The Marriage of Opposites

by Alice Hoffman

  WHEN I SAW MY husband later in the evening, he told me that Aaron was so angry to learn that my father hadn’t left him any part of his estate that he’d already made arrangements to return to Paris. There had been threats and arguments at the store that were humiliating. My cousin’s insolence drove him forward. He insisted he would take legal action. I worried for my husband’s safety. “There’s no need to worry,” Isaac assured me. “He realized it would be worth his while to leave.” My husband was clearly relieved that Aaron was preparing to go. “Your father made a wise choice. We’ll all do well to be rid of him.”

  But we weren’t rid of him so quickly that I didn’t see him walking down the road toward the harbor. It was dusk, the hour when it was possible to do as one wished as darkness fell. Yet the sky was still bright in the east, and I knew where he was going. He went there every night and waited outside the house on stilts, and nothing could be done to send him away. He had come halfway around the world, after all, and found what he wanted here on our island.

  THE MAIDS IN MY mother’s house told me that my cousin was leaving in a matter of days. This time there would be no packet of lavender, no cause to call him back. I had gone to the store and looked through the ledgers my father had taught me to read. I found what I had suspected: Aaron was being paid off handsomely so that he would let go of the business without further argument. I’d kept away from my mother’s house after the scene in the garden, not wishing to see Aaron or his wife. But on the afternoon before they were to leave, Elise arrived at my house. I was on the porch, mending my children’s clothes. Their trousers and shifts always seemed torn after a day of play. I liked to sew, for my own relaxation, to clear the thoughts in my head. The last thing I expected was company.

  Elise was wearing one of her beautiful dresses. Her hair was braided carefully.

  “You don’t like us anymore?” she said archly. “You’ve disappeared.”

  I gazed at her and saw someone different from the girl who’d walked off the boat. She held a parasol to ward off the sun, but she seemed quite steely. She spoke to me as if I were a servant rather than a relative, however distant. When some chickens came pecking around, Elise kicked up dirt to drive them away. I suppose in Paris she did as she pleased, and had everything she ever wanted.

  “He said we can take her,” she told me.

  I was confused. Was it Aaron’s intention not only to live with his wife in Paris but to have Jestine as well? Many men did so here, surely it must be the same in Paris. But such things were not spoken about, and certainly a wife would never announce that she was aware of that sort of arrangement, even if she tacitly agreed. Why on earth would Aaron inform Elise of his plan, and why would she be the one to tell me?

  “And you’re fine with this? You don’t mind taking Jestine to Paris?”

  “Jestine!” Elise laughed. “It’s the girl I want. She looks enough like me for people to think I’m her mother. It’s the gold in her hair.”

  I was speechless, though she didn’t seem to notice. She went on to announce that they had decided to take Lyddie and raise her as their own. The girl was young enough so that in time she would forget Jestine and this island and the house that was so close to the sea she could hear the tides as she slept.

  I listened as Elise went on at great length discussing her plans, the lycée for girls Lyddie would enter, the dozens of dresses she would buy for her, the bedchamber that was larger than the house where she lived now. There would be horses, for Elise’s parents had a home in the country, and hunting dogs, and dinners on Friday nights with Elise’s family.

  I listened openmouthed, unbelieving and silent, until she announced that Lyddie’s name would be changed to Lydia Cassin Rodrigues. Cassin was Elise’s family name, and her father would be so delighted for his name to be carried on. Hearing that, I at last found my voice.

  “Pardon me, but you do know who the father is?”

  “A man who made a mistake, but one who has legal rights.” Now I understood. Elise intended to rewrite Lyddie’s history as she pleased. “He is the father and I will be the mother.”

  “Have your own daughter,” I said harshly.

  “I can’t.” Elise knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t about to let a few words from me hurt her or change her tactics. “Put our proposal before your friend. Tell her of my plans. She will come to understand it is far better for her daughter to live with us in Paris.”

