Constance by Patrick McGrath Page A

please to sort it out. I left them to it. I went out through the kitchen and walked down to the river. I had Iris’s cigarettes in my pocket. I smoked two of them on the dock and felt ill.
    I reported all this to Sidney when I got back to New York. I told him I was grateful that he’d left me to deal with Daddy and Iris by myself. It was family business, I said, it didn’t concern him, he was better off out of it. Of course it concerned him, he told me. Oh, I’d made him angry. If it concerned methen it concerned him, he said. What did I think it meant, being married?
    —Please don’t do this now, I said.
    We were eating lunch in the dining room. Wintry sunlight drifted into the room and the city was quiet for once in its life. I’d come in from Penn Station late the previous evening and been too tired to talk. My mood had hardened overnight. Sidney set down his knife and fork.
    —Listen to me, he said. This is a bad shock you’ve had and I want to help you make sense of it. So don’t, please, say it doesn’t concern me.
    He wanted me to understand that we had to face it together. He said that this news had tipped my world upside down and I wasn’t strong enough to deal with it. I might wear a mask for others, he said, but with him I must express the confusion and pain I was feeling.
    He then said that maybe it was a good thing, what had happened, because now there was a chance I could abandon Daddy and face the world like an adult.
    —Do I have to tell you everything? I said.
    —I’m your husband, so yes, Constance, you do. That’s our deal.
    So I told him that when I got back up to the house Iris was in the kitchen. She told me she didn’t know what to say. I said that telling me what she knew would be a start. She was surprised. Hadn’t Daddy told me? No, I said, Daddy hadn’t told me anything.
    We’d sat across the table staring at each other. I could hear the old man shuffling around somewhere above us.
    —He didn’t tell you
anything?
said Iris.
    Again I told her no, and she asked me if I really wanted to know. I was suddenly filled with dread. I knew bad news was coming at me fast.
    —He committed suicide.
    —I’m sorry, said Sidney quietly.
    He’d been afraid of this, he said. He’d hoped there was some way I could be shielded from it but there wasn’t. He asked me how I’d handled it and I said I didn’t handle it, that I was numb before it sank in. I’d asked Iris why he’d done it.
    —That’s all I know. Daddy wouldn’t tell me his name.
    I felt a gust of anger. Then I asked her how old I was when it happened.
    —You weren’t even
born
, darling!
    As though that would make me feel better!
    —So I never knew him? But why do you know this and I don’t? Why was it a secret? Why was I never told?
    Iris said that Daddy had told her not to say anything about it. She felt ashamed now. But he’d been so insistent.
    —Yes, Iris, but why did he tell you that?
    Yes, why? Now we were getting to it. The numbness was starting to wear off. Iris fell silent.
    —What do you know?
    Nothing.
    —Iris,
why wasn’t I told?
    —He said you weren’t strong enough.
    I’d felt a kind of wildness then, as though something was breaking loose inside of me and threatening to burst out in a flood of destructive rage. I’d risen from the kitchen table. I wanted to go upstairs and tell him what he’d done. Iris stood with her back to the door.
    —Constance, wait, please—
    —Why should I care what you think? You were in on it! You all were!
    —I know—
    Iris still had her back to the door. Suddenly I felt drained. I sat down at the table. I lit a cigarette then crushed it out.
    —Who was he? No, you don’t know, anyway I don’t want to hear it from you.
    Then I put my arms on the table and lay my head down and wept for a while, and Iris had the sense not to say anything or try to touch me.
    The next day I returned to New York without making peace with either of them. They’d tried. The old