off a cliff.”
“With us in the car,” I finish. “With us in the car!”
“Yes.” She looks at me for the first time. It is still hard for her to say, after all these years.
So the dream had been real or at least much closer to real than I knew. “So it was true! We were there. Was it an accident?”
“She didn’t know what she was doing. She shouldn’t have been driving. It was dark. The road was narrow. She thought she saw another car. It was my mistake. A horrible misjudgment.” She lets that sink in. My own mother admitting to a lapse in judgment, a horrible lapse no less. What other lapses had she concealed from me?
“Anyway, you were fine. I had a few broken ribs. We were lucky. But she was … gone.” She pauses again, as if struggling for the right words, before finally continuing, unsatisfied. “It was a terrible time. And Archibald and I blamed each other for certain things. I thought he made a lot of bad decisions.”
“Like his affairs with other men.”
She looks down at her lap and flicks off an errant piece of ash. “Yes. Yes, there was that. Your grandmother was a sweet woman. She tried to stand by him. But when she found out, she couldn’t cope with it all.”
“But he called you a murderer. Why?”
“He blamed me for committing her in the first place, thought it drove her mad. And then, of course, for taking her back. And I blamed him for signing her out of the hospital and just pissing off, leaving me to pick up the pieces. And for … being who he is. And we had a fight, a terrible, terrible fight.”
“Like the one today?” I sit down in front of her. She averts her eyes.
“Worse. And we just … went our separate ways. We were too different to ever be able to tolerate each other without her. I’m sorry I never told you.”
“You lied all this time about the accident.”
“Yes. It was hard to decide how much to tell you, if anything.” And she is suddenly old, with saggy eyes and lines of sorrow from where she has forgotten to smile.
But I’m not letting her off so easily. “So you opted for nothing? Let me think I had made it up?”
“I wanted to protect you. You always had such an … imagination.”
“Imagination? What on earth does a frigging imagination have to do with anything? I didn’t just imagine my dreams about the accident.”
“You must have overheard me discussing it when you were young. That’s all. They couldn’t be memories. I thought I was doing the best thing for you.”
She peers at me, as if waiting for proof of something. I recognize that look. I have seen it on Archibald often enough. Did she think I would go crazy like my grandmother? Did she search me for similarities too?
“Now, you’ll need a place to stay.” She butts out her cigarette and flicks more ash off her skirt. “Why don’t you come back to Oregon with me? I have a comfortable little house. You could try the university there.” She is all business again, snapping back to hospital administrator mode. But it was the way she said try that got my hackles up.
“Oregon?” I say, throat dry with a bitterness I try to swallow down. I’m not ready to wrap this up in a neat little bow. I can’t eliminate what I’m feeling with two Aspirin and a glass of water. What had Archibald called her? Hospital Corners? “I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t know what I’ll do for sure. I don’t know anything for sure — thanks to you. But I like it here. I might just stay awhile.”
She looks at me, incredulous, used to arranging my life. But I don’t want her arranging my life any more. She seems to have enough work arranging her own.
“Are you sure? I mean, it would be no trouble.”
“Mom, do you remember when you told me that I needed to be more assertive? Make better choices? Before I took the job with Archibald?” My hands ball up into fists.
“Yes, but…”
“Well, I’m doing that now. I know you can respect that. And right now, I really don’t care if you don’t. I’m not coming back with you now. Maybe not ever.”
Her shoulders slump and there is a long pause. “You aren’t done with him yet, are you?”
“Yes! No. I don’t think I am,” I struggle, fighting my rising resentment. “There may come a time when I am done with him, for good. Like you. Maybe sooner rather than later. But I am not there yet.”
She nods her head, a small child again, just a girl who was burdened with far too much. I can’t stay angry with her. Archibald as a father. What a trip that must have been.
