SISTERS OF THE FLESH

“You know what I’d like to say to her?”

     She was sitting across from her sister in the drab hospital waiting room.  There were three sisters all together, Neely, Molly, and Patricia, but only two of them came every day to sit beside their father, who struggled on the margin between the light and the dark, and comfort their mother, who wouldn’t leave the bedside, even for lunch.  But by evening, the old woman couldn’t hold up anymore and, emotionally spent, left reluctantly for a few hours, during which time the two sisters made sure she got a meal, took her for a dip in the community pool, then, before going back to the hospital, made her rest. 

     “You know what I’d like to say to her?” the question came again, it’s rising tone recoiling in the silence of the other sister, Neely.

It was only through the vigilance of Neely that their father was still alive, and when Molly finally came, the two of them managed to beat the HMO and get their father out of the for-profit health clinic where he was abusively neglected and into this hospital, where the care was excellent and where they nevertheless continued to stay vigilant.  The two were talking about their older sister, who had made it plain that she wasn’t about to spend her days at the hospital, no less her evenings.  She told them both that her own doctor told her the stress was too great and that for her own health’s sake she should stay away.

     The older sister, Patricia, was not in good health.  But her two younger sisters didn’t believe a word of what she said.  Especially after Patricia and her husband had gone on vacation—which they had planned after the old man was hospitalized.  The two younger sisters had both come to Florida from far away, Neely from the old family home on Long Island, where she lived now with her own family, and Molly from Germany, where she had been living for ten years with her husband and two sons.  They came to tend to their father during his last days and to give support to their mother.  The older sister, on the other hand, lived in the same condominium complex as her parents.

     “You know what I’d like to say?” Molly repeated insistently.  She was irritated and sitting on the edge of the chair, which made her look unusually plump, since her heavy breasts were practically sitting in her lap.

     Neely had gotten up and turned off the television, which protruded into the room from the upper corner beside the door.

     “I can imagine.  Don’t go into it,” she said, finally, sitting down again across from her sister.  “I can’t take the squabbling.  Let the prima donna alone.”

     “She was always dad’s favorite.  You don’t remember because you were the youngest.  I was the middle sister, and believe me, I remember everything.  And then afterward, with each of her marriages, how much money did she ‘borrow’ from dad?  She never paid him back a cent.  Every time you and I needed money, we paid dad back.”

“With interest,” Neely added.

“That’s right.  And dad knows it, too.  He didn’t trust her anymore.  These last few years, he wanted to keep her out of his affairs.  Dad told me one time he was cutting her out of the will because she had soaked him so often.”

     “I know, Molly, I know.  Mom wouldn’t let him.  Just leave it alone for now.  When dad’s gone, there’ll be plenty of time for recriminations and for screeching and scratching.”

     Neely wasn’t impatient with Molly’s ill will toward their older sister, she felt it herself, only she managed most of the time to get over it and to behave pleasantly when they were all together.  It was this attitude that made it possible for them to still call themselves family.

     “You don’t remember, that’s why you feel like that.”

     “But I’ve heard it all dozens of times.  I know.”

     “You know what I’d like to tell her?  Let me just say it so I can get it off my chest.  I’d like to tell her, ‘Big sister, when you go to the pearly gates, you know what St. Peter’s going to ask you?’”

     “Yea, you won’t get far with that strategy.  She’ll bat her big eyes at you, turning on her charm, and she’ll say, ‘You think I’ll get that far?’  She’ll shift it all around and make you feel sorry for her.  That’s the way she is.”

     “Hell.  You’re right.  She’s already got Aunt Lorraine thinking she’s in charge down here, making all the decisions, and she doesn’t do a damn thing.  That’s what I hate the most.”

     “If I worried what Aunt Lorraine thought, I wouldn’t be sleeping at nights.  It’s hard enough as it is.”

     “Of course, if we told Aunt Lorraine the truth, she’ll think we’re trying to smear dear Pattie.  But I won’t fall for her manipulations.  I’m smarter than that.  I’ll just tell her, ‘St. Peter’s going to say, “Aren’t you the mother who left her mentally ill daughter wandering the streets of small towns in Iowa so you could run off to Florida with yet another man?”’”

