House of Rougeaux(52)
“Monsieur Hathaway asked me to give this to you,” she said.
“Ah,” said Guillaume, surprised, “thank you.”
He turned it over in his hands, feeling the thickness of the paper, and the subtle indentation of the ink-pressed letters. Francis R. Hathaway, read the card. Textiles. A Toronto address. Nodding, he tucked the card away in his coat pocket.
* * *
Guillaume returned from his journey to find all in good health and spirits. Preparations were under way for Albert’s wedding. There would be a church ceremony followed by a party in the meeting hall. Albert was a man now, and his bride, Genevieve, a thoughtful, sturdy young lady. The morning of the wedding Guillaume and Bess stood at the altar having a brief word with the pastor as Albert escorted Maman to the pew where all of her daughters were waiting. How tall and fine he looked, with Maman so small and aged, yet elegant, smiling and hanging on his elbow. It seemed so short a time ago that Maman sat with little Albert on the piano bench teaching him his scales and melodies, and all of the songs they could sing together. His seriousness was apparent even then, his brow furrowed as his tiny fingers reached for the keys. She was such a patient teacher, and told him many stories of the island of her birth, of all the happy things, and Albert sat enraptured, imagining Martinique to be the most beautiful place on earth. Life was so very rich and full, thought Guillaume, surely any ache could be forgotten, at least for the moment.
Less than one week later Maman, as it is said in the Old Testament, was gathered to her people. That night Maman and Josephine had spent a quiet evening. Josie read aloud from Psalms and Maman listened with her eyes closed and a trace of a smile, but then said she had a touch of a headache. Josephine urged her to go to bed early, and said she would bring in a cup of tea. Standing at the stove before the heating water, Josephine felt a tremor in her spine that in an instant became so great she stumbled back. A brilliant wind, she told Guillaume later, rushed through the house, passing clear through her body and out through the window.
When Guillaume found Josephine at his door, brought there by a frenzied rapping, her face shone with tears. She reached for him.
“Maman has gone to be with Papa.”
But the greatest shock came another night, three months later. All the rest of the household were asleep, but Guillaume had stayed late in the shop, finishing a pair of saddles to be delivered the next day. At last he climbed the stairs, holding a candle aloft, and made his way to the bedroom. Quietly he set the candle on the nightstand and began to undress. He looked at Bess’ curled form under the quilts. She was still. He went forward and listened for her breathing.
Guillaume hurried to wake Ross, and sent him running to fetch Dr. Laurent, who lived only a few streets away. Jonty he told to go next door for Aunt Josephine. The girls, Eleanor and Melody, woke from the commotion and met Guillaume in the hall, clinging to his sides. Mercifully, little Dax still slept.
Dr. Laurent arrived with Ross and Guillaume led him to the bedroom to examine Bess. Josie had gathered the children in the girls’ room to wait, until at last Guillaume came for them. The doctor explained that Elizabeth’s heart had stopped, and that she was gone. The girls flung themselves at their mother’s feet, sobbing, the boys knelt by the bed, and Guillaume gathered all of them in his arms, all of Bess’ children, except for Dax, who was downstairs with Josephine, until things quieted down.
Guillaume was overcome with a dreadful, hollow weightlessness, as if the earth had stopped turning and he had nothing but his two arms to keep his family from flying away. A long, long river of tears cut a path through the night, until the sky paled, and the bleak dawn broke, unwanted, outside the window.
Whereas Maman’s passing brought a deep but quiet grief, the sudden loss of Elizabeth ruptured the fabric of their lives. The web of the family drew closer together during this dark season. Josephine moved into Guillaume’s home to take charge of Dax, now just two years old, and to help support the other children who, though much older, were still in need of care. Josephine and Guillaume’s three older sisters visited daily, and Albert and Genevieve took over the apartment next door, above the saddlery.
Guillaume went through the tasks of each day crushed with the weight of Bess’ absence. When he dressed each morning it confused him greatly that she wasn’t behind him doing the same. When he went downstairs and she wasn’t in the kitchen he had the impulse to look for her in the backyard. He was two people, the one that knew Bess was gone and grieved for her, and the one that couldn’t yet make sense of it. But at the end of each day, when he said goodnight to the children, he did what he knew she would have wanted. He told them that she loved them, and that she was watching over, and because he believed it they did too. Thus they survived the longest and coldest winter of their lives.
When summer rolled around again, the pain of loss had become a small measure less immediate. Guillaume tended to his work and his children, and to Bess’ memory. Dax, now three, learned he had the power to make the family laugh, and enlivened the household with his antics, and Josephine provided the anchor needed by all. Soon it was time for the journey to Québec City and Guillaume brought along Ross, who was fifteen now and most likely to take over the saddlery one day. Albert was a railroad man, and Jonty would surely follow him there. Eleanor and Melody, children just yesterday, were already becoming young women in their own right. It was almost with surprise that Guillaume remembered the Englishman. Their meeting only one year ago seemed as distant as a foreign shore.