After Donnie Henderson pointed up Goldie’s iridescent drive to the top of the hill, Freddy Broussard finally knew which house was Irma’s. She let him in and accepted the crushed bouquet of flowers with the tiny IGA sticker. All the little Giffords lined the stair steps like potted plants and sat there quietly to view the stranger. When he gave Irma the flowers, a volley of hoots and whistles rang out.
“Go back upstairs and eat your pizza!” Irma insisted. “Come meet my father,” she told Freddy, as she got her sweater and purse.
“Speaking of fathers, I need to call the shop and tell my dad what’s happened,” Freddy said at Irma’s heels. “He needs to let our customers know I won’t be delivering.” Freddy Broussard stopped talking and stared. His eyes grew even larger. Pike Gifford was sitting on the sofa in front of the television, his socked feet resting on a worn footstool. A pizza smiled happily in his lap. PETIT PIERRE'S PIZZA, the letters on the box announced. “A Pizza for the People.” What was it he had told Sheriff Roy Vachon, just moments ago? “I can pick those faces out of any lineup.”
“Daddy likes your pizza so much he and Uncle Vinal drove all the way to Watertown to get some,” Irma was pleased to tell Freddy.
“Piece of pizza?” Pike Gifford asked his potential son-in-law, and held out the box.
“No, sir,” Freddy said. “Thank you.” His tongue was thick in his mouth, his throat dry.
“If I’d known you was coming right to my door,” Pike said, “I would have had you deliver this.” And then he winked.
A POTPOURRI IN THE PINES PRIMEVAL: GABRIEL ENTERS THE CONSTITUTION STATE
This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it,
Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman?…
Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,
Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion,
List to the mournful tradition, still sung by the pines of the forest;
List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline
While the gathering at Sicily Lawler’s house was eating hastily made tuna salad sandwiches, another sort of celebration was taking place, thirty miles away, at the Cloutier home in Watertown. Several bottles of booze decorated the kitchen counter, paper plates lounged about with sandwiches, crackers, and chunks of cheese. Chips seemed to be everywhere, in bowls, on chairs, crumbled on the floor. The house was full to overflowing with just a few friends and Jean Claude’s immediate family. The six brothers were there with wives or girlfriends in tow. The three sisters arrived with their husbands. Jean’s good friends, the altar boys of childhood, had arrived with their dates. A record player boomed from the living room, where half of the revelers danced so that the other half could sit. After an hour of musical entertainment, two records surfaced in what might be considered a survival of the fittest, and they were played alternately for the remainder of the night. Old Mr. Cloutier preferred A Potpourri of Cajun Tunes by Doug Kershaw, while the younger family members insisted on The Best of Creedence Clearwater Revival. All evening the musical atmosphere went from “Allons danser, Colinda” to “Oh, Lord, I’m stuck in Lodi again.” From “Louisiana Man” to “Bad Moon Rising.”
Jean Claude stopped once during the party to wonder why his family was happily dancing up a storm the night before his wedding. It was no secret that the Cloutiers as an entity disapproved of his marriage to Putois Lawler. The Cloutiers were far from being uppity-ups in Watertown. It was true many of the French-speaking Americans there had sent their children away to good colleges where they had cleverly learned to disguise their French accents. And they had come home to Watertown and settled down to take up whatever professional activities they’d learned with barely a vestige of their former French influence peeping out. These this, that types looked down on the all-out dis, dat reminders of the old French Canadian settlers who had inched their way to the border, and then across the border into the United States of America. A few people were wise enough to be proud of this heritage, to strengthen the link with their Canadian and French ancestry. But in 1969 few French accents were heard on radio sets, or on television sets, and few politicians running for Maine’s offices had last names that spoke of other than English or Scottish or Irish ancestries. In 1969 the these, those French descendants of Watertown, Maine, tended to look down their inherited noses at the dease, dose members of the community. The Cloutier family fell into the latter category, but by no means were they considered Giffords. The French equivalents to the Giffords were also abundant in Watertown. They were the ones who slipped through the windows of the KC Hall and stole a case of vodka. They attacked the Watertown drive-in with a chain saw, felling the large picture screen into the grassy field and crushing twenty speakers in the process. They brawled at one of the three drinking establishments. They rarely worked. Thanks to a religion that forbids birth control, their houses swelled to the rafters with children. The Cloutiers, on the other hand, were a hardworking family, loyal to their roots, their God, and most of all, their kin. And they looked down their inherited noses at anyone from Mattagash, Maine, Catholic or not.
