Chapter 48
So far well; but four days after the operation…a blush of red told the secret…
Joseph visited his sister again the next day. Hélène was strangely sedate—her wound ached—but she remained cheerful. On his way down the stairs, Joseph caught Tessa on the first landing. He peered toward the entry hall. “Is anyone behind you?”
“No…”
He grasped Tessa’s left hand, the one that did not hold her slumbering daughter.
He pulled them up the half-flight of stairs into the empty bedchamber.
The curtains were drawn, so only the palest light sifted into the room.
Joseph closed the door. Most recently, this had been his grandmother’s bedchamber; but until he left for seminary, and for a week after he returned, it had been his.
“Joseph?” Tessa inquired from the darkness, a lilt of amusement in her voice.
He pulled open the curtains that faced the piazza.
Behind him, still holding her daughter in the crook of her arm, Tessa caressed one of the pillows. “I slept in your bed, my first Christmas in Charleston.” Her voice was nearly a whisper. “I was certain I could still feel you here—smell you here. It was agony and ecstasy at once.”
She was making him forget his purpose. In his thoughts, Joseph travelled farther into the past, toward another bed. He’d crawled through this very window, the night he’d seen his mother bound to her bedposts. “Tessa, if I ask you a question, will you promise to tell me the truth?”
“Of course.”
Joseph remained at the window, bracing a hand against the frame. “Even if you think it might offend me?”
“Even then.”
He turned his head to her. “What is your opinion of my father?”
Tessa blinked at him. Her shoulders drooped and she looked away. Had she thought he’d brought her into this room for another reason? She laid Clare (still asleep) on the bed and gazed down at her in the half-light. “Your father is a remarkable physician and an even better man.”
Joseph turned his whole body now, though he did not move from the window. “But has he ever… When he’s—examined you, has he made you uncomfortable?”
“Childbirth is uncomfortable. That is hardly your father’s fault.”
Joseph advanced a step. “I mean…uneasy. Has he ever touched you when or where he needn’t have?”
Tessa gaped at him. “Never!”
Joseph turned away again.
Tessa came to stand beside him. “Joseph, your father is one of the kindest, most solicitous men I have ever met. I hope he continues practicing until he is ninety, because I want no one else attending my daughter or my grandchildren. Now, will you tell me the truth about why you asked such a question?”
Joseph planted his fists on the window-sill. “When I was a boy, I saw something that made me certain my father was abusing my mother. But I think now…that I may have been mistaken.”
“You must have been.” Tessa slipped her hand around Joseph’s wrist in reassurance.
“Your father doesn’t have a cruel bone in his body, Joseph—any more than you do.
I know you disagree about a great many things; but at heart, you and he are very much alike.
You are gentlemen to the bottom of your souls.
” Tessa saw Joseph wasn’t ready to leave the window yet, so she took up her daughter and went to Hélène.
Joseph realized he did not need to speak to his mother.
He needed only to watch her with his father—without prejudice, for the first time in eighteen years.
The way she darted down the stairs when he returned home.
The way she took his coat with such tenderness.
The way she smiled at him. Not even a saint would delight in the presence of a man who had violated her.
His father was not a monster. He was simply a man. His mother was not a victim. She was simply a woman.
When Joseph returned to his father’s office, he found him standing before the great cabinet of medicines, taking stock of his pharmacopeia.
Joseph waited on the threshold until his father lowered his note-pad and turned. Joseph could not meet his eyes. “Regarding my mother…” Joseph advanced only a step. “Forgive me, Father.”
His father came to meet him and reached out to touch Joseph’s face.
“Of course I forgive you. You were a child. I wish you had come to me then, but I am grateful you have come now.” Then, he smirked.
“Before I grant you Absolution, however, I must impose a Penance. Your mother mentioned you will be travelling to Columbia next month?”
Joseph nodded. “To deliver a monstrance to St. Peter’s.”
“You will return to us afterward?”
Joseph averted his eyes. “At least until we have a new Bishop.” He hadn’t made up his mind about whether to leave Charleston after that. He knew remaining in Tessa’s proximity was playing with fire.
“While you are in Lexington District, I want you to meet someone: Father James Wallace. He’s my age, an Irishman by birth. When we met, he was serving here in Charleston. You were eight years old, I think, when he left.”
The name sounded a distant bell in Joseph’s memory.
