I am one of those life-long batchelors though not really from choice. It’s not that I don’t like women. I do like them while at the same time admitting to thinking that there’s a few who should be taken out and shot…Marcie for instance…It’s just that I can no more court a woman than I can fly.
It was no problem for my older brother Jack. Jack married Marcie. And what can I say about Marcie? Perhaps that I always did my best never to be alone with my brother’s wife. Hard to manage without being obvious about it and particularly so once we were in business together. We bought a small company that imported veterinary supplies and diagnostic equipment. The owner was wanting to retire and the price was right.
Jack could never see through Marcie. She was, and is, a lazy bitch which is somehow excused by a vague medical problem. Something to do with her nerves. Almost from the day she started school, their only child Marilyn was getting her own breakfast, getting her school lunch together, and taking herself off to school. Marcie would be the loud voice from the bedroom. By the time she was nine Marilyn was doing most of the rather minimal cleaning in that house, getting the tea on, things like that. And screamed at! The abuse that that poor kid took from her mother was appalling! And Jack would just sit there and let it all slide by. It seems that Marcie’s doctor had ruled that Marcie was not to be upset. Her short fuse and unreasonableness had official sanction.
In business Jack and I made a good team. Jack was the born salesman although extremely rash in his promises of what we could do for people. Promises that he left for me to keep. I being the firm’s boffin and bookkeeper. We had some near disasters because of this but always managed to somehow climb out of trouble. We continued to build on the existing customer base and found new and profitable lines.
With everything going well, Jack died. One day he was O.K. The next dead. His heart. He was hardly in the ground before Marcie insisted that I buy out the share that was now hers. The business might have been doing well but not so well that I was flush with money. It meant some serious
DAUGHTERS. Page 2 talking with the bank. But anything to get rid of her. I stuck with the name ‘Maxwell Brothers.’
Marcie moved back to Wellington and the money didn’t last long. She had a talent that way. The money gone, she found herself another man. All I can say is ’the poor bastard.'
After years without contact, I received a letter from Marilyn saying ‘Uncle Ralph, could I come and stay with you for a while?’ It seemed that she had left home the moment that she was legally able and taken the only job immediately offering. Then, probably looking for protection, she had moved in with a male workmate who had shown an interest in her. It hadn’t worked. It couldn’t work. Fred’s macho image masked a basic insecurity. He was unable to trust her, watched her every move, controlled the money, wanted to know who she talked to and what they had talked about, he constantly put her down, and the possibility that she might leave brought all-too-believable threats. She needed to be somewhere far far away. She asked me not to write. It was hard enough to get her own letter away. Could I come down unannounced and just pick her up from work? I might need a policeman. Fred would be there.
I did pick her up and I did need the policeman. She came to me with no more than what she’d worn to work that morning. Fortunately, I’d thought to have a woman neighbour shop and pack a bag with a few things that she would need. We didn’t tell Marcie. It was no longer any of her business.
It was late afternoon when I picked Marilyn up and we didn’t get home that night. We stopped at motel south of Cambridge. She had been withdrawn and had said next to nothing up until this point but, now that we had stopped, the tears came. ‘She shouldn’t have left Fred. Poor Fred. Everything was her fault.’ Fault had become ingrained in her. First with Marcie’s poison, then Fred’s.
So what could I do but give her a hug? And that hug was a landmark for me. I had never hugged anybody in my entire life and I don’t remember anybody ever hugging me. Not Mum. Not Dad. They loved Jack and me, I’m sure of that, but they seemed to be unable to show it in any physical
DAUGHTERS. Page 3 way. Even between the two of them, I can’t remember there ever being any open show of affection. That same inability seems to have rubbed off on me. So that hug was a big deal. My poor damaged niece became my daughter from that moment and, in a way, I was promoted to the human race. It’s something of a shock for a confirmed batchelor to suddenly have an eighteen-year-old daughter. Young women are an unknown quantity even to a natural father who has had eighteen years to adjust.
The school-yard taunt, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me’ is so patently untrue. Bones knit with time. Word-wounds tend to last much longer, sometimes forever. It took time for Marilyn to heal but she eventually came to be at peace with herself. Something that some never achieve life-long. I had her accept that everything I possessed was ours: that she was valuable and at least as smart as anybody else in this world. It wasn’t anything that I said. I’m not a counsellor but I do love her. We came to share a dream and although that dream would cost a lot of money that was of no importance.
Going back to finish school was the hardest part for Marilyn, being in a class several years younger. She did well though. Then it was down to Otago, followed by the hard-yards of a junior doctor, until, eventually, my daughter became a general practitioner, a doctor considered safe to let loose on the community. This is important to my story.
There is something else that is possibly important. While still living with me, Marilyn would suddenly come out with the likes of, “Mum’s still in bed. She’s got a hangover this morning,”or “Oooh! Mum’s just keyed her neighbours car.–You know!–The one she’s been having the fight with.” Naturally, I didn’t know. She was forever saying that her mother was at that very moment doing something or other that she couldn’t possibly know about. Marcie was hundreds of kilometres away and that’s how we liked it. Naturally, I was alarmed at these delusions. I was all set to take her to a doctor and, I assume, then to a specialist when, to my relief, they suddenly stopped. Or was it
DAUGHTERS. Page 4 that she became aware of my concern and decided it best to keep quiet?
Some years ago, I sold the business to a larger rival, partly for cash and partly in shares, and have been retired since. I moved further north and bought the mock-tudor house that I’d always fancied. It’s a bit out of the local town but on the main bus route.
