Payback

"And what are we supposed to do about all this? The rich have always held power. Even in ancient times it was the wealthy people who controlled everything."

"True. Very true. I don't know why the few always had the most and the many had next to nothing, but it seems to be the way of things. But it's a different world now. The stakes are far higher and the big boys, the ones who sit on top of the world, are playing their trump card. They want it all and they'll get it too, unless we do something to stop them."

"Like what?" Priscilla argued. "I'm not disagreeing with you because I really believe that things are pretty bad right now. But what can we do? Start a revolution or something?"

Danielle stopped dead in her tracks and looked her friend right in the eye. "Yes! A second revolution. A second War of Independence!"

"Oh, come on!" Priscilla laughed. "You can't be serious!"

"But I am serious! That's the very reason why I joined the Sisterhood. I assume your mother has indoctrinated you?"

"She has. But I am not a Sister and don't know if I want to become one."

"But she has told you about men. I'm talking about those men who have messed up the world, not guys like your little Eddie Schwartz."

Priscilla giggled when she thought of her genial, lovesick fiancé. "Yes, she did."

"Then you know that the rule of men must end. We women must take control. It is the only way for our civilization to survive."

"I've heard my mother say the same things for years. I can't imagine how the Sisterhood is ever going to achieve such a goal. It's incomprehensible to me."

"Really? At one time people thought flight was impossible. At one time people laughed if you told them that one day a man would walk on the moon. And who would ever believe that you could hold a computer in your hands? Incredible achievements—all of them. Yet, all these things were made possible because they were ideas whose time had come."

"And you think that the time has come for women to run the world?"

"Yes."

"And the Sisterhood is going to usher in this new Utopia?

For a moment Priscilla thought she saw hesitation in Danielle's eyes. The older woman seemed to be searching for the right words to say, her deliberations forcing her to come to a complete halt.

"Look," she said, gently grabbing Priscilla by the arm. "I'm not saying that the world is going to be perfect with women running things. But it sure is going to be a lot less bloody. Right now society is going through a tremendous upheaval. I'm sure you can feel it, these winds of change. All around the world women, both Sisters and others, have positioned themselves in places of power and very soon we are going to be running things."

"Men are not just going to relinquish their control."

"They'll have no choice because we now have a united populace behind us. Believe it or not, most men are sick of war and would rather devote their lives to more productive purposes. All I'm asking of you is to think about what I've said. That's all."

The two women talked for a short while longer before Danielle had to return to her office. Suddenly being safe and secure wasn't the wonderful thing Priscilla had thought it was. She had a lot of thinking to do.

************

Eddie Schwartz was a likeable fellow: gregarious, intelligent, and a snappy dresser. However, he also could be insensitive and selfish. These latter traits were not displayed very often but, when they were, it was always with the intent to verbally destroy the other person. Failing that, he would simply use his prodigious talent for tastelessness by ridiculing someone for no other reason than that it provided him with a sense of perverse pleasure. Priscilla had witnessed this distasteful behavior more than once, and with more than one person, and it troubled her. She herself had never suffered the indignity of being ridiculed or reprimanded by Eddie, and she hoped she never would. He was very good to her in many ways and she had, so far, managed to overlook his faults in favor of his many good points. Eddie was, after all, a very charming guy. He was tall, blonde, and blue-eyed, and possessed of a keen sense of humor. He was the kind of guy you just liked right from the start, and she had fallen in love with him from almost the moment they met.

With the wedding only a few weeks away, Priscilla put any disturbing thoughts about her future husband out of her mind in deference to the more practical matters associated with her upcoming marriage. There was still much to do and she never liked to leave things up to others if she could help it. It was more or less a matter of control: Priscilla simply liked to be at the helm.

For her twenty-fourth birthday, Selma had arranged for her ex-husband, Eddie, and Claudia to come to the house for an intimate candlelight dinner. Priscilla had insisted that she didn't want a big party since her friends at work had already given her one. More than happy to oblige, Selma had only asked that Danielle be invited as well, to which Priscilla happily agreed.

