Disaster Was My God (40 page)

“
Left
—Left Harar.”

Now Isabelle was really confused. “But, Mother, you said you had awful news.”

“Well,” hemmed the old woman, now caught, “I meant that—that this means it’s bad. Here, read it. From Monsieur Bardey. Arthur’s employer. Oh dear,
surely
you remember his name. Here—”

Isabelle folded the telegram, then stood there, nervously smoothing the fold, trying to guess the true source of her mother’s distress. Because to Isabelle, as with so many things, this seemed some kind of diabolical test. “Well,” she ventured at last, “Monsieur Bardey says Arthur is stable. That’s promising, don’t you think?”

The mother glared.

“What, so your brother simply
arrives
here expecting to be taken care of?” Mme. Rimbaud teased her handkerchief from her sleeve, loudly blew her nose, then stuffed it back, one white puff peeping out, like the head of a doll. “I have,” she sighed, “I have a
farm
to run and animals that require my attention. I have my appointments and church and tenants and bills to pay
—duties
, do you hear me? I cannot, and I will not, be lying about, waiting for your brother to waltz in here like some kind of hero.”

Coldly, Isabelle drew the shawl around her. “Well, Maman, whatever else, he will not be
waltzing.
”

“None of your cheek, young lady!”—by now the young lady was well on her way to middle age—“I
need
and I
deserve
from your brother a
when.
”

So saying, Mme. Rimbaud veered around, wavered momentarily, as if she’d lost her place, then bore through the back door, down the lichen-veined stone steps, into the downy-bottomed apple blossoms tossing in the wind. It was a small apple orchard, ringed with cherry, peach, and pear. White-blooming, sun-glowing, mad with bees, it was a landscape in which the old woman now stood off angle, like a misplaced
chess piece, black dress, black cuffs, black shoes.
Of course
, she thought to herself, of course he would return in the spring, in
her
time, when everything was bawling, bubbling, popping, and germinating. Spring, time to erupt. Time to open the hive with her swarms of moneymaking schemes! And Arthur thought
he
was clever, selling his guns to the
noirs
!

Hence Mme. Rimbaud’s busy scheme to bleed the railroad for a right-of-way. Hence fifteen, then twenty more cows—then twenty-five. Hence nine, then thirteen apartments, dumps with rents to be collected and people to be evicted, a terrible business, to be sure—but lucrative. Then her neighbor, M. Viderequin, upon whose property she had long had an eye, he passed away and not two days after the funeral the old hawk had snapped up the place—fifteen hectares, meaning yet more beasts and equipment to procure, and three more dolts to supervise. And the old wife to be moved into one of the hovels.
Did it never end?

It was her time. Now that she was old, with almost no need of sleep or even of food, Madame Rimbaud’s ambition and energy were at their zenith, and the irony was, never had she had less need of money, which she would stuff in black-smoked, tallow-sealed jars—paper currency, gold coins, and deeds, even small diamonds, buried in the thick of night as tenderly as her own offspring.

You’ve done it, old girl! she would think, gloating as she drove her black buggy through the pillow-fluffer neighborhoods on the surpassing heights of rue La Tour. House cats! Let them sneer from their high brick manses, with their arrogant eaves and iron gates—parasites. And then with a shiver, Mme. Rimbaud would conjure that dangerous word
rich
, thinking how they would die if they knew how much
she
, a peasant, had salted away. Heh.

For as she drifted through the orchard, blowing and foaming, absurd or not, it was Mme. Rimbaud’s great fear that Arthur, the copycat, having suckered the
noirs
with his guns—well, that through some cruel trick of fate, he might arrive home wealthier than she was.
Idée inconcevable!

Oh, don’t be foolish, she told herself, he can’t be
that
rich. But why,
then, was she plucking her fingers as if she’d just pulled them from a hot stove? Look to the east. Trees on fire. Look to the west. Locusts massing. South—ugly storms. North—fright and confusion.

Then she heard them, men’s voices and a cow bawling. Trouble by the barn.

