Frenchtown Summer Read online

  “Have to pay my respects,” he'd say

  and my mother never said,

  “So you're going.”

  I lurked on the sidewalk,

  keeping out of sight,

  which was easy to do,

  because the men with cigars

  took no notice

  of my presence

  or my existence.

  At home, after my mother

  hung his Best Suit in the closet,

  having enclosed it first

  in cellophane,

  they sat in the kitchen,

  my father in his rocking chair,

  my mother at the kitchen table,

  smoothing invisible wrinkles

  from the blue tablecloth.

  I stared at the pages

  of Tom Sawyer.

  My mother looked at my father

  and my father picked up the Times,

  shook it as if to drop

  the words on the floor

  and began to read.

  Or maybe pretended to read

  like me.

  My mother's pinched fingers made small tents

  on the tablecloth.

  The newspaper rustled

  as my father turned the pages.

  “Work is sacred,” he declared

  like a priest in the pulpit.

  My mother continued

  to make tents

  and my father squinted at the newsprint

  while I sat there

  wondering

  if I would ever solve

  the mystery of my father.

  “Arthur Colraine

  has Saint Vims' dance,”

  Alyrc Tournier announced.

  I pictured Arthur

  dancing madly, as a Gypsy violinist

  blazed the air with music

  near a campfire

  like in the movies.

  “Saint Vitus dance

  is a sickness,”

  Alyre explained,

  indignant with his information.

  In Arthur's kitchen,

  I watched his mother

  feeding a blue shirt

  into the wringer of the washing machine,

  her wrist bruised purple

  from the times

  she'd caught her arm in the wringer.

  All Frenchtown women

  wore those purple badges.

  Tilting her head, she said,

  “He's awake now,”

  as if a secret sound

  had reached her ears.

  Entering the shadowed bedroom,

  I saw Arthur's sunken face

  as if painted on a piece of cloth,

  his hands moving in the air,

  wild birds flying,

  his fluttering fingers

  plucking at unseen harp strings.

  If his hands were birds in flight,

  his eyes were birds

  trapped in cages,

  swinging this way and that,

  unable to escape,

  not looking at me,

  or anything else in this world.

  He was no longer Arthur Colraine,

  climber of trees like Tarzan,

  amazing at arithmetic

  in Sister Gertrude's classroom,

  but a depraved stranger,

  nameless,

  an apparition,

  and I fled the bedroom,

  did not remember later

  whether I said “Thank you”

  to his mother.

  Running down Fifth Street,

  conscious of my hands,

  I stopped in terror

  —were they fluttering?—

  had I somehow caught

  that terrible affliction?

  Pronounced cured at last,

  Arthur Colraine

  forever after

  walked among us

  alone and apart,

  in the schoolyard,

  on the sidewalks,

  and one of my sins

  is that I never

  spoke to him

  again.

  In the confessional

  at St. Jude's Church,

  I knelt in turmoil,

  only a shimmering curtain

  protecting me

  from the ears of my classmates

  six feet away in the pews

  while Father Balthazar,

  ear pressed to the small screen,

  urged me to

  “Speak up, speak up.”

  I recited my thin catalog

  of sins:

  talking during Mass,

  swearing ten times,

  disobeying my parents,

  losing my temper,

  routine disclosures

  of sins that I wasn't even sure

  I had committed,

  but I had to confess

  something.

  Then the long pause,

  hearing the rustling

  of my classmates,

  wondering if they had heard my whispers

  as I had sometimes heard theirs.

  Father Balthazar waited,

  as if listening

  for the sin

  I could not find the courage

  to confess.

  “That's all,” I finally said,

  wondering if priests could see

  the stains on our souls.

  I heard my penance:

  “Recite ten Our Fathers

  and ten Hail Marys

  and promise to do better,”

  his voice scratching at the screen.

  Limp with relief

  but hounded

  by that unspoken sin

  —those moist moments

  in my bed at night—

  I wondered whether

  the sin of touching

  and the sin of silence

  obliterated my state of grace,

  dooming me forever

  to the fires of Hell

  as I swallowed the white Host

  that was the body of Jesus Christ

  Sunday

  after Sunday.

  We never called them

  birthday parties

  but my mother always invited friends

  for cake and ice cream,

  the cake,

  my favorite,

  golden,

  with butter frosting,

  ice cream a dripping rainbow

  of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry,

  and candles to blow out,

  my gift a flashlight,

  silver

  like a Buck Rogers ray gun.

