The Fall of the Year

by Howard Frank Mosher

  The little blue Madonna in the bathtub seemed to follow the fortuneteller with her painted eyes. Louvia spat in the direction of the plaster statuette and crossed herself in reverse. The girl laughed, rattled off something in French, gave my hand a squeeze, and ran lightly up the steps. At the top she looked back once more.

  “Hurry up and get in the car,” Louvia said to me. “We didn’t travel down here for a box social. I intend to locate that recipe if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “Au revoir, Frank,” the girl with the morning-glory eyes called out, and disappeared inside.

  “What did the little tart do to you out back?” Louvia said as we drove back down the street between the bright houses. “I had time to eat a ten-course dinner while you were dallying with her. Did she make any untoward advances?”

  I laughed. “What I want to know is how she knew my name?”

  “Obviously she overheard me say it.”

  “I’m positive you never mentioned it in her presence.”

  “Don’t contradict me. Inside, while she and I were talking, I threw in your name. You didn’t catch it, it sounds different in French.”

  “Evidently.”

  “Did she expose her breasts for you out by the oven? They didn’t look like much to me, I can tell you.”

  “For God’s sake, Louvia.”

  “These college women are the worst kind, Frank. In and out of the sheets with a different young fellow every night. Pull up in front of the hotel. We’ll go in and get a cold drink and reconnoiter.”

  Inside the dining room, we sat at a table overlooking the Common. I ordered a beer and Louvia sipped a tall glass of iced tea through a colored glass straw from her reticule.

  “What happened to the Bonhomme sisters, Louvia? After they sold the bakery to the Letourneaus?”

  The fortuneteller shrugged. “It was said that they returned to Canada, where they were born. The last I remember of them was during the big strike at the furniture factory. You would have been a small boy, ten or eleven, it was just before they unloaded the patisserie. Sylvie and Marie baked bread for the families of the men on the picket line. The stone oven behind their place was smoking night and day. They even marched with the strikers, if you can believe it. Two old women who didn’t know a dozen words of English between them, hobbling along with the Trotskyites!”

  “For God’s sake, Louvia, Father George supported the workers, too. With the monsignor’s permission. They eventually got a raise and shorter hours.”

  “We fortunetellers and matchmakers should be so lucky.”

  I laughed, but Louvia narrowed her eyes as an idea occurred to her. “Sylvie and Marie were great churchgoers, Frank. It may be that your senile old priest-father could help us run down that recipe.”

  “Father G isn’t senile, and this is his afternoon off. He was going to play bocce on the back lawn and have a few beers. He hasn’t been feeling up to par lately.”

  “He’ll be glad for some company,” Louvia said. “Much as I detest trafficking with a priest.”

  “What’s wrong with priests? I’ll be one myself in three years.”

  “Why?” Louvia said.

  “Why?” As Father George, who frequently used baseball expressions in his homilies, liked to say, I felt like a picked-off base runner caught leaning the wrong way. “I don’t know exactly why. It’s something you feel more than you know. Living with Father G—”

  “An excellent reason not to be one,” Louvia said. “George Lecoeur is an overbearing meddler, no more cut out to be a priest at heart than you are, Frank. I hope you’ll change your mind.”

  “We’ll agree to disagree,” I said. “I feel what I feel. What makes you think I’d ever change my mind?”

  “That’s for me to know.”

  I laughed. “The baker’s girl told me the same thing.”

  “The baker’s girl again. Why don’t you run back and invite her out to the tall grass for another romp? Well, never mind. I was young and romantic once myself.”

  “Tell me a story about when you were young and romantic.”

  The fortuneteller frowned and tapped her dime-store rings, one for each finger, on the table top. “I’ll tell you one story. Then we’ll get on with our business.”

  Louvia took another sip of her tea.

  “Now, Frank. Kingdom Common wasn’t always just a failing little mill town. When I first came here from Canada and went to work in the mill myself, there was a beautiful white pavilion on the common with a hardwood floor and colored lanterns strung around the outside. Half a dozen times a summer big bands from Boston and Montreal came here on the train. We danced to all of them, the best times of my life.”

