Frenchtown Summer (3 page)

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.