Father's Arcane Daughter Read online

  When we picked up Heidi from Bunny Waldheim’s, she seemed in much better spirits than when we had left her there. My spirits were low because I was plain exhausted. Taking Rosalie and Simon to the zoo was not a simple way to spend a Saturday. I think that there was not one square inch of me that had not been tugged at or pulled or poked. And I spent the trip home wishing for a bath and thinking of appropriate deaths for the man who invented cotton candy. I thought he should be rolled in his product and then set on an ant hill.

  TWOSATURDAYS LATER —it was February and the weather was gray and wet—I looked up Fifth Avenue as we came out of the library. Pittsburgh looked like it had dissolved into its own products: steel and glass and coal dust. Nowhere was there any color even a quarter note above gray. I needed some sunshine, so I said to Maurice, “We’ll go to Caroline’s for lunch today instead of Webster Hall.”

  “But, Winston,” Maurice protested.

  “It’s perfectly all right,” I said. “We’re invited to drop in anytime.”

  “I still have to call your home and let them know.”

  “We’ll be home at the usual time. Don’t worry about it.”

  There was a man’s umbrella dripping in the hallway just outside Caroline’s door. She had company, obviously, but I would not turn back and admit to Maurice that we would have to go to Webster Hall after all. I rang the doorbell. My father answered.

  I was surprised. Speechless. I knew that Father had every right to visit Caroline. I reminded myself that she was supposed to be as much his daughter as I was his son. I glanced down at Heidi. She looked as surprised as I did. Of course, it was perfectly logical that Father would visit Caroline at her place: she never came to the house anymore. Still I felt uneasy. Without even entering I felt that I was intruding.

  “Come in. Come in,” Father said. Then he called toward the kitchen, “Caroline, guess who’s here!”

  I heard Caroline say, “I’ll bet it’s Winston.”

  “Heidi, too,” Father added.

  “Good,” Caroline said, still talking from the kitchen. “ Tell them to stay for lunch.”

  I breathed a little easier when I heard that. Then she came out of the kitchen, smiling. She helped Heidi out of her coat. She said to Father, “Send Maurice’home. You’ll drive them back, won’t you, Dad?”

  Dad, I thought. Dad? Dad!

  While Father went downstairs to dismiss Maurice, Caroline hung Heidi’s coat in the closet. I noticed Father’s coat there, too. And something else: a golf sweater. I had never-seen Father wear a golf sweater around the house except in Palm Beach when we went there for Easter, and that was only once or twice when he was very relaxed. Very.

  Lunch was good. Salami sandwiches on rye bread that had seeds in it and a wonderful crust besides. Caroline put some sliced salami on a plate for Heidi, and Heidi cut it up and ate it with a fork. Caroline’s eye steered Father’s attention to Heidi, and he smiled at her—not the way he smiled at her when Mother did that same thing with the eyes: he smiled at her absent-mindedly. I wasn’t sure he realized what Heidi was doing that was different.

  We all cleared the dishes from the table after lunch. Heidi did, and Father did, too. Then Father poured two cups of coffee and brought one into the living room and handed it to Caroline. “One sugar and only a dash of cream,” he said. Caroline took the cup from him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  We left after Father finished his cigar. As we drove toward home, I watched Father’s back stiffen, and I saw his mouth set into the familiar, neutral looks I had learned to read. The man who had poured the coffee at Caroline’s spoke some warmer, foreign, facial language.

  nine

  The big desk buzzed for her attention again. And again she told whomever it was that he would have to wait. “Where are we now?” she asked, turning back to me.

  “Now we’re up to Easter.”

  She looked puzzled.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “1 was just trying to think of how you indicate that time has passed in the comic strips.”

  “Easy,” I said. “There appears a little box in one of the frames and it says, LATER.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “That is how it’s done. Time passes so easily in the funny papers.”

  “Easily and painlessly.”

  I NEVER particularly minded Palm Beach, but, I never particularly enjoyed it, either. It just meant that spring vacation had arrived, and here we were.

