OTHER BOOKS BY ROBERT CORMIER
After the First Death
Beyond the Chocolate War
The Bumblebee Flies Anyway
The Chocolate War
8 Plus One
Frenchtown Summer
Heroes
I Am the Cheese
I Have Words to Spend
In the Middle of the Night
Other Bells for Us to Ring
The Rag and Bone Shop
Tenderness
Tunes for Bears to Dance To
We All Fall Down
To my wife, Connie, with love
t first glance, the picture looked like any other in a family album of that time, the sepia shade and tone, the formal poses, the men in solemn Sunday suits and the women, severely coiffed, in long skirts and billowing blouses. It was a portrait of my father's family taken before World War I on the front steps of the house in Quebec on the banks of the Richelieu River.
The family moved to New England shortly after the picture was taken, my father along with my grandparents, my five uncles and four aunts, among them my aunt Rosanna, whom I would love all the days of my life.
I discovered the photograph when I was eight or nine years old and was told immediately of its mystery by my cousin Jules, who swore me to secrecy. I found out eventually that the mystery of the photograph was not really a secret, although it provoked various reactions among members of the family. Some dismissed the mystery not as a mystery at all, but as a failure of the camera's mechanism or the result of a childish prank. Others spoke of the mystery in hushed tones, with raised eyebrows, as if even the mere mention of the picture would bring terrible consequences. My grandfather refused to talk about the photograph altogether and acted as if it didn't exist, although it occupied a place in the big family album in the mahogany desk in the parlor at his house.
My father was amused by it all. “Every family has its mysteries,” he said. “Some families have ghosts, we have a picture.”
The mystery?
In the space that was supposed to have been occupied by my uncle Adelard, at the end of the top row, next to my father, there is simply a blank space. Nothing.
My uncle Adelard had disappeared at the moment the camera clicked and the shutter opened.
My uncle Adelard was always disappearing, going away and coming back again, a drifter whom I regarded as a glamorous figure, an adventurer, although he was thought of as a hobo and a tramp by some of the others in the family.
The family had settled down in Frenchtown on the east side of Monument in Massachusetts along with hundreds of other French Canadians, living in the three-decker tenements and two-story houses, working in the shops producing combs and shirts and buttons, sending their children to St. Jude's Parochial School, and attending mass at St. Jude's Church on Sundays. They shopped every day in the stores on Fourth Street, although they made regular excursions to Monument Center, the downtown shopping district.
I was puzzled by the way the people of Frenchtown accepted the daily grind of the factories, week after week, year after year. My father, for instance. A handsome man who was quick to laugh, he enjoyed a great reputation as a ballplayer in the Twilight Industrial League, swift and daring as a base runner and hitting dramatic home runs in the clutch. He danced the quadrilles at weddings with the same kind of quickness, whirling my mother around dizzyingly on the dance floor with whoops of delight while she hung on for dear life. The next morning he trudged his way back to the Monument Comb Shop, where he worked for forty-five years, enduring the layoffs, the lean years of the Depression, and the violence of the strikes.
My uncle Adelard escaped the shops—the daily drudgery and the layoffs and the walkouts—just as he had escaped the photographer's lens in Canada. That was why I felt a kinship with him. In that summer of 1938, I was thirteen years old, timid and shy and sometimes afraid of my own shadow. But in my heart I was brave and courageous like the cowboys in the Saturday afternoon serials at the Plymouth Theater. I felt that I, too, could become a hero if the opportunity presented itself or if I were tested. But there were no opportunities in Frenchtown. I longed to explore the outside world I saw in the movies or heard about on the radio or read about in books. Uncle Adelard was the only person outside my books and movies who had the dimensions of a hero, who dared to be different, who wandered the earth.
And that was why I hounded my father with questions whenever I got the chance. I waited while he listened to the radio and the news of Hitler gobbling up countries in Europe, felt guilty because the photograph was more important to me than the marching armies overseas. But this did not deter me from my purpose. I would gauge his disposition after he snapped off the radio, and if he seemed in a talkative mood, brought up the subject of the photograph.
Sipping the beer he brewed in the porcelain crocks in the cellar, smoking his Chesterfields, he often smiled in résignation and said: “Okay, what do you want to know?” As if I had never asked these questions before.
“Okay, it was a Sunday afternoon, right? And you were all on the front steps up in St. Jacques …”
“That's right,” my father said, lighting another Chesterfield with a kitchen match scratched on his pants. “We were dressed in our Sunday best in shirts and ties and wool jackets. It was a hot summer afternoon so there was a lot of moving around, a lot of squirming.”
“And Uncle Adelard was standing right beside you …”
“He sure was,” he said. “It was impossible not to notice him. He was restless, refused to stand still. Until your Pépère turned around and gave him a look. He could shrivel your bones with that look.
“So at last Adelard became quiet, although he still managed to give me a pinch, daring me to flinch or jump.”
“And then what happened?”
“Well, nothing. The photographer, Mr. Archambault, snapped the picture when we were all settled down. Rosanna was a baby in your Mémère's arms and had been fussing a bit. But she fell asleep, dozing nice and quiet. And, bang, the picture was taken.”
