Her brain screamed an unequivocal yes but her heart whispered Emilie’s name. A whisper so loud it interfered with all of her noble thoughts. As much as she wanted to tell Joseph she’d go with him right now she was incapable of doing so. She needed time alone to think it through, so she made the only promise she could make. “Twenty-four hours.”
“What?” Joseph asked, baffled.
“I know you’ve been very patient and we must act quickly, Joseph, but I just need a little time to organize my thoughts and talk this through with my family. Please meet me here in just twenty-four hours, and we’ll make definite plans then.” Or I’ll break your heart and send you back to Canada by yourself, she added to herself.
Joseph readily agreed and he walked her back to her sister’s apartment for dinner. She wouldn’t talk about anything with her family. She just needed to think and to come up with her own decision. Rimouski with Joseph or Boston with Emilie. By tomorrow evening, she would have decided which path she’d follow. She was panicked but also strangely relieved at the thought.
Emilie didn’t intend to walk toward Angeline’s apartment when she first came outside. She just needed to breathe in some fresh air to calm down after her brother had announced over dinner that he and Angeline would be leaving for Canada very soon to avoid the imminent war. They were going to meet tomorrow after their workday at the mill to make plans. He thought they’d leave next week.
Outside, Emilie knew it had to be cold because she could see the condensation of her breath in the air, but she didn’t feel cold. In fact, she was hot. She was so angry she could swear her blood was boiling and soon she had to open up the top button of her wool coat so she could keep breathing as she paced back and forth in front of their triple-decker.
Who did Joseph think he was? How dare he put Angeline in such a situation? How dare he force her to marry him when she was not ready yet? She hadn’t told her brother any of that, of course. Even she knew he’d been more than patient with Angeline. She couldn’t keep quiet though. In that moment over dinner she wanted to hurt her brother because he was threatening her own happiness and as always she knew exactly what would hurt him the most.
“Don’t you think perhaps it is your duty to fight for this country? Are you really such a coward, Joseph?” she said sternly and then stalked away from the table. She knew she hit his pride and that had been what she was going for at that moment.
Now, however, as the frigid air finally permeated her senses and her temper cooled, she regretted her words. What she had really wanted was not to hurt her brother; it was to convince Angeline not to go with him. Angeline was the one Emilie’s happiness depended on, and if she was really ready to make plans with Joseph to go to Rimouski, Emilie hadn’t succeeded in getting through to her as well as she thought she had. She needed to talk to her tonight. She needed to talk to her before she met Joseph tomorrow. Before it was too late. She needed to make one last plea. So she started walking.
When Emilie knocked on the door, Angeline came to open it with a dishcloth in her hand. “I’m sorry to interrupt your evening,” Emilie said to her startled face, “but I need to talk to you. It’s about my brother.”
Angeline quickly put on her coat as her sister implored her to be careful outside in the frigid evening. Angeline promised she wouldn’t be long and joined Emilie outside. They automatically started walking toward their buttonwood tree. Night had fallen but the sky was well lit by a full moon that allowed them to see where they were stepping.
“Will you say what’s on your mind at last, Emilie? You’re scaring me.”
Angeline was out of breath and searching for air between every word she spoke, and Emilie realized they’d almost run to the tree. She’d kept a few steps ahead of Angeline, not looking at her until now, when she turned around and saw an expression of panic on her beautiful face. She was really scared.
Emilie grabbed Angeline’s hands, covered with thick mittens, and smiled in an attempt to reassure her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to scare you. I just had to talk to you. Joseph told us about the possible war and your meeting tomorrow to discuss the details of your departure for Canada. Is it true, Angeline? Are you really going to do it?”
Angeline took her hands out of Emilie’s and sighed. “I don’t know, Emilie. I wanted the evening to make my own decision. I needed to think things through.”
Emilie felt her heart shrink inside her chest and every nerve in her raised a terrified alarm. For the first time since she’d asked Angeline to follow her to Boston instead of marrying her brother, she realized she might lose the fight. She was out of control, desperate, and her voice showed it. “I don’t understand what there is to think through, Angeline. Haven’t you heard a word I said in the past months? We can be together. We can be happy together. I have a way. Isn’t that what you want?”
“It’s not as easy as you make it sound, Emilie. I do want to be with you, but I also want a family, a home of my own. If I go with you I’ll never have that. Your brother is a good man. You know that. He can give me what I always thought I wanted before…”
“Before what?” Emilie asked as tears started flowing down her cheeks.
“Before you put other thoughts in my mind, Emilie. Before you made me believe something else might be possible.”
“So it’s all my fault?” Emilie asked incredulously. “I put thoughts in your head, Angeline? You can’t really believe that. It’s not true. You want to be with me as much as I want to be with you and you know it. I didn’t put any thoughts in your mind that you didn’t already have. I just gave you solutions you couldn’t think of yourself.”
“Because they’re not real solutions at all, Emilie. Don’t you see how difficult it would be for both of us? Our life would be nothing but fights and obstacles and it might even ruin our friendship eventually. Women aren’t meant to live together. Without men. It’s not the way things are done. Even you must know that, don’t you?”
