Water's Edge

by Genevieve Fortin

The dance was planned for the following Saturday and as Joseph walked Emilie to the Banvilles on a sunny and unusually warm Sunday in late February, she was determined to find out more about her brother’s intentions with Marcella Paquette, a girl who lived on their street in Flint. After all, if you believed Marcella, she and Joseph were surely going to get married someday. Joseph, however, had never even mentioned Marcella’s name in Emilie’s presence.

  Joseph had kept his promise to escort Emilie to the Banvilles on each of her trips to Maurice’s private library. It had given them time to talk and share their thoughts the way they did when they lived in Rimouski. Emilie was pleased they’d grown closer again and she was certain that if Joseph had been interested in courting Marcella she would have known about it. Then again, it was quite strange that her brother was not courting anyone, she thought as she observed him walking with a confident stride by her side.

  Joseph had just turned seventeen and was undeniably handsome. His shoulders were wide under his dark gray overcoat. His square jaw was covered with a short beard, just a shade or two darker than his dark blond hair, which he wore a little longer and feathered over his ears. His eyes were still blue but the summer sky blue had become darker, closer to the color of the river at dusk. The color gave him an intense stare that Marcella couldn’t stop talking about.

  “Marcella? What are you talking about?”

  Emilie laughed, not surprised by her brother’s stupefaction. It only confirmed what she’d thought. “Marcella Paquette, Joseph. She’s certain you’re about to ask her to the dance.”

  “I don’t know why she’d think that. We’ve barely shared ten words besides hello and goodbye.”

  “Well, she’s certainly made a lot of those ten words. I think she may have chosen her wedding dress by now,” Emilie said and she burst out laughing.

  Joseph joined her in her laughter but soon went back to staring straight in front of him as they walked, deep in his thoughts. Emilie waited two blocks before she dared asking, “So, Joseph, if you’re not interested in Marcella, who are you interested in? There must be a girl somewhere in Flint that’s caught your eye.”

  “Sure there is, Emilie. I’m sure some fellow’s caught your eye too, no?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Joseph. I still look like a little girl,” Emilie answered as she swept her hand from her shoulders to her hips, indicating her svelte physique. “No boy’s going to look at this broomstick. Besides, I’m quite content with my books. But don’t change the subject. Tell me who’s the lucky girl.”

  “I can’t,” Joseph answered and he sighed.

  “Why not? Do I know her?”

  “Of course you know her, Emilie. We know everyone in Flint. In fact, you know her too well, that’s why I can’t tell you.”

  Emilie felt her stomach instantly churn. Angeline. Of course Joseph would be interested in Angeline. Every young and not so young man in Flint was interested in Angeline. She should have seen it. She should not be surprised. She should even be happy Angeline might become a member of her family. Yet her stomach kept churning and she had to stop walking and close her eyes for a minute to compose herself.

  Emilie had despised every boy that looked at her best friend. They were never good enough for Angeline. Too stupid, too childish, too unrefined. No suitor seemed adequate for Angeline. And Angeline agreed. Joseph was different. Joseph was a good man and logically Emilie had to admit he was quite probably the perfect suitor for Angeline. So why was she feeling worse about Joseph potentially courting Angeline than she’d felt about any other boy? Why was she sweating outside in February and why was she about to vomit her lunch on the sidewalk? She took a deep breath and opened her eyes to a concerned Joseph standing by her side, holding her arm. She stared into his dark blue eyes and asked, because she had to know for sure, “It’s Angeline, isn’t it? The girl who caught your eye?”

  Joseph sighed and nodded slowly, hesitant. He tried to talk a few times and finally managed, “I think I fell in love with her that day she saved me from those Irish bastards.” His confession was delivered in a swift, low voice. Then he took a deep breath and started walking again, appearing relieved that the truth was finally out.

  Emilie was surprised she found the strength to follow him. She focused on taking deep, even breaths as she listened to her brother. “If I had it my way, Emilie, I’d marry Angeline and take her back with me to Rimouski. I’d buy Papa’s farm, or maybe I’d work in that sawmill Angeline’s father keeps talking about. The Price Company. We’d have lots of children and be happy. I can see it so clearly in my mind.”