"I'm so glad that you and Danielle have become such good friends," Selma said as she placed a bottle of chilled champagne onto the dinner table. "That woman is going places."

"Going places? Are you kidding, mom? She's already there."

"Well, yes, I suppose she is. It's a mystery to me where that girl gets all her energy."

Priscilla sat down into a comfortable chair and watched as her mother finished preparing the table. "She's a wonderful person, that's all I know—and very smart. And don't pretend that you weren't trying to play matchmaker with us."

"Who me?

"Yes, you. You've gone out of your way to encourage our friendship. Not that I mind. Danielle is really something else."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, she's got some really wild ideas floating around in her head."

"What kind of ideas?"

"You know...kind of like the things you talk about now and then. Sisterhood stuff, how men have ruined the world..."

Selma stopped herself in the midst of putting down a glass. "Ah, we won't be bringing up these issues at the table tonight I hope," she said with an air of dismay.

"I'm not going to say anything," Priscilla assured her. "I don't want to get dad started."

"Thank you," Selma sighed. "This house has seen enough drama."

The dinner was one of Selma's best. Roast turkey, new potatoes, asparagus, and cranberry sauce. This was followed by a double layer chocolate cake for desert. After dinner, Selma invited her guests to sit out on the lanai. Unbeknownst to Priscilla, she had brought out some old family photo albums that she wanted to share with everyone. When Priscilla saw the albums she froze. These were the albums that she thought would never see the light of day. Her fat, erstwhile self was lurking within the covers of some of those accursed albums! But worse yet, Selma was handing Eddie the blue photo album, which contained pictures of her when she was in her pristine and fat, preteen years. Before she could do anything, Eddie was staring at the pictures inside, his lower jaw hung open in amazement.

"No!" he laughed aloud. "This isn't you is it, Prissy? Oh, my God! It is you!"

Priscilla gave her mother a dirty look. "Thanks a lot, mom. I really needed this."

"Oh, stop it," Selma said genially. "He's going to see them sooner or later."

"Shit! You were a really big girl there Prissy!" Eddie cried. "You never told me you were a fat kid!"

"It's not something I think my daughter would want to advertise," Alan said. "Anyway, she got her weight problem under control in no time. Didn't you sweetie?"

"Yes, dad. Eddie, would you mind not looking at the rest of those pictures?"

"Why, Prissy? There isn't anything to be ashamed of. I think they're kind of cute."

"I am anything but cute. Please put the album down."

Eddie didn't seem to be listening. He avidly examined each page looking for something to gawk at, and he found it. "God damn! Look at you here, Prissy! I had no idea."

Claudia looked over Eddies' shoulder to see what he was looking at. "Oh, she's not so big. You were already slimming down by then Priscilla."

"Slimming down?" Eddie chuckled. "You call that 'slimming down'?"

He held onto the book as if he were afraid it would be torn from his grasp at any moment. Looking through the photos one by one, relishing every picture as if it were some newfound treasure, he ignored Priscilla's request to abandon the book and selfishly guarded his prize.

Danielle stared at him with barely concealed contempt. Here she was, a big, beautiful woman herself, not fat in the traditional sense, but a big woman nonetheless, and this pusillanimous, insensitive jerk was poking fun of Priscilla simply because she was overweight. It angered her but she maintained her cool in spite of wanting to tell him off.

"It was a tough time for our daughter then," Selma said to Eddie. "Alan and I were going through a divorce."

"Mom, please." Priscilla whined. "Take the album away from him."

Begrudgingly, Selma reached out and took the offending book from Eddie's reluctant grasp. "You're so touchy, Priscilla. It's just Eddie."

"Just put the album away, please," Priscilla insisted.

"I don't understand what you're so upset about," Eddie said to his annoyed fiancé. "So you were fat. So what? It's no big deal."

"It's no big deal to you," Priscilla replied. "You have no idea what I was going through at the time. All you see is the physical manifestation of what was going on in my head. There's a lot of pain associated with those times, Eddie. Do you get it?"

"Okay, that's enough," Alan said, trying to clear the air. "Whatever it is, it's ancient history now. Let's forget it, shall we?"