  I was dazzled by the light

  it splashed

  on walls and ceilings

  and ran to the bedroom,

  sending its radiance under the bed,

  lighting up

  the small gray ghosts of dust.

  That night in bed,

  Raymond snoring softly,

  my father nodding in his chair,

  a Chesterfield burning down

  in the ashtray,

  I flashed the tight

  endlessly around the room

  like a prison searchlight

  or a beacon guiding ships

  on stormy seas,

  and fell asleep

  like a lightbulb

  going dark.

  In the morning,

  awaking before Raymond,

  I sleepily tested

  my newest treasure,

  but no beam came forth,

  the flashlight dead.

  Not knowing that batteries

  could be replaced,

  I huddled in the sheet,

  ashamed of my night's flagrancy

  and realized

  that nothing lasts

  forever.

  On a Saturday walk with Uncle Med

  a sudden downpour

  sent us scurrying for refuge

  to St. Jude's Cemetery's old elm tree.


  When the rain became mere dripping

  as if the elm were weeping,

  we waited for a rainbow

  that never appeared.

  Raymond asked if Uncle Med

  knew where foe Latour was buried.

  Over the damp gravel

  he led us to the Edges,

  and to a pathetic mound of earth,

  a broken whiskey bottle,

  not a stone, marking its spot.

  Uncle Med said:

  “Poor Joe, a nice guy.

  We went to school together,

  but he quit in the fourth grade.”

  It amazed me that my uncle

  had known a man who'd hanged himself.

  Going past Marielle LeMoyne's grave,

  Raymond asked:

  “Did you know her, too?”

  Resting his hand

  on the head of the marble angel,

  Uncle Med said:

  “We all grew up together,

  your father, too.

  Marielle was a good girl,

  wild sometimes,

  could dance all night,

  wore too much makeup,

  but sweet,

  a sweet young girl.”

  That night,

  I dreamed of Marielle LeMoyne

  playing jackstones,

  a young girl suddenly,

  her skirt spread around her legs

  as she sat on the sidewalk,

  bouncing the small red ball

  and grabbing a silver jackstone

  with long pale fingers.

  Uncle Med and my father

  and someone I knew was Joe Latour

  watched her play,

  and they, too, were young

  like Marielle.

  One of them,

  I could not tell which,

  his face shadowed,

  snatched the jackstone

  from Marielle's fingers.

  She began to cry,

  tears dissolving her face,

  her black flowing hair

  suddenly turned red,

  red like blood,

  was blood,

  flowing over her body,

  as the boys,

  shadows now,

  ran away

  with all her jackstones.

  And I woke up.

  In the night's stillness,

  the B&M trains silent,

  my thudding heart the only sound,

  I vowed never to return

  to St. Jude's Cemetery,

  another vow

  I did not keep.

  Everyone made fun

  of Omer LaFerge,

  who stood like a balloon

  at the corner of Fifth and Mechanic,

  clicking his false teeth,

  while kids gathered around him

  as if he were a sideshow attraction

  at the Captain Clyde Circus,

  which came to Frenchtown every three years.

  Kids poked at his stomach

  or pinched his cherub cheeks

  while Omer swayed back and forth

  as if his shoes were made of lead.

  He was offered hard candy

  so that we could hear his false teeth

  clicking

  as he tried to chew,

  spittle on his tips,

  a smile on his face,

  eager to please everyone,

  ageless as a statue

  waiting to be

  defaced.

  Then one day

  he simply wasn't there

  anymore.

  I always hurried

  by the house

  where a bouquet of flowers

  hung beside the front door

  announcing that someone had died,

  and a coffin

  in the parlor

  awaited the arrival of people

  who would kneel,

  murmuring prayers

  in the suffocating scent

  of other flowers.

  The doorway flowers

  were always white,

  cupped in white baskets.

  Even when they were removed

  after the funeral,

  I still hurried by that house,

  my eyes averted.

  One Easter morning

  my father presented my mother

  with a bouquet of white flowers,

  which she placed on

  the mahogany end table

  in the parlor,

  and whenever I walked by

  I held my breath

  so that I wouldn't inhale

  the smell of death.

  On le Jour de l'An,

  that first day of the new year,

  Pépère's sons and daughters

  visited him in the morning

  after Mass,

  knelt before him

  for his blessing,

  the father and children repeating

  the ancient ritual brought

  from the old life

  on the banks of the Richelieu River

  in the Province of Québec.

