Fade. Part 14

"But they can catch fire," Armand pointed out.

My father snorted and lapsed into silence.

"What's the matter with us, Paul?" Armand asked me later. "I always get under his skin. Why do we always argue? I try to be a good son. Christ, I followed his footsteps into the shop. ..."

"Age, time," I said. "That's what he's mad about. Not you or me or anybody."

My father sat on the piazza bundled against the chill, the thin sunlight not warm enough to bake his bones. I sat with him several times a week after my stint at the typewriter. He always rose to embrace me when I arrived, his cheek dry and smooth next to mine, like old paper that might crumble at a touch. His troubles began when he was struck by a car on Spruce Street and thrown into the gutter. His injuries hastened the aging process, the way an early frost kills flowers still in bloom, and he was forced to retire early from the shop. I think he loved his days at the shop despite the hard years.

Although I visited him regularly and lived only a few streets away, he was unhappy because I refused to move in with him and my mother. "A waste of money," he said, "throwing it away on rent. And food-isn't your mother's cooking good enough for you anymore?"

"I eat more of her food than ever before," I told him. My mother pressed ca.s.seroles and pies and cakes and cookies on me when I visited or brought them to me when she dropped in to see me, which she did every day or so.

"He's a writer," my mother called in my defense from inside the house. "He needs to be alone when he writes. He doesn't need an old hen like me or an old rooster like you bothering him...."

My sisters the twins, Yvonne and Yvette, were regular visitors to my parents' home, although Yvette lived in Gardner, a few miles away, and Yvonne in Worcester, a forty-five minute drive. They spent most of their visits in the kitchen with my mother and were affectionate with my father in an ab-sentminded kind of way, maternal toward him, as if they were mothers instead of daughters. It had been my mother's fancy to dress them identically when they were young. Yvette and Yvonne dressed differently when they grew up- Yvette tended toward tailored clothing in subdued colors, Yvonne loved flouncy dresses and bright hues and high heels. Sometimes when the light caught her in a certain way, she reminded me of Rosanna, and my heart ached. When Yvette and Yvonne visited, the house was filled with laughter and small talk. The talk was of babies and recipes and hair styles and sales and it was all jolly and happy and light. They each had three children, two sons and a daughter each as if the pattern of their dual ident.i.ty remained intact despite the changes the years had brought. Yvonne's children were Brian who was eleven, Donna, ten, and Timothy, who had just turned eight. Yvette's children were Richard, ten, Laura, nine and Bernard, six.

This leaves Rose, the youngest, and the brilliant, beautiful one of the family. A graduate of Medallion, a small Catholic women's college on the Fenway in Boston, she obtained her law degree at Boston University and became a practicing attorney with her husband, Harry Barringer, in Albany, specializing in corporate law. Her husband is Jewish, intellectual, intense about politics-he once ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for state representative-a liberal whose pa.s.sion doesn't match the corporate image he projects. Rose converted to Judaism during their courtship and was married in Temple Emanuel in Albany. Harry was born in Albany and they continue to live there. I sometimes wondered if my father cried about Rose when the tears streamed down his cheeks on the piazza for no apparent reason and whether Rose was a claw in my mother's heart as she did her housework. My father and mother never discussed Rose's conversion. They went to ma.s.s every Sunday. They never missed Holy Days of Obligation and went to confession on the first Sat.u.r.day of each month, although I cannot imagine what sins they confessed.

I did not go to confession anymore and did not attend ma.s.s. They did not question me about religion just as they did not question Rose. Sometimes, in the evening, I slipped into St. Jude's and offered prayers in the shadows. Sister Angela once said that one of the great sins was despairing of being saved. I prayed for my mother and father and everyone in the family, and for my aunt Rosanna wherever she might be, hoping that my unconfessed sins did not taint the prayers.

The family always gathered for holidays and although Rose had become Jewish, she observed the Catholic celebrations. She and Harry were lavish with gifts at Christmastime and never missed an Easter Sunday dinner. My mother stopped baking her Easter ham and served turkey instead with all the fixings. The first time I inhaled the aroma of turkey and stuffing in the kitchen on Easter morning, I threw my arms around my mother and kissed her firmly on the cheek and she shooed me away, the way she used to shoo us off to bed when I was a kid. My mother also stopped asking Rose when she would have children.