  Emilie felt compassion for her brother. Like him, she could see his dreams clearly. Perhaps a little too clearly. She didn’t like them. She was torn between doing what she could to help her brother and putting every effort into keeping Angeline all to herself. Her mind knew the latter option was not fair to any of them, but it seemed fair to her heart. “Does Angeline know how you feel?”

  Joseph snorted a laugh. “No, Emilie. And I don’t think I’ll ever find the courage to tell her. She rejected so many boys already. Why would it be different for me, Emilie?”

  It would have been so easy to tell Joseph that he was right. That Angeline would reject him and that he was better off keeping quiet to protect his own heart. It would have been so easy. But it was not the right thing to do and Emilie knew it. Women didn’t grow up to live happily with their best friend. They grew up to marry and have children. And if they were lucky, they grew up to marry a good man like Joseph. She wanted that for Angeline, and she wanted her brother to be happy. She had to accept the fact that she would lose Angeline to a man someday and if that man was Joseph, at least they’d be family.

  Emilie took a deep breath and mentally jumped on her heart with both feet to keep it quiet while she forced herself to do the right thing. “It’s different because Angeline already likes you, Joseph. She knows you and you’re great friends. If any Flint boy has any chance of winning her heart, it’s you, my dear brother.” She smiled as she imagined herself squeezing her heart between her heels.

  She was rewarded with a smile from Joseph. “You think so?”

  “I’m sure of it.” Emilie had an idea but wondered whether she really wanted to push her desire to do the right thing that far. She might as well, now that she’d started mashing her heart with both feet. “Would you like me to test the waters for you? Ask a few questions and see if I can find out how she feels about you?”

  Joseph smiled broadly and sighed with relief. “You would do that for me? That would be great, Emilie. I’d be very grateful.”

  “Of course I’ll do that for you, Joseph. What are sisters for? Besides, you’ve been walking me to this house for a year and a half already. I owe you,” Emilie added as they arrived in front of the Banvilles’ home.

  “No, Emilie. If you do this for me, I’m the one who’ll owe you. Forever.”

  Emilie was touched by his candor and vulnerability. She lightly punched him on the chest and sent him on his way back to Flint with reassuring words: “I’ll talk to Angeline, I promise. I’ll ask Dr. Banville to take me home early and I’ll talk to her before dinnertime. Now go and think of those beautiful dreams of yours, Joseph. And believe me when I say that there’s a very good chance they’ll come true.”

  She smiled and as soon as Joseph turned around to walk back home, she wiped the tears from her eyes and she climbed the stairs to the Banville’s porch and knocked on the door.

  Rose answered the door and took Emilie’s long wool coat and hat. Emilie had learned that it was the way things were done at the Banvilles’ but the only thing that made her feel less uncomfortable about it was the way Rose smiled at her when she greeted her at the door. It was a genuine smile, not a forced ripped-out-of-her-pride smile as Emilie would have imagined.

  “Thank you, Rose.”

  She would usually exchange a few pleasantries with Rose but she was too distracted by her talk with Joseph to find anything to say about th
e weather or what she may have seen in the neighborhood that day. Rose simply left with a nod when Helen arrived to greet her guest.

  “Emilie, you’re here at last. I’m so happy to see you.”

  “Hello, Helen.”

  They kissed on the cheek and Helen turned toward the parlor. Helen was always delighted to see Emilie and the feeling was mutual but today Emilie’s heart was not really into the mundane conversations she usually had with Helen and as she followed her she hoped Maurice would arrive soon. Helen was still as elegant and fundamentally good-hearted as Emilie had found her the first time they’d met, but she’d also discovered that she was a very proper lady who very much cared about things Emilie couldn’t be bothered with.

