“You look perfect,” Aaron told her.
“Looks are one thing.” Elise grimaced. “I’m far from perfect.” She turned to me, perhaps thinking she had found a sister of sorts, as we were nearly the same age. “Please. I would sell my soul for some soap and water.”
Elise and I walked together as Aaron and my mother trailed behind. My mother was tender toward him in a way that I found frustrating. I heard her ask why he hadn’t written more regularly, and then she laughed as he teased, insisting that his handwriting had always been dreadful. Besides, he said in a low voice, he had turned his attentions to finding a wife who would please her, and it was Elise’s wealthy family he worked for now. Just then a lizard ran across our path. It was a small green iguana, but Elise panicked at the sight of it, stumbling and grabbing on to my arm.
“It’s only a baby,” I told her. “It couldn’t hurt you, but you could step on it easily.”
I gave Aaron’s wife a day, perhaps two, before she was demanding to go home to Paris. I had seen such women from Europe, dressed in their exquisite clothes, their manners polished, organza ribbons in their hair. Soon enough they would be happy to give up their gorgeous clothes for lighter muslin shifts; their perfect upswept hair would be in tangles. They’d stand on the wharves looking out over the cruel ocean that had brought them here, wishing themselves home once more.
“Whatever that creature is, it’s vile.” Elise was young, and had no experience other than her life in France. She freely admitted she was spoiled, from a wealthy family that gave in to her every desire. I gazed over at Aaron, wondering if that had been the attraction. Elise was already put off by our island; she wondered aloud if there might be lions in the forests here.
I laughed. “No. This isn’t Africa. The most you will see is a dog. Or a donkey. Perhaps a mongoose.”
“What’s that?” she wanted to know.
“A creature with a taste for parrots and bats. They don’t bother people.”
Elise eyed the hills with suspicion, the tumbling vines, the purple flowers, the clusters of tamarind with their seedpods hanging down like bats wrapped inside their leathery wings. “There must be snakes,” she declared of the wild land beyond town. “I dread them,” she confided.
There were snakes, it was true, as well as bats and rats, but I glossed over that. I certainly said nothing of the local tales of werewolves. “We have nothing that will harm you.”
The heat was weighing down on us as we continued toward home. Soon enough Elise began to falter. She squinted in the harsh light and announced that she had a headache. Before I could offer my assistance, she collapsed on the road.
Aaron ran to her, motioning to me crudely. “Couldn’t you help her?” he snapped, as though blaming me for his wife’s delicate nature.
“Help her what? Walk? I assumed she could do that by herself.”
He glared at me for mocking his wife while he lifted her, then clasped her in his arms. He had to carry her the rest of the way. “I’m so sorry, dear husband,” I heard her whisper to him. She hid her face against his coat, and he did his best to cheer her. He called her his darling and his delight and vowed she was as light as a feather. But I could tell from his expression, he wasn’t pleased. I could not believe he had chosen this woman, so very different from Jestine.
I walked beside my mother now, our pace evenly matched. I realized that as delighted as she was with Aaron’s homecoming, his wife brought her no joy. “He brought home a feather,” my mother said contemptuously. “He would have done better with a woman.”
“Well, she’s a feather weighted down with money. He might have had someone with more strength, but you didn’t care for her,” I ventured to say.
“That was impossible and you know it. I don’t decide such things.”
“Don’t you?”
“If you think I make the rules or that I have any choice but to abide by them, you’re more of a fool than I’d ever imagined. Maybe when your own children disobey you and break your heart, we can discuss such matters. Until then, I don’t care for your opinions or advice. I did what I did to save him.”
Once home, Aaron carried his Elise into the washroom, then left her to Rosalie and me. “This time make sure she doesn’t fall,” he said.
“Does she have someone to bathe her at home?” I asked.
“What is that your business?” Aaron said. “What she wants, she gets. That’s the way it is when you can afford to do as you please, Rachel.”