Necessary Sins

by Elizabeth Bell

  Behind him, still holding her daughter in the crook of her arm, Tessa caressed one of the pillows. “I slept in your bed, my first Christmas in Charleston.” Her voice was nearly a whisper. “I was certain I could still feel you here—smell you here. It was agony and ecstasy at once.”

  She was making him forget his purpose. In his thoughts, Joseph travelled farther into the past, toward another bed. He’d crawled through this very window, the night he’d seen his mother bound to her bedposts. “Tessa, if I ask you a question, will you promise to tell me the truth?”

  “Of course.”

  Joseph remained at the window, leaning a hand against the frame. “Even if you think it might offend me?”

  “Even then.”

  He turned his head to her. “What is your opinion of my father?”

  Tessa blinked at him. Her shoulders drooped and she looked away. Had she thought he’d brought her into this room for another reason? She laid Clare (still asleep) on the bed and gazed down at her in the half-light. “Your father is a remarkable physician and an even better man.”

  Joseph turned his whole body now, though he did not move from the window. “But has he ever… When he’s—examined you, has he made you uncomfortable?”

  “Childbirth is uncomfortable. That is hardly your father’s fault.”

  Joseph advanced a step. “I mean…uneasy. Has he ever touched you when or where he needn’t have?”

  Tessa gaped at him. “Never!”

  Joseph turned away again.

  Tessa came to stand beside him. “Joseph, your father is one of the kindest, most solicitous men I have ever met. I hope he continues practicing until he is ninety, because I want no one else attending my daughter or my grandchildren. Now, will you tell me the truth about why you asked such a question?”

  Joseph planted his fists on the window-sill. “When I was a boy, I saw something that made me certain my father was abusing my mother. But I think now…that I may have been mistaken.”

  “You must have been.” Tessa slipped her hand around Joseph’s wrist in reassurance. “Your father doesn’t have a cruel bone in his body, Joseph—any more than you do. I know you disagree about a great many things; but at heart, you and he are very much alike. You are gentlemen to the bottom of your souls.” Tessa saw Joseph wasn’t ready to leave the window yet, so she took up her daughter and went to Hélène.

  Joseph realized he did not need to speak to his mother. He needed only to watch her with his father—without prejudice, for the first time in eighteen years. The way she darted down the stairs when he returned home. The way she took his coat with such tenderness. The way she smiled at him. Not even a saint would delight in the presence of a man who had violated her.

  His father was not a monster. He was simply a man. His mother was not a victim. She was simply a woman.

  When Joseph returned to his father’s office, he found him standing before the great cabinet of medicines, taking stock of his pharmacopeia.

  Joseph waited on the threshold until his father lowered his note-pad and turned. Joseph could not meet his eyes. “Regarding my mother…” Joseph advanced only a step. “Forgive me, Father.”

  His father came to meet him and reached out to touch Joseph’s face. “Of course I forgive you. You were a child. I wish you had come to me then, but I am grateful you have come now.” Then, he smirked. “Before I grant you Absolution, however, I must impose a Penance. Your mother mentioned you will be travelling to Columbia next month?”

  Joseph nodded. “To deliver a monstrance to St. Peter’s.”

  “You will return to us afterward?”

  Joseph averted his eyes. “At least until we have a new Bishop.” He hadn’t made up his mind about whether to leave Charleston after that. He knew remaining in Tessa’s proximity was playing with fire.

  “While you are in Lexington District, I want you to meet someone: Father James Wallace. He’s my age, an Irishman by birth. When we met, he was serving here in Charleston. You were eight years old, I think, when he left.”

  The name sounded a distant bell in Joseph’s memory. “Is he the Father Wallace who was a mathematics professor at South Carolina College?” Joseph remembered another Priest talking about it several years ago at a diocesan convention: how a new, anti-Catholic college president had dismissed Father Wallace from his post of fourteen years.

  “That’s him. He’s also a skilled astronomer. Like many of your kind, he is quite brilliant. James was trained as a Jesuit, but he withdrew from the Society so he could remain in Columbia.”

