Forever Waiting

by DeVa Gantt

  Michael hurried to the first floor. Sweet Jesus, how did I wind up here, aiding and abetting a murderer? What lies will I have to conjure now? Closing his eyes, he drew a deep breath and intoned a Hail Mary. He opened the door, stunned to see a woman he recognized. They had met in Richmond nearly three years ago when John was bringing her to New York. “Lily?”

  “Father Andrews? What are you doing here?” Lily queried.

  “Come in, come in,” he insisted, gesturing emphatically for her to step inside quickly and out of the rain.

  “Where is John?” she asked, looking across to the parlor, disconcerted by the priest’s white face and disquietude.

  “He’s been hurt.”

  “Hurt?” Her eyes shot back to Michael. “How? Where is he?”

  “Upstairs.”

  Lily flew up the stairs and charged into John’s bedroom, running headlong into Frederic. He grabbed her arms, keeping her from the bed. “Who are you?” he demanded as she struggled to pull free, her eyes riveted on John.

  Michael stepped through the door.

  “My God!” she cried.

  “Who are you?” Frederic demanded again.

  “I’m his friend!” she replied, trying to wrench free, looking for the first time at Frederic. “John brought me here from Virginia. Who are you?”

  “John’s father.”

  Frederic read her astonishment. He released her, and she ran to John, clutching his cold hand. “John! John! Can you hear me?” She brought his hand to her lips and kissed it. “Sweet Lord!” she cried, caressing his face and stroking back his hair. “There’s so much blood! Wake up, John! Please wake up!”

  She looked over her shoulder at Frederic and Michael. “He’s soaking wet. We have to get him out of these clothes and warm him up! And the blood—this cloth isn’t working. We have to stem the blood!” She started to pull the shirt from John’s arms. “Get some clean towels!”

  “I will do this, Miss,” Frederic declared, uneasy with her familiarity. John and she were obviously more than friends. “Do you know a doctor who can help us? We need one right away. Neither of us know the city well enough—”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Can you get him to come here tonight?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then please take Michael, go find him, and bring him back here,” Frederic implored. He handed Michael his wallet. “Spend whatever it takes, Michael, but bring him back as quickly as possible.”

  Frederic followed them downstairs. Without another word, Lily and Michael slipped out into the dark city.

  After they left, Frederic locked the door and doused the lamps in the parlor. He returned to John’s bedchamber, pulling the curtains shut, leaving only a single candle burning on the floor as he tended to his son.

  Within the hour, the clopping of horses’ hooves resounded from the street and men’s voices carried up to the quiet bedroom. There was a rap on the door. Frederic snuffed the candle. The rap came again, louder this time, and he peered through a crack in the curtains down to the street. Two men in uniform, carrying nightsticks, stood at the door. The cabdriver must have ratted on them. Frederic prayed they would not try to enter. The police rapped again and waited, and he worried Lily and Michael would return while they were there. A carriage rattled up the street, slowing as it passed the row house, but then it lurched forward, turning a corner a few blocks up. The officers paced around the yard a few times, glancing up the façade of the building. Shrugging, they mounted their horses, and trotted away. Not long afterward, the same cab of only minutes before pulled up to the house, and Lily, Michael, and another man alighted.

  Lily returned to John’s side as Dr. Hastings came away from the bed and washed his hands for the last time in a bowl of water on the dresser. Grabbing a towel and his medical bag, he motioned for Frederic to step out of the room.

  They descended to the first floor, where Michael stood sentry in the darkened foyer, waiting for the police to return.

  “It’s just as well he’s unconscious,” the doctor stated, their only light the small candle Frederic carried. “Stitching a deep wound can be very painful.”

  “Will he be all right?” Frederic asked.

  “He has lost a lot of blood, but the bleeding has stopped, and I don’t think any important organs were damaged, else he’d be dead already.”

  Frederic sighed in thanksgiving.

  The doctor noted his relief and was compelled to speak again. “I am concerned about his left lung. It may have been punctured. And there’s the greater danger of infection. I saw this in the wounded in 1812. The infection will eat beyond the wound. It can kill him. He’s likely to become very ill in the next few days.”

