Water's Edge

by Genevieve Fortin

  The woman put one hand on the counter and kept looking into Emilie’s eyes as if she were searching her very soul. “But you do know the book, don’t you?”

  Emilie instinctively knew that admitting to knowing Zola’s novel was admitting to much more. She swallowed and nodded discreetly while everything inside her wanted to scream yes. Yes, I’m like you.

  “I thought so,” the woman said with another smile. Then she extended her hand and added, “My name is Kathleen. Kathleen Pierce, but please call me Kate.”

  Emilie shook Kate’s offered hand, speechless, wondering how Kate might have known that she’d recognize that particular title.

  “And what’s your name, darling?”

  “Oh, sorry,” Emilie mumbled, remembering her manners. “My name is Emilie Levesque. I’m sorry we don’t have the book you’re looking for, madam—Kate,” she corrected herself.

  “Don’t worry about it, Emilie. I know exactly how you can make up for it.”

  The way Kate smiled was not the way any other woman had smiled at Emilie before. The way she looked at her was different too. Emilie was used to gentlemen smiling and looking at her that way when they paid for their books, as if she’d been an especially juicy piece of roast. It had always made Emilie feel uneasy, sometimes nauseated, but it was part of the job, as Mr. Flaherty had explained. Coming from Kate it made her feel different. Nervous, impure, somewhat guilty, but mostly excited. She certainly wanted to know what Kate had in mind. “How is that?”

  “I’m hosting a New Year’s Eve party tonight. Say you’ll come, Emilie.”

  “I will,” Emilie said without hesitation.

  Emilie felt terrible about lying to Mr. and Mrs. Flaherty, but how else could she explain suddenly going out this night after being a hermit all that time? She’d told them she was going to spend New Year’s Eve with a cousin of her mother’s who lived in Boston and had stopped by the bookstore to invite her. The Flahertys were happy to learn Emilie had family in Boston and Mr. Flaherty had even offered to take her to her cousin’s house, arguing that the address was too far for a young woman to walk alone at night. Emilie had barely managed to dissuade him.

  Now, Emilie knocked on the door of the Queen Anne style home and waited, distractedly admiring the decorative details of the turret and the front porch. She was looking forward to seeing Kate again and was disappointed when a servant opened the door and took her coat and hat. Emilie wore the same dress as she had earlier that day. It was the most beautiful dress she owned and she hoped Kate would not remember it since she’d been partially hiding behind the cash register. She could barely control her nerves as she followed the servant. She was terrified, curious, anxious, but her feet kept following the servant. There was no going back.

  Her trepidation reached its climax when the servant opened the door to an intimately lit parlor and Emilie saw nothing but women. There must have been at least twenty of them in this small room, sitting on sofas or chaise lounges, or standing by the fireplace or in a corner of the room. The servant disappeared, leaving Emilie alone at the door to observe the scene.

  She soon realized that several of the women wore their hair short like Kate and were dressed in a mixture of men’s and women’s clothes. A couple of the women even wore trousers. Most, however, wore dresses, so Emilie didn’t feel out of place. A few women smoked, creating a soft, cloudy atmosphere in the parlor. Emilie’s pulse started racing when she spotted two women kissing in a darker corner. Her brain warned her she should leave, but her legs remained immobile, as if rooted into the wooden floor.

  Emilie forced herself to look away and came face-to-face with Kate, who’d seemed to appear suddenly from a cloud of smoke. “There you are, my darling Emilie. I was beginning to think you might not come after all,” she said as she took hold of Emilie’s arm and pulled her into the room.

  Emilie smiled. Kate exuded such confidence that she couldn’t help but feel intimidated if not overpowered in her presence. She simply followed her around the room as she was introduced to the other women.

  Some granted Kate a strangely congratulatory smile as they shook or kissed Emilie’s hand, a kind of smile that left Emilie with little doubt about Kate’s intentions. Part of her wanted to be insulted by the insinuation but a larger part was too curious to protest. She’d keep following Kate wherever she wanted to lead her tonight, learning in a way that took her out of the books she found so comfortable and into an unknown world. Kate, with her assurance, would be her experienced mentor. Emilie trusted her, even though she didn’t quite understand why.

