Ennui de Famille - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Paws
Last updated: 01/26/2007 02:19:59 AM

Chapter 1

The weather suited his mood.

He had been numb since Xavier had given him the message. To be honest, he didn’t know what to make of it. Should he feel bad? Sad? Relieved? He didn’t really know. All that he could pick out of his emotions right now is that he was uncomfortable as hell with the situation. His life had been too fraught with change lately…he’d gotten soft. Before he’d joined the school he could roll with the punches, but since he had that sense of normalcy in his life, he had found it harder to adjust back to the ‘take each day as it comes’ routine.

The time that his Maman had asked to meet him here had long come and gone. He wondered how long he should stand here, making an ass out of himself. What if she didn’t show up? It wouldn’t surprise him at all. Maman had never been the most reliable, and who knew what she was taking at the moment. For all he knew she could be passed out behind some dumpster.

Yet…this was the only information that she had left for him. He had no other way of knowing where or how to reach her. Of knowing where or when his father’s funeral was. And as much as the whole thing unsettled him, he felt a sense of responsibility to at least attend it and settle any of his father’s affairs. He snorted. Why he should care, he didn’t know – but it was what it was.

He sighed, shifting on his feet again, watching rainwater drip off his long bangs that he’d let droop down so that they half obscured his face. A few people gave him odd looks because of the dark sunglasses he was wearing in the rain – but at least not as overt as the stares he got for wearing them at midnight.

What was he supposed to feel anyway? He’d known that his parents were not in the best state since he had seen them during Mardi Gras so it really shouldn’t have been such a shock to hear that his Pere had died – but yet, it had been. The trouble was he wasn’t quite sure if the majority of his shock had come from the fact that his Pere had died or that his Maman had bothered to tell him at all about it.

A figure finally caught his attention. Even through the thick curtain of rain the way the woman was walking drew the eye – unsteady, swaying erratically as she walked up the sidewalk. People skirted her in a wide berth, her presence making a path like the prow of a ship cutting through water. He closed his eyes and muttered a brief curse. Well at least she’d shown up. He walked to meet her, stopping short to watch her as she covered the last few feet.

“Bonjour Maman.”

In the couple of months since he’d seen her last, her appearance had gotten shockingly worse. She was beyond haggard looking – she could easily pass for a woman in her 60’s rather than a woman in her 40’s. Her eyes were deeply sunken into her skull, the smudges under them so dark that they looked like bruises. Tattered clothes hung off of her in a filthy and sodden mess. He grimaced with distaste when he noticed the open sores on her arms that followed a path up her veins.

“Remy. Y’ came den.” She sounded completely uninterested in that fact – her voice flat and lifeless.

“Oui.” He looked at her, unsure as to where they were supposed to go from here. “Maman, when is the funeral?”

She looked at him for a moment as if he’d spoken to her in some random foreign dialect before some semblance of awareness reached her eyes.

“Tommorah.”

He nodded, relieved that there wouldn’t be much of a wait. It was good that he’d be able to get this done and over with – the quicker the better. He loved his city, but this was the last situation in the world he wanted to deal with.

He watched her sway unsteadily on her feet while she simply stood there in front of him he realized that she was waiting for him to do something. Take control.

“Where y’ stayin’? Where’s y’re things?”

“Lost d’ place where we were stayin’ when y’re Pere died. Only got what I’ve got on me.”

As he turned his gaze back to her face he noticed that the water running down her dirt grimed face wasn’t all rain. He swallowed hard, very uncomfortable with the realization that tears and even a thin line of snot were also cutting their own paths through the mess.

Dieu. Give him the strength. It was just a day or two at most.

He took off his coat, dropping over her thin shaking shoulders. “C’ mon Maman. Let’s get y’ somethin’ t’ eat an’ a hotel room, neh?”

Looking up at him she blinked the tears from her eyes, touching his cheek tenderly. “Y’re a good boy, Remy.”

He just stood and kept looking down for a moment at her before turning wordlessly to lead the way; letting her follow in his footsteps as she would.

