House of Rougeaux

by Jenny Jaeckel

  Guillaume’s sister Josephine was tall for a woman and built like an iron rail. While her brother took after their father physically, and their sisters after Maman, she took after neither parent. How did such different fruits fall from the same tree? Maman always said she resembled her old aunt, back on the Caribbean island of her birth. Josie had had a few admirers as a girl, but no serious suitors. She was fine to look at, she was kind, intelligent and capable in the important things, but she was different, and the older people gently discouraged any of their sons who took an interest. Josie herself was not concerned, said often enough that she was not the marrying kind. Maman worried over her, just as she had when Josephine was young, but Josie told her she had long ago considered herself in a kind of solitary marriage with the Holy One. This was the kind of strange thing she said. And in truth she did seem as happy as any of the rest. Unusual as she was, she was at home in the bosom of her large family, a strange dark bird among a barnyard full of handsome cockerels and hens and broods of fluffy chicks.

  Now that Maman had grown frail, it was a great comfort to all that Josephine took care of her. Josie often took her nieces and nephews on walks along the riverbanks in fine weather, acquainting them with the names and natures of most every kind of plant they saw; she had gleaned much from local almanacs, and more by her own forays. She regarded the plants as friends, and had the children press so many flowers in the family Bibles that any reading produced a rain of dried petals. The children loved their Auntie, all accepted her difference, if they even noticed it. Josie and Maman never lacked for anything, as they were kept well supplied by the family with all the goods necessary for living. If Josephine appeared different from her peers and Guillaume did not, it was only by chance. His difference remained on the inside.

  When Guillaume was eighteen two things happened: he fell in love for the first time, and was engaged to be married, though this concerned two different people rather than one.

  He was engaged to Bess, who was his best friend, not counting his sisters. They knew each other from school and from church and just about every criss-crossing of the community. Elizabeth was buxom, always laughing; she spoke English and possessed a smooth, ebony complexion, unlike Guillaume, who, because of his French grandfather he never knew, was brown like a cake of raw sugar. One day in summer she asked him to help her tote a load of cedar shingles from a neighbor’s home to her house. They took a shortcut through a patch of forest near a canal, sharing the load of a large wicker basket, until they stopped to rest a few moments on a grassy embankment. They spoke easily together and then fell silent, watching the water.

  Elizabeth cleared her throat.

  “What about marrying me?” she said, laughing at his shocked expression. “Why not?” she said. “We know everything about one another, and we’re the best of friends.” The openness in her face bent his heart.

  Guillaume’s brow knitted up like the cinch on a gunny sack, his throat squeezed so that his words barely escaped.

  “You’d want me?” he asked.

  “Of course I would,” she said, her voice descending from bold to soft. “I mean, I do.” He took her hand. The thought of them marrying, of making a family together, was enormously comforting. If it had to be done, and it did, Bess was the one.

  “You sure?” he asked.

  “I’ve given it a lot of thought.”

  “Let’s talk to our parents then,” he said. He helped her up, an arm around her waist. She put her arms around his neck and laid her head on his shoulder, but he trembled inside.

  Their parents were naturally delighted, gave their permission and their blessing, and set the wedding date for one year later. Now, as Guillaume and Papa worked together in the saddlery, Papa began to thread their dialogue with all the wisdom he had gleaned from married life as to what made a good husband and a good marriage.

  “You’ve got to lead, but follow too,” he might say. Or, “Take care of her. She will be your rock and your refuge.”

  Guillaume took his father’s words to heart, even if he didn’t yet know what they could mean. Papa was everything honorable in a man, and Guillaume’s dearest wish was to live up to his example.