     “You can’t say that!”

     “Why not?  It’s the truth.  She should know what we think about it.  We’re all so intimidated by her.  We always pretend she’s OK.  She makes you, especially, think of her as a victim.”

     “She tries to make me.  It doesn’t work.  But I can’t deal with this now, Molly.  I can’t cope with both her and dad.”

     Neely sat back in the chair and closed her eyes.  Her hair was just starting to gray, and in that moment of tired stillness, Molly felt more protective than ever of her sister.

     “Well, you better deal with it.  Because when dad’s gone, she’s already machinating to get everything.  I can see her now—dropping tears on dad’s coffin, saying ‘I am my father’s daughter.’  That’s the way she is.  Then she’ll suck mom dry.  She’ll dispense dad’s estate like this: one for you, one for you, two for mom, and the rest for me!  That greedy bitch.”

     “Molly, she’s not going to get dad’s estate.  Dad made me executor so he could feel certain we’d each get our share.  And nobody’s getting anything until mom is gone.  Whatever dad’s got is going to be needed for her.”

     “But you know she’s been to the lawyer about dad’s will, trying to get him to change it.  Didn’t he talk to you about it?”

     “You mean the lawyer?  Yea, he put Pattie down as executor in case anything should happen to me.  Mom and dad didn’t think of that at the time.  Anyway, nothing’s going to happen to me.  Mom gets everything, we get nothing, and that’s the way I will make sure it turns out.”

     “Watch out, then.  If you care for mom.  Once Patricia finds out that’s your plan, I wouldn’t put it past her to do mom in.  Besides, you know how she lies.  She’s creepy.  Remember how she tricked mom into telling her how many shares of GE she and dad had?  Why did she need to know that?  Mom felt awful about it afterward, like she had been seduced.”

     “Would you listen to yourself!  Come on, let’s go back to the room.  Mom’s been alone too long.”

     When they returned, they found their mother sitting, as she had become accustomed, beside her husband, holding his hand.  She was dry eyed but ashen in color.  A nurse had come and rearranged their father, who tended to shift around violently in the bed, and tied down his hands and straightened out the sheets and blanket and propped him up on the pillow.  He was unconscious, but their mother had put his eyeglasses on, making him look awake.

The older sister, Patricia, did leave her mentally ill daughter in Iowa when she met the man she’s now married to, her fifth husband.  He lived in Florida.  She met him on a visit to her parents, and at that time he was coming out of the grief of losing his wife, to whom he had been married thirty years.  Patricia, somewhat round in those days but still youthful looking, was his rebound, and she knew how to use that, having plenty of experience with men, there being a man friend as well here and there between marriages. 

When he came to Iowa to settle the marriage arrangements and help her sell her house, he met the daughter.  “There’s no way this marriage can work,” he said, “if we take her with us.”  She was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic and was exhibiting full-blown symptoms at the time.  She was in a really bad way.  She was in her early-twenties and was impossible to live with.  Her mother couldn’t cope with her, lacking both the patience and the necessary character to learn how to care for someone with such problems.

     This fifth husband, his name was Benny, was not a selfish or insensitive guy.  But he was smart enough to know that he couldn’t make a life with Patricia if it meant having to take the daughter.  So, to ease his conscience, he found a place to take care of her, got a court order to have her deposited there, and took Patricia away. 

Unfortunately, there is no longer lifetime care for people like this poor girl.  The clinic kept her in a half-way house where they provided work and drug therapy as well as counciling, but they could keep her against her will for only three months.  And she didn’t want to stay, preferring to roam the streets of the towns in the area where she grew up.  She was still an attractive girl, and this circumstance left her mightily vulnerable to predatory men.  Fortunately for her, her father was a responsible man. 

He was Patricia’s first husband, the only one with whom she had children.  She had crucified him during the divorce, leaving her two older children with him, since they were old enough to understand what was happening and to judge; but she took their youngest daughter and prevented him from seeing her, often by moving away from where she was living when he found them, for he wanted to see his “baby.”  But when he found out that his ex-wife had been poisoning his daughter’s mind against him and intercepting his mail to her when he could reach her that way, he figured for the child’s sake it was best he stayed out of her life. 