**************

The rain hadn’t let up by the next day. He supposed that in a way it was better than the sun beating down on them, as much as he missed it - the rain suited the somberness. However, it had pretty much undone all the effort he’d gone into trying to get his mother somewhat presentable. He’d shown up at the hotel room that he pre-paid for her for a week, with a few new clothes and shoes for her. Even with the clean clothes and a freshly bathed body she still looked completely disreputable, barely better looking than a corpse herself. Left unprotected from the rain, her clothes were now all plastered down on her too thin frame, making her look like a drowned cat.

He cursed his lack of foresight in bringing an umbrella. He was willing to bet that even he looked a right mess by now. Some way of paying respect to the dead.

They’d taken a streetcar for most of the way, forced to walk the remainder of the distance. Remy felt a sense of foreboding when the graveyard finally came into view. This wasn’t what he’d expected. The lawns and small gardens were immaculately kept – the mausoleums large and well adorned. This was a place where people with means were interred in style, not the standard public crowded yard with its crumbling pavement and graffiti that he’d expected.

What had his mother been thinking when she arranged all this? He snorted wryly, supposing that it depended if she was even thinking in the first place. He’d figured that she’d need him to pay for the costs of the funeral – but this was bordering on the ridiculous. He didn’t have this kind of money to hand. He supposed that he should be thankful that at least she hadn’t gone for the full ‘jazz funeral’ if she’d been crazy enough to arrange a funeral here.

His mother seemed to know exactly where she was going for once, leading him up the gravel path till they came to the top of a small hill. A man – some sort of priest he supposed, noticing the collar at his throat – stood by at the head of a plain black coffin. It was another surprise – coffins were rare here, the heat usually dealing with a person’s body within a few months if placed directly in the mausoleum. Coffins were only used by the elite – in private mausoleums.

He didn’t expect the raw surge of emotion that ran through him at seeing it. Not…grief really. Shuddering, he repressed a retch. He didn’t want to be here – in this place of death. Left staring at a box that contained his father’s dead body.

His mother stepped up unerringly to the foot of the coffin, stroking the smooth surface of it once, before backing off a few feet. At a loss of what else to do Remy joined her, standing with his eyes on his feet to avoid looking at the scene in front of him, focusing his mind instead on the thin trickles of water that ran down his neck.

Moments passed and he looked up at the priest questioningly. He realized that they were a bit early, he having bundled his mother out the door hastily this morning, thinking that it was the least he could do to get her to his Pere’s funeral on time. He couldn’t help but wonder why the man wasn’t just starting, seeming as they were here. Did he just want to stand in the rain all day or was this some weird rule that mandated it start at the specified hour?

He realized then that the priest wasn’t really looking at them, but rather beyond and down the path that they had come up. Remy glanced discretely over his shoulder hoping that there wouldn’t be musicians or fuss after all. To his relief, it was just a few people; all dressed in the dark clothes of mourning, walking sedately up the walkway together. He looked in to see if there were other services that he hadn’t originally noticed, but the graveyard was empty but for them.

The trio of new comers silently walked up to stand to the right of the priest – keeping a little back from the gravesite. An older man stood to the front of the group – the two younger people standing close together, the man’s arm draped around the woman’s waist. All three were very well dressed – good tailoring and fine cloth announcing their worth. His mouth crooked into a wry twist as he watched them. At least they had remembered umbrellas and so weren’t looking half drowned as he and his Maman were.

The young woman was very pretty – somewhere in her early thirty’s he figured. Her blonde hair was pulled neatly back in a twist, a simple black hat perched on top of it. The man in the sharp looking dark grey suit beside her was obviously a husband or lover with the way that he leaned into her, the two of them seeming to lend each other support. He was completely bald – probably shaven rather than natural given his age. It contrasted with the generous moustache that adorned his lip – the tails of it trailing down the side of each lip.

It was the older man that stood to the fore of them was the one that drew his attention the most. He was dressed in a similar suit to the younger man, looking a bit eccentric with his long dark hair pulled back in a tight braid, grey just starting to appear at his temples. He too had a moustache – but small and neatly trimmed with an accompanying ‘soul patch’ under his lower lip. The man looked genuinely pained, his face haggard with grief and other unidentifiable emotions. The other two were somber – but grief didn’t touch their eyes like it did him.

He watched them all covertly from behind his glasses as the priest evidently took their appearance as a sign to begin. Who were these people? Why the hell were they here? He wondered momentarily if they people that his father owed debts to, come to ensure that they were paid, but if so then why the hell did the man look so sad?

