Landfalls (46 page)

“But you said—”

“Enough talk of names,” I say. I haul myself to my feet, groaning with the effort. Every day it gets a little harder to stand up from a chair, to raise myself out of bed, to fight the downward pull of the earth.

*   *   *

After lunch, I send for a cab, no mean task in our town. When it finally arrives, it's an equipage so shabby I'm embarrassed to be seen in it. But it can't be helped. “Take me to the chapel of the P
é
nitents Bleus,” I tell the driver, a droopy man who bears an alarming resemblance to his horse. When we get to the chapel entrance on the rue du S
é
n
é
chal, I instruct him to ring at the side door and tell P
è
re Armand that Madame de Lap
é
rouse is there.

The chapel looks much like other such chapels—a simple rectangular box symmetrically punctuated by stained-glass windows and topped with a lanterned dome. Antoine and I owned the building for a time, acquiring it in 1796—the Year Four, we were obliged to call it then—when the misbegotten Republic was filling its empty coffers by selling off church properties. I had joined the lay order after marrying Antoine and moving to Villefranche-de-Rouergue, and hated to think of the building being turned into a theater or tavern—or worse, falling into the hands of our rivals, the upstart P
é
nitents Noirs. After the horrors of the Revolution finally abated, we had the building restored, then donated it to the association. It flourishes in its way—we have our own priest who reads Mass once daily and twice on Sundays, and every September our people lead the procession on the feast day of St. Jerome. Last year I was named the chapel's “prioress,” which sounds very ecclesiastical and even a little nunnish but really just means I have the thankless task of collecting dues from wealthy-enough members who seem to believe that the Christian duty of stewardship does not apply to them. When some of these same individuals fawn over my husband after Mass, it's all I can do to keep from flinging my missal at their heads.

I compensate myself for these vexations by coming to the chapel whenever I need solitude. P
è
re Armand and I have an understanding about this. And indeed, here he is, coming through the double front doors and bounding down the steps to help me out of the shabby carriage. I lean on his shoulder as I step out, struck as always by the firmness of the muscles I can feel through his brown serge.

“I'm delighted to see you, Madame de Lap
é
rouse,” he says. A clever young man who knows exactly where his stipend comes from, P
è
re Armand has always called me Madame de Lap
é
rouse in private and Madame Dalmas in front of my family.

“It's now Madame
Dalmas
de Lap
é
rouse,” I tell him.

“Indeed?” He takes my arm to help me up the four shallow steps to the entrance. “It's official, then?”

“Yes,” I say. “Not so much a name
change
as a name …
enhancement
, as it turns out. And they've misspelled Lap
é
rouse.” I try to say this lightly, but my voice unaccountably catches.

“Oh, madame.”

The sympathy in his voice nearly makes me burst into tears. “It's nothing,” I say as briskly as I can manage. “What can one expect, after all? We had our little revolution, but they killed all the wrong people. The bureaucrats remain our oppressors.”

He guides me up the remaining steps and into the building. The place never fails to soothe me. It's the resonant silence of the long, narrow sanctuary with its unadorned stone walls. It's the tamed light streaming through the eight hexagonal stained-glass windows. It's the satisfaction of knowing that something pleasing in the world exists because of my money and my effort. It's also the sureness of the young priest's hand under my elbow as he escorts me to the tiny side-chapel at the back of the nave, my favorite spot in the building. It's the comfort of having someone in my life who knows what I need without being asked.

P
è
re Armand helps me to the iron rail, waits while I light a candle, then leads me to the small wooden stool kept there for my especial use. I shut my eyes against the pain in my hip as I ease myself down. At home, this ache is a depressing reminder of my physical deterioration, but here it feels more purposeful, as if it were part of my devotional practice. When it subsides, I open my eyes. I can hear Armand's footfalls receding as he retreats to the apse. Before me, a simple white vase filled with jonquils graces the plain oak altar. No doubt left over from Easter Sunday, the bright yellow flowers seem to emit their own light and warmth.

É
l
é
onore would love this, I think, my mind turning again, unbidden, to Jean-Fran
ç
ois's wife. She had excelled at the simple flower arrangement. Whenever I visited her in Albi, she had something in every room—a glassful of woodland flowers she'd picked on a walk, a bouquet of roses spilling from a pitcher, camellia blossoms floating in a bowl. Not that I visited all that often. Villefranche-de-Rouergue is a half-day's journey from Albi. And we were never intimate, she and I. None of us had approved of the marriage, of course. She didn't hold that against us, for she wasn't a resentful person, and anyway, she could hardly blame us. She was a Creole, for goodness' sake—the daughter of a hospital administrator in
Î
le de France. Once Jean-Fran
ç
ois left, the distance between all of us became harder to ignore. When she eventually decamped for Paris, we were relieved, I think
É
l
é
onore not least of all.

I last saw her in 1803, back in Albi, on the occasion of my niece's marriage. I hadn't seen
É
l
é
onore in some years and was shocked by the change in her appearance. She'd grown skinny and pale, her steps slow, her breathing labored. She wasn't yet fifty but looked older. It rather confirmed a theory I had, that while childbirth aged women in their earlier years, women who'd never had children more than made up for it later. It's not an idea I dwell on much these days; a woman who's survived to seventy looks old regardless.

Weddings don't, as a rule, allow for much in the way of meaningful conversation with others. I spent most of that week managing Victoire's nerves by pretending to care about every little setback; in mollifying me, the mother of the bride rose above each problem, a model of calm and grace. But one afternoon,
É
l
é
onore and I found ourselves alone and unoccupied in my sister's drawing room. After dispensing with pointless pleasantries about the bride and groom's prospects for lasting happiness, an awkward silence fell between us, broken even more awkwardly when a maid appeared with a tea tray and said, “I thought you might like some tea, Madame de Lap
é
rouse,” and we both said, “Thank you.”

