I am a woman
enormous need to cry. She shut her eyes hard and said softly, “I won’t,
I won’t.” Then she opened them, and, with her heart in her mouth, she
rapped on the door.
The noise sounded huge. For a moment she wanted to run. But she didn’t.
_He mustn’t see me looking panicky_, she thought. She listened. There
was no sound audible. _Maybe he’s not in. Oh, dear God, maybe he left._
She didn’t know whether to exult or despair. _If I don’t face him now,
I’ll never be able to face myself_, she thought. _I’ll never stand
alone. I’ve got to tell him everything._ She felt desperate at the
thought of having to go and search him out, to win her freedom from him.
The hope that she had missed him, that he had already left for Chicago,
was too sweet to banish.
She was ready to flee when the door swung open, without any preliminary
sounds to warn her. She blanched uncontrollably and found herself
looking at her father’s feet. Very slowly, she looked up the rest of him
to his face. There was a slight frown on his heavy features. But he
wasn’t at all surprised. He let her stand there until she was miserably
uncomfortable, and then—only then—he spoke.
“Come in,” he said. Not “Hello, Laura.” He spoke as if she might have
been the maid come to clean his room. He stepped aside slightly to
permit her to walk past him. She clutched herself in her arms, fearful
of touching him as she brushed past, and walked quickly across the room
to a half open window on the opposite side. She looked resolutely out at
the city, afraid to let him see her face.
_The minute I look at him, I’ll cry. I’ll do some damn silly weak thing,
and he’ll lord it over me, and I’ll wind up promising to go home to
Chicago with him. I can’t look at him. Not yet._
She listened to him moving around the room behind her and felt his eyes
on her. But he said nothing. After a few moments, Laura could stand it
no longer. She knew he was laughing at her. Not with his voice or his
lips, but silently, inside. She turned and looked for him. He was
standing across the room, his enormous back planted against the wall,
his arms folded over his chest, studying her. She flinched a little,
seeing his face.
“I never knew before,” he said slowly, savoring it, “how fast you could
run.” He gave her a slight sardonic smile.
Laura felt her insides turn to water. Her face was white and set as
plaster. She forced herself to return his gaze.
“I never knew you could swear, either,” he said. “Especially at me. As a
matter of fact, I doubt whether you can, now that we’re face to face.”
It was a dare. Laura, stung, felt a flush of resistance come up in her.
“If I do,” she said, “you’ll beat me. That’s your answer to everything.”
“It always worked before,” he said, mocking her.
“It worked so well that it drove me out of your house forever. It made
me hate you, Father.”
“You don’t need to spell it for me, Laura. I get the idea.”
She hated his sarcasm! Her hatred flowed in her now and revived her
spirit. “Is that what you wanted? To make me hate you?” she asked.
“Because you’ve done a fine job. A masterful job.”
“Thanks. I’m glad we agree on one thing anyway.” He stood immovable,
still smiling slightly.
_He wants to drive me frantic. He wants me to end up on my knees,
incoherent. Kissing his feet. God damn him! He doesn’t care what he says
as long as it’ll drive me wild._
“I must say, you took a prosaic way out, Laura. Running away is no way
to solve a problem. Running away to New York is the classic cliché.
There are a lot of you here in New York, you know. Silly little girls
who left one set of problems at home for another set in the big city.”
Laura turned her back on him. _I won’t even answer him. If I could just
hurt him somehow. Hurt him like he hurts me. What would hurt him the
worst? Mother. My Mother._
“Did you slap my mother around the way you do me?” she asked him
abruptly.
At this his smile faded and his face grew very hard. “Your mother never
deserved it,” he said.
“Neither did I,” she retorted. “As far as I can see.”
“You are notoriously shortsighted, my darling daughter.”
“And you, Father, are blind.” Her face flushed.
Again he smiled, but his smile frightened her. “What have you been
doing, Laura, that gives you such intestinal fortitude in the face of
such obvious physical risk?”
She wanted to scream at him, “I hate you! I hate your God-damn
sophisticated sarcasm!” But she only said tersely, “I have a job. I have
some nice friends. I have money in the bank. I have a life of my own
without you. I have a little confidence I never had before.” They were
all lies, that started out so beautifully true. Almost all lies, anyway.
But she had flung them in his face, and now he was not sure. He studied
her. “Those are the problems I came to face in New York, Father. Nothing
could ever persuade me to trade them for the ones at home.” _If I didn’t
hate him so much I couldn’t do it. He started out wrong, trying to drive
me in a corner. He gave me a chance without realizing it._
He moved away from the wall then, his face registering contemptuous
amusement. He lighted a cigarette, and, to her astonishment, offered her
one. She shook her head. “Well,” he observed. “You apparently haven’t
taken up all the vices yet.” He turned away from her and walked about
the room, firing questions at her. “What kind of job do you have?”
“Medical secretary.”
“Where?”
“With Dr. Edgar Hollingsworth.”
“Who’s he?”
“The top radiologist in the city.”
“Where’s his office?”
“Fifth and fifty-third.”
“Who are the friends?”
This abrupt switch threw her for a moment. “The friends?”
“You said you had some.”
“Oh,” she said quickly. “Do you want their names?” The little sarcasms
she mustered added to her bravery.
He curled his mouth disgustedly. “Anything that will help,” he said.
“Names mean nothing. Who are they?”