But once discovering his daughter’s condition and his ex-wife’s abandonment of her, he made superhuman efforts to have her taken care of, trying numerous times to take her into his own home.  Added to the years of poisoning, however, her mental illness made it impossible for them to live together.  Her mind was so twisted against him, it caused him great pain, but he understood that those feelings in his child were an artifact of his ex-wife’s making. 

There was no way he could help her, as a consequence, except to see that she was taken in by one place after another.  This involved continuous haggling with the courts and with the police, whom he had to keep in constant touch with to know where his daughter was from month to month.  All the while, Patricia was free of the burden, the worst of it a product of her own making, living comfortably in Ft. Lauderdale.

Her sisters knew all the sordid details of this story, and the middle sister, Molly, despised Patricia—the story, for her, representing the most damning wickedness a woman could commit against her child and against her own soul, though Molly didn’t trouble to worry about Patricia’s soul.  Now, with Patricia actually machinating to get hold of their father’s estate before he had even passed away, Molly was outraged and indignant and could think of nothing else.  Something had to be done.

At night, in her mother’s condo apartment, while her mother slept and Neely tossed in the big bed beside her, she began machinating on her own.  She felt no guilt about this because it was not difficult to harden herself against her older sister.  Sleepless and irritated by Neely’s instinctive protectiveness, even of Patricia, she rolled away toward the moonlit window.  It was the moonlight that filled her with feelings and started the reverie of that warm summer evening.

Long before the move to Germany when she and Michael lived in Texas, they had a pool with a lovely patio behind the house.  Pattie and her first husband Josh had come on vacation to spend a few days with them.  They were hellish days.  The marriage was already failing, and Pattie was as icy as Molly had ever known her.  Her own husband liked Josh and his sympathy for the man was evident—but neither she nor Michael could understand why the feuding couple had chosen to come to them to fight their battles.  They were having drinks on the patio beside the pool.  The moonlit evening was warm and pleasant.  But in a voice filled with arctic cold, Pattie said,

“A man’s cowardice is a wife’s ruin.”

All were stunned by the tone of her voice.

“I suppose you mean me,” Josh said, sipping his gin and tonic, trying to seem unfazed.  “Two things,” he said in a falsely cheerful voice, “what cowardice? what ruin?  Make yourself plain.”

“I can answer that in two words,” Pattie said, her face impassive and her eyes hard, “Iowa and Iowa.”

“There’s no fence around you, Pattie dear,” Josh shot back.  “You know what you can do.”

“I know what you can do,” Pattie answered.  “There’s a whole world out there.  We can do more than vacation in it.  But you don’t have the know how, or should I say the balls?”

“Come on, you two,” Molly intervened.  “Behave yourselves.  If you want to get away, why not go to Dallas tomorrow?”

“Who said anything about getting away?”

“Well, you’re on vacation, I just thought. . . .”

“I like it fine right here.”

“Suit yourself, you’re both welcome,” Molly said, looking at Michael.

“Welcome!  Thanks.  It’s good to know you don’t think we’re imposing.”

Then she got up, took off her clothes, and jumped in the pool.  When she surfaced, she called to Michael to join her.  Michael looked at Josh and apologized.  Josh just shrugged.  But it was too much for him.  He left and took the car, returning two days later to take Patricia home.  Where he had been he never said, and Pattie said she didn’t care.  Afterwards, when news came of the separation and of the appalling things Pattie was saying about her husband, Michael only shrugged and said, “That’s your sister.”

Recalling the ordeal of that divorce and the casual way Pattie consigned her two older children to her husband, and then, after three more marriages, abandoned her sick daughter for the sake of another man, she felt nothing for her, nothing except, perhaps, a determination not to let her mother and Neely be used or exploited by her.

What she would like to do, she thought as she looked out at the moonlit palms, is let her troubled niece know that her grandfather was dying and that she would be welcome to come see him before he passed, and to let her know that her mother and her mother’s new husband would welcome her in their home.  If the poor thing could be made to come with those expectations, her mother could hardly send her away, and having her in the house would do for Patricia.  She would know the meaning of stress, then, and no implausible excuse from a doctor would enable her to get her daughter out. 

