Fade. Part 3

The Meadow shimmered in the sunlight, my aunt and I alone in that vast expanse, and I felt exposed suddenly, wondering if I could find a place to hide before she realized I was there.

Suddenly, she turned.

And saw me.

She didn't appear surprised as our eyes met. As usual, whenever I was in her presence, I blushed and grew fl.u.s.tered and didn't know what to do with my hands. And now it was worse than ever, because I was racked with guilt, from having both followed her and spied on her but most of all for that other day when she had seen me in my shame, my pants stained, my l.u.s.t exposed.

She beckoned to me, her expression inscrutable.

And I went to her, helpless to resist, although a part of me wanted to run away again.

"Why are you following me, Paul?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said, the blood rushing to my face, my temples throbbing. Then in desperation: "Are you still mad at me?" And cursed myself for asking that question because it was a reminder of that other day.

She sank to the picnic table, her arm trailing along its surface. "I'm not mad at you, Paul. Mad at myself, maybe. Are you you mad at me?" mad at me?"

I wanted to cry out yes. yes. Because she had visited Rudolphe Toubert of all people, had probably made love to him while I waited outside and his wife watched his office from the window. And I wanted to shout Because she had visited Rudolphe Toubert of all people, had probably made love to him while I waited outside and his wife watched his office from the window. And I wanted to shout no. no. Because my love for her forgave everything and anything. Because my love for her forgave everything and anything.

Shaking my head, I said: "How could I be mad at you?"

She motioned me to the bench.

I sat down carefully, as if my body would fall apart if I moved too suddenly. I was immediately caught up in the scent of her, made almost dizzy by the closeness of her body.

"I was wrong from the start," she said. "Flirting with you like that. Ah, not flirting, really. Since you were a baby, Paul, you were special to me. You always had a kind of shyness about you. A gentleness. I always loved to pick you up and cuddle you." She blew air out of the corner of her mouth as an errant strand of hair brushed her cheek. "You still are special to me, Paul. But sometimes I forget that you aren't a baby anymore, not someone to toy with...."

"It was my fault," I cried out, not wanting her to take the blame for anything between us. "It's still my fault. I was the one who was wrong...."

"Wrong? About what?" she asked, puzzled.

"Wrong because I spied on you. Sneaked into your room when you weren't home. Followed you today. It's none of my business what you do." And then I plunged. Like leaping from the highest steeple of St. Jude's Church, not caring if I crashed into a million pieces. "I love you...."

"Oh, Paul," she said, her voice catching as if her throat hurt. "It's not love-"

"Yes, it is," I said, ready for her. "I know I'm only thirteen, but it's love. It's not a crush. It's not puppy love. I know all about those things from books and movies. I love you. With all my heart. I will love you forever."

The confession freed my spirit and my soul. I wanted to run and shout to the sky, join the birds in their singing. But then I saw the sad look on her face, and I drew back.

She reached out, touched my shoulder and my shoulder burned sweetly.

"That's the nicest thing anybody ever said to me," she whispered. "And I'll never forget those words, Paul. But you mustn't love me. I'm your aunt. I'm too old for you. You're going to love a dozen girls before you finally find the right one. Then you'll look back on your old aunt Rosanna and wonder: What did I ever see in her?"

"Don't say that," I cried, tears springing to my eyes, my chin beginning to tremble, the chin that always betrayed me. "I'll always love you. I'll never love anyone else."

She reached for my hand, and I hesitated, drew away a bit, because my palm was wet with sweat. She took my hand in hers anyway, didn't seem to notice the embarra.s.sing moisture, locking my fingers with hers. I felt so close to her that I took my courage in my hands and asked the question that had always been on my mind.

"Why did you leave Frenchtown, Aunt Rosanna?"

She looked away, toward the far horizon where old barns, hazy in the heat, seemed like ancient animals pausing to rest.

"A lot of reasons," she said absently.

"Please. You said I wasn't a child anymore. So don't talk to me like I'm a child." My boldness surprised me, but her hand still clutching mine gave me courage.

"Okay," she said, looking directly at me, a challenge in her eyes. "I left Frenchtown because I was pregnant."

I had never heard that word said out loud before. Once in a while I overheard my mother and other women describe someone as being "in the family way" or "expecting" and even those words were spoken in hushed tones. On the street corners, girls got "knocked up." Pregnant Pregnant was almost a street corner word, a shocking sound on my aunt's lips. was almost a street corner word, a shocking sound on my aunt's lips.