Feelers twitching, she walked around the side of the house.
Mon Dieu
, it was Paul, Pierre, and Jean, Sunday drunk and all hard at work—stud work, just the sport for three womenless meatheads with nowhere to go. For there, tied to a post, Mme. Rimbaud saw a large black-spotted cow. And, opposite, there stood the thick-necked M. Jacques, the bull, his long, thick spigot bounding at the ready.

“It is
Sunday
!” she cried, pulling up her skirt as she gamboled down the steps. “What do you think you are doing?”

Deaf to her entreaties, Paul and Pierre were waving their hands, trying to quell the throbbing, bobbing Jacques. As for the third, Jean, brave soul, he was on his knees greasing him up.
It
up, for blood-bowed and grievously nobbed on the end, it was fully the length and girth of a pump handle. Then, as if this weren’t bad enough, squinting, Mme. Rimbaud descried—by a white spot the size of a small coin—that they had the
wrong
lady.
Alors
, it was not Claudette but her twin sister, Marie. No! Eighteen months to calve and milk, then four months off to “freshen up”—this was the rule. Alas, no bovine holiday for Marie.

“Idiots, you’ve got the wrong cow!” cried the proprietress of Roche, now stoutly marching down the hill, blowing her red nose. “Are you all blind? You have
Marie
, not Claudette!
Marie!
”

Too late. With a bound, the brute was upon her, bucking and clambering up, even as Jean, the greaser, bent it, then, with a furious wiggle, angled it in. Behold the stupendous Lord Jacques, stamping on his great hams, his great horned head craning over the hapless Marie.

“Did you not hear me?” cried Mme. Rimbaud, lifting her dress over the turd-thick mud. “
Imbéciles!
That’s Marie, Marie, Mar-IE!”

“Oh, no, no, Madame,” insisted Paul, mustache chuffing, “do you not see the little spot?
There
, do you see?”

“
That
is not the spot. It is not that large.”

“Like a coin,” said Pierre, now squinting. “It is the size of a louis.”

“Good Madame,” intervened the suave Jean, the greaser. “As Madame can surely see,” he sniggered, “the matter is moot.
Monsieur Jacques est préoccupé.
”

“
Odious
man,” said she, “what would you know of being occupied? Now out—out of my way.” She seized the muck rake, then flipped it handle end, like a truncheon.

“Madame, please!” cried the men, trying to stop her, even as M. Jacques poured on the coal,
whop, whop, whop
.

But, crouching low, Roche’s proprietress gave Lord J. the bum handle. Bull’s-eye. M. Jacques bucked. He bellowed and stamped, but so vast was his tumescence, and so compliant was Marie, that it was quite hopeless. Mme. Rimbaud cast down the rake.

“Drunken louts!”

Oh, her swallowing
children
. Oh, her vanished
son
. This crushing
place
. And, like a ton of turgid, unyielding beef, it all fell on her. Always her.

T
hat night Isabelle had a mortifying epiphany. It happened, as so many things happened, at supper, which tonight, cook being off, was a
cacasse à cul nu
—literally, nude ass casserole, an Ardennes specialty. Earth-tasting potatoes, quartered, shallots, lard, butter, a bit of hand-sifted flour, and a good fist of thyme, bay leaves, parsley—all this was set to simmer. And after precisely an hour, when the old woman raised the heavy iron lid, face and nostrils enveloped in a bloom of fragrant steam—behold, God’s bounty. Pleasure itself, as if she were inhaling a cloud. But then as the two women were eating, the mother put her foot in it.

“Well, he has no head for business,” she was saying. Meaning Arthur, of course. “Same thing when he was a writer. And of course, he failed at that, too.”

Writer?
Isabelle stopped cold. Was the old woman losing her marbles?

“Mother,” she said carefully, “what do you mean Arthur was a writer? Are you referring to old school exercises or something?”

“Daughter.” The mother rolled her eyes, delighted. “Good grief, where have you been for the past thirty years? Come now, you know Arthur is—was—a writer. Poet, whatever. I
know
you know this.”