“Put back on dat Potpourri guy,” the elder Cloutier insisted, and when the strains of “Jolie Blonde” reached him, his boots went to work dancing. There was no scheme to the footwork. It was simply a lot of heavy foot stomping intermixed with an occasional gyration and a stream of perspiration from the forehead. Mattagashers were sometimes afraid to go out on the dance floor at the old Newberry store, now the Acadia Tavern, when these Frogs were kicking up a storm.
“They’re gonna take us all through the floor one night,” Peter Craft once complained to Donnie Henderson as they ordered more beers.
Unlike the uptight Scotch Irish of Mattagash, the French people from Watertown loved to have a good time, a genetic trait from their old settlers, and they loved to have it, of all places, in public, a dirty word to the McKinnons and Crafts, who were more used to closets and barns for such practices.
“I’m chaud,” Jean said to his mother, intermixing his French and English, as more and more of the new breed were learning to do. Franglais they called it. “It’s hot,” he said, and she took her handkerchief out of her dress pocket and wiped his brow, arranged the dark, wet curls. How could she let this beautiful child, her youngest, end up married to a Mattagasher? She could not. Mrs. Théophile Cloutier, Genevieve to her friends, could not allow such a thing.
“Where’s Guillaume?” Jean Claude asked his mother. His brothers Guillaume and Rene had driven all the way from their new home in New Britain, Connecticut, where a community of French-speaking Americans from northern Maine had gathered to work in factories or in construction. Frogtown, it too was called by locals, and was only fifty miles away from New Milford, known as Little Mattagash, where the sons and daughters of the old settlers had chosen to congregate. Connecticut was like the last step of some social underground railway that carried off the dissatisfied young of Aroostook County in uppermost Maine. After all, they had only the woods to turn to for a living if they stayed on their ancestors’ soil. A relative in New Britain or New Milford was always glad to take in the transient souls who finally gave up their chain saws for the shiny tools of some factory. But these souls longed for the weather-beaten WELCOME TO MATTAGASH and ST. LEONARD and WATERTOWN signs, and for the first year or so, they made the eleven-hour drive often, eleven hours straight up to the northern tip of Maine. But the city slowly claimed them, and being lonesome was not as bad as spending all those hours in a car. Homesickness eventually went away, like measles or chicken pox. Their children grew up with only a trace of French accent, or the old Irish brogue, and no interest whatsoever in the cold, wooded area that had once harbored their parents. By the next generation the accent, like the homesickness, was completely gone.
“He’
s gone to gas up the car,” Jean’s mother answered him in French. “St. Rose is a long way.” They were, the brothers and the altar boys of old, taking Jean Claude to St. Rose, Canada, where the strippers from Montreal danced, and where the management didn’t mind if a full-blooded, French-speaking, all-American boy of Canadian descent rubbed a leg or tweaked a nipple, as long as he flipped a few pink Canadian two-dollar bills onto the stage.
“St. Rose!” Jean Claude said to Guillaume when he returned with a full tank. “Vierge!”
“You doan find no virgin in dat place,” said Guillaume, who had been working to dispose of what he considered his rustic, country French. The English of the big city would be better, Guillaume decided, for a man who was on his way up to one of the foreman positions of O’Donnell Brothers Construction Company in New Britain. Everybody in Connecticut called Guillaume, at his own insistence, Bill.
“Put on dat Potpourri man, tank you,” Mr. Cloutier shouted and the house rocked with dancing. It was almost ten o’clock before the brothers and altar boy friends, traveling in three cars, set out for St. Rose’s new discotheque. Jean’s mother and father hugged him tearfully.
