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“I didn’t barge in,” I said as he took the stairs two at a time, Elyse right behind.
“For God’s sake, Audrey,” my father said to my mother, his arms reaching for hers. “What do you think you’re doing, my love?”
My love?I thought.My love?!
You were just caught red-handed with another woman. Are you really going to pretend that didn’t happen?
“My poor dear,” Elyse echoed, coming around to take my mother’s other arm, effectively pushing me aside.
I watched the two of them lift my mother to her feet and half walk, half carry her back to her room. They succeeded in getting her back into bed, arranging her pillows and making her comfortable, neither remotely self-conscious about their state of undress.
“Are you hungry, dear?” Elyse asked. “Can I make you a smoothie?”
“Didn’t the doctor say she wasn’t supposed to have dairy?” I said as Elyse headed down the stairs.
“It’s one of the few pleasures she has left,” my father stated, taking my elbow and ushering me from the room. “Are you so cruel as to deny her that?”
“Me?” I responded, scarcely able to believe my ears. “I’m the one who’s cruel?! You’re sleeping with the housekeeper and you’re trying to turn this back on me?!”
“What I do is none of your business.”
“Maybe not. But my mother’s welfare certainly is.”
“Your mother is being very well looked after.”
“Is she? I found her on the floor, for God’s sake!”
“You’re not being fair.”
“Really? You’re sleeping with thehelpright under my mother’s nose and I’m the one who’s not being fair?” I asked, purposely using the word he’d used only months ago.
“I’m a man,” he said evenly. “I have certain needs.”
“Oh, please,” I said dismissively. “You’re almost eighty, for God’s sake.”
“Okay. So I’m anoldman,” he said, suddenly looking very old indeed. “That doesn’t mean I’ve ceased to be human. That I don’t relish the feel of a woman in my arms, that I don’t enjoy being held or caressed.”
I squirmed at the unwanted image of Elyse caressing my father.
“It’s been years since your mother and I have had any kind of relationship, physical or otherwise,” he continued, unprompted. “I’d almost forgotten what it was like to have a normal conversation…”
“Is that what you were doing while my mother was lying on the floor?” I asked, unwilling to feel sorry for him or let him off the hook so easily. “Having a conversation?”
“It’s easy to be judgmental,” he said. “Can you not find it in your heart to be even a little forgiving? A little understanding? Are you so pure? So without blemish?”
Oh, God,I thought. Could I really be so contemptuous of my father after whatI’ddone?Let he who is without sin…
“You need to fire her,” I said. “Give her whatever she wants in the way of severance, but—”
“I’m not firing her,” he interrupted, his previous anger returning to his voice.
I reached inside my purse, removed my mother’s earrings. “I found these in Elyse’s room, in her jewelry box,” I told him. “She’s been stealing from you.”
He took the earrings from my hand. The silence that ensued was all but deafening. “What were you doing, going through her things?”
“You’re missing the point here, Dad.”
Another interminable pause. “Elyse isn’t stealing.”