Incredible. Isabelle’s eyes filled with tears. Lied to again by the entire universe.

“Know
what
, Mother? What do I know? Not one thing, and you never told me—ever! Or Vitalie. You or Arthur. So why, Mother, why did you never tell me he was a writer? To torture me? Ridicule me? Was that the idea?”

“Well,” the mother evaded. “He was not a writer—or
writer
-writer. He was a poet.”

“Stop it! As if this makes any difference. You lied! A sin of omission.”

“Dear me,” said the mother, confronted by this gush of blame, which she could only treat as a joke, “Lied how? Anyone in Charleville could have told you your brother was a writer. Poet, self-styled. Drivel, of course, but he wrote—”

“What?” broke in Isabelle, now shaking. “Then you
read
it? And never showed me?”

“Read it?” Inwardly, the mother couldn’t help but smile, thrown a bone so juicy. “Good heavens, why on earth would I? Whatever he wrote, he only tore it up, or gave it away, or ran away. And then, being Arthur, after all the theatrics and getting shot—you do remember
that
, I hope—well, naturally he gave it all up. Failed before he could be called a failure. Remember that lost period? When he was robbed and beaten in Germany? Then nearly died in that blizzard in the Alps?”

“Mother,” she said, fanning her nose as a sneeze. “None of your insulting stupid digs and distractions. Why on earth did you never tell me?
Me
, your own daughter—his own sister! It had to be intentional. Had to be. It feels completely malicious.”

“Why?” the mother spat back. “Ask yourself why. Why are you not
married? Why at your age are you still sitting here at this table why-why-whying me. Wahh, wahh, why. Another baby.”

Naturally, this mauling had its intended effect. By then, Isabelle was wiping away embarrassed tears with the heel of her palm. In which case the old woman could be magnanimous.

“But you know what,” said the mother, as if she’d just now found a sweet in her dress pocket, “now that I think about it, some man even told me—oh, when was that? Two months ago? Four? Well, apparently in Paris, some fancy-pants place published some of your brother’s old tear buckets. And to some idiot praise, too. Well,” she shrugged, “so what. What’s the difference? Arthur never mentioned it.”

Isabelle slapped the table.

“Good heavens, Mother, here your son is
praised
, and not only are you
not
proud, but you won’t even tell me. Why? I could have been
happy
for my brother. That’s right, happy for probably the one person I ever
wanted
to, or could, understand.”

“Understand him!” said the old woman, hunkering down. “Come to your senses, daughter. In all his years away, did he ever send you one line? One franc? Or—perish the thought—an interesting gift from some faraway place? Listen to me.” The old woman paused, visibly upset, for she was not a cruel woman, she thought. Truth was cruel. “Daughter, this is hard to say, but face the facts. Through no fault of yours, your brother has no real interest in you. Anybody, really.”

“And how could he?” Isabelle sat there, wiping her eyes, shaking her head. “It was you, Mother, you who made him a foreigner in his own home. You barely allowed him to talk to us. Honestly, girls of nine and ten—his own sisters. Quarantined.”

“Right!” The old woman flung down her napkin. “That’s right! Boys no more belong around girls than snakes do in henhouses. You wait until you”—she stopped herself—“well,
if
ever you had children—”

Even she knew she’d gone too far. Breaking off, she patted her daughter’s arm, signifying, to her, a hug. A peace offering. But Isabelle was already off,
t-tt-tromp-omp
, down the hall to her room.

46
New Vocation

Honestly, what parent ever
tries
to be a bad parent? For the sad fact is, all parents, even the worst, most hopeless, are honestly trying to do their best.

Fortunately, for the old woman, when all else failed, there was always prayer. And so she was squashed in her “stall,” as she thought of it, the stall in the corner between her bed and the wall, where, kneading her forehead and working her lips, she knelt on a rug, on her mushy old knees. Then, when her old knees gave out, she crumpled, with some shame, on her now bony bottom.
Can I have no peace, Lord? I am not a bad mother
.