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Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.
– Albert Camus
She’d known for three and a half years but said nothing. Why? They were such simple words, so much more straightforward than all the other things she had said in a variety of languages this month. It was such a simple thing too, nothing like the complexity the other half of the story had laid bare before her.
And yet that complexity had been comforting, seeing the different places one parent’s family was a mix of. The report she’d been given had been colorful and varied, different parts of Africa, the Middle East, even the Indian subcontinent. She had looked at the names and thought of what this or that ancestor might have looked like, had they left their home by choice, had they missed it? The plane hasn’t even taken off and already she misses her home.
But was it her home? She had bought the tickets, arranged the car service, all while a voice in her mind nagged that something wasn’t right. Something wasn’t there.
Something was missing, and she couldn’t accept that anymore.
Where was home? Maybe, once, she knew.
The story had been retold at least a half dozen times before, but it still always made her heart race a little to hear, seeing them all in her mind around the kitchen table. Marianne told the story best, how she’d sat there with her two fathers and three brothers, and how Matthew had opened his results first: Francis Bonnefoy. It had seemed over at that, the twins knew who their biological father was, but Alfred had insisted he needed to see it written down to truly believe, and in the end that was the right call because his results were different: his biological father wasn’t Francis but Arthur.
They tended to be drunk enough by this point in whatever dinner or gathering the story was being told in that everyone struggled to pronounced the… situation, if that was what it could be called: heteropaternal superfecundation, admittedly difficult for most even while sober. Pierre would take over explaining, about how it took a few days to become pregnant, and sometimes females conceived twice in the same small window, and that meant there was an off chance that two different males might end up fathering children from the same pregnancy. Then the group would laugh about the ludicrousness of it all and how rare it must be, and how of course that would happen to Francis and Arthur, their life was just one giant irony after another, and how could they have shared a mistress anyway?
Still, she liked when she’d stop just before entering a room, and there would be Alfred asking his brother if he thought their mother had liked carrots, or Matthew asking one of his fathers to tell him again about the trip from New Amsterdam upstate, the house they’d built and lived in and buried the woman they loved beside.
She didn’t have such stories. She didn’t have fathers, brothers, a sister, a biological mother she knew the name of and the burial place of. She had a name and a country and a series of questions.
Angélique Victoire Picault.
Seychelles.
Why? Why? Why?
If Camille suspected, she said nothing. Visits would be quiet, sitting on someone’s balcony, drinking someone’s wine, gossiping someone’s news. It passed the time, and they had time.
If Camille suspected, it was because of the first trip, two months after she got the report. She hadn’t expected Francis and Arthur to show up, stopping on their trip to a meeting in Rome. Camille had kissed her brother and brother-in-law, and fussed over them, and Angélique had stayed in the kitchen, blushing profusely and berating herself for ever asking for the test. Life had been simpler before the test! But now she knew and she couldn’t go back, couldn’t forget, couldn’t unknow what had finally been given to her.
Not that she had been sure then what it was, nor was she sure now.
But if Camille suspected, it had been because of how she found Angélique in the kitchen, sputtering, disoriented, clearly hiding something. But Camille had said nothing, because she was Camille de Bonnefoy, and thus she was good at keeping secrets.
The plane lands. Customs is smooth enough. The car makes good speed at this time of night. She wonders where they are.
It has been decades since she’s been here, at this building, ascending these front steps, knocking at this door. Yet it’s as if little has changed when it’s opened, a man’s head looking over his shoulder, laughing at something as others make a ruckus further inside. He turns finally and smiles even wider.
“Angélique!” Francis kisses her cheeks, ushering her inside, as if it was his house — which, now, she supposes it is. But he’s always acted as if what was Arthur’s was his; Pierre liked to say it was part of his father’s charm.
“What a lovely surprise,” a calmer voice says from the sitting room, and she finds Arthur rising to greet her, kissing just one of her cheeks. Past him are Alfred, and Matthew, and Pierre and Marianne.
Their family was having alone time, and she was interrupting.
Right?
They’d run the test a second time and confirmed the results. The man had asked if she needed them explained to her. She’d snapped, and cursed under her breath, and stormed away.
They all move with ease, because they were used to this. They joke about their partners, their children, someone they knew. There’s inside jokes and knowing looks and single words, uttered aloud, that cause the house to still before bursting with laughter.
Once she laughed too. Once she was free. But now she is a prisoner of her own mind, unsure if this was a hearing for her release or a harsher sentencing.
Her phone buzzes. “I believe in you,” it reads. So she’d understood what Angélique had done such a poor job saying, the night she’d broken down and bought the tickets. What a perceptive aunt.
“Someone texting you?” Francis asks with interest as he stands at the counter, flipping a page in his recipe book. Arthur moves between the fridge and counter, pulling things out for his husband. Alfred and Pierre are slumped in chairs on one side of the table, smugly watching their dinner be made. Matthew and Marianne are still in the other room.
“Camille,” she answers truthfully. If she practices, maybe it would be easier to say.
“Ah!” and Francis touches his heart dramatically, causing Arthur to roll his eyes as he places something before the man, a hand tenderly at his hip to keep him still. “My sister! How I miss her!”