  I watched one winter morning

  my father kneeling,

  head bowed,

  at his father's knees,

  saw for the first time

  the small oval of whiteness

  at the back of his head.

  In a burst of knowledge,

  I saw that he was not ageless,

  after all,

  and would the someday.

  Now, in August heat,

  in the pantry,

  as my father bent down

  to remove

  the brimming tray at the bottom of the icebox,

  I saw that spot of baldness,

  whiter, wider now,

  his hair thinner,

  revealing his pale scalp,

  and I fled the tenement,

  clattered down the stairs,

  in sudden rushing panic

  running to—

  where?—

  I was blinded

  by the knowledge

  that there was

  no safe place

  to run to.

  Once every summer

  the family spent a Sunday

  at Moccasin Pond.

  I sat squeezed between

  my cousins Francine and Ernie

  in my uncle Eldore's Chevy,

  baskets on the floor

  bulging with baloney sandwiches,

  quart bottles of orange Kool-Aid

  clinking in paper bags.

  On the burning sands,

  I hovered in my bathing suit,

  straps biting my frail shoulders,

  while my cousins frolicked,

  splashing and diving,

  pushing and shoving,

  delighting in the freedom

  from Frenchtown pavement.

  I held back,

  knowing that the instant

  I removed my glasses

  the world would blur,

  the pond become a monster

  lapping at my feet,

  while my cousin Freddie called:

  “Hey, Eugene, come on in,

  the water's wet.”

  I spent

  the rest of the day

  waiting

  to go home.

  My uncle Jules

  limped through the streets of Frenchtown,

  his right leg not synchronized

  with the rest of his body,

  walking as if trying to maintain

  his balance

  on a tilting sidewalk.

  He was my silent uncle,

  sat in the back pew at Sunday Mass,

  converted the shed at Pépére's house

  into a bedroom,

  did not join the family

  at the supper table

  but took his pate

  back to his room

  to eat by himself.

  He had been hurt


  when prayers brought

  three hundred pounds

  of combs and brushes

  down on him as he walked by,

  the sound of his legs breaking

  like gunshots

  in the shipping department.

  (My uncle Med told me all this

  as we hiked up Ransom Hill

  toward Pepper Point.)

  Uncle Jules was seventeen years old,

  waiting to be drafted any moment

  and sent overseas

  to the in the trenches in France

  when the crates fell,

  saving him from war.

  That's what my pépère believed

  and why he had spent hours

  in St. Jude's Church

  kneeling in prayer,

  lighting candles,

  rising each morning

  for the five o'clock nuns' Mass,

  gulping Holy Communion

  like a starving man.

  At the end of nine days,

  the length of a novena,

  the crates fell

  in an avalanche of boxes.

  Every year

  on le Jour de l'An

  Pépère waited in vain

  for Uncle Jules to kneel before him,

  seeking his Messing.

  As the morning turned to afternoon

  tears spilled from Pépère's eyes

  like blood from wounds.

  Everybody said

  Officer O'Brien was a good cop.

  His beat was Frenchtown

  and he patrolled the streets

  as if strolling in a park

  but a deadly gun rode at his side

  and a black billy club hung from his hip.

  He kicked the behinds of kids

  who misbehaved,

  manhandled the drunks

  who became unruly at the Happy Times

  and sent them home to their wives.

  His smile

  was quick

  but his black eyes could see

  into your soul

  and make it shrivel.

  They said he had a scar on his shoulder

  from a bullet fired

  by a robber who'd held up

  the Merchants' Bank downtown.

  Despite the wound,

  the good cop O'Brien

  brought the robber down

  with a tackle,

  the sidewalk behind him

  veined with his blood.

  They also said he was in love

  with Mrs. Rancoeur on Fifth Street,

  whose husband often left town

  for days at a time,

  sometimes weeks,

  and returned without explanation.

  No one ever saw the good cop O'Brien

  and Mrs. Rancoeur together.

  He only tipped his hat to her

  when she passed by on Third Street,

  arms bundled with groceries,

  her two children at her side.

  “Rumors,” my father said,

  shaking his newspaper

  while my mother looked dreamy,

  staring out the window.

  “They're such nice people,” she said.

  “Life is so sad sometimes.”

  While my father