  For Mother, Palm Beach meant doing the same things in different proportions. She still played bridge and shopped, but there was more golf. For Father it meant along weekend away from the office. He always flew down on the Thursday evening before Good Friday and stayed until the Tuesday morning after Easter. For me it meant a lot of the Invisible Game and a lot of tennis lessons. I never particularly enjoyed either. Heidi and I were the only children around.

  For a couple of years Mother had invited Judy. Judy was our cousin, Mother’s sister’s daughter—Judy Robinson from Muncie, Indiana. She was five years older than I, a pleasant girl in the awkward position of being something between a guest and a servant. Were it not for the generosity of my mother, her Aunt Grace, Judy could not have afforded the luxury of a resort vacation; but were it not for the needs of my mother, her Aunt Grace, she would not have been asked in the first place. Judy was our overseer on the days that Luellen had off.

  1 liked Judy, but last year I knew she would not be asked back. Last spring Mother had caught her kissing a lifeguard from a public beach while Heidi and I sat on the floor of the same room, playing a game of double solitaire and casually watching cousin Judy.

  I seemed to have more time for me this year. It was not just that Judy was gone; there was also less of Heidi. Heidi seemed more self-contained.

  I wrote some letters:

  Dear Barney,

  Have it on the best authority—President Eisenhower’s golf score is the same as his IQ. This makes his golf handicap better than his mental one.

  Sincerely,

  Win

  Dear Mr. Eppes,

  The Seminole Indians of Florida have agreed to sign a peace treaty with the United States if the Secretary of the Interior will offer up a live sacrifice of one social studies teacher per year. I see the negotiations as doomed to failure; of the thousands of social studies teachers in the U.S. only fourteen can be certified as alive. Can you enlist volunteers?

  Sincerely,

  Winston Elliot Carmichael

  And then one day something happened which caused me to write:

  Dear Caroline,

  Florida is fine; lots of people congratulated us on getting you back; they read it in the local papers, so you see, you are still famous. They were sorry that you didn’t come to Palm Beach with us. I think they are curious about you. Who wouldn’t be?

  I am curious, too. Curious about something that happened today at the beach. We were going to have a cookout. Father was going to grill steaks out-of-doors. Mother didn’t want us to hear Father’s possible language as he tried to start the fire, so she sent us to the beach.

  Luellen and I always have to walk Heidi into the water, Luellen takes one hand, and I take the other, and Heidi walks between us like a wishbone. Once she is in the water, she doesn’t swim, but she moves easier in the water than she does on land. Here is what happened that was strange: Heidi began to sing. It was not a melody, and if those sounds had come from someone else, you wouldn’t call it singing, but knowing her as well as I do, I knew it. I was surprised because I don’t remember the last time I heard her singing, but I must have heard it sometime—otherwise how would I have recognized it?

  “What are you so happy about?” I asked.

  “I am a genius,” she answered.

  “Yeah,” I said, “and your father is Albert Ein-stein.”

  She gave a look that I can only describe as a Heidi look, and then she said, “Well, I’m just as smart as you are.”

  “I’m n
o genius,” I said.

  “You’re not?” she said. (She sounded really surprised!)

  “Who told you that you’re as smart as me?”

  “Caroline. Bunny Waldheim told her.”

  Now the reason that I am writing this letter is this: How would Caroline, that’s you, have told Heidi that she was as smart as I was unless you were seeing Heidi seeredy? And here’s another reason I’m writing this letter. Why, if you are seeing Heidi secretly, why didn’t you tell me? And here’s my third reason—I have always thought, ever since you came back, that you were my friend. I never thought a friend does things like talk to a friend’s sister without telling the friend.

  I hope you had a nice Easter. We had ham.

  Sincerely,

  Winston

  Caroline’s answer, except for her signature was typed.

  Dear Winston,

  May I please have your trust, your confidence and your silence awhile longer?

  Please,

  Caroline

  I gave her my silence.

  CAROLINE GALLED almost as soon as. we returned home.

  She told me that she would like to pick me up from school on Thursday.

  “Check with me on Wednesday night,” I said. “That is, if your finger isn’t too sore from dialing this time.”

  “Winston,” she said, “I have some important things to tell you. Will you be there on Thursday?”