“It’s been three days,” Arthur says grumpily, wrapping his arms around his husband to hold him from behind, resting a chin on his shoulder.
“Remember when she lived with us?” the Frenchman says longingly, and Angélique is mesmerized by the sight of them.
“That was dope,” Alfred agrees, playing with something in his hand. “Y’all should have a baby again.”
“I think it’s Camille’s turn,” Pierre says, one eyebrow raised. He looked so much like Francis and yet, if you knew the father, you saw the differences in the son. “Four kids is quite enough for those two.”
“I want a sister!” Marianne yells from the next room, feet approaching as she and Matthew appear. The Canadian carefully moves around Angélique, smiling at her with an expression that said he didn’t understand why she was here but would enjoy waiting. “No longer will I be the baby of the family!”
“Yes you will,” her brothers say in unison.
Angélique is sure she’s about to pass out.
It had been awkward but she couldn’t take it, standing suddenly at the dinner table, her gaze fixed down, asking to speak with them in private. Arthur had led the way to his study, Francis behind her scolding his children one last time to behave as if they didn’t have children of their own, grandchildren he fawned over and showed photos of to anyone who made the mistake of staying near him long enough.
Arthur stands behind his chair, holding its back. Francis loiters more to the side of the desk, near his husband but not beside him. Perhaps that described their relationship.
And Angélique hestitates before the desk in the darkening room, blushing profusely as she stares at her feet once more. Every language she speaks is gone, until he says something, in soft French, and she shatters.
“Angélique, ma petite–”
“T’esmonpère.”
No one breathes.
Then Arthur says, “Pardon?” and it’s not clear what language he’s speaking but it doesn’t matter: she’s not here to see him.
They’re alone now, sitting on the back porch. Inside they can hear men shouting at each other.
Francis hasn’t said a word.
She tries to look forward, she does, but her eyes keep drifting down, and then to the left, where he sits beside her a little hunched over, eyebrows drawn together as he studies his hand, spinning his gold wedding ring with the letters “AK” tattooed beneath it. His right hand, on the part that moves below his thumb, there’s a tattoo of a cross; three of its ends have little fleur-de-lis.
“It’s new,” Francis finally says, catching her watching his hand. His other thumb runs over the ink. “A cross for my faith and my husband, four ends for my children, three boys and my daughter.”
“That’s beautiful,” Angélique forces, and she finds eyes staring at her — lost, searching, hopeless, confused, pained.
“How long have you known?”
“A little over three years.” His eyes fall closed but his face does not scrunch up. He swallows deeply. “How long have you known?”
“I didn’t.”
Silence.
“Blood…–” He sighs, then begins again. “Biology isn’t what makes a parent.” His gaze holds her still. “Blood isn’t what makes a family.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Angélique says and there it is, in the open, the thing she couldn’t get passed: that once she had had a mother was nothing new, but that once she could have had a father, and that he was still alive, and that he was so often so near, was.
Did he not love her, as he loved his other daughter?
Did she want her father to love her?
Did she want her father… to be her father?
“Had I known,” he begins, lamely, his voice trailing off. Shouts pass the door behind them. “When Arthur and I told Alfred and Mathieu, I knew the name of their mother. I knew her background, and her tastes, and her smile, as if it hadn’t been centuries. I could answer their questions, I could recall the day they were born, the day she died. When we told them, it was because we had raised them, for more than a century, and they remembered parents even if they didn’t remember us, and we didn’t want to parent our children unless they wanted their parents.”
“How could you?” Angélique challenges, not caring that they were essentially having different conversations.
“When I had to leave my children, I was a mess. My friends in the government put me on a ship, and sailed me far away from Europe and North America, to places where I wouldn’t see the faces of my babies, but they haunted my dreams. Your children don’t leave you, and I have learned that being a parent — being their father — meant I had to do what they needed me to do, not what I wanted.”
Angélique is about to interrupt with another accusation when he stops her cold with the words,
“Your mother understood.”
“… what?”
Francis looks at her, and smiles weakly. “She spoke Dutch. I do not know where she was from, but she had traveled so many more miles than most women at the time could dream of. And I spoke Dutch, which was advantageous as we were, at the time, attempting to fuck the Dutch out of a good trade route and their spice money. I do not know, either, why she was there, but she was, and she looked at me and saw my sadness, and I looked at her and saw her potential, and it was comforting.” Francis sighs, dropping his head. “I had not been held by one who loved me in many years, and I am selfish when it comes to such affection.”
“You’re sure?” and it sounds almost sarcastic, almost as if there is a challenge for Francis to prove himself. He nods.
“She was the only one. It was just three months, and then I was to sail for somewhere else, and she said that that was to be expected and was quite right and perhaps I would find another who could also love me, could also take away my pain and fill the hole in my heart. I remember so much, now.” He looks at his hands, palms up and open. “Funny, how my memory works. I had forgotten; or, better put, I had locked such memories away.”
“What was her name?” Angélique demands and the man’s head pops up, curious as he looks at her, blinking once before admitting,
“I no longer know.”