But there was a problem with this scheme: there was no way to reach her niece.  She was living out of her car, which is how she spent her summers since her mother left Iowa, her father making sure she was safely ensconced in some half-way house for the winter months.  Molly supposed she could contact the police in the towns her niece drifted in but didn’t think they would cooperate.  The poor girl’s father had to get court orders to make the police both keep an eye on her as well as share information with him, and contacting him was out of the question.  He would resist any efforts to reunite his ex-wife with the poor desperate girl. 

So this plan, which would have had the merit of forestalling her sister’s machinations and of exacting a fitting retribution proved unworkable.  Keeping her own council, for she knew her younger sister wouldn’t approve, she decided on an alternative.  Knowing that Patricia would rather drop dead than speak with her first husband, Molly told her, in secret from her younger sister, that her first ex had called and said that his daughter had worsened and was in danger of doing serious harm to herself and that Patricia needed to come to Iowa right away since he couldn’t do anything with her because she hated him so much.  Molly knew that that would hit Patricia with especial force, conscienceless though she was.  The upshot is, she would tell Patricia her ex-husband insisted that she would have to take her daughter back to Florida with her, if only for a few weeks, to calm her down and get her over the worst of whatever was troubling her.

Molly didn’t know how her older sister would react to this concocted tale, whether she would see through it and realize it was a pack of lies, or whether she would make serious efforts to find out more, perhaps even go to Iowa.  She didn’t know what to expect, but she was unprepared for what did happen.  Nothing.  Apparently, Patricia, believing the whole story, nevertheless had no intention of getting involved again in her daughter’s life.  Molly was astonished!  Getting Patricia aside one evening, she asked what she was doing about the emergency, and Patricia said, coldly, “She’s not my problem anymore.”

But Patricia did change as a consequence of Molly’s lies.  Not immediately.  But after a while the story had begun to affect her.  She was uncharacteristically quiet when the three sisters were together with their mother, and she began to come to the hospital, smilingly and caressingly, though she didn’t stay long, seldom more than half an hour.  Still, it was a change her youngest sister, Neely, noted, and it became a matter of considerable speculation among them and their mother, who, in fact, was suspicious of her older daughter’s motives for suddenly being so dutiful.  All the more so when Patricia, seemingly so earnest in her concern for her father, began to appear solicitous about how her mother was holding up.

“I just don’t trust her,” the old woman said as they dogpaddled in the deep end of the pool one evening. 

“Give her credit, at least, for coming,” Neely said, always the peace maker.

“I don’t trust her,” the old woman repeated.  “Do you know what she did yesterday?”

“What did she do, mom?” Molly asked, always ready to find more reasons to despise her sister.

“She came for my key to the mailbox!  I asked her why she wanted it, and she said, acting hurt that I seemed to distrust her, that she just wanted to get my mail.  So I gave it to her.  Don’t you know she gave me a different key back?  I was surprised, so I went to the mailboxes to see if she had given me her own by mistake.  Well, it wasn’t.  It didn’t open her box.  Guess whose box it opened?”

“I haven’t a clue,” Neely said.

“I think I have,” Molly said.  “Tell us!”

“It opened my own mailbox.  Patricia took my key and had a copy made and gave me the copy by mistake.  She doesn’t even realize it!”

“Why does she want to get into your box?” Neely said, almost too naively.

“To look at mom’s mail,” Molly said disgustedly. 

“Why would she want to do that?  She wouldn’t steal it, would she?” Neely said.

“Who knows what she’s after?” the old woman said.

“She wants to know who you’re getting dividend checks from, that’s what she’s after,” Molly said.  “What are we going to do about it?  That’s the question.  I’ll be damned if we should let her get away with it.  I say get the lock changed.  I’m going to see about it tomorrow morning before we go to the hospital.”

Molly knew what was really going on in her sister’s head.  Aside from her usual machinations, of which the key to the mailbox was only the latest, Patricia was afraid, not for her daughter but for herself—because she believed the family knew all about her daughter’s condition and that she was told what had to be done and wasn’t doing it.  But she couldn’t explain this to Neely, since she would have to admit to the lies she told. 