  A former Jesuit was rare indeed. This Priest was a rebel. No wonder Joseph’s father liked him. Why should Father Wallace wish to remain in South Carolina, when so many Irish Priests fled its climate at the first opportunity? At least he and Joseph would have something to talk about.

  By morning, Father Wallace and Columbia seemed as distant as the stars.

  On the fourth day after Hélène’s surgery, Joseph’s mother appeared before Mass. Her eyes were bloodshot. ‘Are you still praying for your sister?’

  ‘Of course.’

  His mother’s hands trembled as she signed. ‘She is worse.’

  Joseph came home as soon as he could. He raced up the stairs to hear Liam begging his father: “What can we do?”

  “Manage her fever…beyond that, we can only wait.”

  They could pray.

  Their mother was doing just that, while May bathed Hélène’s forehead. Her breaths were rapid, and their father said her pulse was as well. He explained: “The wound showed signs of inflammation last night.”

  “Why didn’t you send for me?” Joseph demanded.

  “It’s not unusual after surgery. A fever like this is also common; but preceded by chills…” Their father looked back to her. “Your sister is a fighter, Joseph—we all know that. None of this means she won’t recover.” But Joseph could hear in his father’s voice that he’d not even convinced himself.

  This was exactly what had happened to Joseph’s grandfather. Just when it seemed the danger had passed…

  No! His sister was younger and stronger. She would survive this.

  Hélène’s mind wandered. She whispered instructions to fugitives as if she were already aiding the Underground Railroad. She murmured phrases from Shakespeare and hummed bars from operas. Liam tried to engage her by reciting the next line of the speech or the aria. Much of the time, she seemed unaware of anyone’s presence. She appeared to be conversing with another Liam, another May, another Tessa from months before.

  Other times, Hélène clung to the present so long, they began to hope. She and Liam recreated their favorite poems. But these lucid intervals became shorter and shorter, more and more precious.

  Joseph could not remain with her all day; other parishioners needed him. On his third visit, one of the candles guttered, and Hélène murmured: “‘Put out the light, and then put out the light.’”

  Joseph frowned and looked to Tessa.

  “It’s from Othello.” She did not have a chance to explain.

  “Hélène means ‘light’; did you know that?” His sister gripped Tessa’s hand as if this were a matter of utmost importance. “‘Clare’ does too! One’s Greek, and the other one’s Latin. I forget which is which… I don’t mean Clare is going to die next, Tessa! I mean the opposite: that I am ‘passing the torch’ to her! I know she can’t even talk yet, but Clare will be your best friend, you’ll see!” Tears spilled from Hélène’s eyes. “Oh, I wish I could be there! But you’ll tell her about her godmother, won’t you? I haven’t fulfilled my duties very well, I know…” She sat up suddenly, as if she’d found the solution. “I’ll come back as a fairy godmother, and make all her dreams come true! Clare will be happy, Tessa, I know she will—she’ll find her prince! Maybe even two, who’ll fight to win her hand, and she’ll have a hard time deciding…”

  Tessa stroked Hélène’s arm, trying to calm her, even as she glanced at Joseph. “One prince is quite enough.” />
  All of them had to sleep some time, if only in anguished snatches. Tessa and Joseph were alone with Hélène again when his sister squeezed his hand and gasped:

  “Oh, night that guided me!

  Oh, night more lovely than the dawn!

  Oh, night that joined

  Beloved with lover!”

  Tessa blushed. “Ellie, you must save that for Liam.”

  But Joseph recognized the words. “It isn’t— That is to say: It is a love poem; but it’s the Soul speaking to God. It’s a stanza from ‘The Dark Night of the Soul,’ by Saint John of the Cross.”

  For a moment, Tessa only stared at him, as if she didn’t quite believe it. “Oh.”

  The next morning, at the gate, Joseph passed Dr. Mortimer leaving. The man’s face told him everything. At first, Joseph thought it meant he was already too late. Then the surgeon murmured: “She’s still with us.”

