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  We, on the other hand, were not successful, and struggled for money more than the rest of the family. My father, after he quit the job at Lilly’s, never quite settled down with another. He taught for a while, then wrote textbooks and a science column for a national scholastic magazine, things that would let him tinker around the house. Later, he was part-owner in a restaurant.

  After his restaurant failed, Dad told me, “I find it so sad that there aren’t enough meals in life for all the menus I’ve assembled.” A pot of creamy soup was bubbling on the stove; a pan of cornbread browned in the oven. You never knew what you might hit when you bit into my father’s cornbread. Dad, the chemist, was always looking for a miraculous assemblage.

  “I’m going to help you out,” Uncle Benny said to my father one night soon after the restaurant went under.

  “Don’t do me any favors, Ben,” said Dad.

  “No, really. I got an idea, need a partner.”

  “I’m no businessman,” said my father. “You need somebody who is.”

  “No,” said Uncle Benny. “Look, it’s this way. Esther is my sister, and I naturally want things to be as good for her as they can be. Let me be honest, I don’t need a partner for this, but it’s a good deal, you’ll make some money, you won’t have long to wait . . .”

  “Ben,” says my father.

  “Really, Frank. Trust me,” says Uncle Benny.

  Or something. I was not there when my father agreed to be Uncle Ben’s business partner in an apartment deal in St. Louis. I don’t know what Uncle Ben said to convince Dad that the apartments were a sound proposition; I had heard my father say to my mother that he never wanted to go into business again in his life. But why should he doubt Ben? In his perfect hat, razor-sharp clothing, Ben looked like he knew what he was talking about. No doubt he said as much: “Frank, you’re not a businessman. Take some advice from one who knows. Take the deal.”

  Mom took the case up with the Barrons, who were unanimous: of course, invest with Ben. Ben was brilliant, a business genius. Dad would be crazy not to do this.

  And the fact of the matter is it was the first time the Barrons invited my father into anything. That must have meant the world to him; he must have thought that at least this part of his life was taking a turn for the better.

  So my father invested, and the Barrons were thrilled. It made Dad uneasy, everyone knowing his business, but they all congratulated him. “Ben knows,” Uncle Mose said significantly. “You’re taken care of.”

  Soon my father got excited about it. Anything that was a chance for research delighted him, and he checked out a dozen books on real estate from the library. His life seemed aimless to him after he quit his job at the pharmaceutical place, and he latched on to interests with the hope they’d turn into passions. In fact, my father got so caught up in the whole thing that he decided to go to a Sunday meeting with us for the first time since my mother had learned to drive. Maybe he felt like he was part of the family, and wanted to celebrate. I had graduated from high school and enrolled at the University of Chicago on a scholarship; I had a job and a little apartment in town. But I came back almost every weekend, missing my parents even though they were just thirty minutes away.

  The Aunts and Uncles were on their favorite daydream: who would do what when the Barrons took over the government. The argument always ended the same way: Ida, of course, would head the Library of Congress; Dr. Uncle Bram would be Surgeon General. Uncle Benny, Aunt Fannie, and Uncle Mose all had their law degrees, and so there was some argument about who would be Attorney General. It was generally agreed that they’d be on the Supreme Court, and then that sounded so good that they all wanted to be Supreme Court justices, and that started a new argument: who was too hot-headed to judge, too emotional, too sleepy. The Barron Court. They would have loved that, to listen carefully to the evidence of somebody’s life and then adjourn together to convince one another of what was right.

  My father looked around the room. He put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Stay close.”

  Aunt Rose said, “Mose should be President.” You could tell by her tone of voice that she wanted somebody to say, “No, you, Rose. You’d be terrific.”

  Instead, Sadie said, “A President needs a First Lady.”

  “Buchanan,” said Aunt Ida in her best librarian voice, “was not married.”

  “Ben should be President,” said Aunt Sadie, “because he’s married, looks good, is smart.”

  “Lillian as First Lady?” my mother asked incredulously.

