The Love Children by Marylin French

Author:Marylin French
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Feminist Press
Published: 2009-01-08T23:00:00+00:00

The only hard part was Dolores. She arrived late, looking strange. At graduation, she had been blowsy and fat, her breasts limp over a swelling stomach, her eyes teary, her face blotchy. She’d bleached her hair pale blonde and worn a trampish outfit, not the fashion in our crowd. She was much changed now. She had slimmed down and was dressed in a prim, matronly brown suit and brown shoes. Sandy and I had on jeans with sweaters and high boots; our hair was still long and natural. Dolores’s hair was short and curled in a wave. She looked like her own mother. Sandy and I grabbed her as soon as she came in, gave her a glass of wine, and took her up to my room, where we could lie around and talk.

“Where have you been!” we exclaimed. “We couldn’t find you.”

She was subdued. She didn’t look at us. “Yeah, I’ve been away.”

“Where, Dolores?” I probed. “What was wrong?”

She looked up then. “I was in a hospital.”

Suddenly everything made sense.

“What hospital?” Sandy asked warily.

“St. Katherine’s.”

A mental hospital in the suburbs. We looked at her questioningly. She lowered her head, studied her lap.

“I tried to kill my father,” she said. “I stabbed him in the chest with the carving knife. I wounded him; he didn’t die. They took me away, put me in the hospital. The state.”

They hadn’t charged her with anything. So she must have had a good reason. We stared at her. Then I went over and embraced her. Of course—she liked to sleep in our gallery when she could. We should have known.

She began to cry, and I did too, and Sandy came and put her arms around both of us and rubbed her cheek against Dolores’s.

“But you’re out now,” I said finally. “You’re free.” It was a question.

“Yes. And back at college. I live in a halfway house. It’s part of my sentence. I have to stay there. I was at my parents’ house the day you called just by accident. I went there to get the rest of my stuff. I’ll never go back there again or see them, either of them, ever again.”

“Both of them?” I asked. “Both of them?”

She exploded. “He fucked me and she was jealous! They fought over me all the time! She’d tell him nasty things about me, she’d nag him to beat me, and sometimes he did but sometimes he’d threaten to beat her, but he was always at me . . . Oh, God! My life wasn’t worth living . . .”

“Oh, Dolores!”

I could see her go someplace in her head. She changed her breathing, slowed it down, breathed in deeply, exhaled hard. “It’s okay now,” she said. “I live in a group home. The kids there are great. You should hear their stories; I swear they’re worse than mine! I love them! I’m starting my life over again. I hope you two will be part of my new life. I mean, you were always good to me. And so was Bishop.

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