"Does that shock you?" she asked.

"No," I said, trying to hide my shock.

"I wasn't married, Paul, but I wanted to have the baby. I knew I would have to give it away but I wanted it to be born." She breathed away the wisp of hair that had fallen again across her cheek. "Oh, I suppose something could have been arranged so that I didn't have to have it. But I could never do that. I always loved children. ..."

I knew at that moment that I would love her forever.

"So I left town before I began to show."

"Where did you go?"

"Canada. To my aunt Fiorina and my uncle August. They were very good to me. They asked me no questions and I told them no lies. They still live in St. Jacques, on a small farm there. They took good care of me. They arranged everything. With the doctor, an old man from the parish. But the baby was born dead."

I did not say anything. Everything was silent around us, as if the birds and the small animals in the woods were holding their breath.

"A girl. I saw her only once," she said. And then, with a small laugh: "You know, all the new babies I've ever seen, Paul, have been red and wrinkled, but not my baby. She was like a rose, all pink. I held her for a few moments and then they took her away. She's buried in the cemetery at St. Jacques. I never go there."

Her voice was a whisper now and it was as if she were not talking to me at all but to herself. "The plan was for me to give her up. The doctor would see to it, place the baby with a good family. I agreed, although I wondered as she grew inside me if I could do that. And then she died ..."

She shook her head and slapped the bench. "Enough of that, Paul. It's past and gone."

We sat for a while without saying anything, so close that I could smell the peppermint of her breath.

"Did you stay in St. Jacques all the time you were gone?" I asked finally.

"I'm not the farm type," she said. "I got to Montreal, worked in a beauty shop there. Then, last year, to Boston. Know what's the matter with me, Paul? I don't belong anywhere. I don't belong here in Frenchtown. Your Memere and Pepere took me in when I came back because they never shut the door on anyone. They let me live there but I'm like a tenant who doesn't pay rent. The girls I knew at St. Jude's are married now, have children. Those who aren't married work in the shops. I don't fit in. I'm not the shop type anyway." She said this last with a kind of pride in her words.

"But why did you come back?" I asked.

"Good question," she said, frowning. "I came back because I got tired of rooming houses, cheap hotels, being picked up by strangers. Even my closest friends were strang-ers....

I ached for her loneliness, for all the things that had gone wrong in her life.

"Let me tell you something, though, Paul. Strangers sometimes treat you better than your relatives. They judge you by what you're doing today, not what you did yesterday. So, I'm ready to go again. To leave Frenchtown. There's nothing here for me anymore."

But Vm here, I wanted to shout in protest even as I knew that I could only offer her a thirteen-year-old boy's love and nothing else. No protection from the pickups. No money to dress her in the fancy clothes she loved. I wanted to shout in protest even as I knew that I could only offer her a thirteen-year-old boy's love and nothing else. No protection from the pickups. No money to dress her in the fancy clothes she loved.

"When are you going?" I asked, even though it was better if I did not know when.

"It depends," she said.

The afternoon began to alter, changing almost imperceptibly, glowing rather than shining, pewter suddenly instead of silver. The trees were limp and weary now, leaves closing on each other, branches bending as if in genuflection. The birds had fled, leaving an emptiness in the air.

"I knew you were following me this afternoon, Paul," she said. "And that's why I almost didn't go to Rudolphe Toubert's. I didn't want you to see me going there. But I had made up my mind to see him and it was too late to change. It took a lot of courage for me to see him and I was afraid that if I changed my mind, I wouldn't go again."

"Does your going away have something to do with him?" I asked.

She nodded. "I asked his help. This time, when I leave Frenchtown, I want to do it the right way. With prospects. I'd like to start a small business ..."

A business? My aunt Rosanna a businesswoman?

"What kind of business?"

"Hairdressing. I'm good at it too. I worked as a hairdresser in Montreal. I'd like to open a small shop there. That's why I went to see Rudolphe Toubert. To arrange for the money."

I thought of Jean Paul Rodier and the beating he took in Pee Alley. Would Rudolphe Toubert send his goons all the way to Montreal?

"Did he say he'd lend you the money?" I asked, hoping he had refused and she would remain in Frenchtown.

"It's not a question of lending," she said, and then pressed her lips together, a small frown creasing her forehead.

Suddenly I knew, the knowledge coming to me the way blood spurts from a wound, the way pain is absent one moment and agonizingly present the next.