  I WENT TO SEE Aaron, but he shouted that he didn’t want to see me. When I wouldn’t give up, he came into the hall in a rage. He’d been drinking and was unstable.

  “Do you know what your wife is trying to do?” I asked.

  “Give my daughter a better life?”

  “Better than what? Being with her own mother?”

  “Rachel, you’ve never understood what the world is like,” he told me. “You’ve always thought I could do as I pleased, but that’s never been true.”

  “Because you have no courage,” I said.

  My cousin slapped me then. I was shocked and so was he.

  “I didn’t mean that,” he said. “You know I didn’t.”

  I turned and ran. There was no talking to him. We’d put a spell on him to bring him back, but we’d done so without thinking of all that enchantment might do. He was a ruined person, he was crying in the hall, and the saddest thing to me was that I could see he loved Jestine, and he wasn’t going to do anything about it.

  I went down to the house on stilts, my heart beating fast. I thought of what Rosalie had told me, how loving someone too much could be dangerous and how she’d been punished for her pride. When I reached the harbor I noticed there were shingles missing on the cottage, which hadn’t been painted in several years. Since Adelle had passed on, things had fallen into disrepair. The same was true for my childhood house, which hadn’t been the same since the death of my father.

  Jestine was waiting for me on the steps. I could tell from her expression that she hadn’t slept. She had been waiting for a message from my cousin, but a different one entirely. She wanted to hear him admit that he’d chosen the wrong woman and say he was coming back to her. I was reminded of the lavender Adelle had placed into my cousin’s luggage to bring him back to Jestine. I wished I hadn’t found it and hidden it there again after he’d discarded it. I wished he’d never returned.

  I told her what Elise had proposed. Jestine said nothing, but she grew cold.

  “They’re going to steal her,” she said.

  Jestine was a free woman, but her rights were limited. She had publicly declared that Aaron was the father of the child. Everyone in our household had heard her say so, including my mother, who would certainly act against her if given half the chance.

  Lyddie was inside, studying her lessons. Jestine sat there weeping. “There’s no way for me to fight them. You people always get what you want.”

  I was stung, even though I knew what she said was true. People of my faith had fewer rights than Europeans, but compared to Jestine and Adelle we were part of the established order.

  “He’s found me every night he’s been here,” Jestine said. “I was good enough for that but not good enough to be my own daughter’s mother.”

  Perhaps Elise had guessed and this was part of her revenge.

  Jestine went inside without saying another word. I peered through the window to watch as she gathered a few belongings into a basket, then grabbed Lyddie by the hand. When they came back they took the stairs two at a time. “He’ll never find us now.”

  Lyddie tossed a frightened look back at me as her mother hurried her along. I began to trail them, but Jestine turned around and snapped, “Don’t you dare follow us! You treated that witch as if she were a sister. Now look what’s happened! You’re one of them.”

  I stood alone in the road and watched Jestine take her daughter into the mountains, where the mahogany trees were hundreds of years old, their bark made into the strongest medicine on the island. Adelle had once brought me
a tea made of this bark when I fell ill as a little girl. I remembered only a haze from that time. My skin was so hot I felt that fire had been laid across my bed. I felt a wave of that heat now, and my heart sank. I feared there was no way to protect Jestine from my cousin’s wife.

  In the morning, our visitors were standing in our courtyard while their trunks were brought down. They waited, exchanging glances.

  “Jestine won’t bring Lyddie to you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I said.

  “I don’t suppose we’ll see each other again.” Elise kissed me good-bye. I recoiled and wished her away. My cousin looked sad and somehow resolved. He leaned close so he could whisper to me. “We made a mistake to think we could have what we wanted.”

  “Her mistake was you.” She should never have trusted him or thought he would marry her. She should have stayed away from our courtyard.

  I watched them leave our garden. My mother was so distraught she had gone to her room. Despite my cousin’s failures, she still had a deep attachment to him. I think she would have been pleased if he had chosen to stay. She might even have supported him. But of course, Elise had more to offer.