Ah, the children.

I have mentioned the children only in pa.s.sing and yet they concerned me more than anyone or anything else. They often visited me at my apartment, especially Armand's sons and daughters, who lived in Frenchtown and dropped in frequently, after school and on weekends. Yvette's and Yvonne's children usually found their way to my tenement when their mothers visited Frenchtown and never failed to spend part of their summer vacations here, Armand's swimming pool being a major attraction.

I had business going with the kids. My nieces performed household duties, sweeping the floors and drying dishes and dusting the furniture. My nephews ran errands, picked up groceries (mostly cakes and cookies and doughnuts and candy, which they later consumed) and mailed my letters and ma.n.u.scripts at the post office. I insisted on paying them. I tried to antic.i.p.ate their interests, stocked my shelves with books and games they might enjoy at certain ages. I had a complete collection of Elvis Presley records that Armand's older sons, Kevin and Dennis, played incessantly.

I felt like a traitor sometimes, as if I were using the children for my own purposes. But it also went beyond just that. I wasn't married, had no children of my own, and except when the writing was going well, the words dancing and singing on the page, the apartment was a lonesome place. An old couple, the Contoirs, lived downstairs, but I was only aware of their presence when they turned up the volume on their television set. When my nephews and nieces arrived, they brought color and sound and riot to my home. They invaded the place and took over operations. The girls experimented at the stove and concocted all kinds of dishes from cookbooks I picked up at secondhand bookstores. We went for long walks, although I avoided St. Jude's Cemetery and could not take them to the Meadow because that immensity of gra.s.s and trees was now a shopping mall and the Moosock River had been diverted and no longer ran red or green on certain days of the week.

As I spent time with the children I studied them closely, always searching. I did this carefully, surrept.i.tiously, casually, but searching all the same. I had kept them under constant observation since their births.

I learned to love them. I ached at Debbie's painful shyness and the way she hung behind when the others were whooping it up. I was inordinately proud when Michael won first prize in the history fair at school for his masterful depiction of the battle of Gettysburg, complete with miniature soldiers and cannon he carved himself throughout an entire winter. Laura was so beautiful and fragile that I wanted to be a knight in shining armor for her, to protect her from all the thugs and wise guys she would inevitably encounter.

There was an echo of Rosanna in the new generation. Just as my sister Yvonne had a touch of Rosanna in her wild colors and easy ways with people so did Donna retain for me souvenirs of Rosanna. There are old photographs of Rosanna as a child that look exactly like Donna at that age except that Donna's features are more delicate, as if the blood that flowed through the Moreaux veins had become more refined as new babies were born. I sometimes found my vision blurred with tears when I looked at Donna.

No one ever knew of Rosanna and how much I loved her. A futile love because she had disappeared from my life and the life of the family. She did not write letters anymore or send postcards, and did not show up for holidays. As time went on, my longing for her dwindled and lost its intensity. Except for certain moments, when Donna entered a room or I caught a glimpse of a woman on the street who reminded me of her-a touch of Rosanna in her walk or windblown hair-and the old anguish would return.

I searched the children incessantly for clues, signals, but never found any evidence.

Kevin came down with a rash one summer day. He was st.u.r.dy like his father, broad-shouldered, with hands that in earlier times would have been ideal for working in the shops. The rash developed after a walk we took across the streets of Frenchtown, out toward Moccasin Pond. The band of us picking blueberries. The rash spread out across his arms and his chest, small puckerings of the flesh and a kind of radiance providing a sheen to his skin. I stared at the radiance, heart pounding. Was this a sign of the fade? I perused his flesh the way I would a specimen in a laboratory, trying to be objective but not able to deny the churning in my blood, the pulse leaping at my temples. The rash turned out to be an allergic reaction, according to the doctor's report. Yet I had known all along that Kevin was not the fader I had been searching for. None of the children was.

How did I know?

