Frenchtown Summer (5 page)

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
kept reading the newspaper.

Sometimes I brought my father's lunch
to the comb shop
and the foreman, Mr. Leonard,
allowed me to ascend the wooden stairs
to the second floor,
where my father worked
at the shaking machine,
which rained bristles down
into celluloid shells
that would later become hairbrushes.
The smell of celluloid,
sweet and acid at the same time,
lanced my eyeballs
and long before had penetrated
my father's pores
so that even after a bath
he carried the smell of the shop with him
like a disease
for which there was no cure.
He always frowned when he saw me there,
and kept on working
while I placed the brown bag
with his two sandwiches,
either baloney or spiced ham,
and a piece of fruit,
a pear maybe or an apple,
on the windowstll.
He never spoke
(I would not have heard him, anyway,
above the noise of the machines
that trembled the floor
beneath my feet)
but nodded his thanks
before his eyes showed me the way out.

Sometimes my father worked
at the bubbling vat,
which spilled hot globs of cement
onto the celluloid shells,
splashing on his hands,
blisters the size of dimes
like evil puddles on his flesh.
He never complained,
sat in his kitchen chair after work
sipping the cold beer
my mother served him
from the icebox,
his shoulders sagging,
a wan smile on his face
as she handed him the
Times
before bustling off to the pantry
to prepare supper.
Somehow, the beer softened
the harsh angles of his cheekbones
and his eyelids often fluttered,
almost closing,
and he half-dozed in the smells
of hamburg frying,
or sometimes sausage,
nodding,
listening to her voice
the way he listened to music sometimes
on the radio,
a half-smile on his lips,
as if he enjoyed not only what she was saying
but also the sound of her voice.
I loved those moments
just before supper,
my father half-dozing in the chair
basking in my mother's voice,
and my mother
humming sometimes
as she peeled potatoes,
glancing at me once in a while
as if we shared a secret.

I didn't know what the secret was,
I only knew that we both loved
my father,
and I knew he loved my mother
by the way he looked at her
but I wondered if he loved
me, too.

Suddenly,
my uncle Med
did not occupy his third-row pew
at St. Jude's nine o'clock Mass,
did not punch the time clock
at seven A.M. Monday at the comb shop,
did not join the other men
at the Happy Times after supper.
My father and Uncle Philippe
encountered only süenee
when they knocked at the door
of his tenement
while I hung back near the stairway.