É
l
é
onore looked up, her blue eyes regarding me with a kind of surprised empathy. I'd never told her that Victoire and I had petitioned to use Jean-Fran
ç
ois's name, much less that we'd already started using it in Albi, where people knew us first as Jean-Fran
ç
ois's sisters and secondarily as our husbands' wives. Antoine said we ought to seek
É
l
é
onore's blessing before submitting the petition, but I hadn't seen the need for that. It was only her name by marriage, and a brief enough marriage at that.

I met her glance with equanimity. She poured out a cup of tea and handed it to me, then said, “Do you think Jean-Fran
ç
ois could still be alive?”

Well, this was unexpected. He'd been gone—eighteen years. The expedition had been declared lost for thirteen. I stared at my sister-in-law, quite unable to formulate a reply.

“Over the years I've met some of the other wives,”
É
l
é
onore went on. “Many of them said they
knew
their husbands were still alive.”

“Hope fed by desperation,” I said.

“A few of them seemed equally sure that their men were dead.”

“The less happily married ones,” I suggested.

El
é
onore laughed at this, a small trilling laugh that reminded me of her cheerfulness when she'd first come to Albi as Jean-Fran
ç
ois's bride, a cheerfulness that seemed immune to our collective disapproval. But now the laugh turned into a dry, papery cough. When it subsided, she said, her voice quieter: “Do you think there can be such bonds between people? Bonds so strong they can communicate over vast distances?”

“It seems a question for a philosopher,” I said.

“I've never had any sense of Jean-Fran
ç
ois's fate,” she said. “I thought that you—” She pressed her lips together before going on. “You may remember that I also lost a brother in the expedition.”

I clinked the spoon against the side of my teacup. I'd forgotten about her brother and was not pleased by the reminder. He'd been arrested for assaulting their sister, then given a choice between going to prison or accompanying Jean-Fran
ç
ois as a volunteer. He should have chosen prison, I thought. He could have spent the ensuing decade happily assaulting aristocrats. “I'm sorry,
É
l
é
onore,” I said, then thought about why she'd mentioned him. “Are you saying you know what befell your brother?”

She looked away, embarrassed. “I don't
know
, of course,” she said. “But I do have an inkling—or I did, early on—that Fr
é
d
é
ric might still be alive. Now, of course, it's been so long…” Her voice trailed off, then she looked directly at me. “You are Jean-Fran
ç
ois's sister and knew him the longest,” she said. “If he were able to convey his fate to anyone, it would be you.”

I shook my head and said nothing. Her unjealous, clear-eyed sadness was more painful to me than an undisciplined episode of tears would have been. I kept my lips shut tight, fearful of revealing the raw anguish I felt welling up inside. As soon as I could manage, I made my excuses and got up.

“Madame Dalmas,”
É
l
é
onore said, also rising. “I would be very happy, and honored, if your family were to adopt the name Lap
é
rouse. It would be an enormous comfort to me, in fact.”

I left the room. My niece was married the next day.
É
l
é
onore returned to Paris, where, I learned later, she successfully petitioned Napoleon for a small pension. I never saw her again.

*   *   *

You were his sister and knew him the longest.

And what was it that I knew? That Jean-Fran
ç
ois was a man maddeningly indifferent to society and his status in it. That he would have found my adoption of his name amusing and my distress over its misspelling incomprehensible. That he would have delighted in the noisiness of children. That the fading and early death of
É
l
é
onore would have broken his heart.

I also knew that he had never communicated his fate to me—or if he had, I had been too insensible to hear him. Every year it grows more certain, not only that he will not return, but that I will go to my grave not knowing what happened to him or to the expedition that bears his name. His name is all I have left of him. An old woman may be forgiven, I think, for hoarding a few things over which she may still exercise some sway.

I turn at the sound of a footstep—not Armand's. It's my husband, hat and cane in hand, standing just outside the side-chapel and regarding me with a look of patient indulgence.
What are you doing here?
I want to cry. But that hardly seems an appropriate utterance in church, even if the church is a private chapel one used to own. Anyway, it's entirely obvious Antoine has come to take me home.

“Monsieur Dalmas de Lap
é
rouse,” I say.

His face opens into an expression I have not seen in a long time, an expression of pleased surprise and gratitude. I'm reminded of him as a younger man and younger husband, and the heat rises to my face as I realize: he's been waiting two days to hear me call him “Monsieur Dalmas de Lap
é
rouse.” It would be so easy—it's so tempting—to quash his pleasure, to say,
How considerate of Jean-Fran
ç
ois to disappear so you could improve your name.
But—well, we're still in church, so I let him help me up, and I wave my farewell to P
è
re Armand as my husband escorts me outside.

Helping me down the steps, Antoine says, “Victor and Fran
ç
ois and I have written to Paris about the name, Jacquette. And we've written to L
é
on to get his help. With his connections, he may be able to see it through better than we can.” L
é
on, Martiane and
É
mile's father, is a naval commissary in Vannes.

When I say nothing, he adds: “We may not live to see it fixed, Jacquette. But our children will. And I predict that within a generation or two, they will drop the ‘Dalmas' and call themselves only ‘Lap
é
rouse.'”

I pause at the bottom of the steps and look up into the face of the man who has been my husband for fifty-one years. “Won't that bother you?”

“Only a little.”

At the carriage, I'm startled by Pierre's impish face grinning at me from the window.

“Oh, what did you bring
him
for?” I ask.