She hates him.
“I’m not a good father,” Francis says, and there’s no hint of sarcasm, no demand for pity: it is simply a fact. “Neither was my father, but I believe I am better than him.” He looks at nothing, then nods. “I know I am better than him, because he was not worthy of the title and I… I try. I gave up Alfred and Mathieu because I believed it was for the best, and perhaps it was the best of all those terrible scenarios, but we are still healing and I take responsibility for that. I have hurt Pierre in ways my father hurt me, by trying to not be my father, and for so long he hated me but I had learned, by then, how to be stronger for my son, so we work on it, and heal together, and share the responsibility for what we did and did not do.” He sighs, and closes his eyes. “Marianne looks at me sometimes and I can see in her eyes the fear that I will leave her again; that is my doing, and I take responsibility for that, and I continue to learn how to be a father to my daughter.”
“She’s not your–”
“Yes she is!” and his head whips around and his voice is hard and there is outrage in the lines of his face. “Who nursed her in the night? Who stayed with her when she was sick? Who checked her room for monsters? Who ran to her when she was injured? She is my daughter, and I am her father.”
“Not by blood,” Angélique challenges.
“Aren’t you listening? Neither Alfred nor Marianne are biologically my children, but that is not what makes a family. That is not what makes me a father.”
The Seychelloise doesn’t understand.
“Why are you here, Angélique?” Francis whispers into the night.
“I… don’t know.”
There’s laughter from the kitchen as she approaches the top of the stairs. She wants to go outside, away, call Camille, be anywhere else–
Arthur, at the foot of the stairs, gestures for her to follow him.
His study is still dark, even in the morning light. “You never were one for an early breakfast,” the man comments. He knows her too well. Why couldn’t he be her father?
“I hate him.”
The Englishman snorts and shakes his head. “No you don’t, though that is a common enough reaction to the man.”
“I do, I hate him and never want to see him again.”
“Fine,” and Arthur sits in his chair behind his desk, arms comfortably lounging on the sides. “Fine, leave, Camille will probably have you over so your long flight wasn’t a complete waist. Lili would also be happy to have company, sweet dear, Emma has been terribly busy lately. I’d suggest Erzsébet but she’s been living an adventurous life as of late and it’s best not to get involved in–”
“That’s not what you’re suppose to say,” Angélique interrupts and the man who watched her grow purses his lips in annoyance.
“Then tell me, O Wise One, what is?” His sarcasm takes her aback. “I’m married to Francis and have four children,” he says by way of explanation, “I’ve developed some additional coping mechanisms.
“You’ve been away too long: things have changed.”
“I haven’t.”
“Well maybe that’s the problem.”
“I don’t like you.”
“I don’t particularly care,” Arthur states plain as day. “If I did, I would have lost my mind centuries ago. You think you were ever as cruel to me as my brothers? As my other charges? As my eldest son? Pfft.” He smacks his lips together. “We did what we had to, you and I, and we’ve always accepted that, but to hate Francis means there’s a possibility of loving him — believe me, I’m the expert. That man has cut me to the core and yet I cannot imagine my life without him.”
“I can,” and Angélique turns her back on him, making for the door.
“If you want a father,” and his voice makes her pause, but he doesn’t finish the statement.
She doesn’t think he knows how.
The park is lovely, and the bench is partially shaded, and she sits staring at nothing even as he sits beside her.
“Why are you here?” she demands, and Francis shrugs.
“Why are you here? Why are any of us?” He looks around, at people jogging, laying in the sun, talking on phones. “I like London, now. It… is home,” he settles on and she realizes he’s been speaking English but there is almost no French accent. He smiles. “I am married to an Englishman with four English-speaking children.”
“Don’t they speak French?”
“Speak may be too generous for one of them, and no I don’t mean Alfred, his French — when he wants to — is flawless. I know, I taught him myself.” He smirks to himself in pride. “Really pissed off Arthur with that.”
Angélique looks straight ahead, at a man pushing a pram, and pulls her legs up to her chest. “I wish Arthur was my father.”
“If you mean biologically, you would have monstrous eyebrows and, besides, green eyes wouldn’t suit the tone of your skin quite so nicely.”
“What other way is there to mean the word?”
He looks at her with an expression of boredom and resignation, stating unexpectedly in French, “You must be willing to be a daughter.”
“What‽”
“After you left, Arthur was annoyed that he couldn’t find the words to finish what he began saying to you: if you want a father. The problem was, in my opinion, his choice of language.
“If you want a father, you must be willing to be a daughter.”
“And what does that mean?”
The man beside her looks around, then shrugs, then stands. He turns to face her, forcing her head up and back. “It means if you want to find your way home, you must first love people: when you let them in, when you are vulnerable and weak before them, they become your home. They become your family.
“The choice is yours,” and he walks away, hands in his pocket, a small smile on his face.
She writes him a letter — an honest to God letter, on paper, with a pen — from his sister’s desk.
I don’t know how to be a daughter, but I could be willing to try.
He writes back a few weeks later, and knows to post his note to her address in her capital.
I don’t know how to be a father, but I still try.