Emilie could hardly recognize Angeline through her tear-filled eyes. She was not the woman she loved. Her face was in distress, yes, but her eyes remained dry. She almost appeared cold. Their connection was broken and Emilie panicked, clueless as to how to fix it. Her appeal of the last five months, logical and calculated, had failed. What else was left to do but to let her heart cry out and beg?
“Angeline, please. I know it will be hard. But I can’t live without you. You said you couldn’t live without me either. Don’t you remember?” Emilie hated her voice. It was small and shrill and ugly, punctuated with weak sobs. But there was no time for control. No place for pride.
“I know, Emilie. I just don’t see how it’s possible,” Angeline answered as her voice broke for the first time and her blue eyes welled up with tears at last.
Angeline was losing her resolve. She just didn’t understand. She had to make her understand, had to let her heart speak. She stepped closer to Angeline, under the protection of their tree, and lowered her voice. “Please, Angeline. I love you. I love you so much.”
Emilie didn’t try to stop herself and she pressed her lips to Angeline’s with all the desperation that inhabited her. She just had to make her understand how deep were her love and her need to be with her.
Angeline gasped at the contact but didn’t pull away. Emilie even thought she might have felt her press harder against her mouth. Emilie’s lips parted with an unexplainable desire to taste Angeline, and to her surprise Angeline allowed the timid exploration of Emilie’s tongue. Angeline’s mouth was salty and sweet at the same time. She gently sucked in the full bottom lip and when in return she felt Angeline’s tongue on her own upper lip, the tender, wet caress made her moan softly. Angeline responded with a small whimper and moved her tongue until it met with Emilie’s.
The union of their tongues made their mouths hungrier and their kiss deepened until Angeline abruptly pushed Emilie away with strong arms and screamed, “No!”
Angeline’s strength easily forced Emilie to her knees and when
she looked up she saw a glimpse of shame in Angeline’s face as she labored to catch her breath, a shame that was quickly replaced with anger and disgust.
Emilie stood back up with difficulty and didn’t look at Angeline again before she ran away saying “I’m sorry” in a voice she knew was too weak and broken for Angeline to hear.
Angeline waited for Joseph by the bench. She hadn’t walked with him before or after work because she didn’t want to see Emilie. She’d succeeded in avoiding her all day and she didn’t want to see her before she saw Joseph, before she told him they needed to leave and get married right away. She feared that if she saw Emilie before she spoke to Joseph, she might change her mind. She couldn’t change her mind. What she’d felt with Emilie the night before when they’d kissed couldn’t happen again.
Angeline had spent the night awake, thinking about Emilie’s desperate plea, her declaration of love and most of all her soft lips pressed against hers. The way they felt, the way they tasted, the way their touch had awakened Angeline’s entire body. Joseph’s kisses had never had that effect on her. It was as if Emilie’s lips had sent a violent whirlpool of desires inside her that left every inch of her skin wanting more. More contact, more sensation, more of Emilie.
In a way, what had happened explained so much. How she had needed to be close to Emilie all those years, how she couldn’t help thinking of Emilie when she got close to Joseph, how she’d even wanted to believe it was possible for her to live with Emilie.
But most of all, what had happened proved that Angeline needed to get away from Emilie as soon as possible. These feelings she had for Emilie, and that Emilie obviously had for her, she had no words for them, but she knew they were wrong. They were unhealthy, unacceptable, and if she had to leave the country and get married to Joseph to forget about them once and for all, that was exactly what she’d do. She’d save both Emilie and herself from something so evil she had never even heard of it before.
Joseph arrived and she hugged him tightly, as if clinging to a savior. “I packed everything that’s mine, Joseph. I’ll be ready to leave whenever you are.” At Joseph’s disconcerted smile, she added “What? Is there something wrong?”
Joseph laughed and gave her another hug, holding her tighter. “No, nothing’s wrong. You’re just surprising me, that’s all. I was coming here halfway expecting you to ask me to wait a little longer, or even worse, break off our engagement. I was certainly not expecting you to tell me you were all packed.”
She giggled nervously at his excitement. “I didn’t have much to pack, Joseph. It’s not that shocking. We have to leave the country as soon as possible. You said it yourself.”
Because of the war, but mostly because I have to get away from your sister.
“I know. I do have money saved up for train tickets and the bare necessities once we get there. We won’t be rich, Angeline.”
“I know, but my parents will be there to help us and I trust you, Joseph. We’ll be fine, I know it.”
“So this is really happening, Angeline? We’re going to Rimouski to get married?”
His childish grin was most endearing and helped her keep threatening tears at bay. She even managed a smile to answer, “Yes, Joseph, it’s really happening.”
She would be happy with Joseph. She knew she would be.
MEANDERS
1898-1905
Chapter Fourteen
Boston, November 1898
Emilie sat at the small round table placed in a corner of her room, trying to read an article in a medical journal she’d borrowed from the bookstore. She plunged her fingers through her long black hair and massaged her scalp. Mr. Flaherty required that she wore the most complicated and sophisticated hairstyles when she worked in his store. They made her look a little older, he claimed, and gave her more credibility. The bouffant, pompadour and other hairstyles she’d so carefully avoided before she moved to Boston were now part of her daily routine.