  Kate guided Emilie to a quiet corner of the room where they stood until they finished a glass of champagne. Since she’d first taken her arm to lead her through to the room, Kate had never broken contact with Emilie until now. She took the empty flutes out of their hands and placed them on a nearby table only to come back and grab Emilie’s hands, facing her. The touch was comforting and amicable. “What do you think of this little gathering of mine, my darling Emilie?” she asked with a low, soothing voice.

  For the first time, Emilie realized that Kate cared about her feelings and knew just how foreign this event was to her. “It’s all very new,” she confirmed, “and I’m rather nervous, but I’m still very happy I came.”

  The relief she saw in Kate’s smile betrayed a glimpse of self-doubt Emilie hadn’t seen in her and she found it endearing. It made Kate more human, more approachable.

  “I’m glad you came too, Emilie.”

  Kate took a step toward Emilie so that mere inches separated them and slowly ran one fingertip up Emilie’s arm, from the inside of her wrist to the bend of her elbow. The caress seemed innocent yet felt so intimate that Emilie gasped. She knew Kate would kiss her soon and she would let her, but before that happened she had to ask, “How did you know? About me, I mean.”

  Kate laughed softly, as if she knew Emilie would ask. “I don’t really know, my darling. Call it intuition, instinct, or simply call it hope. All I know is that never yet have I been wrong.”

  With that Emilie watched quietly as Kate’s almond-shaped eyes closed and her fine lips closed the distance between them. She let Kate’s expert mouth explore hers. Soon Kate’s tongue probed inside and Emilie leaned back against the wall, taking pleasure in Kate’s kiss but even more in knowing it wouldn’t stop. Kate wouldn’t push her away and look at her with hate and disgust like Angeline had. Kate would keep kissing her as long as she offered her mouth to be kissed.

  Kate was not Angeline. Emilie shook her head, forcing Angeline out of her mind as Kate’s lips traveled down to her exposed neck. She grabbed Kate’s shoulders and pulled her closer yet. Kate groaned as her mouth was pressed hard against Emilie’s skin. Emilie moaned, simply knowing this delight wouldn’t be taken away from her until it reached the ultimate peak she was longing for.

  Kate rose from her neck then and looked into Emilie’s eyes. Emilie saw the lust in Kate’s dark pupils and in her parted, reddened, breathless mouth. “Stay with me tonight,” she said hoarsely.

  Emilie simply nodded. Kate took her hand and led her to her bedroom on the second floor.

  That night, Emilie let Kate teach her everything she’d imagined a Sapphist ought to know and even some things she’d never imagined. Mouths, flesh, sexes mixed together in such ecstasy Emilie no longer cared what kind of illness made it possible. Emilie made love with Kate all night and began the new century as a new woman.

  She came back to Kate’s house many more nights afterward. She never read another medical journal. If anyone ever came up with a cure, she didn’t want to know about it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rimouski, April 1900

  April was a messy time of the year in Rimouski, Angeline was reminded again as she walked out of the barn with two pints of milk in two glass bottles. Little Paul-Emile followed her with difficulty, his small moose-leather boots catching in mud several times, causing him to fall on his behind. Everywhere, even on the roads, the ground was
nothing but a mix of melting snow and mud.

  She brought one of the bottles to her parents’ house and left it on the porch then walked back to her own house, grabbing Paul-Emile into her free arm to make the trip a little faster.

  Angeline milked the cows every evening and she’d usually go in to talk with her mother before going back home to finish getting dinner ready. Today she didn’t feel like it and had managed to avoid her all day. She didn’t feel like talking to anyone. She’d done her chores routinely all day long, her thoughts elsewhere, taking only a few minutes to play with Paul-Emile. He’d made her laugh almost despite herself when he’d fallen face first into mud and had gotten back up giggling, his face covered with wet dirt. She’d wiped his face but he desperately needed a bath.