I didn't know how how I knew. But I knew. My uncle Adelard had said that something in the blood drew him back to Frenchtown when I was ready for the fade, a beckoning he could not deny. And in that third-floor tenement that spring, that same beckoning came to me. I woke up sometimes in the night, as if answering a distant call, a voice raised in supplication in the darkness. Other times, a restlessness kept me awake into the far reaches of the night, haunted by something just out of sight, beyond my grasp, like a memory I could not recall. Lying in bed, tossing and turning, unable to induce the sweetness of sleep, the knowledge flowered in me that the next fader, the fader of the new generation, was already walking the streets and inhabiting the world. Where? I did not know. But knew he was present somewhere on the planet. I knew. But I knew. My uncle Adelard had said that something in the blood drew him back to Frenchtown when I was ready for the fade, a beckoning he could not deny. And in that third-floor tenement that spring, that same beckoning came to me. I woke up sometimes in the night, as if answering a distant call, a voice raised in supplication in the darkness. Other times, a restlessness kept me awake into the far reaches of the night, haunted by something just out of sight, beyond my grasp, like a memory I could not recall. Lying in bed, tossing and turning, unable to induce the sweetness of sleep, the knowledge flowered in me that the next fader, the fader of the new generation, was already walking the streets and inhabiting the world. Where? I did not know. But knew he was present somewhere on the planet.

My sister Rose knocked at my door one afternoon. I was surprised to find her standing in the hallway with her suitcase. Seeing my frown, she said: "Can you use a visitor for a day or two? I can sleep on the couch...."

She looked weary and defeated, as she entered the kitchen. "I needed to get away," she said, "and realized I had no place to go except here, Frenchtown. But I didn't want to bother Ma and Pa, or cause them worry. I stayed in a motel last night. Couldn't take that again. So thought maybe I could stay with you for a couple of days."

"What's mine is yours," I said. "I'll take the couch, though -I hardly sleep anyway."

I didn't ask her any questions. She seemed at a point of desperation. Touching her shoulder lightly, I kissed her on the cheek. She raised her hand and caressed my own cheek. "Good old Paul," she said. "Always dependable."

My baby sister, fully grown, a wife now, but still my baby sister. Troubled, overweight-"I have a tendency to eat and eat when things go wrong and I've been a glutton lately," she said as she collapsed on the couch.

She took a long bath, changed into slacks and a loose navy blue sweater. "I'm famished," she announced, "starved for something outrageous. Like pizza with everything on it ..."

A pizza parlor occupied what used to be Lakier's Drug Store and I picked up the fanciest pizza possible, which Rose and I devoured with great gulps of beer. "Eating well is the best revenge," Rose said.

Finally, while I sat on the floor, legs jackknifed, and Rose slouched on the couch, chewing on the last vestige of pizza, she began to talk.

"The problem," she said, "is children. It's very simple and uncomplicated and not so simple and complicated. I want them and Harry doesn't." She sighed, wiped a dab of tomato sauce from her cheek, looked down at me, frowning, face dark. "I more than want children, Paul, I have have to have them. I'm not asking for a houseful. One, to begin with. But he won't listen to that. He doesn't want to bring children into this terrible world, he says. c.r.a.p, I say. We battle. We argue. I try to seduce him. He grows cold. It's ruined our s.e.x life. h.e.l.l, it's ruined our life, period." to have them. I'm not asking for a houseful. One, to begin with. But he won't listen to that. He doesn't want to bring children into this terrible world, he says. c.r.a.p, I say. We battle. We argue. I try to seduce him. He grows cold. It's ruined our s.e.x life. h.e.l.l, it's ruined our life, period."

"Maybe time will change him," I said. "A yearning for immortality. The true immortality, Rose: a child to carry your blood, your genes into the future ... Maybe he'll eventually see that...."

"Don't bet on it," she said. "When you live with someone all this time, you come to know them. I know Harry. That's what's so disheartening, so defeating. He does not change."

Forlornly, she brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead. A frown on her forehead, the graffiti of sorrow.

"In all other things he is kind and considerate and loving and caring. And listen, I'm not perfect. I keep gaining weight. I have a temper. I'm far from the perfect wife and roommate...."

"You're perfect in my book," I said.

"No, I'm not," she said, a poignant acceptance in her voice that made me sad. "In fact, this thing about children is kind of ironic. Pathetic, maybe, and ironic too."