Remy eventually tore his attention from them, concentrating on the priest as he performed the brief ceremony. The blackness of the opened mausoleum that stood ready to receive the coffin made his neck crawl. It was all too much. He felt restricted, his breaths forced past a throat cased in a collar that was suddenly too tight. He sighed in audible relief as the priest finished, his mother tottering up unsteadily to press a final touch of farewell to the casket.

The strangers were talking quietly amongst themselves now that the priest was done – darting small looks towards his mother and him. Remy attempted to ignore them, hoping that whatever they wanted could wait until later. His mother turned away from the coffin finally, seeming to catch the eyes of the older man briefly before reaching for his arm, clinging to it as she tugged on him, heading down the path. He followed her quite willingly – eager to depart from the whole unpleasant scene.

***********************

“Who is that with Rose?” he caught the slight movement out of the corner of his eye as his daughter-in-law leaned close to her husband and whispered it so it wouldn’t carry.

“Dunno…Papa?”

In response he just shrugged and continued to watch the tall youth that stood by Rose’s side – not quite touching, but close enough to show some bit of familiarity between the two of them. The boy looked solemn, but held himself stiffly, as if keeping himself separate from the grief surrounding him. With the large dark glasses hiding his eyes it was hard to tell. They could be covering any range of emotions.

Suspicions were tumbling madly through his head though as he watched Rose and the youth. While he couldn’t be certain without asking, he had a feeling in his gut that he did know exactly who this young man was. The resemblance was just too uncanny.

But that meant that all these years…what Bastien and Rose had told him – it was all untrue. He felt slightly ill. Dieu – why had they done it? And then what had he ignored all these years?

Then Rose and the boy were turning to leave and he felt his only chance to know the truth slipping away.

“Here…hold dis.” He thrust the umbrella into his son’s hands, ignoring the startled look he got in return, and hurried down towards the two retreating figures.

**************************

The crunch of shoes on gravel alerted him moments before the voice came.

“Rose.”

His mother stumbled briefly, before catching her feet, walking on as if she hadn’t heard the man. Remy glanced back, noticing that the older man was the one that had chosen to follow them. He’d left his umbrella behind, his leather shoes slipping slightly on the wet gravel. The shoulders of his coat were quickly growing darker with the rain, and the drops were beading like dew in his facial hair. It was odd the things that you noticed.

“Rose. Arret. Sil vous plait.”

His mother stopped, but kept her gaze averted as the man strode up to them. Remy frowned. Up to him to deal with it he supposed.

“Monsieur, now is not d’ best time. Perhaps we can arrange a meetin’ t’ discuss any…arrangements later, neh?” Remy stopped as he realized that the man was watching him with an odd intensity that made him uneasy. This had to be the weirdest collections man he’d ever met.

The man didn’t respond to him, speaking to his mother instead. “My sympathies t’ y’ Rose. He was a…” the words trailed and ended awkwardly as an odd look crossed the man’s face. Remy could sympathize. What could you really say about his Pere? The man kept darting odd looks towards him the entire time though, which made him fidget with nerves, fingers flipping a card over and over in the depths of his pocket.

“Rose…” The man cleared his throat. “Rose…is dis who I think it is?” The inquiry was barely phrased as one, the tone of the words coming more as a statement than a true question. It was weird having this stranger refer to him as if he knew him. His Mere had spoken to people of him?

His mother continued to refuse to meet the man’s eyes, but nodded in answer, her shoulders tiredly slumping forward.

Despite the confident way that the man had approached the conversation, as if he already held the answers in his hand; he still managed to look credibly shocked at the response, his face paling momentarily. The man stood wordless, his eyes fully examining his Maman’s sickly looking face before he frowned deeply at her.

“But why Rose? Why did y’ an’ Bastien lie t’ me all dese years?” The man’s voice cracked slightly on the last words, and he found himself taking a step back from the strange man, inadvertently tugging his mother along with him like a child’s play thing on a string.

“Would someone please tell Remy what d’ hell y’all are talkin’ about?” He watched the man warily, lips pressed tightly together.

When his mother said nothing, the man shifted on his feet and looked back at him. “My name is Jean Luc LeBeau. It would appear dat I’m y’re uncle.”