All the more did Molly despise her sister, now.  Because she alone could see how Patricia was manipulating them by her new attitude, and because she couldn’t say anything about it, the strain became almost unbearable.  Patricia was preparing the ground for their sympathy when the news came about whatever happened to her daughter.  Molly could see plainly from the way she behaved that Patricia was expecting to hear bad news, perhaps even that the girl killed herself or got herself killed, or wound up seriously injured in some hospital, or perhaps something even worse.  Molly wondered, as she floated and paddled away from her mother and sister, what lie Patricia had devised to explain to her mother why she didn’t go to Iowa to rescue her daughter.  One thing was plain, though.   Patricia was sucking up to them, wanting to be the object of their sympathy when the news came—once again making herself the center of attention.

They left the pool and showered in the clubhouse and dressed.  It was a fine evening.  They had brought a cooler with a bottle of wine and some glasses and now took a table on the lawn where they sat and talked.

Molly always said it, and she said it again, “It’s all about her, everything that goes on in this family is all about her, even dad’s dying is all about her.  Oh, the poor thing, she’s so stressed, her health is in danger!  That’s why she can’t stand to come to the hospital.  She can’t pretend it’s all about her when she’s here.  That’s why it stresses her out so much.”

Reacting to the logic of this, Neely said, puzzled, “But she’s been coming, even if she doesn’t stay long.  She comes almost every day now.”

“That’s my point, Neely.  Can’t you see?”

“I don’t get it, Molly.  You condemn her when she doesn’t come and then when she does.”

“I don’t like any condemning,” their mother said.  “But I would like some more wine.”

“She knows something.  What’s all this business about the mail?  Why are you defending her?  You don’t think she’s coming out of concern for her father?”

“What does she know?” Neely said, suspicious of Molly, now.  She was detecting something under the surface.  She knew her sister well enough to know she was holding something back.

“How do I know?  I’m trying to make sense of Patricia’s compassion, which you know as well as I do is a mirage.”

“Aren’t you being unfair, Molly?  Maybe she’s coming around,” Neely remonstrated.  “Cut her some slack.”

“Cut her some slack?  What slack did she cut her four husbands and three kids?  You want to feel sorry for somebody?  Feel sorry for Benny.”

“Oh, Benny’s no fool,” Neely said.  “He made her sign a contract when they were married.  They keep separate finances.  He told me that was the only way he could get his kids to accept her and be friendly.”

“I didn’t know that.  He told you that?  Or did you get it from Patricia?”

“He did.”

“Ahhh!  I begin to see.  That turns lights on.”

“No, you don’t see anything.  Don’t make her out to be so bad.  Pattie’s trying.  Like I said, cut her some slack.”

But to this, Molly had nothing to say.  Instead, she threw out her favorite condemnation of Patricia, “She left four husbands and three kids in her wake,” to which, she added, “watch out you don’t end up there, too.”

But Neely did end up in Patricia’s wake, as did Molly and their mother.  This is how it happened. 

Patricia began to come to the hospital more and more often, and although she didn’t stay long for any visit, she came several times a day, turning on all the charm of which she was capable, and she also began to come in the evenings.  She had begun by degrees to carry a full share of the burden.  The old man, a victim of cardiac arrest and then of a total systems shutdown, was seldom conscious, having catheters for feeding and eliminating, IVs for antibiotics and saline solutions, and a trake for respiration.  All these interventions made him extremely uncomfortable, and he was restless and twisted around in the bed, often trying to pull the trake out or throwing his legs over the side of the mattress, which sometimes pulled the catheter from his bladder, causing him to bleed profusely.  Since the nursing staff couldn’t be with him every moment, the daughters took it upon themselves to keep him comfortable and stable.  They also swabbed his mouth every hour or so and made sure he was shaved and his garment clean.  They kept his eyeglasses handy for those times when he was awake and able to respond.  Patricia—thinner, handsomer than ever, and never so nerve-wracked as her younger sisters—began to say that she could spell them in these duties and began to insist that they get their mother out of the hospital for more relaxation. 