  For how much longer?

  Joseph entered the hall to find his father attacking the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. He slammed his palm against the wood again and again till it must have hurt. “Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!”

  Joseph’s mother stood beside his father. She glanced at Joseph, then touched his father’s shoulder and offered: ‘At a time like this, we must remember our blessings.’

  ‘What blessings?’

  She hesitated. ‘God spared our home during the fire…’

  ‘What is a pile of wood and brick beside our daughter’s life, Anne?’ He glared at the portrait of Christ on the wall. ‘Take the house!’ He stopped signing and started shouting. “Do you hear me, you bastard? Take the damn house! Just leave me my girl…” He sank to his knees on the floor. Joseph had never seen his father sob before.

  His mother tried to comfort him, but she told Joseph: ‘He’s given up hope.’

  Hélène had too. Joseph climbed the stairs to hear her pleading with her husband. She spoke no longer of Shakespeare or fairy godmothers, only reality. “Don’t you see? That’s why God didn’t give us children—so you could start again.”

  “I can’t,” Liam insisted, his breaths as labored as hers.

  “But I am saying I want you to!” Hélène’s tears belied her words. “Heaven will be a little awkward, yes; I cannot pretend I won’t be a tiny bit jealous. But the last thing I want is for you to spend the rest of your life mourning me!”

  Liam saw Joseph on the threshold. “Tell her, Joseph,” he begged. “Tell her you only love once. That everything else is meaningless.”

  Joseph opened his mouth to argue. He’d been taught these answers so long ago. He’d taught them so often himself: This is why you must never love a created thing more than the Creator. Only God is deathless. Only He will never fail you.

  Yet his sister’s own childish words invaded his thoughts:

  “I do love Our Lord—but I can’t hug Him!”

  “The grave’s a fine and private place…”

  Joseph could only cover his face and turn away. In that moment, he didn’t care about God’s will or even His love. It was weak and it was wicked; but he wanted his sister to stay.

  When their father dragged himself back up the stairs, Hélène smiled at him. “I know you did everything you could, Papa.”

  His face crumpled again.

  “You did the best thing you could have done: you let me marry Liam.”

  Their father wiped angrily at his tears and glanced at Joseph before he answered: “My child asked me for bread. I was not about to give her a stone.”

  One more time, Hélène pressed the key to Tessa’s garden into Joseph’s palm. His sister’s eyes blazed like blue flames. “You have fasted for so long, Joseph…”

  To soothe her, he accepted the little box. But at the first opportunity, Joseph slipped across the hall to Hélène’s dressing room, where he tucked the key into a drawer in her wardrobe.

  He must direct her thoughts away from sin. This was his last chance. “Dearest sister…” Joseph prayed before she left them, words that might have been written for this moment alone and had never been more painful to pronounce: “Freed from the fetters of this body, mayest thou return to thy Maker, Who formed thee from the slime of the Earth. … May Christ place thee in the ever-verdant gardens of His Paradise… Lord, be not mindful of her former transgressions and excesses which passion and desire did engender. … Blessed Joseph, patron of the dying, I commend to thee the soul of this handmaid Hélène, suffering the throes of her last agony…”

  The agony passed. The end came as gently as sunset. Such a simple change: a final breath, a stilling of that vibrant heart. But Hélène’s sun would never rise again. Not on this side of the grave.

  Joseph celebrated the long Rite of Burial like some kind of automaton, as if he were one of the mechanical figures on his grandfather’s clocks. When it was over and he had unvested, he returned to his father’s house. He climbed to the third floor and stared into his sister’s bedchamber as if all of it might have been a mistake.

  But of course the bed was empty. His parents were downstairs accepting condolences. Liam had announced his intention to drink himself unconscious, and Joseph did not doubt it.

  Perhaps Tessa had seen him go upstairs. Somehow, she appeared at his side and took his hand. That was when the tears began. Within a few moments, he could barely see her.

  “I’m here,” she said simply.