"Was he the one?" I said, my voice sounding far away, as if someone else were speaking. "The one who ..." I couldn't say the words.

"Yes, Paul. He was the one who got me in trouble." Shy suddenly, the words in trouble in trouble instead of instead of pregnant, pregnant, delicate and almost prim on her lips. "The baby-it was his." delicate and almost prim on her lips. "The baby-it was his."

A pang tore at my heart. She had slept with him, after all. Had carried his flesh and blood in her body. Had let him caress her, kiss her-I did not let my thoughts go further.

"Not many people know this, Paul. Your Pepere would kill him if he knew. So would your father. They think it was somebody pa.s.sing through Frenchtown. Which made them think worse of me but ..." And she shrugged, her shoulders lifting and falling as she sighed.

"Will Rudolphe Toubert give you the money?" I asked.

"I think he will. He likes to keep people dangling on a string. That's what he did the first time. He gave me the money to go away but only after he kept me waiting. He said he had doubts the baby was his...."

Again, she read what was in my eyes and on my face. "Oh, the baby was his, all right, Paul. And he knew it, too. I liked a good time in those days, still do, I guess, but I didn't sleep with just anybody at all. He said if he gives me something this time, it will be out of the goodness of his heart."

"I don't think he has a heart," I said. Again, I plunged. "When you saw him this afternoon, did he ... did you ..." But I couldn't bring myself to finish the question.

She shook her head. "No." Emphatically. "Oh, he wanted to. He ... touched me. Felt me up. But I took his hand away ..."

My blood raced at her words-more street corner words, felt me up felt me up- and the words inflamed my l.u.s.t again and despite my hate for Rudolphe Toubert and my horror at what he had done to my aunt Rosanna and what he had tried to do only an hour or two ago, despite all this, I felt my body getting warm again and I was caught between pleasure and agony, between sin and desire.

My hand had been in hers all this time, and she had alternately pressed and caressed it and entwined her fingers around my fingers as we talked. And now she took my hand and placed it on the white blouse, on her breast, and my fingers cupped her breast, caressing instantly and instinctively, as if they had been born for this, as if / had been born for this moment, what all my days and nights had been preparing me for. I was stunned by the softness and the firmness of her breast-how could it be both at the same time?- the way it yielded to my touch and filled my hand so beautifully. I had never held a breast before, either a woman's or a girl's, except in my hot dreams at night. Its weight was gentle, light and heavy, both at once, as I caressed it in the silki-ness of her blouse.

Raising my eyes to hers, I saw a terrible sadness in them. "Do you like that?" she asked, covering my hand that covered her breast.

And I knew then that I was no better than Rudolphe Toubert and all the others in her life who had wanted only her body, her flesh, not caring about her, who she was, her needs, her desires, her ambitions. I had never inquired about her hopes and dreams-had not even known she was a hairdresser, for crying out loud-had not known until today why she had left Frenchtown. Yet, I loved her. Love? Did I even know what love was? Rudolphe Toubert had not loved her. We both wanted the same thing from her. In my shame, my body went limp and all desire left me.

I withdrew my hand and it trembled, a thing apart from my body, like a leaf detached from a branch, pausing in the air until the wind takes it away.

"I'm sorry," I said, wanting her even as I denied myself the touching of her, the caressing.

The shop whistles blew in the distance, five o'clock, the end of the workday. The whistles of Frenchtown always blew at once, the deep bellow from the Monument Comb Shop, the piercing tones of the Wachusum Shirt Company, and the short blurts, like someone in agony, from the Royal b.u.t.ton Company. Carried on the summer air, the whistles created a strange kind of harmony, harsh and out of tune yet blending together, like the cries of all the workers down the hallways of the years, protesting the long hours, the blistering heat, the aches and the pains, the frustrations and the losses. The whistles were the sound of Frenchtown and I sometimes hear them in my dreams.

I looked at my aunt and said: "Why did you do that? Why did you put my hand there?"

"Because I love you, Paul. In my own way. You mean more to me than Rudolphe Toubert. If he can touch me there, then why not you?" There was a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. "I wanted to give you something to remember me by. Even though it was wrong, of course. But then I'm always doing the wrong thing, I guess...."

A blue jay's cry pierced the stillness of the afternoon, as if to coax the factory whistles back.

"It's time to go, Paul," my aunt Rosanna said.