  Angeline barely had time to remove her boots and coat as well as Paul-Emile’s before Joseph ran into the house and announced with an enthusiasm she hadn’t seen in him since the birth of their son, “It’s happening, Angeline! They’re expanding the mill and guess who’s becoming head of maintenance. That’s right, little man! Your papa is the new head of maintenance at The Price Company.” Joseph grabbed Paul-Emile and held him above his head, then threw him in the air before catching him.

  The boy’s unrestrained laughter and his father’s joyous pride forced a smile onto Angeline’s face. Joseph had slowly made a reputation for himself as the guy who could fix machines no one else seemed to know how to fix. No matter what was wrong with any kind of machinery at the sawmill, he always found a way to make it work again in a timely manner. He’d learned back at the cotton mill what stoppage meant. Stoppage means loss! Stoppage means loss! Angeline remembered it too. The phrase had been drilled into all of them with such forcefulness that they couldn’t forget it even if they’d wanted to. It seemed like it was paying off for them now. Joseph’s bosses at The Price Company appreciated his sense of urgency. They’d promised him a better position once they were ready to expand and it was finally happening.

  “That’s great news, Joseph,” she said with as much excitement as she could muster, which was not enough to convince Joseph.

  From the suddenly serious expression on his face when he turned from Paul-Emile to look at her, Angeline knew that he understood that something was wrong and one look at the hand she’d put on her stomach almost unconsciously was enough for him to know exactly what it was. She fought tears as Joseph put Paul-Emile down on the wide pine planks of floor and walked toward her with compassionate sadness in his dark blue eyes. When he wrapped his arms around her, she started sobbing uncontrollably into his chest, quickly making his working shirt damp.

  She’d miscarried early that morning. It was the second baby she’d lost since Paul-Emile’s birth, and she couldn’t understand why it was so difficult for her to do the one thing she was convinced she’d been born to do. She couldn’t help but think that perhaps she was being punished for her sins. For the feelings she’d had for Emilie, for that kiss she was so desperately trying to forget. For the dreams that crept up at night, rare but inescapable, in which she lay with her sister-in-law in her bed somewhere in Boston.

  Joseph caressed her hair and held her close, comforting her. She squeezed his waist as tight as she could. She might deserve punishment, she admitted to herself, but Joseph didn’t. Please don’t keep punishing him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Boston, February 1901

  Emilie kissed Kate’s nude buttocks again and laid her head on her lover’s lower back, admiring the roundness of her bottom as Kate slowly caught her breath after a long, particularly strong orgasm.

  Emilie was filled with pride every time she brought Kate to climax, every time she felt her muscles tense up under the touch of her fingers or her mouth. It made her feel powerful and she couldn’t get enough. She lay naked in Kate’s bed like she did every Sunday, languorously caressing the round, soft, ivory bottom. It was her favorite part of Kate’s body apart from the folds of flesh she knew so well after a little over a year of their strange, unnamed relationship.

  Emilie felt Kate rise under her head and knew she was going to light a cigarette. She moved to her side so she could watch Kate smoke. Kate was still lying on her stomach but held herself up on her elbows.

  “I wish I liked smoking,” Emilie said with sincerity. She’d tried smoking a few times shortly after she’d met Kate but she couldn’t get used to it. It burned her lungs and she hated doing it as much as she liked watching Kate do it.

  Kate laughed as she exhaled, a white cloud escaping from her fine lips. “Why, my darling?”

  “I don’t know. Isn’t it the lesbian thing to do?” Emilie had learned the word lesbian from Kate. She liked it better than Sapphist. She liked the idea of a community of women who loved other women living together on a small island called Lesbos. It was a nice, comforting thought.

  Kate laughed even louder, choking on her most recent puff of cigarette. “You’re mixing things up, my darling. I smoke because I love the taste of cigarettes. I’m a lesbian because I love the taste of twat. See? Two very separate things.”