“Well,” she said, “some are men and some are women.”
For a triumphant moment she felt like laughing in his face. But his face
had grown dark, and a flash of fear prevented her. “My roommate,” she
went on, more timidly. “For one. She’s a very nice girl, I’ve met a lot
of wonderful people through her. The doctors have been wonderful to me.”
“Everybody’s ‘wonderful’,” he mimicked.
“I was surprised to find that people can be nice, Father.”
“God! If a man accused me of being ‘nice’ I’d spit in his face.”
“And decent and human!” she said hotly.
His face grew dangerous now and his body tense. “Are you implying that
I’m not human?”
Her fear grew suddenly quite strong and for a moment she wavered. Then
she said softly, “If you’re going to beat me, Father, do it now and
let’s get it over with.”
He laughed; an awful laugh she remembered very well. It was usually the
prelude to violence. “Well, isn’t that noble,” he said. “Why don’t you
pull down your pants and bend over? Make it easy for me?”
“You’ve beaten me all my life, whenever I displeased you. And I seem to
displease you just by existing. I’ve never seen you beat anyone your own
size, Father, but you’re awfully damn good at beating _me_.”
“My, aren’t we grown up!” he said. “We not only talk back to our Father
now, we swear at him. That’s real sophistication.”
“You don’t know how much I hate you, Father! You can’t know! I’ve begun
to think that’s what you want. You’ve worked hard enough all my life to
make me hate you.”
His face changed again, became grave and heavy. Her eyes watched him
intently, like eyes that have witnessed floods scan the skies for sun.
He turned away from her, dragging on his cigarette, knocking ashes into
a heavy glass tray on the dresser. “Why do you hate me, Laura?” he asked
dispassionately. “Because I discipline you now and then? Isn’t that a
father’s prerogative?”
“Not when it ruins his child’s life.”
“Is your life ruined?” he said sharply. “You have a ‘wonderful’ job,
‘wonderful’ friends. Wonderful money in the bank, wonderful everything.
Hell, I seem to have done you a favor.”
“A favor! You call it a favor!” She stared at him, his hardness still
astonishing her after all these years. And then she felt her resistance
begin to wilt. Sooner or later all her arguments were doomed. She never
won with him. The sheer physical fact of him, massive and dominant,
exhausted her after a while. “I—I never wanted to hate you, Father. You
were all I had. I wanted to love you. But you wouldn’t let me,” she
almost whispered. _I mustn’t go on like this. I’ll cry_, she thought
desperately. “I hate you because you hate me!” she flung at him.
He looked at her for some time before he answered quietly, “What makes
you think I hate you, Laura?”
She was so taken aback by this that she could only stammer at him. “I
don’t know, but you know you do.”
“Oh, come now. I haven’t been _that_ harsh with you.”
_It’s a trap! A trap! He wants to soften me up. He wants to see me
whimpering. Oh, God, if only I could stop him, freeze him up, like other
men._ “You’ve been brutal,” she said harshly and the sobs were crowding
close in her throat. “You’ve treated me like a slave. Worse! you’ve
beaten me sometimes for nothing. Just for the exercise.”
“I never once beat you without a reason,” he said.
“You lie!” And her voice was a furious hiss.
He glared at her. “I’m not in the habit of lying to you, Laura. Your
life has been more than beatings. I sent you to the best schools. I let
you go to the college of your choice. I let you join a sorority and paid
all your bills. And when you came home and quit like a damn
coward—without so much as an explanation, I didn’t force you to go back.
I found you a good job with excellent training and a big future. I’ve
given you a good comfortable home, a lot of clothes, travel.” His voice
was low, controlled, but it was the calm before the storm and he was
tense.
“I would have traded them all for love.” Her voice broke and she turned
suddenly away, afraid to shame herself with tears in front of him.
“Let’s not get maudlin,” he said sardonically, and once again smothered
the spark of tenderness that had waited so many years in Laura for
expression.
“All right,” she said sharply. “Let’s not be maudlin. I have a good job
here and I’m not going to leave New York. That’s what I came to tell
you. Now maybe I’ll better go.” She turned and walked resolutely toward
the door, but she should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. He merely
placed himself between the door and Laura and she stopped, afraid to go
near him. He smiled slightly at this evidence of his power over her.
“Before you leave,” he said, “suppose you explain the filial affection
that made you write me to go to hell, in your little billet-doux last
week?”
“Why did you say you had no daughter?” she flared.
“To teach you a lesson.”
“Are there any lessons left for you to teach me?” she said.
“Quite a few, my dear. You don’t know it all yet, even if you are almost
twenty-one.”
“It almost killed me, Father,” she said, the anguish showing. “You don’t
know how terribly I—” But she stopped herself, ashamed. He didn’t know,
and she didn’t want him to know. She was the one who cared about their
relationship, who wanted love and trust and gentleness between them. Not
her father. He didn’t give a damn, as long as she minded him. “You said
you had no daughter,” she repeated bitterly.
“You wanted it that way, Laura.”
She turned to stare at him, incredulous. “I?” She said. “_I_ wanted it
that way?”
“You denied my existence before I ever denied yours,” he said. “You ran
away from me.”
“You _forced_ me to.”
“I did no such thing.”
“You made life intolerable for me.”
“I didn’t mean to.” It was an extraordinary admission, completely
unexpected, and she looked at him speechless for a moment.