Fortunately, Mrs. Flaherty had been able to teach her how to accomplish such hairstyles popularized by the Gibson Girl, a character created by Charles Dana Gibson that inspired all young American women when it came to style and fashion. A character made up by a man, of course, Emilie repeated to herself every time she let her hair loose at the end of the day and attempted to massage the pain out of her scalp.
She couldn’t complain, though, as the hairstyles she had to wear were the only aspect of her work she didn’t enjoy.
Flaherty Books was located in a three-story house on Bromfield Street. It was a red brick building, like so many buildings in Boston. The second and third floors had regular-sized windows, but on the first floor, the front door was flanked by two enormous windows where new books were displayed to tempt passersby inside the store which occupied the entire first floor of the building. The light through the front windows faded as it moved along the dark wooden shelves toward the back of the deep and narrow space. Emilie had quickly realized that the books, just like the store, became more obscure the farther she walked toward the back. That was where she found the medical journals and books Mr. Flaherty let her borrow as long as she didn’t bend or crease any of the pages. Emilie was grateful he never kept track or paid any kind of attention to what she borrowed.
She was grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Flaherty for many reasons. The couple, both in their forties, had been nothing but kind and generous to Emilie. Michael Flaherty, with his large belly and his red mustache, had trusted her with his store from the very first day. He never talked to her about books the way his friend Maurice had because, Emilie suspected, he still wasn’t convinced women had much to say about books, but he’d taken her under his protective wing and helped Emilie feel safe in her new surroundings.
Margaret Flaherty had been nothing short of a second mother. On one hand it made Emilie miss her own mother even more and she’d often cried herself to sleep when she’d first moved in, thinking of her. On the other hand, it made her life in Boston so much easier. She couldn’t help but smile every time she thought of the corpulent, rosy-cheeked woman who couldn’t be caught without a smile on her face. Showing Emilie how to do her hair every morning was just one of the many things Margaret had done for her. She also washed her clothes, even her sheets, and she fed her. While most lodging houses in Boston didn’t include meals, Mrs. Flaherty cooked both breakfast and dinner for her four lodgers every day.
Emilie was definitely grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Flaherty, who had also successfully reconciled her with Irish people after the horrors she’d lived during her childhood in Fall River. Mr. and Mrs. Flaherty didn’t go out much. He would go to business meetings once in a while but she never left the house. Emilie would have liked to explore the city with them. She didn’t dare go too far on her own. She’d walked two blocks on a sidewalk made of red bricks that resembled the bricks of the bookstore to a nearby eatery a few times, but that was the extent of her solitary exploration thus far. It would have been easier with Angeline, she often mused before she forced herself to think of something else. She didn’t have much time to wander off anyway. She worked all day long and read every night. On Sundays, she went to church with Mr. and Mrs. Flaherty and helped Margaret clean the lodging house. She didn’t have time to get bored.
Emilie straightened up to stretch her back, often sore from bending over the table to read, and hit her head on a nail in the wall. She gasped and started massaging her head again. Her room was just that: a room. It was smaller than her bedroom in Flint but the walls had been recently painted in white which gave it a much cleaner look. There was a small bed in one corner with no space to put anything else at the foot of the bed, and a small rounded wooden table with a wooden chair in the other corner. A narrow window separated the bed from the table and a few nails in the wall allowed her to hang her clothes. Or hit her head.
One big advantage over the triple-decker of Fall River was an interior bathroom with fully functioning plumbing. There was also electricity, but Emilie didn’t like its flickering lig
ht. It seemed more dangerous than the flickering candlelight she was used to so she preferred lighting a candle at night to read. Her room and the other three lodgers’ were on the third floor while the second floor hosted the bathroom, a small and comfortably furnished parlor, the Flahertys’ bedroom, and Mrs. Flaherty’s kitchen.
Once the pain subsided, Emilie returned to her reading, frustrated. She’d found information about Sapphism and homosexuality in medical journals, but not what she was looking for. The articles all agreed that homosexuality was a disease, but no cure seemed to exist. It could be caused by a variety of factors from climate and excessive masturbation to fear of pregnancy or simple curiosity.
They used complicated words like sexual inversion, which meant that someone who desired their own sex was somehow reversed. A woman who desired another woman, for example, would essentially be a man inside a woman’s body. According to these articles, women with such feelings had deep voices and big muscles and liked sports. They even suggested that such women smoked and could spit, whistle and curse like no other woman. Emilie was lost. She couldn’t recognize herself in the doctors’ descriptions, although she was very tempted to spit on their articles and curse them out. But she knew her feelings were real. She most certainly had desire for Angeline. She’d always been skinny and short and didn’t care anything for sports. She’d never been tempted to smoke either but her love for Angeline was real. The articles and books she read didn’t talk much about that love or desire.
They didn’t do much better when it came to potential cures, especially for women, the gist of which could be summarized as “get married and have children, woman.” No pills, no drops, no medicine of any kind. Just forget about all of these unnatural feelings and do the right thing. Socially, morally and religiously, the right thing was to get married and have children. Emilie couldn’t accept that.
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