A leap of my heart for some reason, something in her words putting me on alert.

The floor throbbed beneath me as the old couple downstairs turned on their television, full volume as usual, a drummer banging out a beat now and then. Canned laughter found its way through the thin floor.

I had a sense of deja vu, as if we had had this conversation before, in these exact positions, she on the couch and me on the floor. I almost knew what she would say next but not quite, not quite.

"Remember when I was at Medallion? The summer between my soph.o.m.ore and junior years? The summer I didn't come home? Went to Maine as a junior counselor at a summer camp for girls? Remember?"

"Yes," I said, "but only vaguely." That was the summer I began to write Bruises in Paradise, Bruises in Paradise, and the real world of Frenchtown and family receded. and the real world of Frenchtown and family receded.

"You probably don't remember that I didn't come home at all that spring. Made it for Easter, otherwise Ma and Pa would have thrown fits. But not after that. And Easter was early that year...."

I said nothing, looking away from her, studying the faded flowered wallpaper, waiting for her to speak and somehow knowing what she was going to say.

"Anyway, I was pregnant. It was crazy." Her voice had a touch of awe and it was as if she were speaking of someone else, not herself. "One time, the first time and my precious virginity which I had battled to save was gone. Just like that. How I had protected that virginity. Fought with guys, cajoled them, almost took up judo at one time. The battle of the hands of all those guys, at dances, at mixers. But quick cheap feels are one thing. I could cope with them. What I couldn't fight was this gorgeous hunk from Boston College. I've never gone for the handsome, virile, the-world-is-mine type. But I did with this guy. Swept me off my feet. I was on a merry-go-round. He was a basketball star. Six three, I mean, I came up to his nipples ..."

She looked directly at me: "Does this offend you, Paul? Disillusion you about your little sister? Will you love me less now?"

"Don't be ridiculous," I said.

"But you look so ... so sad."

"Sad because I didn't realize at the time what was happening to you. It scares me sometimes to think how the family is so close and yet so far apart. All the secrets we have from each other." And my own dark secret.

"Well, the amazing thing, Paul, is that I kept kept it a secret. All these years. n.o.body knew. n.o.body knows even now. n.o.body at home, here in Frenchtown, anyway. n.o.body except my two best friends at school. I'd have been lost without them...." it a secret. All these years. n.o.body knew. n.o.body knows even now. n.o.body at home, here in Frenchtown, anyway. n.o.body except my two best friends at school. I'd have been lost without them...."

"How about the guy?"

"He never knew. I never told him. By the time I was sure -three months gone-he was off on another chase. And me? I was glad he was gone. Nothing like five or six weeks of vomiting every morning in the John of a dorm to send romance out the window...."

"What did you do?" I asked. And knew the answer.

"I might have been pregnant but that didn't mean I wasn't still a good Catholic girl," she said. "I knew I had to have the baby. Oh, we'd heard stories about backroom abortions in South Boston. Horror stories. But it could be done for a price. I didn't consider abortion for a minute. Take the life of a child and a child growing inside me? Impossible. For me, anyway. ..."

"So you had the baby," I said.

The fader. Here in this world, all the time, somewhere.

"It wasn't easy," she said, blowing air out of the corner of her mouth, a little girl suddenly. "Arrangements had to be made. My roommate, a girl named Hettie, and my best friend, Annie, at college, I don't know what I'd have done without them. And a nun. Sister Anunciata. A sweetheart. Not the type to preach, to lift eyebrows, to be shocked at anything. But tough. Small, built like a fire hydrant. No nonsense. She took care of everything, even took care of me....

The endless, unceasing repet.i.tions. The tides of life and living. I thought of Rosanna and her journey to Canada and the baby born dead in a small parish. And now another time and place. And a baby brought into the world. My fader.

"So I went to Maine that summer but not to the camp and not as a counselor. Stayed at the convent of the Sisters of Mercy, a contemplative order. Sent cards home.

"I gained so much weight, it was unbelievable. I don't think I've ever lost all of it. Maybe still carry some of it around, the weight, like penance. The baby was born at the end of August. A week early, thank G.o.d. I was back in school in September, after a short visit home. Ironic-Ma and Pa thought I looked terrific. They always measured health by weight, anyway. Fat babies were the thing in those days. And there I was, a fat and healthy daughter."