“Is he the Father Wallace who was a mathematics professor at South Carolina College?” Joseph remembered another Priest talking about it several years ago at a diocesan convention: how a new, anti-Catholic college president had dismissed Father Wallace from his post of fourteen years.
“That’s him. He’s also a skilled astronomer. Like many of your kind, he is quite brilliant. James was trained as a Jesuit, but he withdrew from the Society so he could remain in Columbia.”
A former Jesuit was rare indeed. This Priest was a rebel. No wonder Joseph’s father liked him. Why should Father Wallace wish to remain in South Carolina, when so many Irish Priests fled its climate at the first opportunity? At least he and Joseph would have something to talk about.
By morning, Father Wallace and Columbia seemed as distant as the stars.
On the fourth day after Hélène’s surgery, Joseph’s mother appeared before Mass. Her eyes were bloodshot. ‘Are you still praying for your sister?’
‘Of course.’
His mother’s hands trembled as she signed. ‘She is worse.’
Joseph came home as soon as he could. He raced up the stairs to hear Liam begging his father: “What can we do?”
“Manage her fever…beyond that, we can only wait.”
They could pray.
Their mother was doing just that, while May bathed Hélène’s forehead. Her breaths were rapid, and their father said her pulse was as well. He explained: “The wound showed signs of inflammation last night.”
“Why didn’t you send for me?” Joseph demanded.
“It’s not unusual after surgery. A fever like this is also common; but preceded by chills…” Their father looked back to her. “Your sister is a fighter, Joseph—we all know that. None of this means she won’t recover.” But Joseph could hear in his father’s voice that he’d not even convinced himself.
This was exactly what had happened to Joseph’s grandfather. Just when it seemed the danger had passed…
No! His sister was younger and stronger. She would survive this.
Hélène’s mind wandered. She whispered instructions to fugitives as if she were already aiding the Underground Railroad.
She murmured phrases from Shakespeare and hummed bars from operas.
Liam tried to engage her by reciting the next line of the speech or the aria.
Much of the time, she seemed unaware of anyone’s presence.
She appeared to be conversing with another Liam, another May, another Tessa from months before.
Other times, Hélène clung to the present so long, they began to hope. She and Liam recreated their favorite poems. But these lucid intervals became shorter and shorter, more and more precious.
Joseph could not remain with her all day; other parishioners needed him. On his third visit, one of the candles guttered, and Hélène murmured: “‘Put out the light, and then put out the light.’”
Joseph frowned and looked to Tessa.
“It’s from Othello.” She did not have a chance to explain.
“Hélène means ‘light’; did you know that?” His sister gripped Tessa’s hand as if this were a matter of utmost importance.
“‘Clare’ does too! One’s Greek, and the other one’s Latin.
I forget which is which… I don’t mean Clare is going to die next, Tessa!
I mean the opposite: that I am ‘passing the torch’ to her!
I know she can’t even talk yet, but Clare will be your best friend, you’ll see!
” Tears spilled from Hélène’s eyes. “Oh, I wish I could be there! But you’ll tell her about her godmother, won’t you?
I haven’t fulfilled my duties very well, I know…
” She sat up suddenly, as if she’d found the solution.
“I’ll come back as a fairy godmother, and make all her dreams come true!
Clare will be happy, Tessa, I know she will—she’ll find her prince!
Maybe even two, who’ll fight to win her hand, and she’ll have a hard time deciding… ”
Tessa stroked Hélène’s arm, trying to calm her, even as she smiled at Joseph. “One prince is quite enough.”
All of them had to sleep some time, if only in anguished snatches. Tessa and Joseph were alone with Hélène again when his sister squeezed his hand and gasped:
“Oh, night that guided me!
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn!
Oh, night that joined
Beloved with lover!”
Tessa blushed. “Ellie, you must save that for Liam.”
But Joseph recognized the words. “It isn’t— That is to say: It is a love poem; but it’s the Soul speaking to God. It’s a stanza from ‘The Dark Night of the Soul,’ by Saint John of the Cross.”
For a moment, Tessa only stared at him, as if she didn’t quite believe it. “Oh.”
The next morning, at the gate, Joseph passed Dr. Mortimer leaving. The man’s face told him everything. At first, Joseph thought it meant he was already too late. Then the surgeon murmured: “She’s still with us.”
For how much longer?