  Once they were on the street, I heard Elise’s bright voice echo, and I was puzzled. I couldn’t understand why she was so cheerful when she hadn’t gotten what she wanted. I heard a burst of her laughter, and she said the name Lydia in a loving way and then went on to discuss how she had written the maids at home so the girl’s room would be ready for her. All at once I knew she hadn’t lost. I ran after them to the docks. I stood on the wharf, sunlight and tears clouding my eyes. I could see the rowboat of passengers that Elise and Aaron were joining, a little girl among those waiting. My cousin had hired some local men to search for Jestine. They’d found her and restrained her until they could get Lyddie away from her. The child was told that her journey was a brief trip to France, one her mother had approved. So why had her mother been sobbing when they came for them in the mountains, and why had she refused to let go of her daughter until she was held back by men who had left bruises on her arms? Lyddie asked, but these questions went unanswered. The men who’d been hired to bring the child to the wharf were sailors who cared nothing for the people of our island.

  Jestine might never have been discovered, but I knew the secret places in the hills. I ran until I heard a woman crying. It was up by the caves, where ruined women often went to end their lives when they had nothing left, near the gardens of the pirate wives. The sailors who’d stolen Lyddie had left Jestine tied to a jacaranda tree. There were a dozen pelicans above her, each one perched on a higher branch. Some people believe that when a pelican cries the tears shed are as red as blood; they say the pelican will pluck the bloody feathers from its own breast to make a nest for its young despite the damage to itself.

  Jestine screamed at me as I untied her. “You let them take her!”

  “No,” I said, but she wasn’t listening to me. I broke all of my fingernails, frantic, because she was crying.

  “Hurry! I have to follow them.”

  I knew the rowboat had left, the ship had boarded, but I stepped away once she was free and watched her run down the hill. I never knew a person to run so fast, to disappear the way ghosts do, out of our line of vision. I heard that everyone fled the dock when she got there. That people could hear her crying for miles.

  No one saw Jestine for several weeks afterward. She refused to answer her door, not to me and not to anyone else. I left baskets of food, but they went untouched. I sat on the stairs until evening, but she refused to come out. My husband did everything he could. He wrote to his family in France and explained the situation. A solicitor was hired, but in the end there was little anyone could do. The laws gave Aaron Rodrigues the right to his own daughter, especially once she was on French soil. My husband went on to find a second solicitor, one who was not above paying people off to get around the law; he took the high fee Isaac sent, but though he was well connected, he could not undo what had been done. I dreamed sometimes of Lyddie on that ship, en route to Paris. In my dreams she looked toward our island. A pelican followed her until she was halfway across the Atlantic, a place that was too cold and too far to reach, even for those who loved her best.

  Elise wrote me a single letter months after she’d returned to Paris. It was now summer. We hadn’t heard anything of my cousin or Lyddie, therefore I was shocked to find the envelope on my table. Elise had beautiful handwriting, and the ink she used was a shade of blue so dark it was almost purple. I thought about reading the letter. I held the brass letter opener and debated. But in the end I didn’t feel the message was meant for me. I brought the letter to Jestine. She had avoided me all this time, and my loneliness was like a stone in my shoe. When I knocked on the door Jestine didn’t look pleased to see me, but she let me in. I knew she put blame onto me, for I had befriended the witch from Paris. That much was true, and I regretted it every day. The house felt empty when I came inside. The windows were shuttered even though it was a beautiful day. The sea was green.

  “What is this supposed to be?” she said when I held out the letter.

  “Something from Paris.” The envelope felt hot in my hands, as if it had breath and life. “Would you rather I burned it?”

  She gestured for me to hand over the letter. Then she went into her bedroom.

