Joseph hesitated. “I think Perry would remain in Charleston if you asked him to.”
“He wouldhateit.” Cathy snatched up the diaper again. “Soon enough, he would hateme. He longs for the wilds, my Peregrine. He longs to see what’s over the next hill. His parents named him well. I knew that when I married him.”
Then whyhadshe?—
“I dreamt of marrying a prince once, or at least a gentleman.” Cathy threw the diaper into another laundry tub. “But a gentleman wants aladyat his side, not a woman like me.Mychoices were a man of Perry’s class or life as a spinster.”
She might have become a nun.
“Did I understand the implications of my choice when I was sixteen?” Cathy continued, half to herself. “Of course I didn’t. But I’ve made my bed, and now I must lie in it.” With a wooden paddle, she fetched a chemise from a third laundry tub. “Or should I say: Papa’s father made my bed for me, when he went after hismulâtresse. I am the granddaughter of a slave, so I must work like one.”
Hélène also rejected a religious life.She often aided the Sisters of Mercy in their labors with orphans and invalids, so their mother urged her to take vows. But Hélène doted on her niece and nephew. She wanted her own children and husband. She was eighteen now and pretty, though she had not lost the plumpness of her girlhood.
Upon their reunion, his family had exclaimed about how Joseph’s voice had changed and how tall he’d grown. He had never seen his mother’s smile last so long. She remained beautiful, butstrands of silver had invaded her golden hair. She was, after all, a grandmother in her forty-fourth year of life. His father was two years her senior. Surely by now his lust had cooled.
Still Joseph wondered, worried, and prayed for his mother. He was grateful when Bishop England suggested Joseph share his own modest residence next to the seminary and cathedral. Joseph was a new man now, or nearly, and it would be inappropriate for him to remain in his childhood bed as if nothing had changed. He was no longer a son or a brother, and he could never truly be an uncle. He was a seminarian, and before the end of the year, he would be a Priest. How much better to share a roof with his spiritual father, the man he wished to resemble.
Henry too had aged almost a decade, so he welcomed Joseph’s help in the garden. Even in early January, there was a great deal to do on a mild day. While Henry spread hay over the daffodil bulbs, Joseph harvested spinach from the cold frame, since the black man’s knees bothered him. Apparently Joseph’s garden gloves, like the rest of his few possessions, were still making their way across the Atlantic. Henry’s gloves did not fit Joseph, but slicing through spinach stalks was a simple enough task.
His father emerged from the house and watched Joseph for a time. Finally his father asked: “Do you like gardening because it keeps you perpetually on your knees?”
Joseph leaned back down into the frame so he wouldn’t glare at his father and decided not to dignify that with a direct response. “There’s a long and proud tradition of botanist Priests and Friars. Men of the cloth have whole genera named after them:Camelliafor the Jesuit missionary Georg Joseph Kamel andPlumeriafor the Franciscan Charles Plumier.” Joseph set another handful of leaves in his basket, then stood to take the spinach to Agathe. “Did you know ‘seminary’ is Latin for ‘seed plot’?”
“Yes. It comes from the same root as ‘semen.’ Will you really be satisfied if the only things you ever plant are flowers and vegetables?”
Agathe disappeared into the kitchen. Joseph was glad she didn’t speak much English. “There is no need to be vulgar.”
“Lifeis vulgar, Joseph—and sublime.”
That gardenia bush was becoming unwieldy, Joseph decided; it needed pruning. He could make a start, at least, with his knife. Much as he wanted to, Joseph shouldn’t walk away to find the shears while his father was still arguing. But Joseph didn’t have to look at him.
“God gave us bodies as well as souls, Joseph. To reject one of them is toinsultHim, not?—”
“God gave us bodies, but our sin corrupted them; it divided our natures. Before the Fall—” Joseph looked quickly from the gardenia to Henry, who was rubbing linseed oil into tool handles. Then he remembered that the black man was also a husband, and that nothing he could say would shock Henry. Joseph returned his attention to pruning. “Before the Fall, our souls had mastery over our bodies. Now ‘the law of our members fights with the law of our mind’; they ‘rise up against the soul’s decision in disorderly and ugly movement… Beware, lest that bestial movement?—’”
“I don’t want to hear another word from Saint Augustine! The man was a hypocrite and an idiot!” His father loomed over him. “Your body is not ‘ugly’ or ‘bestial,’ Joseph! You—and your member—are a miracle and a masterpiece!” Joseph’s father finally paused in order to glance over at the black man. “You’ll have to pardon us, Henry—I do not mean to imply that you are any less miraculous. Butyouare not willfully throwing your life away!” Joseph felt his father’s eyes again. “At twenty-two years old!”
If his father had been a loving husband, Joseph might have countered:You also made a life-long commitment at twenty-two.
“This order of Subdeacon that happens next month—that’s your Rubicon, isn’t it? That’s when you make some sort of irreversible promise?”
Joseph nodded, kneeling to remove the lower branches of the gardenia. “I will be ‘perpetually bound to the service of God’.”
“And to celibacy.”
“‘Henceforth you must be chaste,’ yes.”
His father sighed heavily and turned away for a minute while Joseph worked. Unfortunately, he soon turned back. “There is another doctor my own age who lives a street away. His name is Latour—a fine man and a fine physician. But when the families in this neighborhood need a doctor, they call on me first. Do you know why? Because Dr. Latour is a bachelor. He doesn’t know what it’s like to watch his own wife and children suffering. My patients trust my judgments because they know I am also a husband and father.”
Remember what he did to Mama in order to become a father.Joseph would never allowhishands to torment a woman.
“I know all my patients’ names and I care about what happens tothem, not their diseases. I don’t just spout words I’ve memorized from a book.”
Heis the hypocrite. He is a beast; you are a beast; and your only hope?—
Joseph saw the bright well of blood before he even felt the pain, before he realized what he’d done. He’d been distracted; the knife had slipped past the wood of the gardenia and sliced into the heel of his hand. He dropped the blade, and panic clamped down on his chest. He struggled to stand, as if he could escape from his own flesh, but the world was going bright and black at once—he only collapsed to his knees again.
“Henry! Get my bag!” his father yelled somewhere far away. “Quick as you can!”