  “We?”

  “I didn’t dance with a broomstick. I had a boy who brought me. We met at the pavilion every Saturday night. As I told you, I was very romantic, and even more foolish than romantic. Foolish enough to fall in love with my good-looking boy, bewitched by the big bands and the colored lights.”

  “But he wasn’t in love with you?”

  Louvia smiled. “I think he was.”

  “And?”

  She shrugged. “The Great War broke out. He went for a soldier. I ran away to tell fortunes with a carnival. A summer romance. Nothing more.”

  Just as I’d suspected, Father George was out on the spacious side lawn of the Big House, playing bocce alone. On a nearby iron bench sat an open bottle of beer.

  Father G retrieved the four bright balls—red, yellow, green, and blue—from a sandy circle in the middle of the lawn and brought them back to the bench, where he dumped them clacking on the ground at his feet like four colored eggs in the same nest. Though baseball had always been his favorite sport, he’d learned to play a form of bocce in France, and he was exceedingly fond of the game.

  Sunday afternoon was Father George’s one time off. When I was a boy, we’d spend Sunday afternoons fishing or hunting, playing ball on the common, riding out into the country in Father George’s Buick, or playing bocce. He’d used the four balls to explain all kinds of doctrinal matters to me. “Look, Frank. The red ball’s the Father, blue is the Son, yellow’s the Holy Ghost. The green one that doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing half the time is me!”

  Or, when getting ready to bowl the red ball at the three others: “Here comes old Pharaoh in his chariot, hot on the trail of the Children of Israel. Look out, Moses!”

  I’d roar with laughter, fall right down on the grass. But later on, in my early teens, when I began to pose hard questions to Father George about such matters as the Trinity, the Sacraments, and our ultimate origin and destination, he’d get frustrated with me and with metaphysical matters as well. To my delight his face would get red, and he’d shout, “All I know, goddamn it, is that God’s creation is good and we’re put here to celebrate it and the best way to celebrate it is to help other people, not bedevil the Lord and His aging representatives on earth with smart-aleck questions.” By then, Father G was usually so worked up he was easy to beat, which made him even madder. He’d have to go into the house for more beer, and I’d laugh harder than ever.

  Today, though, with Father George’s health failing, I was reluctant to bother him. Today he was just an old man playing bocce on a warm spring afternoon, and here I was with his nemesis the fortuneteller. Not surprisingly, when he first saw me approaching with Louvia, Father G shot me a baleful look.

  “Who are you playing against—God?” Louvia said.

  “Yes,” Father George said. “He’s ahead, as usual.”

  “That swill you’re pouring down your gullet isn’t at all good for you, George. It’ll take twenty years off your life.”

  “In September I’ll be sixty-nine. I’ll take my chances, damn it.”

  “The only reason you’ve gotten away with your shenanigans all these years, guzzling beer, swearing like a horse marine, adopting brats, and God alone knows what else, is that Kingdom Common’s so far removed from the rest of the diocese no one knows
what you’re up to.”

  “Or cares, more likely,” Father G said. But when he found out what Louvia wanted, he nodded and smiled. “Of course I remember Sylvie and Marie Bonhomme. They were faithful members of the parish, generous to everyone. A pair of saints, if you ask me. They departed about ten years ago.”

  “Where exactly did they depart to, these two saints on earth? That’s the question.”

  Father George picked up the red ball and hefted it thoughtfully. “Unfortunately, Louvia, there I can’t assist you. There I’m afraid that all Kingdom Common couldn’t assist you.”

  “To hell in a handbasket with all Kingdom Common,” Louvia said. “I want that recipe!”

  Without rising from the bench, Father G rolled the red ball out over the grass. It stopped a few inches short of the circle.

  Louvia made as if to stand up. “This palaver isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  Father G picked up the blue ball, the Son, and lofted it out over the lawn. It nudged past God and wormed its way into the circle. He smiled at me.