  “Oh, I’d get divorced after the election,” said Ben. Aunt Lillian had stayed behind in St. Louis, and he felt no loyalty toward her.

  “Ben would get the votes,” said Sadie. “He’s a wheeler-dealer. Objectively speaking, I think he’d get elected.”

  “I am not a wheeler-dealer,” said Uncle Ben. “I am a businessman.”

  “I meant,” said Aunt Sadie, “you’re very political.”

  The Barrons agreed on Benjamin Barron as the Barron candidate for President.

  “And I’m head of the Library of Congress,” said Aunt Ida, sure of her position.

  They handed out posts carefully, a little grudgingly. I was allowed Ambassador to Spain, because I was getting my degree in Spanish. “It’s Mexico or Spain,” said my mother, “and Mexico is close.” That was an argument for Mexico—surely, if I were Ambassador to Mexico, I would get home more often—but I was awarded Spain because the Aunts and Uncles agreed that it was a nicer country.

  “I’d like to be Secretary of State,” said my father, all of a sudden.

  Uncle Mose cleared his throat; Aunt Sadie scratched something out of her dark skirt. You had to be nominated for a post among the Barrons, you couldn’t just claim one.

  “Why?” said Ida.

  “Sounds like a good job,” said Dad. “Sounds like fun.”

  “But what are your qualifications?” asked Ida.

  Dad shrugged. “I’m level-headed.”

  Aunt Ida shook her head. “Look, you’re the nervous type; you aren’t aggressive enough.” Then she caught herself—she was the hostess, after all—and turned kindly. “I mean, I don’t think you’d like the job.”

  Dad said, and I couldn’t tell how seriously, “Please?”

  “No,” said Aunt Ida. “I’m sorry, but no.”

  Mom patted Dad’s shoulder. “You’ll live in the embassy, with Sophie,” she said. “You’ll hardly miss it.”

  “Honestly,” I said. “Do we have to talk like this? Can’t we just have a normal conversation?”

  “This is normal,” said Mose.

  “Of course it is,” said Rose.

  “Sophie,” said my mother, “isn’t this a normal conversation?”

  I sighed. A college lady, I felt newly weary around my family. “Under the circumstances, sure.”

  “Under what circumstances,” asked Aunt Ida.

  “Under the Barron rules of order.”

  “But your friends at school,” said Uncle Mose, “your friends don’t talk like this.”

  “No.”

  Uncle Mose poured himself a cup of coffee. “Not talkative people, your friends?”

  “Well, yes,” I said. “But they don’t try so hard to be . . . controversial. They just talk about personal stuff, just chat.”

  The Aunts and Uncles looked serious for a minute. Uncle Mose lit a cigarette and, with the match still lit, brushed his hair back. Then he blew out some smoke.

  He said, “Sometimes I sleep in pajamas and sometimes I don’t.”

  The Aunts and Uncles launched their arguments with this conceit, all at the same time.

  Ben called within a month after he’d first brought up the proposition, summertime. Not contrite; he just explained that he’d guessed wrong. The apartments were in bad shape, and after they’d spent the invested money on fixing up the place, the floors had collapsed. Too bad; they would have done well for themselves, but, well, said Uncle Benny—business is business. Next time
he had something, he promised, he’d call.

  When my father hung up, he looked tired. His eyes got wet; he apologized for no reason. A little later in the day, a few tears dropped. He said, “I am not available for dinner.”

  I stayed downstairs while my mother went to tend to my father.

  “Call me if you need me,” I said.

  “You bet.”

  She did not call me; she did not come back down.

  I sat on the sofa for a long time. I raised my hands and imagined putting them on my father’s shoulders to comfort him, but couldn’t call up what I would say. This was all selfishness, I thought, to be worried about my inabilities when I should be worried about what was happening, and that made me feel worse: I was useless and selfish; I could not do anything for my father.