“Demain à ce temps je serai un homme marié,” he said to his parents. This time tomorrow I’ll be a married man. They nodded, and his mother hugged him a second time. Then his sisters kissed him. He climbed into Guillaume’s Pontiac GTO with the bright blue Connecticut license plates, of which the whole family was proud. It told of their son’s rise in the world, among the godly English, in Connecticut, THE CONSTITUTION STATE. The Pontiac sped off, its engine rattling power beneath the hood. On the return trip, they would cross the border into the United States at Madawaska, fifteen miles from Watertown. Where they crossed the border depended on what time of day it was and therefore which customs officer would be on duty. They could be regular nice guys with a job to do, or they could be power hungry men in official suits. Jean Claude had seen much of both types in his days of border crossing, and driving fifteen miles out of one’s way, even if it was three o’clock in the morning, could be well worth the trip.
The second car pulled out and followed Guillaume into the wet night. All the women remained behind to finish the party at the Cloutier house. St. Rose was no place for them. They might see their men do things that would bring tears to their eyes.
The third car lingered. Jean’s brother Rene came out carrying a suitcase in each of his large hands and tucked them both away in the trunk. Even if the customs officer did ask to look through the suitcases, Guillaume’s car would already be safely on its way to St. Rose, and Jean Claude would suspect nothing.
“His money.” The old woman was teary-eyed. She gave Rene an envelope. “Keep him down there,” she said to Rene, and kissed him good-bye.
“Once he’s thinking straight”—Rene spoke French back to them, and discovered that in just a short year of living in Connecticut he was already struggling to remember his native language—“we’ll bring him back for his car.” Mr. Cloutier took his son’s hand and shook it.
“Take him to that French bar where you and Guillaume go, down there in New Britain. Introduce him to a nice French girl,” the old man advised.
“Get him a good job,” the mother said. “He’ll be better off.”
They watched Rene drive away in Eloie Thibodeau’s old black Ford with the bland, unsuccessful MAINE, VACATIONLAND on the plate. What was that compared to THE CONSTITUTION STATE? They were giving Jean Claude, as his wedding present, a very important trousseau. They were giving him Connecticut.
The three sisters stood with the parents on the front steps, which were sagging with the memory of too many Watertown snows. On-the-border winters. The family waved good-bye until even the sound of the car died away, and then they went back inside the house. Aunts and uncles had arrived at eight o’clock. Even though everyone knew there would be no wedding, it was a shame to let a good party go to waste.
“Put back on dat Potpourri guy,” Old Man Cloutier said. Then he wiped the tears from his eyes.
***
Jean Claude drank all the vodka that his brothers and friends put in front of him. His stag party was a major success. He developed a particular interest in a brunette stripper who called herself La Petite Hirondelle. The Little Swallow. Guillaume and Rene drank 7-Ups, which looked enough like vodka, but the rest of the large group saw no reason to drive all the way to St. Rose and stay sober. Besides, whether he knew it or not, this was Jean Claude’s going-away party.
“Tabernacle! Look at dem buns!” Eloie Thibodeau shouted and grabbed the fleshy cheek of one stripper’s rear. That was the last line of poetry Jean Claude heard. The next thing he would remember was sitting up in the backseat of the Pontiac GTO Sunday morning and asking his whereabouts.
“Almost to Mass,” said Guillaume, and lit a Canadian cigarette, a DuMaurier. He would need to smoke them all, rather than be seen back in New Britain with a reminder of his heritage.
“Où?” Jean Claude asked. “Where?” Mass? He couldn’t go to church as hung over as he was.
“Massachusett,” said Rene, forgetting the s. He would need to start remembering such things, now that he was headed back to the land where s’s were never forgotten.
“Massachusett?” said Jean Claude, and lay back on the seat. “Chalice!” he said. He was on his way to the Constitution State.
PEARL OF ARC HEARS A BANSHEE IN THE SUMMER KITCHEN: THE WEDDING GUESTS ARE ALBATROSSES TO THE ANCIENT MOTELIER
Banshee: (Celtic mythology) a female spirit believed to wail outside a house as a warning that a death will occur soon in the family.