  Fashion was one of those things and Emilie was reminded of this as she followed Helen, wondering how she would possibly make it through the doorframe with those gigantic puffy sleeves. Every year it seemed these leg-o’mutton sleeves got fuller and puffier and most ladies like Helen wore them with pride. Emilie thought they were ridiculous. Her mother had shown her how to sew her own clothes and she was quite content with the same type of full sleeves extending from the shoulder and gathered at the wrist that she’d worn most of her life. She knew her beloved bishop sleeves were not stylish or fashionable, but at least her sensible gray skirt and simple dark blue bodice and functional sleeves would get through every door.

  Emilie took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She had a tendency to criticize everything around her when she was upset with one particular thing, a habit she was not proud of and found overdramatic, a habit that was difficult to control.

  Helen and her sleeves made it through the door to the parlor although Emilie distinctly heard the fabric rub against the wood of the frame. Emilie’s mood improved as soon as she saw Maurice there, already sitting in his usual armchair. He stood to greet Emilie with an embrace and a kiss on the cheek. The greeting might have made people talk if they’d known; but Maurice had slowly come to think of Emilie as a daughter and he’d confessed as much during one of her visits. Their hopes of having a family of their own were dwindling.

  Emilie didn’t see Maurice as a father. She already had a father. She saw him as a friend first, one that shared her eagerness to learn and her analytic abilities. And she saw him as a teacher, someone who pushed her further in her thoughts about the books she read but also about life in general.

  Rose served them tea and they talked about Helen’s charity activities since their last visit, what had happened in their respective neighborhoods, as well as events in Emilie’s family. Emilie didn’t mention the still-too-recent news of Joseph’s love for Angeline. Then Helen excused herself and Emilie took the last book she’d read out of her leather mailbag and placed it on the round table in front of her. It was their ritual. First all three of them would catch up on each other’s life since their last visit, then Helen would leave her and Maurice alone to discuss the last book Emilie had read.

  Maurice glanced at the book on the table and grinned. “Ah, Madame Bovary. So, what did you think of Flaubert’s controversial novel, my dear?” His grin intensified and Emilie couldn’t help but smile back. He knew she would identify with Emma Bovary, a woman who wanted so much more than what her life had in store for her.

  “What I don’t understand is why Flaubert had to make her kill herself. Can’t a woman want more than a boring little married life?”

  Maurice laughed, obviously satisfied with Emilie’s reaction to the book. Emilie waited for him to do what she both hated and craved: shake her convictions to the core and make her see the other side of the coin. “Do you think Madame Bovary’s life was that extraordinarily boring? If you compare it with your mother’s life, for example, or even with Helen’s.”

  There it was. Emilie sighed with frustration. “Well, no. But life in novels is not supposed to be like that. Characters are supposed to want more, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. But do you think there was something out there that would have satisfied Madame Bovary’s need for more? Didn’t she get bored or disappointed with everything? Her husband, her daughter, her lovers. Everything.”

  “Yes, she did,” Emilie admitted with a sigh. A lump lodged in her throat at the realization. She’d identified with Madame Bovary on so many levels. She didn’t want the married life women around her extolled as their entire purpose in life. She didn’t want to work in the cotton mill all her life either. She didn’t want children crying under her skirts at all times. She didn’t want anything she knew—but what else was out there for her? Was she condemned to accept the life she, just like all the other Flint girls, was meant to live, or end her life like Emma Bovary?

  “So that’s it, then?” she finally asked Maurice. “Women like Emma, like me, who want more out of life, are condemned to live and die unhappy?”

  Maurice’s earlier grin became a smile of compassion. Then his green stare focused on Emilie as if it could pierce a hole through her and force her to listen carefully to what he was about to say. “That’s not what I think, Emilie. There’s a difference between wanting something different and reaching out for it, and just wanting more all your life and never being satisfied. There are women who are married or unmarried who become journalists, for example. There are even a few female doctors nowadays. These women wanted more, Emilie, but they knew what they wanted. You have the mind to do anything you want, young lady, but the fact that you’re a woman will make it a lot more difficult. So you need to decide what it is you want and put all of your determination and stubbornness into it.”

  He winked at her and she had to smile. He knew her so well. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting more, Emilie. You just have to know what you want.”

