Frenchtown Summer Read online

  Frenchtown held for them.

  Sometimes at night,

  awaking suddenly,

  hearing the chuffing of an engine

  in the Boston & Maine freight yards,

  I'd ponder the possibility

  that the tramp had been

  innocent after all,

  remembering the rumors

  that Marielle LeMoyne

  had been three months pregnant

  when she was slain.

  Was it possible

  that a murderer still stalked

  the streets of Frenchtown,

  kneeling in St. Jude's Church on Sundays,

  buying hamburg steak

  at Fournier's Meat Market,

  drinking beer with the men,

  my father among them,

  at the Happy Times,

  and, maybe,

  maybe looking right into my eyes

  as he passed me unidentified

  on Third Street?

  Or had he died?

  Or simply moved away?

  Those last thoughts

  were like rosary beads of comfort

  as I lay sleepless,

  waiting for daylight

  to arrive.

  My uncles and aunts

  came and went in my life

  like gaudy ghosts,

  playing bid whist at kitchen tables,

  dancing the quadrille at weddings,

  singing old songs on le Jour de l'An

  at my pépère's house,

  sitting on the evening piazzas,

  the uncles gruff in their talk

  and raucous with sudden laughter,

  the women murmuring delights

  of gossip,

  gasping sometimes

  at a surprising bit of news.

  My uncle Philippe passed the collection basket

  at the ten o'clock High Mass

  Sundays at St. Jude's Church.

  Uncle Albert was a clerk

  at Fournier's Meat Market

  and washed his hands all day long.

  Raymond and I counted with delight

  his many trips to the kitchen sink

  as he listened to the Red Sox games

  with my father,

  the hanging towel near the sink

  limp and damp

  at the end of the afternoon.

  My poor aunt Olivine

  visited St. Jude's Church

  every afternoon at four o'clock,

  lighting a candle

  for the soul of her child, Theo,

  who spent only twelve minutes

  in this world.

  Years after he died,

  she still dampened handkerchiefs

  with her tears

  and they waved

  like small flags of distress

  on her clothesline,

  nobody able to come

  to her rescue.

  My uncle Eldore,

  who laughed at everything,

  claimed that her tears

  came from a “sinus condition”

  but we all still mourned

  for poor Aunt Olivine.

  The children in the family,

  Raymond and me

  and all my cousins,

  made birthday visits

  to my aunts and uncles,

  passing our hats

  like church collection baskets,

  receiving nickels and dimes,

  always a quarter from Uncle Med

  and three shiny pennies

  from Aunt Julienne,

  who never married

  and sewed and mended

  for Frenchtown women

  in Pépère's sitting room.

  My uncles patted me on the head

  as they walked by,

  my aunts bestowed wet kisses

  on my cheeks.

  They called me Eugene

  but most of them seldom

  looked into my eyes

  and I wondered

  if they really knew

  who I was.

  My uncle Med

  wore a white shirt

  every day of the week,

  buttoned to the top

  for Sunday Mass, weddings and funerals,

  but top button open

  at the Monument Comb Shop,

  where he wrestled boxes

  in the shipping department.

  He never wore a tie.

  I picked up his shirts

  every Saturday morning

  at Henry Wong's Chinese Laundry

  and laid them out neatly,

  white as Communion wafers,

  in his bureau drawer.

  Friday night was my uncle's

  downtown gambling night

  and whether he won or lost,

  he tossed me a quarter

  the next day,

  which paid my fare

  to the Saturday movie at the Plymouth

  with change left over

  for a Baby Ruth or Mr. Goodbar

  at Laurier's Drug Store.

  He was my bachelor uncle,

  target of my busy aunts,

  who suggested,

  sometimes arranged,

  dates with available

  but respectable Frenchtown girls

  until he said:

  “No more.”

  My aunts murmured

  about a lost, unknown love

  he still mourned

  but raised their stubby fingers

  to their lips

  when he looked their way.

  He lived in a two-room tenement

  above LaGrande's Ice Cream Parlor,

  the smell of chocolate

  rising through the floorboards.

  He never owned a car

  but walked everywhere

  to church and work,

  tramped the woods and fields

  of Frenchtown and Monument,

  hiked occasionally

  to Mount Wachusum,

  a knapsack on his back,

  blotches of sweat

  on his white shirt.

  Sometimes he invited

  Raymond and me to join him.

  He pointed out flowers and birds,

  giving them names—

  Queen Anne's lace by the side of the road,

  barn swallows in sudden flight.