  “Are the two old birds dead or not?” Louvia interrupted. “If so, what became of their effects?”

  Father George picked up the green ball and flipped it from hand to hand between his knees. “This one has always seemed to have a mind of its own,” he said. “It’s apt to behave in unpredictable and interesting ways.” He looked roguishly at Louvia. Then he rolled the ball toward the others. At the last moment it wobbled off course and ran a foot past the circle. “See?” Father George said. “Its own master.”

  Louvia heaved a great sigh. “Are you going to tell us what became of the sisters and their recipe?”

  Father George picked up the yellow ball, made two short false casts, then launched it out over the greensward. It rolled straight and true into the sandy circle and stopped beside the blue ball. “Behold,” he said. “Just so the Holy Ghost conducted Sylvie and Marie safely to paradise. Snug as two bugs in a rug.”

  “I won’t debate the point,” Louvia said. “As long as you can tell me what became of the recipe.”

  “Well, there’s the rub, Louvia. I can’t.”

  “What do you mean you can’t? Did they sprout wings and flap up to heaven with it like two old herons?”

  Father George pushed himself to his feet. “Let’s walk down to the church,” he said. “There’s something there I want you to see.”

  “I haven’t set foot in a church in twenty years.”

  “You can see this from the entry way.”

  As we headed down the hill through a corner of the cemetery, the pink granite of St. Mary’s glowed in the rays of the lowering sun. Inside, banks of candles burned for the dead. Stained-glass windows illuminated with biblical scenes lined both walls. Radiant in his multicolored coat, Joseph stood apart from his brothers. Jacob grappled with a muscular angel. Moses and Aaron were beseeching a haughty Pharaoh. These were the images I had grown up with as an altar boy, a choir boy, an acolyte in Father George’s beautiful Church of St. Mary’s of the Green Mountains, where I hoped to preside over masses myself someday. Despite herself, Louvia came inside for a closer look.

  Father George led us down the west aisle and halted beneath a window depicting an ancient figure in a flowing white beard, rising into the sky high above a hillside of olive trees and attended by two angels. ‘“The translation of Elijah, directly from earth to heaven,’” he read from the brass plaque under the window.

  “I imagine he got there as fast that way as any other,” Louvia said. “Look! The two old Bonhomme busybodies are already up there, baking a loaf of bread in honor of his arrival.”

  Father G laughed. “I’m a skeptic myself when it comes to the Old Testament stories. Still, Louvia, the world is full of mysteries.”

  “More than you could ever dream of, George,” Louvia said.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Father G said.

  “That’s for me to know,” Louvia told him.

  Father George sighed, sat down in the pew below ascending Elijah, and slid over to make room for us. The beams of the setting sun streamed in on our heads and shoulders. “That feels good,” he said.

  Louvia nodded. “At last we agree.”

  For a few moments no one spoke. The interior of the big church was perfectly still.

  “This was Sylvie and Marie’s pew,” Father George said. Inside the empty church his voice resonated. “They never missed a mass. But during the big strike Marie got sick. No doubt the excitement was too much for her. After that she claimed that their bread alone was keeping her alive.”

  “Enough about this wonderful manna,” Louvia said. “Did Marie give up the ghost?”

  “Not immediately. But when the strike finally ended, the sisters weren’t able to bake any longer. They were worn out. Then they all but stopped eating. Finally, Sylvie asked if I’d arrange a special communion here in the church at sunset, just for them. She informed me—I don’t know why I’m telling this now, I wouldn’t expect anyone to believe it—that the little blue Madonna from their lawn had appeared to her and suggested the idea. That Mary had said if they’d come here one last time, a ‘great event’ awaited them.

  “Well,” Father George said, “how could I deny her request? In they tottered, arm in arm, at the appointed time. They sat right here, under our old friend the white-beard. When I started down the aisle with the communion service, I had the strangest sensation, as though the sunlight were streaming straight through them. As though they’d become translucent. It was just an illusion, enhanced by their dreadful thinness. But when we celebrated the sacrament and they reached for the wine, the sunlight seemed to shine through their hands onto the silver chalice. I supposed this must be the great event that Sylvie had mentioned.”