One day there was a knock at the door. A young woman and a toddler stood there. She appeared to be at the end of her tether. “I’ve arrived,” she said with no other explanation. She seemed to think them expected but I’d never seen her before. And yet…somehow…I was not surprised. It seems as though, on some other level, I’d known that she was coming. “Bring your things in”, I said. “You’ll be in this bedroom up here…Would you like a drink?..Are you hungry?.. What would the young fellow like?”
This was Janice the first of the three who would arrive at intervals over the next few years. All three to become my adopted daughters although that seems to have been decided for us before they even arrived. The other two, Karin and Ruth, were, like Janice, worn to inadequacy. They appeared bubbly on the surface but it was a facade propped up by the flimsiest of scantling. Behind that facade their self-esteem had been steadily gnawed away by their own mothers and then later by others. And you have to ask, had their mothers been similarly undermined? Was it a family thing?
These three had each been to Marilyn with obscure physical problems…they admit that much…and I am sure that she would have realised what lay behind their problems. Perhaps recognised her earlier self and situation in them. I can’t ask. It’s not something that she can discuss. The doctor/patient confidentiality thing. And yet I can’t believe that she would knowingly send them up here. That would be professional misconduct. Naturally, I have quizzed the three of them.
“Was it suggested that you come to me?”
“No!”
“Well how did you get my address?”
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“I d’know!”
”What made you think that I’d be expecting you?…Or that you’d be welcome?”
“I d’know!” They get confused. They really don’t know. And I don’t suppose it matters anyway.
And by the way, Marilyn tells me that her mother has recently tried to re-establish some sort of relationship with her and cannot understand the continuing coolness. It’s all my fault apparently. ‘I have alienated her daughter from her.’ That’s what she says. The woman is completely unable to see herself as bearing even the least blame. I know it sounds silly but, in a way, I’m beginning to feel sorry for her.
I enjoyed the eight months that Janice was with me. Young Jason too. He was the first of my grandchildren! There are more now. Seven! And I have four daughters and three sons-in-law who call me ‘Pop.’ The only one we have to marry off now is Marilyn.
There was never any therapy. Being family has been enough. Affection just grew. And by affection I don’t mean sex. It’s a sad world that can imagine no other relationship between a man and a woman. The odd hug, yes, but that’s not sex. There are times in our lives when all of us could do with a bit of a cuddle although with vulnerable women one needs to be a little cautious. Our affection is based on a mutual good opinion and an affinity that I cannot explain. I did have slight problems initially with Karen who had come believe that there is only one thing that a man could want from a woman like her. It pains me to think that any daughter of mine could ever have thought herself of so little value.
We worked together, whichever one was here, sharing the housework, preparing meals, doing the garden. We went for walks, went into town shopping for groceries, shopping for those bits and pieces that women need. We went clothes shopping. None of the four—I include Jason– arrived with much in the way of clothing. When I say that ‘we’ went shopping, I mean that I gave them my
DAUGHTERS. Page 6 card, told them to get whatever they needed, and went off and amused myself for half an hour or so. Ruth, who was weepy at any time, broke down completely at this. To be given someone’s card and pin number with no set spending limit was just too much for her. I’ll never understand women. Karen, who favoured the brazen-face mask, asked me, “How much have you got on the card. I’ve already picked the car I’d like.” But I knew that she would be more careful with my money than I was myself. And she knew that I knew. It was a game that we played.
We went eeling in the creek at the back. Something they’d never done. A simple enjoyment but they loved it. They want to do it everytime they come back, Marilyn’s the same, but I’ve never been able get them to eat eels.. Their “Yuk” is unanimous. They can’t even be brought to touch them. Someone else must always unhook them. That’s me. The neighbour likes eels. They’re his.
We did a lot of cooking together. The girls were recipe cooks while I’m a ‘what if I chuck in a bit of this?’ cook and I’ve always liked yeast cookery which was something that they’d never done. In my younger, impecunious days, I learned a lot about what could be done with the cheaper cuts of meat. I had the girls trying out the different herbs in my garden, using plenty of my home-grown garlic, experimenting with the collected sauces that I have in my cupboards. We would taste as the cooking went along but even then there were times when our concoctions didn’t work. But we ate them anyway. We called it ‘penance.’ They show off their skills now whenever I visit them.
And those endless games of cards and scrabble, those crossword puzzles, and all that talking. Had no-one ever taken the time to really listen to these girls? The T.V. would be mumbling to itself unwatched. It’s only mindless pap anyway. Not that we were always in each other’s pockets. They needed time to themselves perhaps even more than I need time to myself.
So you’ll see that nothing much ever happened here. Eventide Lodge would be ‘Mardi Gras in Rio’ in comparison. Yet—SOMEHOW—it seems to have been enough.
Was it Alice who said, ‘curiouser and curiouser’? As if the foregoing isn’t strange enough. A
DAUGHTERS. Page 7 week ago there was another knock on my door. Again the simple, “I’ve arrived,” with no other explanation and I seem to be locked into my own script. “Bring your things in”, I said. “You’ll be in this bedroom up here….Would you like a drink?…Are you hungry?” Her name is Sarah and where she differs from the others is that she’s within a year or two of my own age. A widow for some years now and a particularly nice woman—In fact I would say, one of this world’s few real ladies—We were immediately at ease with each other.
Yet, if she has any hidden demons, I haven’t been able to discover them. I can’t for the life of me see why Marilyn would send her up to me.