  Frederic’s alarm was rekindled. “Then what are we to do?”

  “Keep the fever down. Keep a tub of water and some ice on hand. If he gets very hot, submerge him in an ice bath. It’s my own remedy. I’ve found it works. Other than that, there’s nothing to do but wait. It all depends on how strong he is. It doesn’t help that he’s lost so much blood.”

  Frederic closed his eyes in dread. He’d hoped to leave on the Heir first thing in the morning, but now that was too dangerous. “What will it take to keep this between us, Doctor?” he pursued in another vein.

  “Nothing,” Dr. Hastings replied. “Your son is a good man, Mr. Duvoisin. He helped my nephew set up a practice—on your island. I hope he recovers.” He removed his cloak from the coat rack and pulled it on. “Send for me if you need anything else.”

  Frederic returned to the bedroom once the physician had left. “We have to move him,” he declared. “The police will be back.”

  “You can stay at my house,” Lily offered. “It’s small, but we’ll make room.”

  Frederic nodded, and once again, Lily and Michael went out into the gloomy night, this time in search of Lily’s friend, who owned a livery service. She would borrow a carriage to transport John downtown.

  By dawn, they had settled John into her humble, two-bedroom home. Lily’s children and Rose were moved to the tiny parlor, leaving the second bedroom to Frederic and Michael.

  Michael caught a few hours’ sleep before setting out in search of ice. He got lucky when he went to a neighborhood tavern. The proprietor gave him the name of an ice supplier, and by the afternoon, a buckboard had pulled up in front of the house. Curious neighbors paused to watch as the massive block was unloaded. It had been cut out of a lake well north of the city in Rockland County and floated down the Hudson River. Now it sat on a wooden pallet in the backyard of the small house, covered in burlap. The December weather had turned mercifully cold, snow blowing in, and the ice would stay frozen.

  Friday, December 7, 1838

  Frederic came away from John’s bedside early, nodding to Michael who now took up the vigil. As he stepped into the front parlor, he found Lily hastily tying her daughter’s shoelaces, her twin brothers impatiently waiting.

  “I can do it, Ma!” she complained. “We’re gonna be late!”

  Lily stood, gave both sons’ coats a final tug, nodded her approval, and shooed all three out the door with the words, “No stopping along the way and come directly home after school!”

  “We will, Ma!”

  She sighed, then turned around, surprised to find Frederic studying her.

  “You love them very much,” he said.

  “Yes,” she admitted with a smile, “my pride and joy. How is John?”

  “The same: still sleeping, no fever.”

  “Good.” She moved toward the hearth. “Rose has already left for work. Can I make you something to eat?”

  Frederic waved away the offer. “Not just yet. I’d like to talk, if you can spare the time.”

  “My time is my own. Rose will make my excuses at work.”

  She settled into an armchair and motioned for Frederic to do the same. When he had, he rubbed his brow, wondering how to broach the subject that had plagued him since Lily had rushed into John’s bedroom no
t two days ago.

  “You’re quite a woman, Miss Clayton,” he began. “Again, I thank you for your hospitality—what you’ve done for my son.”

  Lily smiled knowingly. “I’m also a woman of color, Mr. Duvoisin—a quadroon.” She chuckled deeply at his astonishment. “You’re surprised.”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t worry, sir, John is not the father of my children. I was a slave at Wisteria Hill, the plantation near Freedom. When John purchased it, we—that is my children, Rose, and I—became his property, though not for long. We were emancipated within the year. Your son is a good man, sir, an honorable man. If not for him, I would never have made it north, my children would have remained uneducated, not much better off than those in bondage, and life would hold little hope for them.”

  “And what of their father?”

  Lily bowed her head, the lump in her throat making it difficult to speak. “Henry—my husband—remains a slave. He was sold south nearly five years ago. I will never see him again.”

  Frederic heard the despair in her voice and knew a greater dread. “You love your husband.”

  Lily’s head lifted. “With all my heart.”