  Father George looked at Louvia, as if anticipating one of her comebacks. But she sat stock-still, listening attentively for once.

  “After they’d taken communion, Sylvie asked if they could sit on a bit longer,” Father George said. “I returned to the front of the church to put up the service. By then the sun had set, and to tell you the truth I wanted a cold beer in the worst way. Still, I intended to escort the sisters home first. But when I started back down the aisle toward their pew, this pew, it was empty.”

  Reliving his puzzlement, Father G shook his head. “I hadn’t heard them get up to go. And at their rate of speed, so elderly, they certainly hadn’t had time to reach the door. They’d vanished—there was nothing here but the faint scent of freshly baked bread. Or maybe it was the burning candles. Who knows?”

  I looked at Louvia, who remained silent. During Father George’s narrative the sun had set. Louvia’s face in the afterglow was abstracted, as though she were thinking of something long ago.

  “I rushed outside, but they were nowhere to be seen,” Father George said. “In short, no trace of them was ever found.”

  “Wasn’t there a search?” I said.

  “What would the point have been?”

  “They had to have gone somewhere. You’re the skeptic, Father G.”

  My father rose slowly, reaching out to steady himself on the back of a pew. He shook his head. “Sixty-eight isn’t twenty-six. My bocce days may be drawing to a close, though I hope not. I’m finally beginning to figure out the green ball.”

  “For God’s sake, the recipe!” Louvia cried.

  “I’m afraid it was in their heads and they meant to write it down but never got around to it,” Father George said. “Still, I want to show you one more thing. Two things, actually.”

  We followed Father G down the aisle of the church and outside into the evening. Below us, at the foot of the hill, the lights of our little village were coming on. Across town, the furniture mill was lit up like a village itself. Father George led us up a path through a double row of cedar trees and into the cemetery.

  He stopped on a knoll beside two oblong granite memorials about three feet long and two feet tall. There was just enough light beneath the ced
ars to read the names of Sylvie and Marie Bonhomme on the stones. In the dusk, the memorials bore an uncanny resemblance to bread loaves. Etched into the polished granite beneath Marie’s name was an engraving of an outdoor baking oven with a wisp of smoke curling out of the chimney. On Sylvie’s was a small Madonna in a bathtub shrine.

  “Who paid for these?” Louvia said.

  Father George shrugged. “It was a small enough gesture after all they’d done for the parish.”

  He rested his hand on Marie’s stone. “Sometimes when I pass near here I’m sure I can smell the scent of baking bread. Very faint, but inexpressibly fragrant. Like the tiny white violets that come up in the grass all over my bocce court in May. I think I can smell it now.”

  I, too, thought I caught a whiff of bread baking. But true to form, Louvia scoffed at such a notion. “It’s the cedar trees,” she said. “Falling dew always brings out the aroma of arborvitae.” After leaving Father George at the Big House, Louvia and I drove back down the hill past the church toward the lighted town. Neither of us spoke until we reached the common.

  “Bring your wife here someday, Frank,” Louvia said suddenly. “Tell her the story of how you and Louvia the Fortuneteller journeyed up to the church and the cemetery and whiled away the afternoon listening to fairy tales.”

  I laughed. “Should I tell this wife of mine about the baker’s assistant?”

  Louvia reached into her reticule. “I’ll consult my Daughter.”

  Under the street lamps, Louvia’s rose quartz gazing stone glowed softly. “Yes, tell her. She’ll be amused,” Louvia said. Then: “Oh! I thought I caught a glimpse of the old dance pavilion on the common. Another vision from the other side, no doubt.”

  But thinking of the open dance hall with the colored lights where Louvia and her young man had danced to the Montreal bands made me suddenly angry. “That guy you fell in love with? He should have married you, Louvia, war or no war.”

  Louvia looked at me intently. “Would you have?”