  Whether or not she read what Elise wrote I will never know. Perhaps she cursed its author, perhaps she gave thanks for what little news she had of her daughter. When she came back the letter was folded in half. Together, we burned it in a bowl Adelle had once used to make elixirs, including the one that had saved my life. The sparks flew up. As they did I made a wish, and this one came true. From then on Jestine answered the door when I came to call. One day she was sitting in my garden, and I knew that she had forgiven me for having Aaron as my cousin and the witch from France as his wife, even though nothing was ever the same after that.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  If You Leave

  CHARLOTTE AMALIE, ST. THOMAS

  1824

  RACHEL POMIÉ PETIT

  When I thought of the last moments of my husband’s life, the sudden stab of pain he must have felt in his heart, the speed with which he slumped over his desk on a hot afternoon, the lemon-colored sunlight falling across his shoulders, I wondered if he cried out for me, or if he had called to Esther, his beloved first wife. I hope she was standing there waiting for him, her arms outstretched to hold him, and that his spirit lifted itself out of his body with joy. On the night my husband died I came home from the office alone with his spectacles and his watch. I got into our bed and waited for the spirit of the first Madame Petit to lie down beside me and mourn with me, but she was gone. She had been there for only one reason, to watch over her husband. Now he belonged to her in the world beyond ours.

  His was the third death, and the one that changed my life more than any other. Isaac was only fifty, and his death came as a complete surprise. I was just twenty-nine, too young to be a widow. I went to Jestine and asked her to make me a black dress, for I would have to wear black for the next year. She knew I didn’t love Isaac, but he was my husband all the same, the father of my children. She understood my fear. I was still young and I was responsible for six children, all of whom had experienced loss.

  The day of my husband’s funeral was hot, the kind of weather that made people faint. It was a blur to me, and I was glad when it was over. At last dusk had fallen and the children were asleep. David, Samuel, Hannah, Joseph, Emma, and the youngest, always called by her French name, Delphine. Rosalie dozed in a chair in the nursery. I still hadn’t told her that tomorrow we would be forced to leave. We could no longer afford this big house, and it would eventually be sold. In the past months the business had been failing, and it was possible that we might have to close the store, our last real asset. I dreaded Rosalie’s reaction. She had lived at this address longer than I had, and was already here working for Isaac when the first Madame Petit arrived from F
rance, limp from the heat, her freckled face flushed with exhaustion, her luggage so heavy four men had to carry her trunks from the dock. Madame’s dresses from France were still in the cabinet. I intended to sell them with the household goods, though it caused me pain to do so.

  On the last evening I would ever spend in my husband’s house, I felt a struggle within me. I was free, unmarried, but I was also trapped. This was the moment when I’d always imagined I could begin a new life; now I wasn’t so sure. The green shutters at the windows were open, and the breeze came spilling through the house. The cool stone corridors were empty, for the mahogany furniture Rosalie oiled every other week would soon be sold at auction and had already been collected in a horse-drawn cart. Adelle had cautioned me before I married that the Petit family would know only tragedy, but she’d never warned me how much I would love my children, both those I gave birth to and those I had inherited, or how that love would imprison me. In the fading light it was still so stifling that sparks of heat rose into the pockets of darkness. As I walked across the courtyard I noticed that parrots came to the stone fountain to drink. Though it was good luck to see them, especially in your own garden, this would not be my garden anymore. At the funeral, people had held wet handkerchiefs to their overheated foreheads. I’d had the sense that I was in a dream as it was happening, and that in my true life I was in my bed in Paris, under cold linen sheets pressed with lavender water, and that the rain was pouring down on the slate roof as I slept. Surely, it was only in my dreams that I was a widow with too many children and that I did not shed a tear as others wept around me.

  I returned to the cemetery after the children had been comforted and had their supper, this time alone, so that I might leave branches of the flamboyant tree on Esther’s grave. Her grave and Isaac’s were next to each other. HUSBAND and WIFE had been written on her headstone in Hebrew, and there had always been a space for him. The branches I’d brought were only sticks, but the fragrance of the wood was sweet. I wandered through the paths, looking for spirits and finding only still, heavy air. On my way out of the cemetery I heard the gravedigger say the flowers had bloomed all at once, as if they were growing on the hillside in the season when everything turns red. I turned and saw it was true. That was how I knew my gift had been received.