“There are ways around this,” my mother said.
“So you can keep him here? And baby him while you treat him like a son?”
“Why not? He is a son to me.”
“And what will his child be to you?” my father asked.
“What is yours to you?” my mother said coldly.
This was dangerous territory, I thought, even though I wasn’t certain what my mother’s meaning was.
“Am I not married to you still?” my father said, which ended the conversation.
THAT EVENING AT DINNER my father revealed that Aaron was being sent to France. My mother looked like she’d been crying, and my cousin did not look pleased by the announcement. All at once I viewed him differently. There was a hidden vulnerability inside him that was in direct opposition to the careless man he appeared to be. I suppose he’d thought he would be my father’s heir, and now it was clear that honor had gone to my new husband, in the manner of the law if the oldest child was a girl, for women had no rights to property. It was a slap to Aaron, a reminder that he was not a true son, though my mother treated him as such. Yet he was not to be entirely forsaken. We had distant cousins in France, and many business connections, and Paris could not get enough of the island’s rum. Aaron would be introduced to all of our relations and their friends. I felt a bitterness rise inside me. I was the one who wanted to go to Paris. Adelle always said if a person doesn’t speak her mind she will carry her resentment until it burns her, as I was burning now.
“Perhaps we should be the ones sent to France,” I said to my husband.
There was an immediate hush of the dinner table chatter. My father and husband both looked at me as if I was a bee with a stinger who had settled on our table without invitation.
“That wouldn’t be possible,” Isaac said to me. He looked over at my father, embarrassed by my outburst.
“And why not?” I had already convinced myself, now all I had to do was convince the men of my family. “The children would be in a good school and would get to know our family. It would be an adventure for them. And we could take Rosalie.”
My husband shook his head. “Our life is here.”
Still I didn’t give up. “You came from Paris, it would be a homecoming.”
My father’s gaze was blistering. He didn’t like to be disrespected, and this was the first time I had opposed his wishes. “You’ve said enough,” he told me. “Your husband is an excellent partner and the business here is what matters most.”
“A business you clearly don’t need me for.” Aaron threw his napkin on the table and stormed out.
“Let him go,” my father told my mother when she began to rise from her chair. She sank back down, near tears. “This day was bound to come,” my father told her. “You have done more than enough for that boy. We will follow the law. The business will belong to Monsieur Petit. Not to Aaron.”
I couldn’t keep quiet. “Even if I want to leave and he doesn’t? If the business is to be my husband’s, do I not also have a say?”
“My apologies for her behavior,” my husband said to my father, as if I were a child he had to make excuses for. He turned to me displeased. “Say no more.” He looked his age on this night, and I could see he thought me nothing more than an ill-mannered girl, too young and foolish to know enough to hold my tongue.
I thought of what Jestine had said, that we had inherited our troubles. Certainly I had inherited mine. This marriage, this man, this house, this family.
“I’ll find my own way home,” I told Isaac. “I’ll go with Rosalie.”
I left the table and followed Aaron outside. Once, he had been my baby cousin, a fondling in desperate need. Now he was a handsome man who stood alone, tossing some crumbs to the old lizard that had been his pet when he was a boy. He had only just turned twenty. He was a favorite with many of the young women in our congregation, but he’d never looked at anyone other than Jestine.
“I should be the one going to France,” I told him.
“I wish it could be so. I’d be happy to stay here.”
“Then let me go!” I said impulsively.
“I have no power, Rachel. Not even over my own life. At least you’ll get what you want. Someday your husband will take you there.”
“I plan to go with Jestine,” I told him coldly.
Aaron laughed at what a fool I was. “You think you’re so smart, but you don’t understand anything. You’re never going there with her. Just as I would never be allowed to marry her. Don’t you understand she’s the reason I’m being sent away?”