  * * *

  That autumn they had an unusual visitor. He was a young itinerant preacher, an American from a family of freedmen, the Clarksons, in New Haven. He was making a pilgrimage around the region, to spread the word of God, and, as he said, to educate himself by seeing more of the world. Emmet Clarkson appeared in church, seated with the Minkinses, the Rougeauxes’ closest friends. He wore a well-fitting, if slightly worn, black suit with a dark blue cravat, and held his black brimmed hat in his hands. During the service Guillaume, seated nearby with his family, found his gaze drawn repeatedly to the stranger’s striking profile.

  Later, during introductions between the Rougeauxes and the Minkinses, Guillaume took in Emmet Clarkson’s erect posture, his smiling eyes, his charming how-do-you-dos, his resonant voice. He was twenty-three or twenty-four. He stayed a fortnight, lodging with the Minkinses, then with another family, and then with the Rougeauxes. He led two prayer meetings in each home, conducted in a different style than the community was used to, but all were well received. He spoke of character, of duty, of the sacredness of man, and also of humility. He quoted scripture with well-versed alacrity, and when he punctuated his orations with a reverent Let us pray Guillaume felt faint.

  Guillaume was as intoxicated by Clarkson’s presence as he was mortified. Clarkson noticed Guillaume’s rapt attention during the prayer meetings and interpreted his interest as a true connection with his message. He clasped a warm, firm hand on Guillaume’s shoulder and remarked to Papa on the beautiful nature of his son’s evident piety. Guillaume’s face burned like fire. Then, worse, or better, when he lodged with them he shared sleeping quarters with Guillaume. Maman fixed up a pallet and they insisted the young preacher take the bed, which he refused. Those four nights Guillaume looked askance as the other man undressed and replaced his suit with his nightshirt. The lamplight shone on his wide, bare shoulders and the long dipping line of his spine. They lay but a few feet apart, sharing some revelation of the day, and each time Clarkson said, “Shall we pray, Brother Guillaume?” Guillaume prayed for the impossible; that Emmet Clarkson would remove his nightshirt and that Guillaume would remove his own, and that they would lie together the whole of the long night.

  It was awful when he left. The family saw him off as he disappeared down the road, having hitched a ride out of town in a neighbor’s wagon. The last glimpse of him, waving his black hat in the air, left a crushing ache in Guillaume. But aside from imagining the young preacher’s hands when he touched himself, there was nothing to be done. Surely this pain was punishment for the sin of desiring a man in the first place. Perhaps, thought Guillaume, he should take God’s side against himself. He would easily have done so, if it weren’t for Josephine.

  Josie, as with all her peculiar ways, had her own relationship with God. She attended church with the family, but never seemed to pay attention to the sermons or Scriptures. Instead she sat with her eyes closed and her lips moving, visiting her own interior temple where she communed in her own way. She didn’t even say the word God, but rather used Maman’s term, the one brought with her from her island. The Holy One. Maman herself rarely said it anymore, preferring to say Dieu or God, in harmony with the vernacular of the community. And now Josephine knew, with her piercing and infallible insight, the full extent of her brother’s affliction.

  “At least don’t torment yourself,” she said to him one evening as they fetched water from the pump outside. The twilight air was crisp. Soon enough they would cover the pump for winter and melt great pans of snow by the stove. Guillaume rubbed his hands together and glanced at the back door just to be sure they were alone. “And don’t imagine the Holy One made a mistake in making you. We are all made on purpose, just as we are.”

  After a long moment he said, “What do I do, then?”

 
; “You just love, however you can. That’s what we all must do.” She was awfully young to be so sure, not more than sixteen, but he knew she was right.

  On his wedding night, in bed in the dark with Elizabeth at his side, he said a silent prayer and thought of Emmet Clarkson. Afterward he prayed for Bess’ forgiveness. The years rolled forward and the children came. Guillaume took for granted that everyone had dear things that they lived without. His parents had suffered terrible losses in their young lives. The Minkinses had too. They lost the first two of their four children, a little boy and girl Guillaume had known and loved in his youth. No one was spared hardship.