  We always stopped

  for sweet cider at Fontaine's Farm

  on Ransom Hill

  or banana splits

  at the Boston Confectionery Store

  downtown.

  He was my happy uncle.

  Yet sometimes I caught him

  looking out the window,

  so far away in his staring

  that he'd forgotten I was there,

  his shirts in my hands,

  waiting for permission

  to place them in his bureau.

  What did he see outside his window

  that I knew I would not see

  even if I looked?

  In my heart

  was the knowledge,

  lodged like a chunk of ice,

  that I would never find out.

  The tombstones of St. Jude's Cemetery

  at the far end of Mechanic Street

  shimmered in the afternoon heat

  as Raymond and I arrived,

  a pilgrimage we made

  when there was nothing else to do.

  An ancient elm,

  the cemetery's solitary tree,

  guarded the entrance,

  its benevolent shade

  falling on the seven sad stones

  that marked the graves

  of the St. Jude nuns who died

  far from the France of their birth.

  We always stopped first

  at the small stone

  bearing the name of my cousin Theo,

  who had lived only twelve minutes

  twenty years before.


  Marielle LeMoyne's marble angel

  made us pause and look around

  as if we were being watched

  by whoever scrubbed her angel

  free of bird droppings,

  neatly combed the grass

  and placed geraniums there

  for Memorial Day.

  As usual, we hurried past

  the gray mausoleum

  of the Menier family,

  still not brave enough

  to peek in the stained-glass windows

  to see if the coffins

  were visible.

  We always ended our visits

  at the Edges,

  that unconsecrated ground

  at the far end,

  with the lonesome graves

  of those who did not die

  in the state of grace,

  had taken their own lives

  or abandoned their faith

  or disgraced themselves

  in ways I could only imagine.

  No tombstones here,

  only small tilted markers,

  names long ago faded,

  or no markers at all,

  only lumps of earth

  often decorated with debris.

  We looked in vain

  for the grave of Joe Latour,

  who years ago had hanged himself

  in a cell at the Monument police station

  after his arrest

  for drunken behavior

  one Sunday morning

  in front of St. Jude's Church.

  He used to wander

  the streets of Frenchtown,

  weeping sometimes,

  sleeping in Pee Alley,

  which, Uncle Med claimed,

  he baptized

  on many occasions.

  We were always glad

  to leave the cemetery,

  not looking behind us,

  and I wondered

  why we went there

  in the first place.

  Like setting a clock,

  my mother adjusted

  the octagonal card in the window,

  telling Mr. Harrold, the ice man,

  when he arrived on the street

  how many pounds we needed—

  fifty, seventy-five, one hundred.

  Mr. Harrold wore a rubber apron

  on his back

  onto which he swung the blocks of ice

  with huge tongs.

  He lumbered up the stairs

  without even grunting,

  beads of sweat

  like chips of ice

  on his cheeks,

  dumped the block into

  the icebox in the kitchen.

  My mother always offered him

  a glass of Kool-Aid,

  lime or orange.

  Raymond, Alyre and I

  waited for him to return

  and when he arrived

  he wielded the same pick

  to shave wedges of ice

  from the mounted blocks,

  and handed them to us.

  The ice, stingingly cold,

  burned my lips and fingers

  but at the same time

  brought delicious

  tingling to my tongue.

  As Mr. Harrold went on his way

  I stood with the other kids

  in the pungent fragrance

  of horse dung

  and knew bliss

  in a sliver

  of ice.

  I emerged from Dr. Sampson's office,

  (“The Eyes Have It”)

  blinking into the sunlight,

  and suddenly everything

  had sharp edges,

  the corners of buildings,

  the curbstones,

  a leaf tumbling

  from the maple in Monument Park.

  The glasses,

  with steel frames,

  were a strange weight on my nose.

  A world suddenly vivid,

  people's faces across the street

  no longer blurs.

  I saw the red spiderwebs

  in the cheeks

  of the cop directing traffic,

  looked up to see

  white clouds

  clearly outlined

  as if pasted on a page

  in a child's coloring book.

  And looked down to see

  cracks of lightning

  frozen in the sidewalk,

  a shard of green glass

  from a broken bottle

  gleaming like a distant planet

  fallen into the gutter.