It was difficult for me not to ask the question that had formed in my mind from the beginning of her story, but I remained silent, waiting, telling myself to be patient.

"So I have to have a baby, Paul. I lost one already...."

"Lost?" Had her baby failed to survive? Died in a room somewhere in a convent in Maine?

"Lost to me, me, Paul...." Paul...."

"Did the baby live?"

"Yes, although I never saw it. Him. Him. Terrible to call him Terrible to call him it. it. I've never spoken of this to anyone before, not even to Hettie and Annie. Anyway, things were never the same at Medallion when I returned. Hettie fell in love with a boy from Hah-vahd and we seldom saw each other after that. We took different roommates the next year. Annie was an art major and spent her junior year in Florence." I've never spoken of this to anyone before, not even to Hettie and Annie. Anyway, things were never the same at Medallion when I returned. Hettie fell in love with a boy from Hah-vahd and we seldom saw each other after that. We took different roommates the next year. Annie was an art major and spent her junior year in Florence."

We were silent for a while.

"So there's the terrible secret." She raised her face to the ceiling, stretched her arms above her head, sighed magnificently. "I feel free," she said. "For the first time in years. I've never told anyone this before, Paul. It's like confession. Like a hundred-dollar session with a therapist. Suddenly, I feel good. Still overweight but lighter, as if I'd dropped fifty pounds." Looking at me now, troubled and tender. "Thanks, Paul. I hated to burden you with this, but thanks."

In the middle of the night, I lay awake, unable to sleep, thinking of that son of hers-how old? twelve, thirteen now? -knowing somehow that he was calling to me, beckoning to me. I heard footsteps whispering across the kitchen linoleum and saw her ample figure in the white flannel nightgown at the doorway. She came to me, knelt by the bed, and I saw in the dim light of the moon spilling into the room, the tear-stained cheeks, heard her sobs. "I gave him up, Paul, gave him away. The only child I'll probably ever have." I drew her to me, placed my arms around her shoulders, absorbed her m.u.f.fled sobs as she dug her face into my chest.

"My poor lost boy," she murmured inconsolably.

"Maybe he's not lost," I said, my voice tentative.

"What do you mean?"

"Your son, he's out there somewhere in the world." Hated myself for going on but went on anyway: "Do you have any idea where he is? Maybe you could trace him, find him, see him?"

I felt her stiffen as she withdrew from me. "I haven't allowed myself to think that, Paul. I gave up all that when I gave him up."

"How old would he be, now? Twelve? Thirteen?"

"Thirteen, this coming August. August twenty-first. I wonder if he's short or tall. His father was tall, a basketball star. Good-looking, too. I hope he's tall like his father, not short and dumpy like me...."

"You're not dumpy. ..."

She smiled, wanly. Cheeks still stained with tears.

"Good old Paul." Then, brushing back her hair: "No. I could never look him up. Gave my word. Wouldn't know where to look anyway."

"He was born in Maine. Where did you say in Maine?"

"He was born in the hospital in Bangor. But the convent was on the outskirts of a small town called Ramsey. A spooky old stone building that rambled all over the place. Part of the convent was sealed off for the contemplative nuns. They never left that section of the convent except for daily ma.s.s and vespers in the evening. Sister Anunciata and a few others did the ch.o.r.es, cooked and cleaned."

Ramsey. The order of the Sisters of Mercy. Could she provide more information?

"G.o.d, they were good to me," Rose continued. "Wonderful Sister Anunciata with her blue eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with cheer and hope. She was my buddy. Don't worry, she told me the day I left, we have found a good home for him."

She rose to her feet, tears gone. "Thank you for the good shoulder to cry on."

She kissed me on the cheek as she encircled me with her arms. At the doorway, she paused in the semidarkness, the white nightgown flowing dimly around her, and waved good night.