  Once when Guillaume was a boy, he was in the stable grooming the old chestnut quarter horse they called Nantucket, when one of the short brown hairs flew into his left eye and became lodged high up inside. No amount of flushing by Maman was able to remove it, nor could she see it and pluck it out. The eye became red and inflamed, and for days it stung and watered. The lid swelled and oozed pus, half blinding him. With only one eye to see through the world suddenly appeared flat. He reached for things that were too far away to grasp, and he stumbled over curbs and uneven ground. At last though, the hidden hair worked its way out. The infection cleared and was quickly forgotten, as just another in a thick catalogue of childhood injuries and ailments that passed through the ranks of the children. Yet, now and again, Guillaume thought he could still feel the hair, when he was tired, or angry, or, years later, if a man chanced to remind him of Emmet Clarkson.

  * * *

  For years Guillaume made an annual trip in late June to Québec City to purchase his hardware for the saddlery. Papa had done the same all his years in Montreal, as loyal in his business relationships as with family, and now Guillaume did business with the hardware man’s son. In years past it was a week-long journey by horse and wagon. Now, just a day on the train. He would stay one night at a guesthouse that was quiet and clean, and served simple but hearty meals. With his transactions complete by mid-morning the next day he returned home, arriving late, though at that time of year always before dark. It was a pleasant trip when the weather was fine, and he welcomed those rare hours of solitude.

  Time had a way of speeding up or slowing down, it seemed, depending on circumstances. Soon after the taking of the photograph, the daguerreotype that hung on the bedroom wall, baby Dax took his first steps, and soon after that it was time once again for the journey to Québec City. Guillaume was unsettled at the thought of leaving just now, even for one night. Elizabeth, strong and healthy all her life, had still not fully recovered from Dax’s birth. She grew winded climbing stairs or hefting laundry or even straightening too quickly when lifting the baby from the floor. She waved off Guillaume’s concern. It was nothing she was worried about, and the older children helped her with everything. Albert would be home that week from the railroad anyhow, and with Josephine just next door….When she kissed him goodbye early the next morning he felt sufficiently reassured.

  Guillaume arrived at the guesthouse later that evening, having walked the distance from the station. There were six rooms in the place, and by now he had stayed in each, every time a year older. Five guests besides himself were served supper by the proprietress, Madame LeBlanc. All were seated around the familiar long oak table: a young couple, two French Canadians and an Englishman from Toronto. The Englishman was in textiles, he said, also in the city on business. His name was Hathaway. His salt and pepper hair was cropped rather short. Guillaume noticed the black brows that hovered over his blue eyes. Guillaume’s left eye began to sting and he rubbed at it with a knuckle. He concentrated on his chops.

  After supper the young couple and the proprietress retired early, leaving the four men to linger with tobacco and stories made more amusing by the company of strangers. After some time two more went off to bed, leaving Guillaume and the Englishman.

  They got on very well, a mutual energy animated the conversation, despite the late hour. They got onto the subject of fruit trees as both men, it turned out, cultivated a few of their own in their back gardens. Hathaway knew of nothing better than a ripe freestone peach in summer, so full of juice one had to lean forward to eat it.

  “No, Sir,” Guillaume argued. The best fruit of all was the Van cherry, in his opinion, and he went on to describe its texture and flavor, and the loveliness of the tree itself, which he pruned in his own yard late each winter with the utmost care. As he spoke his gaze was lost in the lace curtains that hung in the window, and when he turned back to his companion he realized the Englishman had fixed him with a stare, eyes cobalt under the coal-black brows.

  Guillaume flushed with a violent heat. He reached for his teacup.

  “It’s a pity there’s no billiard table,” Guillaume said, having choked down the last of the cold tea. In fact he was a great lover of the game, and often took his older sons, Albert and Ross, to play at a local tavern. Guillaume had an instinctive understanding of speed and spin and angle, and won so easily his sons preferred to play each other. In that case Guillaume would circle the table while the boys played, calculating the best shots and offering advice on the better way to grip the cue.