Priscilla glanced at her father and sighed heavily. His dismissive attitude revealed a mentality that had refused to accept the fact that her pain was anything but "ancient history," as he called it, something that had no relevance to her present existence. In fact, the pain was still real and foundered just below the strata of her young life. She wondered how he could be so obtuse.

After everyone had left, Priscilla went to bed and lay awake for hours thinking about men, and all that Danielle had told her months ago about the Sisterhood. Her friend had been unusually quiet all evening, as if she were a bird that had found herself a high promontory from which to observe the landscape and make evaluations as to who the prominent players in the human scenario taking place below might be. Claudia, too, was rather quiet, only offering a word here and there to dispel any protracted silence. And there were a lot of them. But why? It was her birthday after all. Why did she feel such tension? Such anxiety? She fell asleep oblivious to the answer that stood waiting patiently at the door to her soul.

************

The Schwartz/Widener wedding was a splendid success and no one could have been happier than Priscilla herself, who had always dreamed of a December wedding. The night before it had snowed, so that there was a light blanket of white on the ground, and enough found its way onto the trees to make her wedding day look like a magical winter wonderland.

The couple spent their honeymoon in Barbados—two entire weeks of white sandy beaches and the best cuisine and night life that money could buy. As a wedding gift, Priscilla's parents had bought the newlyweds a beautiful Victorian house in Garden City. And when they had returned from their honeymoon, they took up residence immediately in the new house, which had been partially furnished with furniture that Priscilla and Eddie had bought before leaving for their tropical island getaway. By the time both newlyweds had returned to their respective jobs at WNYX, it seemed as though their lives were as complete and happy as they could be.

For the most part, Eddie was a conscientious husband. He still acted in a juvenile fashion at times, finding humor in other people's misfortunes, or using sarcasm as a self-defense mechanism, but Priscilla wrote his liabilities off as a holdover from his teen years. He had asked at one time if he could see her "fat" pictures, but she refused, telling him that she didn't want to be reminded of those difficult times. At first he acquiesced, but she later caught him looking through her hated "blue" album, and didn't speak to him for several days. Thereupon began a period of months where their conversations became little more than shouting matches, culminating in Eddie walking out on her one evening, returning only after an absence of three days for which he refused to provide an account. It was only after much pleading and many tears that she finally induced him to stay. But deep in her heart she felt deeply hurt; Eddie's subterfuge and lack of respect wounded her greatly and she wondered if that wound would ever heal.

It was exactly two months before their one-year anniversary that Priscilla received a phone call from Selma informing her that Alan had had a heart attack. It was 10:30 on a Saturday morning and she was just getting ready to go grocery shopping. Eddie was in Vermont visiting his parents at the time and she called to tell him the news just as she was leaving for the hospital. Showing some rare sensitivity, he offered to cut his visit short and come home, but Priscilla told him to stay put until she had learned more about her father's condition.

When she arrived at the hospital she found her mother sitting on a chair close to her father's bed, holding his hand in hers. He looked tired and haggard but he seemed cheerful and spoke to her in a soft, halting voice.

"Come over here and let me kiss you," he said to his daughter.

"Oh, daddy!" she cried, overcome with sadness at seeing her father so helpless.

She threw her arms open to him and embraced him passionately, tears flowing generously from her eyes.

"Are you feeling okay?" she demanded to know.

"The doctor told me that I'm going to be fine," he replied breathily. "But I have to slow down a little."

"You have to slow down a lot," Selma corrected him. She gently placed her free hand on her daughter's arm. "Your father is a stubborn man and never listened to me when I told him that he needed to take a break from his work. Now he has to."

"I never knew when to quit," he said, offering his ex-wife a wan smile.

"Now you do. You do want to be around for your grandchildren, don't you?"

"Yes, Selma," he said. "I would like that."

The three of them talked for a few minutes more until the nurse ordered them to leave. The following morning both ex-wife and daughter made the pilgrimage to the bedside of the stricken man. Priscilla had spoken to Eddie just before leaving for the hospital and informed him that Alan would be hospitalized for several more days, but that he was improving and in good spirits. Eddie seemed glad to hear the news but had no encouraging words to offer his distraught wife.