At first they wouldn’t hear of it.  Molly especially.  When they saw how Patricia turned on the tears when the nurse came to change their father’s bedding, they were all disgusted.  “Oh, my poor father,” she said through a shower of phony rain, “please try not to disturb him.”  But Patricia continued to insist and said, “Why not?  Just take mom out for an hour or so?  It would help her ever so much.”  Molly wanted to pull her hair.  But in time they began to think about it, and one day they entrusted care of their father to her and took their mother out to buy some groceries and later go for coffee at a Starbucks.  When they found their father in good shape on their return, they were thankful for the break.  Molly began to wonder if she hadn’t been too hard on her sister. 

After a while they began to rely on the break.  When it became routine, Patricia had arranged for their father’s lawyer to come to the hospital.  She and her husband had insisted their father go to this lawyer, whose name was Nat Nidjinski, because he was a friend of her husband’s, which made the outcome of her father’s will all the more insufferable to her.  In spite of the lawyer’s recommendation that the oldest daughter should be named executor, then his caution that the will might be subject to challenge if she wasn’t, her father succeeded in naming Neely as his executor.  Nidjinski had done as much as he could for Patricia at that time, barring illegalities.  But Patricia now got him to draw up a trust into which all her father’s assets were to be deposited, and had his, her lawyer’s, bank named as the manager of the trust, which meant in practical terms that nothing could be expended from it without her own approval. 

In the hospital room she had arranged to have two witnesses.  One was her husband, the other the wife of the lawyer.  Then Nidjinski read the document to the old man, who actually was conscious at the time and understood what was happening but, because of the trake and the ties that kept his hands secure, was unable to make his will known or to protest.  Then, untying his right hand, Nidjinski put a pen in it, and Patricia, holding the hand, guided it on the paper to produce his signature.  Then another document was signed the same way, granting her general powers of attorney over his assets.  The witnesses each signed an affidavit testifying to the fact that the old man was conscious during the proceedings and that, in their opinion, he showed every sign of approving.  The whole affair was completed before the sisters and mother returned. 

Patricia was beside herself with pride in the accomplishment.  This signing took place on a Wednesday, and on the following Saturday evening, Patricia had her sisters and mother come to her apartment, one floor above her mother’s, for dinner.  She laid out a spread that was sumptuous and varied, as though she had prepared a last meal for the three of them.  They were all unsuspecting.  Molly, more than the others responsive to good food, was beginning to relent and letting herself feel some warmth for Patricia. 

Patricia had put her old Johnny Mathis albums on low and had candles on the table.  She had put pictures of her father on the sideboard, and as they ate she talked about the family when they all still lived on Long Island.  She had stroked the nostalgia in them and had them all feeling close and familiar.

It was then, however, in the after-dinner glow, when the table had been cleared and the dishes taken care of and the coffee served, that Patricia brought out copies of the two documents, the trust and the power of attorney, and showed them what she had done.  Then she showed them the affidavits, supposedly proving that the old man was both aware and consenting.

“I could hardly hold his hand, he was so eager to sign,” Patricia said, triumphantly, glaring at Neely, especially.

Molly and Neely couldn’t respond, they were so much in shock.  The long silence was filled finally, after what seemed like an unendurable hiatus, with their mother’s inconsolable sobbing.  The image of her daughter’s triumphant look was a stab in the heart.  This was, after all, what her first daughter wanted all along, as she knew, but which, however, she wanted not to admit.  The nefariousness and callousness of it were so extreme that the poor old lady couldn’t even bear to look at her daughter.  Neely and Molly had to assist her out of the apartment and down the stairs to her own.  As the three of them passed along the rail-enclosed walkway towards the stairs, Patricia shouted from her doorway that their father’s car now belonged to the trust.  As they helped their mother take the steps, they heard her shout again, saying she wanted the keys to the car in her own hands by Monday afternoon, then they heard the door slam.