  Emilie sighed again. “Right now all I know is what I don’t want.”

  “I know. But it’ll come.”

  Maurice’s smile was so reassuring and comforting that Emilie wanted to believe him. She was terrified she’d be the same kind of eternal unsatisfied woman Emma Bovary had been and in that moment she wished nothing more than being able to find happiness in marriage with a good Flint boy and half a dozen children. She found the idea as laughable as repugnant. She didn’t know what she wanted, but there was no possible way she could be satisfied with the life she was expected to live. It was already too late for her. Then she suddenly thought of Joseph’s revelation and of Angeline. It was too late for her but it may not be too late for Angeline.

  As soon as Maurice dropped her off at the entrance of Flint, Emilie ran to Angeline’s with new books in her old leather mailbag. She often visited Angeline right after her trips to the Banvilles’ and sometimes even left her books at Angeline’s house until she was ready to read them. Before she left the Banvilles’ that day, she’d picked up Voltaire’s Candide and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. The last thing she wanted to read at the time was a romance and she was sure to avoid it with these titles.

  Pierre Fournier opened the door of the apartment and Emilie greeted the family gathered in the kitchen. Angeline was already aunt to six young children and she was busy playing on the floor with them. Emilie’s older half-brothers also had children, but she didn’t feel like an aunt. She didn’t see them as often as Angeline saw her nieces and nephews and she didn’t get involved in their lives. Emilie often thought she’d make a horrible mother. She couldn’t even imagine it. Angeline, on the other hand, was clearly made to be a mother.

  Angeline got up from the floor and wiped her dark brown dress. While the enormous puffs on Helen’s sleeves had seemed pretentious, the smaller puffs of Angeline’s own dress made her look like a princess. Angeline’s beauty truly was stunning and when she smiled at Emilie as she passed by her on the way to her bedroom, Emilie stopped breathing for a second, as she did every time Angeline smiled at her.

  How could she blame Joseph when Angeline had this kind of effect on her? She wasn’t even a boy and she couldn’t resist Angeline’s charms. How could Joseph? Emilie followed Ange
line to her bedroom where they often talked when it was too cold outside to meet at their buttonwood tree.

  Emilie put her bag down by Angeline’s bed and sat by her friend, smiling when the small brass bed frame made the familiar squeaking sound when they sat on it together. Angeline laughed. “I don’t think it’ll survive many more years of our friendship.”

  The thought of the small bed collapsing under their weight instantly brought sadness to Emilie’s throat and her smile vanished. It seemed their friendship was suddenly both threatened and threatening in so many ways. She knew she couldn’t stop the changes that were happening, yet that was exactly what she wanted. All she wanted. For time to stop and let them be on this bed together forever.

  Her sorrow must have shown when she turned to face Angeline because she saw her friend’s wide smile disappear and the light in her beautiful blue eyes was replaced with concern. Angeline grabbed Emilie’s hands in hers and asked, “What’s wrong, Emilie? Did something happen during your visit with the Banvilles?”

  Emilie looked down at the adorably pudgy yet elegant hands covering hers and felt the skin of her own hands under them tingle. She smiled at the sensation and looked up at Angeline again. “No, nothing happened. I just see all those changes around us and I can’t help wishing the bed and everything else could just let our friendship be the way it is forever.”

  “The bed won’t really stop us from being friends, Emilie. We could drag a chair next to it and share the weight, you know.” Angeline laughed but the humor didn’t reach her eyes and Emilie knew she understood her anguish. She continued more seriously. “We can’t let anything come between us, Emilie. We just can’t.”

  “Easier said than done, Angeline.” Emilie took one hand out of Angeline’s grip and slowly caressed one of her friend’s naturally pink cheeks as she spoke. “Eventually you’ll meet a boy you really like and you’ll have less time for me. It’s the way it goes.”

  Emilie followed the movement of her hand down Angeline’s cheek to her long neck and stopped, hesitating long enough before she removed her hand for Angeline to trap it between her cheek and her shoulder instead.