“Now, tell me what happened when Mr. Archambault brought the picture to the house,” I said.
The smell of celluloid clung to my father, a sweet acid smell that emanated not only from his clothes but from his skin as well, even when he emerged from a bath. It was the smell of the material from which combs and brushes were made at the shop. It was the smell of work, the smell of weariness, even the smell of danger because celluloid was highly flammable and sometimes spurted into flame without warning.
Sighing, he said:
“Well, when we looked at the photograph, there was no Adelard. Instead of Adelard, there was a blank space. He had disappeared.…”
“Did he really disappear?” I asked, as if I hadn't asked the question a thousand times before.
“Well, Adelard was a trickster, you know. I think he might have ducked out of sight at the last minute, just as the photographer took the picture.…”
“Wouldn't you have seen him do that?” I asked. “He must have made some kind of movement.”
“I don't know, Paul. I was concentrating on the camera. Mr. Archambault told us to smile, told us not to move. It was hot in the sun, my collar was tight. I didn't really care what the others were doing, especially Adelard. He was a pain in the neck most of the time anyway. So I didn't see him move.”
This delighted me because if my uncle Adelard had simply disappeared, there would have been no movement at all, of course.
“Now, the photographer, Mr. Archambault. Didn't he see anything unusual?”
“Who knows?” my father asked, his eyes flashing as he prepared to make his usual joke. “It's hard to see what isn't there.”
I laughed, not only to be polite but because I enjoyed this ritual of question and answer, and my
father and I in the kitchen together, the cigarette smoke curling in the air and everybody else off somewhere.
My father went on: “Mr. Archambault, poor guy, was more mystified than we were. He swore that Adelard had been posed like the rest of us but he also admitted that he was not looking at anyone in particular when he snapped the picture. Mr. Archambault offered to take one-twelfth off the price since one of the twelve wasn't in the picture. But your Pépère paid him the full price. He said the family was his responsibility, not the photographer's.”
“What did Uncle Adelard have to say about it?”
It's funny that even when you know the answer to a question, you wait for it eagerly anyway. Is it because this time, this time, the answer might be different, that some forgotten piece of information might come forth? Or is it that the answer will confirm what you hope to hear?
“Did anybody ever get a straight answer out of Adelard?” my father asked, a question he didn't expect me to answer. “Anyway, he always said that if he told us what really happened, we'd have nothing to talk about anymore, except the shop and time studies, dull stuff.”
“So he never admitted that he ducked down and was hiding, did he?” I asked, triumph in my voice.
“That's right, Paul. He only smiled when we asked him. Still does. And then he changes the subject. …”
We sat there a moment in silence, each with our own thoughts about my uncle Adelard and the photograph, I guess.
“Where is he now, Dad?”
“Who knows?”
My father pulled back the white ruffled curtain and stared out the window at the other three-deckers along Sixth Street, clotheslines looping from house to house, hung with clothes like flags of many colors, some bright and vivid, some faded and sad.
It thrilled me to think that my uncle Adelard was out there in the big world beyond Frenchtown and Monument.
* * *
“He's back,” my father announced as he entered the kitchen in a cloud of celluloid and banged his lunch pail on the table.
I leapt from the chair where I had been reading the latest issue of Wings magazine, eager for details.
“When did she arrive?” my mother asked, turning from the table where she had been supervising my twin sisters, Yvonne and Yvette, as they laid out the knives, forks, and spoons.
She?
“Last night, late as usual, knocking on Pa's door after midnight,” he said, shaking his head in mild disgust. “That's Rosanna for you.”
I realized that my ears had fooled me into hearing what I wanted to hear—that my uncle Adelard had returned—instead of what my father had actually said.
“Poor Rosanna,” my mother said.
My father snorted and went to the kitchen sink to wash up.
I had not seen Aunt Rosanna for at least five years, which is a lifetime, of course, when you're thirteen years old looking back to the age of eight. I had almost forgotten her existence and retained only a vague image of red lips and shining black hair and clothes that sparkled and shimmered when she walked. Whenever her name came up, a hush always followed and people in the family averted their eyes from each other. She was not like Uncle Adelard, who was always the subject of speculation and curiosity and sent postcards home from places like Boise, Idaho, and Billings, Montana, and Waco, Texas. No one ever heard from Aunt Rosanna.
A few days later my mother sent me to my grandfather's house with an apple pie she had baked. The steaming pie in my hands, I knocked awkwardly at the door with my elbow. A moment later I found myself in the presence of my Aunt Rosanna.
She stood near the kitchen window in a purple skirt and white blouse, the black hair even blacker now and glinting in the afternoon sunlight, her lips still full and red, redder even than the brightest Mclntosh. And her eyes. What eyes. Brilliantly blue but not the blue of the sky or the blue of my mother's fancy goblets she put out only on holidays. Her eyes were a brimming blue as if on the verge of tears, and the light danced on that blue the way the sun dances on the surface of a lake.
There are moments that stop the heart, that catch the breath, that halt the beat of blood in your veins, and you are suspended in time, held between life and death, and you wait for something to bring you back again. And what brought me back was my name on her lips:
“Paul. You've grown up. It's so good to see you.”
