Frenchtown Summer (4 page)

Waiting, I thought of the times
he dressed in that Best Suit
to visit Cardeaux's Funeral Home.
“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.