It was at some point during the afternoon that Alan asked Selma to leave him alone with Priscilla. She graciously heeded his request but seemed hesitant to leave. She threw her daughter a curious glance as she exited the room, but Priscilla only shook her head numbly, unaware of why her father had made the odd request. Once the door had closed behind her mother, she took her father's hand in hers and cajoled him.

"Shame on you, daddy! I thought you and mom were beyond keeping secrets from each other."

He smiled gently. "It's not a secret. I just want to have a heart to heart talk with you, baby. You can tell your mother if you want."

She squeezed his hand softly. "I'm listening."

Almost immediately the once formidable litigation attorney poured forth a litany of undiluted regret, condemning himself for his maltreatment of his daughter by reason of his devotion to his work and his subsequent absence thereupon from her life. In what seemed to her to be less than a few minutes, he managed to hurl upon her the culmination of a life spent in servile obedience to his own personal god of success, ignoring her and her mother to the point where all that mattered was achievement for its own sake, and the overweening pride it evoked.

"And look where all that hard work has gotten me?" he said forlornly. "I'm only 47 years old! But the worst of it is that I put you and your mother second to my career. All those years that I can't take back. Years that could have brought me closer to you."

Priscilla didn't know what to say. She could have easily hurled recriminations his way. A less sensitive child might have done just that—even in his weakened condition. Or she could simply forgive him and tell him to forget it. But then she would be lying, because she did truly feel that she had been neglected by him. Instead, she put her arms around his neck and told him not to worry; that he had fostered in her those intrinsic qualities that had helped her to succeed in life, and that was, in itself, a tremendous gift.

"But I should never have called you 'fat and lazy' when you were a kid. That was wrong of me and I want you to know that I am sorry, Priscilla. I am sorry for a lot of things, my beautiful child."

She felt her eyes swell up with tears as she pulled him closely to her. Why did it take you so long to tell me, daddy? She wondered. Why?

"Don't think about it now, dad," she said. "You should try to rest."

"I just wanted you to know that I'm proud of you, and that I love you very much."

He hadn't told his daughter that he loved her in over a decade, and his words affected her beyond her capacity to verbalize. Instead, she responded by crying even harder and held him in her arms ever so tightly.

He caressed her hair as she lay next to him and in a little while she felt him drift off to sleep. That same evening, at just two minutes past midnight, the great burden of sorrow that he had carried inside his heart for most of his life became a weight to great to bear, and his spirit reluctantly departed from this life.

************

Priscilla didn't realize until many weeks later just how much she missed her father. His death created a vacuum in her life—a gaping hole that could not be filled. Although Alan was never close to his daughter, he was all she had, and she loved him, while all the time, in her young, facile mind, she made up the deficit he created by his seeming indifference in placing him high upon a pedestal, far from any malfeasance that any human being might inflict upon him—an untouchable demigod who sometimes showed his beneficent face to the child but most times did not. So far did she place him above her that any feelings she might have had, either positive or negative, were in direct proportion to the vast gulf of time and space she had apportioned between them. In so doing, the rare approbation he bestowed upon her was pristinely acknowledged, while the negative ramifications became likewise assuaged. Thus she achieved a certain level of emotional protection, which was reinforced by her self-imposed isolation.

She spent many nights acting out a recurring scenario in her head, seeing him standing before her casting a disapproving look her way when she, as a young girl, had failed to live up to his exacting standards. She would promise him that she would do better next time, and she did, but the praise never came; the fatherly pride in his child's achievements unrecognized. And then she would see him in his hospital bed, so frail and remorseful, and would speak to him in an adult voice, expressing her inner feelings to him until the words flowed from her mouth in a torrent of emotion, chastising him, and then forgiving him, for the years of neglect and selfish devotion to his own agenda. There were so many things she wanted to tell him, but never had the courage to say. Now it was too late. All she could do was act out the scenario in her head, night after night, finding no solace in the insidious, nocturnal activity.