The two sisters never brought the car keys to Patricia.  The next time they met was at the lawyer’s office.  When the three women arrived, they expected to find Patricia in the anteroom waiting for them, but she was already inside.  They decided to wait in the anteroom, uncomfortable though it was, until their own lawyer arrived.  Nidjinski, who originally drew up the will and was responsible for drawing up the trust, invited them to come in, but they insisted on waiting.  “As you wish,” he said, smiling, and closed the door.

“I don’t like that man,” Molly said.

“Your father would never wear a hair piece,” her mother said.  “Now I can see why.”

“The first time I met him,” Neely said, “I was surprised by it, too.  I didn’t trust him then.  I should have listened to my instincts.”

“You?  Suspicious?” Molly said.  “When you get suspicious, someone has to call the cops.”

“It wasn’t only the hairpiece,” Neely added.  “He wore tight polyester slacks with a huge iron belt buckle.  It made me laugh a little.  I was rather put off by him.”

They fell silent.  The anteroom was large and somber.  On the wall across from them hung a long sword with a huge handle and hilt guard, encrusted with gemstones—fake, no doubt.  The wall itself was decorated with mahogany-stained beams onto which were attached oil lamps with burning wicks.  There was a fake medieval tapestry on the wall behind them.  The furniture was all uncomfortable Mediterranean-style stuff gathered in clumps about the large room, the dimness of which cast a pall on them.  Across from the entrance was a fireplace over which a painting of an old English barrister hung, probably done to order for Nidjinski.  It was as out of place as the three women felt.

When their lawyer arrived, they were ushered into a room inside where Patricia sat at a  conference table upon which were placed two folders containing papers.  Their lawyer, a small, slender man with a nervous demeanor, was given one of the folders, and Nidjinski took the other for himself.  Then, referring to documents he drew from the folder, Nidjinski described the whole affair of the signings in detail.  The sisters’ lawyer, setting first one document to this side and another to that, said that the thing would never hold up in court.  Nidjinski, on the other hand, said it would, that he himself had been involved in other incidents like this and that they always held up. 

“But don’t you see,” the sister’s lawyer said, “we could do the same thing tomorrow, reversing everything you did last week?”

“We could successfully challenge that, since it would be obvious to any court why it was done.”

“You mean the intent behind the signing of these isn’t obvious?” the sister’s lawyer said, shaking the whole set of papers in his hand.

“Since I represented their father during the drawing up of the original will, I can verify the fact that the old man was acting under duress, under extreme pressures, if you will,” and here he glared at Neely and her mother, “pressures placed on him by his wife and his youngest daughter.  I can easily establish that these documents represent his genuine will, since once he was removed from their influence,” he said portentously, casting hard glances again at Neely and her mother, “he readily consented to sign.  Witnesses testify to this.”

“But they are not disinterested witnesses.  Her husband and your wife,” the other lawyer said, angrily.

“You would have to impeach their credibility in court, and any effort you made in that direction would be countered by a libel suit.  I should point out that my wife works in my office and has witnessed many such signings.  She has considerable experience in the matter.”

The two sisters sat looking at the men engaged in this duel.  They knew it was hopeless.  They had been trumped by Patricia.  And she sat with such a smile and bright gleam in her eyes—a devastating look of triumph—that both of them felt defeated and, worse, depressed.  This happened over the dying body of their father, his own hand, emptying of life as she held it, used by his eldest daughter, whom he had, after all, favored all through the years of their growing up, as a weapon against him, against him and their mother and themselves.  This betrayal by their older sister seemed contemptible, outrageous—worse, it seemed tragic.  They couldn’t believe it.  They both just sat and cried.

Patricia also had the last word as they left the lawyer’s office.  She pulled her two sisters aside where their mother couldn’t hear and said,

“I am my father’s daughter!”

“What,” Molly said, “we’re adopted?”

Patricia, imperious and arrogant, replied, “You lie, the both of you.  You’re liars.  I knew it all along.  You got what you deserve.  Both of you.  There never was a problem with my daughter in Iowa.  Oh, I found that out right away.  You tried to cut me out, kept me away from my own father in that hospital, poisoned my own mother’s mind against me.  You’re both evil.  You’re going to get just what you deserve.  Nothing!”