  “All your heart?”

  “Yes,” she averred.

  A lengthy silence descended on the room. Frederic wondered where John fit into the picture. It was obvious this woman had feelings for his son. But were they deep? Or did John merely fill a void left in the wake of a family torn apart—the dismal abyss of loneliness? The possibility stirred a memory and thoughts of Hannah Fields clouded his musings. Hannah had not only filled a void; she had seen firsthand the atrocities of slavery, escaping to this very same city. Did she and Nicholas still live here?

  “I know what troubles you, sir,” Lily was saying.

  Frederic was drawn back to the present. “Do you?”

  “John was there when I needed him most,” she answered slowly. “But I love John as surely as I love Henry. I will always love John.”

  Frederic scoffed at the assertion, and Lily raised an irate brow in return.

  “I see you don’t believe me.”

  “Pardon me, Mrs. Clayton, but you avow your love for your husband and, in the very next breath, proclaim your love for another.”

  “Is it so hard to believe a woman could love two men?” Lily’s voice cracked, her tears accumulating. “I assure you, sir, it isn’t. I know I have two hearts. One was broken five years ago. The other is breaking now.”

  Frederic was dumbfounded and profoundly moved. Without warning, he thought of Colette, and everything was clear, crystal clear. “John is married now,” he pronounced solemnly, “with a son or daughter on the way.”

  Lily digested the information, and her sadness intensified. She collected her emotions and whispered, “Then I pray he will be happy. He deserves to be happy. But first, I pray he will recover.”

  Frederic nodded. Declining breakfast, he stood and retired.

  The second day was as tranquil as the first. John remained unconscious, though he groaned now and then. His eyes would sometimes flutter open, and he’d mutter incoherently before they’d close again.

  That evening, he showed signs of fever, shivering under the blankets as a sweat broke on his brow. Lily continuously applied a cool cloth to his forehead, but by morning, the fever was raging. He shuddered uncontrollably, and his teeth chattered violently. He bucked against the compresses and pulled at the bedcovers to get warm, even though Lily kept pulling them away. Frederic and Michael prepared an ice bath. They stripped off his nightclothes and submerged him in the frigid water. He cried out in agony, struggling against the arms that held him down, but the bath worked, and as they settled him back into the bed, he slept peacefully. Within hours, the fever rose again, and he began to hallucinate, uttering fragmented phrases, reliving the confrontation with Blackford and calling out for Charmaine. Michael and Frederic submerged him in the water again, and again they succeeded in bringing the fever down.

  Saturday, December 8, 1838

  Frederic stirred in the cramped chair next to John’s bed, the glaring sunlight streaming through the window slats, shocking him awake. He looked at John, who lay deathly still. Jumping up, he grabbed his son’s hand and gasped in relief. It was cool, but not cold. Still, John was unresponsive to anyone’s voice or touch, his breathing shallow, his face colorless.

  Lily ran for Dr. Hastings again. An hour later, he examined John, then stepped out of the room with a grim shake of the head. “I’m sorry … I wish I could do more.”

  Michael studied Frederic, whose eyes were dark with grief, and pitied him. So valiant an effort, and now this. Michael looked down at John, his good and generous friend. The face was ghostly white, a face the priest had seen too many times while presiding over a bedside, administering the Last Rites. It was the face of death. He thought of his daughter. She would not be here to say farewell to the husband she loved.

  Michael’s eyes filled with tears. Silently, he recited the prayers for the dying, finishing with: Sacred Heart of Jesus, pray for us … St. Jude, helper of the hopeless, pray for us … Father in Heaven, restore him to us …

  Late Evening

  Frederic sat beside his son’s lifeless body. With head bent, he clutched one of John’s hands between his own, and brought it to his mouth in a fervent prayer. “Dear Lord,” he murmured, “don’t take him from me—not now!” He squeezed the hand harder as if he could infuse it with his own vitality. “I promised Charmaine I would bring you home, but not this way, Dear God, not this way!” He buried his head in the bed clothing and wept.

