Woe is All I Possess
I was sitting in my desk, hacking through another edit on my book – a second of a trilogy about the Jacobites and the 45' Rising. I've been at this the since three in the afternoon and I permitted myself to some well-deserved break. I put my pencil down, stretched my neck and grabbed my whisky from the coaster to my left.
The room was dark, except for the small light emanating from the lamp in my table and the clock's ticking sound echoed around the room. I used to not notice it but now, its sound brings me dread and puts me in a trance with my thoughts. It was reminding me of my life passing by without really me really living it followed by a punch in the gut of the emptiness I suddenly felt in my soul.
I found him. Him. The man who my wife loves, the man who fathered her child.
I hadn't meant to look or find him. Why would I? As far as I know, he asked Claire to forget him, I asked Claire to forget him and opening that door would just be tempting fate even more. But at the arrival of Colonel Hal Grey's journals in my office - a gift from one of my Harvard colleagues in the hope that it will help in providing more insight in my book – had changed everything.
I had seen his name in his logs and what happened to him immediately after the war. The first entry mentioned him being sent home to the highlands with a grave injury, after that, curiosity got the better of me and I fell down the rabbit hole - chasing him through every note and paper trail I could locate - and now I know where he is. Ten years after the Battle of Culloden, I am certain that James Alexander Malcolm Makenzie Fraser is alive.
Should I tell Claire? It's the question I've been asking myself back and forth for the last hour and a half. I remembered how crazy she ran through Reverend Wakefield's books in the library hoping to find a sliver of his existence in the aftermath. If she knew of these documents currently in my possession, I have no doubt that she'll run back to Scotland, take Bree with her, and find him without giving it second thought on what the state of his life is now. If she didn't, she'd continue to live her and Bree's life with me where everything is settled and familiar. Call it selfish, but I would say that I'm the latter option that looks like the lesser "win-win" situation for the both of us – even if it mean probably living half a life forever.
Answering that, the next question I had is can I live with my selfish choice?
In choosing to be a historian, I thought that the details of the past meant the studying of lives lived and knowing their story to teach and educate the present – whether it's for the influence of the good or the prevention of the bad. Moreover, accepting the consequences of history was at the inspection and discretion of the now and was never meant to directly touch.
However, thirteen years ago, history decided to play on my fortune. It took my wife, to her back two hundred years, to a time closest to my academic heart and expertise, only to return three years later, married and in love with another man and pregnant with a child that was supposed to be born and live in the 18th century.
With accepting Claire back came with a blessing and, if I was really going to be honest with myself, a curse.
Bree was an unexpected blessing in my life. I never thought I'd be able to love someone so wholly who was not my own flesh and blood and yet, the moment I held her in my arms, she crept her way to my heart. I could not, even for the all the hurt I feel, consider Bree a mistake but rather the complete opposite as she is the only one that keeps me going nowadays.
On the other hand, with her here, I was given a direct, tangible, and living reminder of the past – Claire's past. Every movement Bree makes, every milestone she surpasses, every flicker of the eyes or toss of the hair, Claire would see him and weep.
One night, I came home late and decided to check on Bree before heading to our bedroom. I opened the door softly and saw Claire hunched over a sleeping Bree who nestled herself in the protective shield of her mother. With her elbows propped and her back to me, Claire didn't seem to notice or feel my presence. I observed them for a while – hoping to make a sweet memory of my girls.
She was just looking at her, memorizing, caressing her hair away from her face and suddenly I saw her brush her hand through her nape that I knew would elicit a drowsy smile from Bree just as I discovered a few years ago. Claire gave a sad chuckle and said "Oh, you're so much like your father". She lied down and pulled Bree to her embrace and I abruptly left, stunned at her sudden revelation – not even bothering to close the door.
The clock continued to tick along with my running mind and thoughts. As soft as the sound, it felt like a scream with every movement of the hand. It was too much to handle. I walked over to my mantle and threw it across the room to a loud crash that broke the item into hundreds of irreparable pieces. I chuckled rather bitterly in the irony of my situation.
I downed my drink in one gulp and ran my hands through my face and hair. In the now absolute silence of my study in my Boston home, my mind had one thought: How the hell did I end up here?
You know how because you agreed to this. She gave you an out and you were too honorable to refuse. Said my conscience's snarky reply.
"That's what good men do" I said out loud to the universe in the faith that it would make it a little bit more true and alleviate the dismay I was feeling.
And it comes at the sacrifice of your own happiness. You did this and chose this for yourself.
I sat back down to my chair to try and calm my thoughts and assess my emotions. I looked up at the clock to see how long I have until Claire and Bree would arrive home but then remembered I no longer had a mantle clock. I opened the drawer to my right grabbed my monogrammed stainless pocket watch - a gift from Claire in the first year of our marriage. It was 6:50PM – I have, at least, ten minutes to compose myself.
I placed my elbows in the desk and held my head in it, closed my eyes, considering and allowing all my emotions to show and release itself. Love, hurt, joy, pain, good, bad - combining them all left me feeling one final sentiment: woe.
"Woe is all I possess" I muttered under my breath.
I let the tears building in my eyes to overflow and allowed himself to feel everything for the first time in a long time.
Woe in the realization that Claire would never be mine again, that she would never love me the way I see her love and devote herself to him even after all these years, that we'd settled in a life of domesticity for civility and show; woe in the realization that Bree – with her fiery red hair and blazing blue eyes - would never be thought by anyone as mine in any way, shape or form, that our bond would never be just ours forever when the time comes that she learns the truth about her real paternity; woe in the reminder of my own inability to sire children; woe in having to give in to affairs just to fill a physical and emotional void that will never or could never be truly filled again; woe in the knowledge that my family history is tainted by a darkness that made me slightly sorry that I found real, historical truth; woe that I had resorted in forcing Claire into an agreement to forget him and everything about that part of her life even though I knew it would break her spirit.
I needed protect myself and save myself a little dignity in this circumstance – even though it means forbidding a certain name to be mentioned in the next century.
Woe is all I possess.
So yes, I can and will live with my own selfishness.
I hadn't heard the door open until Bree called me out.
"Daddy!" she ran towards my chair and hopped on my lap. "Look what we made in school today!"
Bree laid her artwork on his table - a rather exceptional profile of one of her classmates – as she rambled on how her teacher taught drawing techniques and said that her work was the best one in class.
I glanced up to find Claire at the doorway of my study staring at us. In another parallel universe of our lives, I'd see light and happiness in her eyes as I held what would have been our child. Looking at her, even I can't deny the sadness and longing in her eyes as she imagined a life two hundred years back where her daughter is held by the man she loved who would've raised her if it wasn't for the massive obstacle of history.
"Claire" I called out immediately putting her out of her trance.
"I'm making meatloaf for dinner. It will be ready in 30 minutes" she replied embarrassingly as she knew I caught her in moment faraway. I nodded as she left for the kitchen.
Woe is all I possess – but as long as Claire is cooking in the kitchen and Bree continues to talk about her day – there is still that small flicker of the life I once envisioned to be living. A small claim it might be but one I lay hold on even for a little while, just enough to push away the pain in my heart and move forward on to the next day and the next day and the next.