Later, lying on the old couch, unable as usual to summon the sweet oblivion of sleep, excited by the knowledge that the fader existed and was perhaps even now waiting for my arrival, I felt the signals of the fade's arrival, the taking away of the breath that meant the pause. I tried to fight it off, girding myself uselessly for the flash of pain because I had never solved the problem of holding off the fade. As I lost the battle again this time, I was grateful at least that Rose was sleeping in the next room and had not seen my body becoming nothing before her eyes.

There is this about the fade: Its ever-changing nature, the many faces it presents.

At first, the fade was controllable and I held the power to summon or dismiss it. After a while, it began to manifest itself without invitation and without warning.

Once at a dinner party at Andre's Restaurant celebrating Armand's fortieth birthday, I felt the imminence of the fade as we raised our gla.s.ses in a champagne toast. I put the gla.s.s down immediately and excused myself. I made my way without delay to the men's room, rushing among the tables, absorbing the flash of pain. Inside, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror above one of the sinks and saw my body disintegrating. Engulfed by the cold, I rushed into one of the stalls, slammed the door shut and slipped the bolt into place. Even as I did so, I did not see the hand that secured the bolt. Heart beating furiously, flesh damp with perspiration on flesh I could not see, I marveled at my narrow escape. Throughout my life, my biggest fear had been the manifestation of the fade in the presence of others.

I dreaded illness, feared the possibility of a disease or a condition that would call for surgery or a stay in the hospital during which I would have no control over the fade and no place to hide. My tenement became my hiding place. For three weeks one year, when pain tore at my intestines, I isolated myself at home, curled up in bed, gritting my teeth when the pain accelerated, fearing a burst appendix or internal hemorrhaging. I kept a chart of my rising temperature, 102, 103. Chills accompanying the fever, the pain sometimes fugitive in my stomach, sometimes fierce. Looked at myself in the mirror in the bedroom and said over and over again: I will not go to the hospital, I will not go to the hospital. Finally the symptoms grew less intense, the pain a distant echo of its former self, my temperature receding, returning to normal. Afterward, I remained always on guard, bundled up well in winter to avoid chills, drank fruit juices every day, watched my weight, strolled the streets as exercise, careful not to eat too much or drink too much.

The fade exhibited other variations as the years pa.s.sed. It began to diminish me. In the aftermath of the experience, I was left limp with exhaustion, without appet.i.te, listless, with no direction or ambition. This la.s.situde sometimes remained for days, a week or two. I found it impossible to sit at the typewriter and I remained in bed or on the couch for days at a time, trying finally to set down words with pen and paper. This never worked for me. My best writing always comes when I am at the typewriter, at the old L. C. Smith, the keys clattering beneath my fingers, trying to capture in type the swift words leaping from my mind.

The last time my uncle Adelard returned to Frenchtown -the autumn before he died-I was appalled to see the toll that the years and the fade had taken. He had lost weight alarmingly, the flesh of his face taut over his cheekbones, eyes sunk deep into their sockets. "Every time the fade comes," he said, "it takes more out of me. No flash of pain these days, nothing like that. But it's killing me by inches, Paul, eating away at me."

I realized as I stared at my uncle that I was looking at my own future.

During that last visit we didn't walk the streets of French-town but sat on my porch in the cool evenings, wearing bulky sweaters, drinking beer, silent for long intervals but companionable in our silences. I pointed out how ironic it was that the fade had made him wander to far places while it had kept me here in Frenchtown.

"Why have you stayed here, Paul?" he asked.

Wasn't it obvious? "Because here, in Frenchtown, Uncle, I have some control over the unpredictability of the fade. I feel safe here. If the fade happens unexpectedly-and it comes that way more and more-I am never far from home." Yet there was more. "In a way, the fade has made me the writer I am. I always wanted to roam the world, envied you and your wanderings. But I discovered that I didn't have to leave Frenchtown to write. I had dreamed of fame and fortune, crowds cheering me on my arrival in great cities, beautiful women throwing themselves at me. But I learned that the beauty comes from the writing itself and that fame has nothing to do with cheering crowds and being chased by women." I paused then: "And you, Uncle, did you find out there what I found here?"

"It was different for me, Paul, because the fade itself was different in my case. There were things ..."

Across the street in St. Jude's Church the choir was rehearsing as it always did on certain nights of the week, faint voices raised in song.