  Emilie joined in Kate’s laughter. Kate’s sense of humor was one of the traits she most appreciated in her. The only other person who’d ever made her laugh that much was Angeline, but Kate’s humor was much more salacious than Angeline’s. It was difficult not to compare the two women although Emilie tried hard not to. She came to Kate every Sunday with the firm intention to leave all thoughts of Angeline in her room on Bromfield Street, but she didn’t always succeed.

  After lying to Mr. and Mrs. Flaherty about spending New Year’s Eve with her mother’s cousin, Emilie told them that moving forward she would spend Sundays with that same cousin’s family, even going to Mass with them. Of course, Emilie had not gone to Mass in more than a year.

  Her new church was Kate’s body. Her sins were beyond saving by now anyway, she was sure of it, and there was no room in church for someone like her. Not only did she sleep with a woman, but she was also an adulterer. Kate’s husband lived in London and had a life of his own, Kate assured her, but what they did remained adultery nonetheless.

  Kate called herself a new woman and being a new woman apparently meant living guilt free, among other things. Emilie tried to follow her older lover’s footsteps and become a new woman but she still battled with guilt. She felt most guilty about her new life when she received a letter from her father and she was forced to think of her old life, her family, and what they would think if they knew about the way she was living now.

  Emilie turned her back to Kate and closed her eyes, pretending to sleep. Kate put her arm around Emilie’s waist and snuggled up to her, accepting a restful pause from their frolics. Thinking of her family always made Emilie nostalgic.

  Joseph had turned twenty-three last week. She hadn’t spoken to him since she’d accused him of being a coward three years ago. They’d been so close when they were children, inseparable. It was difficult to accept that the harsh words she’d told him out of jealousy could be the last words she’d speak to him. She kept telling herself she would write to him, but she never did. She had no excuse. Her father had given her the address on Tessier Road as soon and he and Angeline had moved to their own house.

  She didn’t know what to tell Joseph. She had no news that would make him proud of her, she figured, no stories he could relate to in any way. He was probably better off not knowing more than the superficial bits and pieces she wrote in letters to their father. She assumed he shared those with Joseph. He surely shared everything about Joseph’s life with her.

  She often wished he wouldn’t. Knowing everything about Joseph’s happy married life made her sad and bitter, and then she felt guilty about her inability to simply be happy for her brother. Knowing about Angeline’s life was even worse. How could she put the woman she’d loved out of her mind when she kept being informed of every event in her life? A life Angeline had chosen to live with Emilie’s brother despite Emilie’s efforts.

  When she�
�d learned they’d named their first son Paul-Emile she’d cried herself to sleep for one full week. She’d cried because she couldn’t believe Joseph and Angeline still thought enough of her to name their first child after her. She’d cried most of all because she might never know the boy who shared her hair color, her own nephew. Then she’d learned about Angeline’s miscarriages and she’d cried for her friend, feeling her pain as her own.

  But more recently, she’d learned of the birth of Victor Henri Levesque, their second son. Emilie’s father wrote that Victor looked exactly like Joseph when he was a baby, with blond hair and clear blue eyes. Emilie wanted to be happy for Joseph and Angeline and she was, in a way. She was truly happy for her father, who seemed to be such a proud grandfather, even from a distance. But she couldn’t help but feel sorry for herself. And she couldn’t help but wonder whether Victor was named after Victor Hugo. She remembered Angeline’s appreciation for Les Misérables and wondered if Angeline, when she named her son Victor, had thought of the hours they’d spent reading and discussing the novel together under their buttonwood tree in Flint. She ached thinking she might never know.

  Emilie slowly came out of her reflections when she felt the soft kisses Kate had started to place on the back of her neck. There was no point losing any more time on Joseph, Angeline and their children. They weren’t part of her life anymore. They had nothing in common but blood and memories. They would never understand what she’d become. She forced her attention back to the woman behind her, who did understand who she was, who was in fact in part responsible for what she’d become. Kate had helped her and accepted her in ways her family never could. More importantly, she’d made it possible for Emilie to accept herself. Acceptance was still a work in progress but that progress wouldn’t have been possible without Kate, her new woman.