  Reeling as if drunk

  on Uncle Philippe's home-brewed beer,

  I knelt down to watch

  a glistening ant

  at the curb's rim,

  and in my glorious generosity,

  my state of grace,

  did not squash it underfoot,

  the world too sweet

  and brightly lit

  for anything,

  even an ant,

  to the today.

  The glasses were a miracle,

  bringing the sweet

  gift of sight

  until

  in front of Laurier's Drug Store,

  Ernie Forcier

  placed his hands on his hips

  and yelled to me

  across the street:

  “Hey, Four-Eyes.”

  Love came to Frenchtown

  in the middle of June

  when Sister Angela arrived

  on the last day of school

  to teach piano

  at the convent.

  Meeting her one hazy afternoon

  as I took a shortcut

  through the convent gardens,

  I fell into the violet pools

  that were her eyes

  and signed up for summer lessons,

  soon plunging

  into agonies of longing.

  Dumb with desire,

  I stumbled through my days and evenings

  just as my fingers stumbled

  as I struggled to play

  “The Song of the Rose.”

  Delirious with her closeness

  beside me on the bench,

  the scent

  of strong soap her perfume.

  Her long fingers

  were so lovely in their paleness

  I longed to crush them

  to my mouth

  and kiss the palms of her hands,

  not daring to dream

  of touching her lips

  with mine.

  Mute in her presence,

  tripping on the carpet's edge,

  I was a pathetic lover.

  By the time I had learned

  to play “The Song of the Rose”

  without tripping fingers

  she had vanished,

  gone to some unknown convent,

  her sudden departure,

  like her arrival,

  unexplained,

  a mystery,

  just as so much of life

  behind the shuttered windows

  of the convent

  was a mystery.

  My anguish tore

  my life into shreds

  and I never played

  the piano

  again.

  “So you're going.”

  My mother's voice

  an off-key violin string,

  while my father,

  not answering,

  tightened the knot

  in his Sunday tie,

  blue with cardinals flying

  on the silk.

  His white shirt glistened

  in the bedroom mirror.

  I watched him toss her question away

  with the tilting of his chin.

  He often didn't answer my mother

  but his silences

  could contain lightning,

  at other times,

  tenderness.

>   He shrugged into his Best Suit,

  dark blue with faint stripes,

  his suit for weddings and funerals

  or special times

  like the day he watched

  President Franklin D. Roosevelt

  waving from the final car

  as the train slowed down

  but did not stop

  at the Monument depot.

  “Spiffy,” my mother always said

  when my father put on his Best Suit.

  But today, she said only:

  “Go then.”

  Her voice

  a violin string

  snapping.

  I followed him like a spy

  through the thrumming Saturday crowds

  on Third Street,

  women clutching grocery bags,

  the men lounging outside the Happy Times,

  basking in the cellar smell of whiskey.

  Mechanic Street led us downtown

  while I dodged

  from doorway to telephone pole

  behind him.

  He never turned around,

  head down,

  as if the sidewalk held a map

  charting his way.

  Through Monument Park

  past the wartime statues,

  and the Civil War cannon

  aimed at the five-and-ten

  across the street.

  The North Side lay ahead,

  big white houses

  with wide verandas

  and birdbaths on carpet lawns.

  My father's steps faltered

  and he stopped at a telephone pole.

  Would he turn back?

  He lit a Chesterfield,

  then began to walk again,

  more briskly now

  as we passed Merryweather Lane

  and Holly and Cranberry Avenues.

  Frenchtown had streets,

  not lanes or avenues,

  piazzas, not verandas.

  My father finally paused

  at the two marble columns

  guarding the entrance

  to the Estate,

  the home of Lanyard C. Royce,

  owner of the Monument Comb Shop.

  “Benefactor and Philanthropist,”

  according to the Times,

  reporting his death that week at age eighty-nine

  in big black headlines on the front page.

  “Inventor of machines that produced combs

  eight hours a day without stopping.”

  I had seen his signature

  scrawled on my father's Friday paychecks.

  The Times did not report

  what the men called Lanyard C. Royce

  at the Happy Times:

  Skinflint.

  Strikebreaker.

  A hard man, my father said at home,

  striking a kitchen match

  on the sole of his shoe.

  I watched him enter the Estate,

  diminishing in size

  as he walked up the half-moon driveway,

  past men gathered

  near Mack limousines,

  puffing at long cigars,

  and he disappeared

  into veils of smoke.

  Waiting, I thought of the times

  he dressed in that Best Suit

  to visit Cardeaux's Funeral Home.