  “I’ve just checked my five-day horoscope. It said Thursday was the day for me to avoid encounters with strangers. Are you strange?” I asked.

  “When you hear what I have to say, you might even call me weird,” she said.

  “Oh, good,” I said. “Then I’11 be there. My horoscope recommends weird.”

  I WAS QUIET in the car. I wanted to punish her. When we arrived at her apartment, I noticed a cigar butt in an ashtray—Father’s. I was quiet about that, too. She opened the refrigerator and took from it a whole Joyce’s cream pie. I never knew that you could buy them that way, whole. “How about that?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “How about it.”

  I knew it was a peace offering. She cut me a large slice, and I took a huge mouthful. “Well,” I said, “this sure beats the camel snot they served at school today. They called it tapioca.”

  “Winston,” she said, “I want to tell you something. I’m going back to college.”

  I swallowed hard. “But why? You’ve just moved in. You don’t even have all the furniture you need for this place yet. You don’t even.…”

  “Oh! I’m not moving. I’m going to the University of Pittsburgh. I’ll just commute up and down Fifth Avenue.”

  “Good!” I said, relieved. I began to relax. I didn’t really want to stay mad at her. I didn’t really. “What are you going to study?”

  “I plan on enrolling in the special education program.”

  “Is that because you’re so old?”

  “What has my age to do with anything?”

  “I just wondered if you would need a special education because of your age.”

  “My age has nothing to do with anything. The course I want to study is called special education. I want to learn how to teach the handicapped.”

  “Is Bunny Waldheim the one who got you interested? Being that she is going back to college and all.”

  “No,” she answered. “Heidi is the one who got me interested.”

  “Heidi?” I said. “Heidi? Heidi. It’s always Heidi. Everything is for Heidi. I think God made the skies for Heidi, and I think that Andrew Carnegie made Pittsburgh for Heidi, and I think that Eisenhower went to Korea to make the world safe for Heidi.” I looked at her and asked, “Why?” I asked softly at first, “Why?” and then I screamed. “Why? Why does Heidi deserve everything? Why does Heidi deserve you?” Caroline reached across the table to me, and I jerked back. She got up and stood behind my chair and put her arms around me. I did not realize that I was being embraced. My first reaction was to pull away from her touch, her very warm, very human touch, but she kept her arms around me, and I relaxed. I didn’t cry because I couldn’t; knowing how to cry had been taught out of me.

  Caroline sat down again. She reached for my hand across the table and waited until we were face-to-face before she said, “Heidi is really my second order of business, Winston.” She paused before she added, “You are my first.” I pulled my hand back. She lit a cigarette. “Remember months ago, the day we bought the aubergine, I said that if we stretch the bars of a cage very wide, even Heidi can walk through. I thought then that if we stretched the bars just a little, you could walk through and then we would stretch them just a little more, and Heidi could walk through. But I had it backwards, Winston. I realize now that Heidi must go first. You are strangely tied to her. If I can do something to help make Heidi into a whole human being, Winston, you will no longer be responsible for her. You can stop feeling guilty for being handsome and whole.

  “Bunny Waldheim has determined—you knew, didn’t you, that she was testing Heidi that Saturday we went to the zoo?”

  I nodded.

  “You knew, and so did Heidi. Bunny did some tests at Holton Progressive, too. I went with her that day, and by the way, there is your answer to how Heidi found out that she has above-normal intelligence. As a matter of fact, Heidi is extremely bright. Bunny feels, and I do, too, that the way out for Heidi is by building up her positives, especially her intelligence. The answer certainly does not lie in disguising her handicaps with ribbons and ruffles. and every kind of indulgence. None of the solutions is pretty. Her hearing can be helped with a massive hearing aid, not a pretty one, and her coordination can be helped with braces and with some relearning, a long process, a difficult one, too. That’s what I want to learn how to do: diagnose and prescribe for people like Heidi.”

  “How long will it take you to graduate?” I asked. “How long before you can help Heidi out?”

  “It will be some years.” She smiled at me.

  “Why can’t you just hire some people to help her now?”