  My worry pushed me up the stairs. I paused outside my parents’ door and heard them talking. A good sign, I thought; I’d been raised to think that dialogue was the road to everything. When I leaned closer, I heard my father, sobbing, saying over and over, “Essie, Essie, you have to help me. You have to help me.” Beneath this, my mother repeated her own chorus: “I don’t know what to do. I just do not know.”

  “I’m driving,” my mother said.

  I shook my head. “I’ll do it.”

  “No,” she said. So I got into the back seat with my father, who was almost asleep. I did not know what had happened to him, but my mother, calm, in charge, said that we should take him to the hospital immediately. She drove more smoothly than she ever had in her life, as if to say to my father, You taught me this.

  Dad’s dead weight scared me. He smelled of bitter mint. I wanted to talk to him, but I could only lean on the back of the front seat, saying to my mother, “Left here. Keep going. Get in the left lane. Turn.” We both knew that if I stopped talking to her, or if she stopped listening to me, we would not be able to go on.

  I helped my mother fill out the forms, and thereby learned everything about my father I did not know. His age, for instance, which he had for some reason doctored. I didn’t know that this was his third breakdown—he’d had one in graduate school, and then another while he worked for Eli Lilly, before I was born. I did not know that my father was the sort of man who, in sorrow, would eat the contents of the medicine cabinet, including diet pills, three sleeping tablets, No Doz, aspirin, cough syrup, and an entire tube of toothpaste.

  My mother knew and never told me.

  Because I had not been home, I didn’t realize how bad my father had been, that my mother had to grocery shop in small trips three times a week because my father had developed a habit of cooking everything in the house. He’d been depressed for some time, my mother told me, and I thought I should have noticed. After my father’s nervous breakdown, I saw his sadness beforehand everywhere: in the way he always had to have a pot of something on the stove; in his clothing, which was always caked with his foods; in the way he treated any restaurant we went to, his tenderness with the silver.

  Even in the way, three months before, he had so gently asked for the post of Secretary of State. If my father had felt well, he would have announced that the day the Barrons took over the government was the day he defected to Canada.

  “I’m to blame,” my mother said.

  “Of course not,” I told her. We sat in the molded hospital chairs. “You didn’t know.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m the one who made him lie in the first place. I asked him to.”

  “Why on earth?” I asked.

  “What would the family have said? Seven years younger than me? Already a nervous breakdown? They never would have accepted him. Your father knows science. My family—that’s my only real expertise. I would have lost them.”

  “Who cares?” I said, now angry at everybody involved.

  “Me,” she said. She held her own hand, as if it belonged to a frightened stranger she wanted to calm. “I loved your father too much to not marry him”—she shook her head,—“but I loved my family too much to disappoint them. I mean, imagine Ida knowing. It would have kept her up nights for decades.”

  He was born in Queens, not Connecticut. He’d had cancer as a child and was not expected to live. His mother’s maiden name was Reilly. He’d been prone to depression all his life.

  The Barrons would not have approved of my father’s real self, so, loving my mother, he became somebody slightly different. Not quite a fraud, just a poorly sanitized forgery of who he’d been.

  “And for what?” I said to my mother, listening to all this.

  “For love,” she answered. “For the sake of everybody’s love.”

  My mother wasn’t allowed to visit my father in the psychiatric wing, though she sat in the waiting-room lobby every day. She didn’t mention Ben, who after all wasn’t the cause of my father’s problems, just a contributor. After two weeks, we decided it was time for me to go to Aunt Ida’s on Sunday. Mom said she couldn’t bear to yet. Whether she was exhausted or ashamed of her bad luck or had already somehow resolved to change her life, I don’t know. But I was finally granted my job as ambassador, from the Savitz family to the Barrons.

  I tried on a dozen outfits. Bright colors were too cheery; black was defeated. I didn’t want to call attention to myself by breaking any of the Barron rules for clothing: no white, which was for nurses and brides, or jeans, which were for cowboys. I still had to please them. Finally I chose a blue skirt and blouse, and as I looked in the mirror I knew I didn’t want to go to Aunt Ida’s, not ever again. But I had to. She would worry if I didn’t.