In shock, if more shock could descend upon those two hapless women, they left the lawyer’s office and went to sit in the car, where they waited for their mother, the both of them wondering how long Patricia, who was so venomous, would let them live in the apartment—even how long she would let them use the car.  Both of them had their own homes and families, which they had been away from for three months now, their own husbands feeling as hapless without them as they were feeling now over their plight.

Well, they decided, their mother should come to live with Neely, since that was what she preferred.  But, first and foremost, they had still to minister to the old man.  His condition hadn’t changed.  And, after all, they realized with relief, nothing could happen regarding the trust until he passed.  So, for now, things will go on as they had been, except they would have the now new grace of not having to see Patricia anymore. 

Both sisters were outraged at Patricia’s pronouncement that it was they who kept her away from the hospital.

“Of course,” Neely observed, “she would have to think that.  It fits with how she distorted everything.  Dad under duress, rescued by her!”

“Oh, God, Neely.  I don’t think I can stand it.  I do hate that woman.  I always have.  Ever since mom made me wear her first hand-me-down dress.”

“I know.  She got all the new clothes and you got all the hand-me-downs.  I remember you learning how to sew so you could make your own dresses and not have to wear hers.”

“She got the new dresses and I got her toss offs.  It’s still that way.  Things never change.  And to think we paid dad back every penny we ever borrowed from him, and SHE’S going to get it.”

“Do you remember how she stained all her dresses in the armpits?  She used to sweat like a pig.  That’s why I thought you didn’t want to wear her dresses.  I used to look at those dark rings under the arms.  They wouldn’t wash out.  Maybe because I was so little they loomed more in my imagination than they should have.  I still remember that, though.” 

They sat silent for a while in the car.  Finally, they saw their mother coming from the lawyer’s office.  She was walking slowly, talking with the man who had come to represent her at that table inside.

Neely was curious about one thing, however, and since their mother looked like she would be a few minutes yet, she brought it up.

“Molly, what was that bit about our being liars, something about her daughter in Iowa?  What was she talking about?”

“Oh,” Molly said, without skipping a beat, “I never did bring up the St. Peter’s bit, remember that?  I just asked her about Melissa, how she was doing, and suggested that she should find out if she was all right.  I told her I feared something terrible was going to happen to her.  I wanted her to think about it, to get guilty over it.  That’s all.  That’s what she was talking about.”

Neely looked at her sister for a moment, as if weighing the consequences of what she had said. 

“Well, you accomplished your purpose.  She was feeling guilty, no doubt about it.  It’s what made her sound so vicious.  That woman’s sick.  Poor thing.”

“Don’t ‘poor thing’ her.  No sympathy for the witch, Neely.  Don’t do it.”

“But why did she think I was lying?  She said we were both liars and that’s why we deserve nothing.  What did she think I lied about?”

“Neely, our sister’s crazy.  She probably thinks you lie about everything.  Besides, dad made you executor, so she hated you most.  Didn’t you see the way she glared at you when Nidjinski claimed you and mom pressured dad to make the will?  Where did that come from?  If he didn’t make it up, she did.  Be glad she doesn’t accuse you of worse.”

At that, their mother finally came to the car and got in.  Molly started it up and they drove home, all three of them quiet, keeping their feelings and their thoughts to themselves.  As they were made to understand by their own lawyer, once their effort to contest the signings was denied in court, which he thought would be the case, Patricia could force the sale of their mother’s apartment, and they had better plan for the worse.  They knew that what Patricia could do she would do to hurt and inconvenience them.  They were appalled by the way the afternoon turned out.  They pulled into the parking lot in front of their mother’s building and into the space beside the palms where they always parked, and Molly turned off the engine.  For a moment they continued to sit in silence.  Then, just as Molly opened the door, the old lady said,

“The lawyer thinks there’s only one way out of Pattie’s trap.  You know what that is?”

She smiled warmly and cast a quizzical glance at her two daughters, then continued calmly.

“He said, ‘Why, you just got to keep your husband alive.’  Isn’t that the truth?  That’s what it’s all about.  Keeping dad alive.  Keeping dad alive,” she repeated tremblingly.  “God, oh, how I want to keep dad alive!”

Then she started to cry.