  “Ha!” Hathaway laughed, “I’m glad there isn’t one. Abominable game.”

  “Don’t you play?” Guillaume smiled at the Englishman’s irreverence.

  “When forced,” Hathaway said. “But it’s not bad for business, I will say that. Given that I always lose. Makes the clients jolly and likely to buy more of my wares.”

  “What do you prefer, then?”

  The conversation rolled on, from games and sport, back to fruit trees and onward to rail travel. The clock struck midnight and still neither of them took their leave. Finally, after the clock struck one, Hathaway rose.

  “I’m certain we’ll need our rest,” he said.

  Guillaume nodded and stood also.

  He followed Hathaway up the stairs. The Englishman opened the door to his room, opposite Guillaume’s.

  “Would you care to come in,” Hathaway said quietly.

  Guillaume stood petrified, wavering on the threshold.

  “My wife,” he said at last.

  Hathaway nodded, a wistful smile. “Of course,” he said. “Goodnight, then.”

  Guillaume lay awake the whole rest of the night. Many times he thought of rising, approaching the other door, and softly knocking. He knew that if such a knock came to his door he would be powerless to resist. But no such knock came, and when the dawn greeted him he was exhausted, utterly torn between relief and regret.

  The Englishman was not present when breakfast was served. The French Canadians asked after him and the proprietress said he’d had to leave at first light. Guillaume ate his eggs and porridge in silence, but suddenly Madame LeBlanc was at his side. She brought out a gilt-edged card from her apron pocket and held it out to him. A calling card.

  “Monsieur Hathaway asked me to give this to you,” she said.

  “Ah,” said Guillaume, surprised, “thank you.”

  He turned it over in his hands, feeling the thickness of the paper, and the subtle indentation of the ink-pressed letters. Francis R. Hathaway, read the card. Textiles. A Toronto address. Nodding, he tucked the card away in his coat pocket.

  * * *

  Guillaume returned from his journey to find all in good health and spirits. Preparations were under way for Albert’s wedding. There would be a church ceremony followed by a party in the meeting hall. Albert was a man now, and his bride, Genevieve, a thoughtful, sturdy young lady. The morning of the wedding Guillaume and Bess stood at the altar having a brief word with the pastor as Albert escorted Maman to the pew where all of her daughters were waiting. How tall and fine he looked, with Maman so small and aged, yet elegant, smiling and hanging on his elbow. It seemed so short a time ago that Maman sat with little Albert on the piano bench teaching him his scales and melodies, and all of the songs they could sing together. His seriousness was apparent even then, his brow furrowed as his tiny fingers
reached for the keys. She was such a patient teacher, and told him many stories of the island of her birth, of all the happy things, and Albert sat enraptured, imagining Martinique to be the most beautiful place on earth. Life was so very rich and full, thought Guillaume, surely any ache could be forgotten, at least for the moment.

  Less than one week later Maman, as it is said in the Old Testament, was gathered to her people. That night Maman and Josephine had spent a quiet evening. Josie read aloud from Psalms and Maman listened with her eyes closed and a trace of a smile, but then said she had a touch of a headache. Josephine urged her to go to bed early, and said she would bring in a cup of tea. Standing at the stove before the heating water, Josephine felt a tremor in her spine that in an instant became so great she stumbled back. A brilliant wind, she told Guillaume later, rushed through the house, passing clear through her body and out through the window.

  When Guillaume found Josephine at his door, brought there by a frenzied rapping, her face shone with tears. She reached for him.

  “Maman has gone to be with Papa.”

  But the greatest shock came another night, three months later. All the rest of the household were asleep, but Guillaume had stayed late in the shop, finishing a pair of saddles to be delivered the next day. At last he climbed the stairs, holding a candle aloft, and made his way to the bedroom. Quietly he set the candle on the nightstand and began to undress. He looked at Bess’ curled form under the quilts. She was still. He went forward and listened for her breathing.