  “You suddenly seem anxious. I must make some other people anxious. Before I can make them anxious, I’ll have to make them understand. I have to educate them.”

  “Tell me,” I asked. I didn’t want to ask, but I had to know. “Is Heidi smarter than I am?”

  “I don’t have the figures on you, boy, but I think one of you is as smart as the other.” Then she leaned clear across the table and her hands on either side of my head and kissed my forehead. I felt dumb. Like a Norman Rockwell cover for the Saturday Evening Post.

  AFTER CAROLINE dropped me at home, I went immediately to my room. There sitting on the floor by the doorway, her back resting against the door jamb, was Heidi. “How was Caroline?” she asked.

  “Fine,” I answered as I stepped over her and walked into my room.

  She got up and followed me in. “I know you were there. There’s no point in denying it.”

  “I’m not denying it.”

  “I hope you had a rotten time,” she said.

  “Well, it so happens that I didn’t. She had a whole cream pie.”

  “Then I hope you have a rotten time the next time you go.”

  “I don’t know if I can stand any more of your good wishes. Better save the rest for Christmas.”

  “Next week I won’t be going with you to Caroline’s either.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “Fine with me. More pie.”

  “I won’t be going there ever again. Ever.”

  “Why not?” I asked. I was surprised.

  “Mummy explained it all. Mummy said that I’m getting to be too big a girl now. She says that probably I’ll have to start going with her to Mr. Rick’s to have my hair done. I’ll probably start going to Mr. Rick’s very, very soon.”

  “Do you really want to go to Mr. Rick’s instead of Caroline’s?” I asked.

  “It’s what girls do,” she said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Caroline doesn’t go t
o Mr. Rick’s.”

  “Mummy mentioned that. She doesn’t want me to grow up like Caroline.”

  “There’s no chance of that,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  I said, “Nothing.” But I thought that there were a lot of ways I meant that. Heidi could never grow up like Caroline. Heidi was made of different stuff; Heidi was made of Carmichael stuff, and Caroline was. .. was what? Caroline was supposed to he Carmichael stuff, too. But I wondered.

  ten

  “Now, you’ll have to tell the plot of the movie,” she said. “Do you still remember it?”

  “Even after more than twenty years, I can recall it scene by scene. It was in a sense the end of the lies.” I thought awhile.

  She tapped a pencil on that manilla folder. She was thinking, too.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” I muttered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When they give prisoners their rights, they say, ‘You have the right to remain silent.’ I think I abused that right. Silence has been called the disease of my generation. I guess it is. What cowards we were.” I sighed and said, “We were all cowards except you.”

  “And her” she added.

  HEIDI AND I had a whole Saturday with nothing to do.

  Piano lessons did not resume until the second week after Easter. I wondered what Sister Clothilde’s Easter had been like. A Convent of the Sacred Heart Easter was probably as different from a Palm Beach Easter as 1953 was different from 1593. I read in the Pittsburgh Press that Forbidden Games would be showing at the Squirrel Hill Theater. It was a French movie with subtitles. There was no kind of movie that Heidi enjoyed more. Foreign movies with voices dubbed in were a total loss to her, but those with subtitles made her the equal of everyone else in the audience. Mother called the theater and found out that it was the story of a boy and girl in the French countryside, and she thought that it would be a sweet picture for us to see.

  Forbidden Games was indeed the story of a little boy named Michel and a little girl named Paulette. Her mother and father have just been killed in the war. Michel finds Paulette wandering in the countryside. That’s about as much of the countryside as the movie has. When he finds her, Paulette is holding her dead dog. Michel feels sorry for her, and he takes her to his farm. He makes a little grave for her dog, and seeing what comfort that gives her, they begin to bury other things like a mole and other small dead animals they find. They make a small cemetery in an abandoned mill. One day they steal the cross from the grave of Michel’s brother. When his family discovers the theft, they get very upset. Michel says he will lead them to the stolen tombstone if they promise they will not send Paulette away. When they see the small cemetery, they think that the children have been worshipping the dead. Despite their promise, they send Paulette away. The last scene shows the little girl in the railroad station, not understanding what has happened, and hunting for her friend Michel.