  In his blindness, Joseph let her lead him away from Hélène’s chamber, down the stairs and into his old room. Tessa pushed the door closed and pulled him into her arms. Even this was not enough. His legs shuddered beneath the weight of his grief, and Tessa swayed with him. As powerless as wheat before a scythe, they fell onto his old bed.

  He clutched her so tightly he could feel not only the softness of her throat but also the stiffness of her corset and petticoats through his own garments. Her skirts were a hindrance; but as much as they let him, without thought of propriety or violation, even his legs clung to hers, like a vine climbing desperately towards the light. She didn’t resist him. When he felt wetness on his forehead, he knew she was weeping too. But Tessa held him more than he held her.

  In time, the storm calmed, as all storms must. He found he could breathe again, albeit with difficulty. He loosened his grip on her, though he did not let her go. He pulled back just enough to see her beautiful face taking shape in the dimness. Only gauzy white curtains covered the windows.

  Her fingers sunk into his hair, Tessa’s thumb stroked his forehead as if he were a child. The comfort suffused him like sunlight. With every caress, her own tearful eyes communicated her thoughts: I know. I understand.

  Joseph didn’t. Why should the loss of Hélène wound him more deeply than Sophie’s passing? The only answer he could find was regret. He’d chastised his sister because he loved her, because he didn’t want to spend eternity without her—had she understood that?

  “If my Ordination granted me one miracle,” he whispered hoarsely, “if I could raise one person from the dead as Christ raised Lazarus…”

  Tessa tried to smile.

  For a moment, Joseph closed his eyes to chastise himself. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say that. You’ve lost so much.”

  “I still have you.”

  He avoided her eyes now, looking past her to the windows.

  Tessa’s thumb stilled on his forehead. “Your father said you were planning to leave Charleston?”

  The morning after Epiphany, and so many times since, he’d “firmly resolved to avoid the proximate occasions of sin”…

  “Might you reconsider?”

  “It is the wisest course.” He withdrew from her and sat up. She followed him, her petticoats rustling. His arms and legs ached to enfold her again. His hands actually twitched. He fisted them in determination. “I suppose Hélène explained why she gave you the blue lamp.”

  “Yes.” Tessa’s smile was brighter now. “Did she give you the garden key?”

  “She tried. I left it in her war
drobe.” Gazing at Tessa was dangerous, so he stared at his fists instead.

  “I wish I could come to you. I wish there were a better place…”

  Where? At the Bishop’s residence, in the shadow of the cathedral? Here, where his mother might see? Joseph shuddered at the thought of Tessa flitting unprotected through the dark streets.

  “We needn’t do anything more than this, Joseph.” She took one of his hands, uncurled his fingers, and laced hers between them. “Edward stays at the plantation for two or three days at a time; I could put out the blue lamp during the day, and you could visit in the morning or afternoon…”

  Was that really what he wanted: afternoon teas with her, half an hour in the parlor or garden—when one of her slaves might interrupt them at any moment? He wanted this: a time and place where they might be truly alone, where they might belong only to each other, when they might speak without censure and embrace without fear of discovery. But such a refuge would always be tenuous. Even if they never unfastened a single button, anyone who caught them together would assume they were committing adultery. Joseph would be committing it, in his heart. “I need…”

  “I need you, even if you don’t need me.”

  “I need time.” It was not entirely a lie. Tomorrow was Ash Wednesday. He kept staring at their joined hands. Whatever this might become, Joseph knew one thing for certain: he could not begin it during Lent. “Give me until Easter?”

  He felt Tessa’s hand tremble in his—whether from disappointment or anticipation, he couldn’t say. “If ’tis safe before then, I’ll still light our blue lamp, so you’ll know what to look for. ’Tis a double-burner Argand lamp. It will be on the second floor, in the right-most window.”

  Behind the house, from the direction of the slave quarters, a baby began to cry. When Tessa drew in a sharp breath and turned toward the sound, he realized it must be her daughter.

  “Clare is another reason I cannot come to you.” Tessa smiled an apology. “So the decision must be yours.” She squeezed his hand and left him.