  The mood was a bit somber, though not enough for my taste. They were talking about a book they’d all read and eating an elaborate, dry-looking cake that Ida had made. They tried hard not to mention my parents.

  About an hour into the afternoon, I couldn’t take it anymore and announced that it was time for me to go home.

  “Poor Sophie,” Aunt Ida blurted.

  I was clutching my purse. I nodded solemnly. “Poor us,” I said. I meant it.

  All the Aunts and Uncles joined in.

  “Oh, Sophie,” said Uncle Mose. “We’re so worried for your mother.”

  “She’s taking it very well,” I said. “It’s Dad I’m really worried about.”

  “Waiting for Frank to finally snap,” Aunt Sadie said. “Hiding what she knew about him.”

  I put down my purse. I asked, “What did she know about him?”

  The Aunts and Uncles looked at one another nervously. “Well, we all knew this would happen. I mean, with his history, it was bound to. You know,” said Aunt Rose, “your father didn’t ever finish his Ph.D.”

  “What?” I said.

  “I know,” said Aunt Sadie. “Terrible.”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t believe you’re talking about him like this.”

  “How should we talk?” said Uncle Mose. His bright shirt, which once would have delighted me, just made me tired. “We’re worried about our sister.”

  “What about your brother-in-law,” I said.

  “Him?” said Aunt Ida. She could not bear to use the word brother-in-law, and I realized: less than brother meant nothing, meant stranger. My father had just showed himself as what they’d known all along he was—not good enough for the Barrons, a nobody, a crazy.

  “Now, your father is a wonderful man—” Aunt Ida began.

  Uncle Mose snorted; Rose poked him.

  “He’s a good man,” said Aunt Ida, and I could tell she thought good was better than wonderful. She picked up her plate, waiting for me to help her. But I couldn’t.

  “My father’s suffering,” I said.

  “Yes, yes,” said Aunt Ida. “But what kind of life will Esther have after all this? That’s what eats me up. That’s what I think about all the time.”

  “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe you people,” I said.

  “Now, Sophie—”

  “Sophie honey—”

  “This is your fault,” I said. “Can’t you see that?”

 
; There was a half-second pause. Aunt Ida bit her lip, wondering if this were so. Then Uncle Mose laughed, wisely. The Barron secret weapon. “Look, Ben was just doing your family a favor.”

  “A favor?” I echoed. “Losing our money?”

  “He didn’t know,” said Aunt Rose.

  “The deal was good, it just went bad,” said Aunt Sadie.

  “These things happen in real estate,” said Uncle Mose. “Real estate is like that. Your father knew the risks.”

  “All for the best,” said Aunt Ida, confident now. “Something was bound to happen sooner or later. All this—” She waved her hand, to indicate great nonsense; she was holding a piece of cake and some crumbs flew off. “Not good.”

  “What wasn’t?” I asked.

  “Your father,” she said. “I mean, he was sooner or later going to fall apart. We saw; we knew. Your poor mother couldn’t go on like that, worrying every day of her life about what would happen to her. Things might be bad now, but not as bad as they could be. I mean, how long could it have gone on?”

  “Forever, if not for you,” I told them. “And I wish to God it had gone on. That was my life that’s been happening all these years.”

  My mother was in the kitchen when I got home, absentmindedly washing a dish, her back to me.

  I said, “Aunt Ida says what’s happened to Dad is all for the best. She says she knew it would happen.” I took a deep breath. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have let the whole matter drop. “I hate those people.”

  One of her shoulders lifted, then the other one, slowly—not from dishwashing, but as if she were comparing the weights of two precious objects in her hands. I thought maybe she was just wondering how she’d gotten there, her hands wet, holding the plates that my father always took care of. Then the dish fell into the water with a plop, and she turned around.

  She smiled. I was sure that, like any Barron, she would try to explain what had just happened and how it was unavoidable. Then she ran a wet hand through her hair.