I followed my aunt Rosanna across the narrow bridge. She walked barefoot, carrying her shoes in her hand, her stockings in her purse. We walked home slowly, nodding to the weary, sweat-soaked workers as they returned from the shops, their shadows long on the sidewalks, their movements languid in the failing heat of the day.

At the corner of Mechanic and Sixth, my aunt and I parted. She smiled tenderly at me, touched my cheek with her hand.

When I reached home, my mother greeted me with the news that my uncle Adelard, that elusive traveler, had returned to Frenchtown and was waiting for us to visit that night at my grandfather's house.

*y uncle Adelard's homecomings were always a treat for the family, even for those who, like my uncle Victor, didn't approve of his wanderings and thought he should settle down in Frenchtown, marry and have children. When he arrived, excitement spread through the family and everyone gathered at my grandfather's house to listen to his stories and pepper him with questions. I sat on the floor, at my aunt Rosanna's feet, enthralled to be in his presence, thrilled to be so close to my aunt yet barely able to raise my eyes to hers when I thought back to that moment with her in the Meadow.

My uncle Adelard stood in the doorway, tall and thin, in old clothes that seemed faded from the sun and worn out with use. His face was the same as his clothes, pale and faded, eyes sunken into deep sockets. Listening to him intently, I realized after a while that he did not so much tell stories as answer questions, patiently and dutifully, as if this were some kind of debt he must pay, an ordeal he must endure.

"Yes," he said, answering my cousin Jules, "the West is like what you see in cowboy pictures. The rolling hills and the plains. But what the movies don't show is the cold. It's always hot in the movies and the cowboys gallop over the prairies in the heat, and the sun is always shining. But last year in Montana on the Fourth of July, it snowed-sure, melting as soon as it hit the ground-but snow all the same."

"Were you a cowboy?" I asked, the question popping out as unplanned as a hiccough.

Everyone laughed and I blushed and my aunt Rosanna reached out and tousled my hair, her touch like a caress.

Uncle Adelard looked down at me and smiled, his eyes crinkling as he did so. "Well, I rode a horse a few times and we had cows where I worked for a while so, yes, maybe I was a cowboy, Paul. I did carpenter work, though, fixing the fences in the corrals. You've heard of chuckwagons? Well, we had a chuckwagon but the food was so bad that I had the runs one whole summer...."

We all laughed, and I was delighted that he remembered my name. I wondered if I ought to press my luck and ask him about the photograph. Then decided not to, afraid to appear foolish in front of the family, knowing my uncle's reputation for avoiding straight answers.

As he continued to ponder other questions-"Did you see the Golden Gate Bridge?" and "Is it true the Mississippi is so wide you can't see across it?"-I studied him closely and noticed the way he held himself apart from all of us between the piazza and the hallway, as if he needed s.p.a.ce around him. He talked in matter-of-fact fashion about his travels without exhibiting any excitement over great cities like Chicago and Los Angeles. "They're like Monument, only bigger," he said. Was he joking or was he serious? If he did not seem charmed by the places he visited why did he keep going, year after year, always moving on, moving on?

There comes a moment when evening pa.s.ses into nighttime and people begin to stifle yawns and stretch their legs. The shops waited tomorrow and the workers never stayed up late in the middle of the week.

My father finally stood up, my baby sister, Rose, sleeping floppily in his arms, a doll with dangling limbs. "Well, Del, we're glad you're home. It's good to have you back...."

The others murmured a.s.sent as they rose and prepared to depart. My uncle Victor flung his arm around his younger brother's shoulders and pecked him on the cheek. "I can get you a job at the shop anytime you say," he said, but there was good humor in his words and it was evident that he did not expect Adelard to take him up on the proposal.

"Time for confession," my mother proclaimed one Sat.u.r.day morning.

I flinched at the dreaded words but had known they were inevitable. During the school year the nuns marched us once a month to the church, where we confessed our sins. The confessions were torture. You whispered your sins to the priest, your lips close to the screen, conscious of the priest listening intently, inches away. You were aware of your cla.s.smates in the nearby pews, waiting their turn, afraid your voice would float through the trembling curtain, carrying your words of disgrace to their ears.

During vacation, those agonizing confessions were suspended, although at least once during the summer my mother dispatched us to the church. Armand and I always protested. Summer Sat.u.r.days were busy with baseball and movies and ch.o.r.es around the house, too busy for confession. My mother was adamant. "Bad things happen in the summer. People get struck by lightning. The LeLonde boy drowned last year. Do you want to go straight to h.e.l.l if, G.o.d forbid, you missed confession?"