—Collins American English Dictionary
Sunday morning found Pearl McKinnon Ivy staring out of her bedroom window with dark circles beneath her eyes. There had been voices again in the summer kitchen, lilting and ghostly. She had even nudged Marvin awake and asked him to listen.
“There’s nothing,” he said, and rolled onto his side and was soon snoring. Pearl lay awake staring at the ceiling. There they were again, micelike and muffled: scampering noises and whispers, coming from the old summer kitchen. Marge, no doubt, rifling through the dusty trunk in search of her love letters of another era, of a golden time. How soon before she put two and two together, assuming ghosts could add, and came clawing at the back door for an explanation?
“I want my letters!” Pearl could hear the April wind whistling about the eaves. She would have to tell Sicily. Sicily would be in danger, too, as she was half responsible. And Pearl would not hesitate to let Marge’s ghost know this tidbit. All night long she had lain awake to the tinny voices of those old lovers, Marge and Marcus Doyle. Were these voices in her head? Pearl shuddered to think that she was on the short road to another breakdown. But she had heard bees, dozens of them, during that first lapse with sanity, when Marvin decided to become an undertaker instead of a lawyer. Maybe the voices were divine. Look at Joan of Arc. She’d heard voices and she ended up burning at the stake for them. Pearl imagined herself tied to a pine tree while the good wives of Mattagash circled around her with cigarette lighters. But again, Joan of Arc was French, so God only knows what she was hearing. Extraterrestrials, maybe. And Pearl decided that if God had wanted to talk directly to her, he would have chosen the quiet streets of Portland, Maine, and not Mattagash. Yet Mattagash was where she wanted to be, if the supernatural world would just leave her alone.
“I’m home,” Pearl said. “Even if it is haunted.”
***
Sicily Lawler had spent a restless night with her own tortured dreams. She was sitting on the sofa in her brightly colored living room and thumbing through a scrapbook of her grandchildren, the offspring Amy Joy and Jean Claude were sure to bequeath to her in her old age.
“They were all frog-legged,” Sicily remembered. “Poor little tadpoles.” She closed her eyes, hoping the awful pictures would disappear.
Downstairs i
n her kitchen, Sicily was shocked to see a virginal layer of snow spread out over Mattagash. If that wasn’t a sign from Providence to call off the wedding, what was? She heard Amy Joy stirring about in her bedroom, in the very room where she had grown and blossomed into womanhood. There were a few weeds poking out here and there, granted, but there had been a blossoming.
“I always thought this would be one of the happiest moments in my life,” Sicily thought, as she patted Puppy’s head. Maybe Amy Joy would have met her Prince Charming right here in Mattagash. After all, the Kennedys came down the Mattagash River once. And so did Jane Wyatt, from Father Knows Best. All the actress wanted when she came ashore was a place to pee, and she had trudged up the riverbank to Norton Gifford’s house. And Rita Gifford had led her to the indoor chamber pot and instructed poor Jane Wyatt to toss the little yellow tissues she had in her purse into the empty pail leaning against the door for such inconveniences. But maybe Jane Wyatt would have trudged up the hill at Sicily Lawler’s house, and Sicily would have handed her a glass of lemonade, and Jane would say that she knew just the perfect young man for Amy Joy. A young man far, far away from Mattagash. Maybe even a movie star.
“I could be having lunch with a Mrs. Rockefeller or a Mrs. Kirk Douglas, those snazzy people who have more Rolls-Royces than they do children.” Sicily imagined several such cars, sleek and shiny, pulling up to Albert Pinkham’s motel, the wedding entourage. Sicily would say clever things like “Charmed” when the Vanderbilts introduced themselves and she would even curtsy in respect. Yet here was Amy Joy marrying into a family of the French persuasion whom Sicily had not even met. And if Sicily curtsied to one of them, it would be so that she could gaze at them eye to eye.
She put on some water for tea. As the coiled burner grew red and the water began to pop into tiny bubbles, Sicily contemplated her fate. She missed Ed terribly on this morning of all mornings. If Ed had been alive these past ten years, Amy Joy would have progressed differently along life’s highway. Right now, as far as Sicily was concerned, Amy Joy was in the ditch.
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