Somehow the pie was out of my hands and I was in her embrace, her arms around me, her perfume invading me, spicy and exotic, and I was aware of her breasts crushed against me, and I couldn't breathe and my blood pulsed wildly and my skin itched and my head whirled.
“Let me look at you,” she said, thrusting me away but her hands gripping my shoulders, and I was both reluctant to leave the circle of her embrace and yet eager to get away, to run and hide, to gather this moment to myself, burn it into my memory, and I also wanted to sing a song or write a poem or leap with joy. I did nothing but stand there, stunned.
“What's the matter, Paul? Aren't you glad to see me? You haven't said a word.”
Was there teasing in her voice? Was she enjoying the effect she had on me? I felt that I was turning all colors before her, that I appeared awkward and ridiculous. My pants were too tight and trickles of sweat rolled down my ribs from my armpits.
I stammered and swallowed and gulped and didn't know what to do with my hands as she laughed a wonderful laugh, full-throated and raucous while her eyes told me without words that she understood what was happening to me, that there was something special between us.
“I remember picking you up as a baby and kissing you all over,” she said. “And now you're almost a grown man …”
I almost dissolved in ecstasy there in the kitchen in front of my grandparents. I ached to tell her that I loved her, instantly and forever, that she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, lovelier than Merle Oberon and Margaret Sul-lavan in the movies at the Plymouth, more beautiful and enticing than any of the women in those magazines at the back of Lakier's Drug Store that I feasted upon with hot eyes when Mr. Lakier had his back turned.
My grandfather coughed explosively and my grandmother bustled about, and I sensed that they wanted to end this meeting of my Aunt Rosanna and me.
“I'm glad you're back,” I managed to utter as I fumbled for the doorknob. Fleeing the kitchen, I slammed the screen door behind me, clattered down the stairs and across the yard, scurried through the rows of tomato plants in my grandfather's garden, streaked along the sidewalk down Eighth Street, running, running, heart pounding, thoughts in a frenzy, wondering what was happening to me, happy and sad, hot and cold, all at the same time, my heart filled to bursting with—what? what?—I couldn't put a name to it. Someone called my name as I hurtled past Dondier's Meat Market and it might have been Pete Lagniard but I didn't stop, couldn't stop, wanted to run forever, alone but not alone, because my Aunt Rosanna ran with me— Paul … you ‘ve grown up … / remember kissing you all over …
That night in bed, curled up like a child, I erupted into ecstasy.
“What the hell are you doing?” Armand, my older brother, asked from the other side of the bed. My younger brother, Bernard, lay between us and I was glad he was sound asleep.
“Nothing,” I said, voice low and muffled, strangling with shame and remembering Father Blanchette's whispered warnings in the confessional about such practices.
Yet, could it be a sin if you did it out of love, if you surrendered to a terrible longing, if, by surrendering, you ended the torture, sweet as it was, that made you run the streets with no destination, that took away your appetite, that kept you tossing in bed, that made you so happy one minute that your body sang like a violin and so miserable the next that you wanted to cry?
“Go to sleep,” Armand said, his voice surprisingly tender for someone concerned mostly with baseball and skipping school and hanging around the comb shop.
I lay there in the bed, listening to the sleep sounds of my brothers and sisters. The bedroom was large enough to accommoda
te two beds at right angles to each other. While Armand, Bernard, and I occupied the bed nearest the kitchen door, my twin sisters, Yvonne and Yvette, who were eleven, slept in the bed near the window. The sounds of the night were everywhere around me—the melting ice dripping from the pan beneath the icebox in the pantry, the sounds of my brothers and sisters softly snoring, turning in their sleep, sometimes uttering small sharp cries in the night. The baby, Rose, slept in a small bed close by my parents in their bedroom and she sometimes wakened, whimpering, and I would hear my mother crooning softly to her.
I pondered the mysteries of life as the minutes passed. How did I manage to be born in Frenchtown in Monument at this moment of history? I thought of the poems I had written that were hidden away in the closet, poems full of my longings and loneliness, my fears and desires. I wrote my poetry in secret, lying beneath the bed with a flashlight or in the shed behind an old and useless black stove. But I did not know if I was a poet. I wondered why I tossed and turned in my bed at night instead of plunging into sleep the way my brothers and sisters did. I sometimes envied the way they lived their lives without asking questions or pondering the mysteries that surrounded us. Or did they, too, have secrets they shared with no one?
I sometimes longed to be like them, a star ballplayer who was always chosen first for a team, like Armand, or handsome like Bernard, almost too beautiful to be a boy, some people said. I even envied my twin sisters, who were all giggles and laughter, got good marks in school, and were never scolded by my parents or the nuns. Most of all I envied Pete Lagniard, my best friend, who ran faster and climbed fences quicker than anyone else, knew a thousand secrets—all the uses of corn silk, how to make a slingshot that never failed, the best hiding places in the neighborhood. I considered my lack of talent at schoolyard games, my thousand fears, the loneliness I could not explain that threw a shadow across my life even during happy moments.
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