  John looked down upon the curious scene unfolding below. His father was praying over his body, but he didn’t feel the man’s pain, only serenity. Am I dreaming? Someone was calling his name—not from the room, but from above and behind him. He turned slowly, and the corner of the ceiling opened wide, bathing everything in splendor. Far off, a woman was walking toward him, silhouetted against the bright light, and he shielded his eyes to better see her. She called his name again, her voice unfamiliar. Her hair was golden brown, her eyes like honey. She was plain, yet beautiful in her placid mien, and something in the way she moved reminded him of Colette. He knew she was his mother.

  “John,” she breathed again. “I’ve longed to see you.”

  There was a great distance between them, but his heart swelled with her greeting as if she were only a breath away. He took one last look at his father and turned back to her.

  Chapter 8

  Charmantes

  BENEATH a blackened sky and cold, steady rain, the sorrowful procession picked its way along the craggy path to the cemetery. They stood before an open grave, where Michael Andrews intoned the dirge: Eternal rest give unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. The men lowered John’s casket into the deep hole, and the first shovelfuls of dirt were thrown on it. Charmaine closed her eyes and wept pitifully into Frederic’s shirtfront, his strong arms encircling her. The twins were wailing. Paul was at their side, his eyes stormy. Flanked by Rose and Mercedes, George’s head bowed farther to hide his tears, though his shoulders shook with grief. Charmaine couldn’t bear it. She was going to die, too … Oh God, let me die, too!

  She awoke, her heart pounding and her body saturated in a cold sweat. She was staring at the ceiling. It had been a dream—just a dream, yet she knew John was dead. She struggled out of bed, rolling with her cumbersome belly, but as her feet touched the floor, she doubled over in pain. She was in labor.

  Elizabeth smiled at John as he approached, but oddly, the distance between them remained constant. His eyes left her face for the small child she held by the hand. It was Pierre, smiling up at him. John broke into a run and, after an eternity, reached them. He lifted Pierre and the boy flung his arms around his neck. “Papa,” he said. “Where were you?”

  “Right here, Pierre,” John whispered. “I was right here.”

  “We missed you! Mama and I missed you!”

  Joh
n turned to his mother, but Colette smiled up at him now. He reached for her, and she stepped into his embrace. “You did well, John,” she murmured. “You righted the wrong, and now it is over.”

  “Colette,” he breathed, “Colette.” He hugged mother and son tightly to him and savored her sweet fragrance. He was at peace.

  Charmaine groped through the darkness to Paul’s room, hunched over with another contraction. She rapped on his door, pounding harder when he didn’t answer.

  “Charmaine?” he queried when he opened to find her there. “What is it?”

  Then he knew: The baby was on the way, one month early. He lifted her into his arms and quickly carried her back to her room. “Stay here, I’ll get Rose and Loretta and set out for Dr. Hastings.”

  “Paul!” she called as he reached the door. He turned to face her. “John is dead. Dear God—I know he’s dead!”

  He returned to the bed, grasping her hand and holding it tightly as another contraction seized her, waiting for the pain to subside. “You don’t know that, Charmaine.”

  “I had a dream,” she moaned, her breathing rapid, “but I know it was real! I’ve lost him!”

  “You’re in labor, Charmaine, and your mind is playing tricks on you. Now, try to relax, and I’ll be back soon.”

  He left her again, beset with worry.

  Marie Elizabeth Duvoisin was born not two hours later, a loud wail greeting the doctor, who arrived too late. It had been a surprisingly easy labor, especially for a first child, and Rose beamed at her prowess as midwife.

  Dr. Hastings stayed until he was sure mother and child were fine. The babe was small, but quite healthy, he reassured. Her early delivery was induced by anxiety, he diagnosed, which he admonished Charmaine to subdue, lest she bring on complications. He spoke to Paul on his way out. “I hope your brother won’t be disappointed with a daughter.”

  “No, Adam,” Paul murmured, “John won’t be disappointed.”

  Charmaine gazed down at her infant daughter, who was already searching for a nipple. She wept, her tears falling onto her daughter’s head, a baptism of abounding love.