Fade (24 page)

The endless, unceasing repetitions. 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 God. 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,
Paul….”

“Did the baby live?”

“Yes, although I never saw it.
Him.
Terrible to call him
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.”

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 muffled 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 mass and vespers in the evening. Sister Anunciata and a few others did the chores, cooked and cleaned.”

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

“God, they were good to me,” Rose continued. “Wonderful Sister Anunciata with her blue eyes brimming 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 glasses in a champagne toast. I put the glass 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 passed. It began to diminish me. In the aftermath of the experience, I was left limp with exhaustion, without appetite, listless, with no direction or ambition. This lassitude 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.

“What things?” I asked, my voice hushed, sensing that at long last he perhaps was ready to speak in some detail about the fade.

“These days, the fade wears me out. In the old days, the fade made me crazy. Took command of my body, my senses. Made me want to do things that were opposite to my nature. Gave me wild desires. Made me feel as if I could do anything. More than that: I
wanted
to do things.

“Sometimes I gave in. Stole, broke into stores, a warehouse once. Always in the dark, at night. Break a window and into the store I went. Or went in earlier and remained there after the owner locked up and left. Saw where he hid the money, unless he took it to a night deposit at the bank. I learned the tricks of hiding money after a while. They put the money in cigar boxes or behind bottles on a shelf, never in a drawer. One night I robbed ten stores, in a town in Ohio. Broke into them in a frenzy, crazy. In my room later, I counted up the money. Almost twelve hundred dollars, in small bills. Counted the money, laughing while the glow of the fade was still with me but the next morning, like a hangover, I looked at the money in panic. And gave it away. Mailed some back to a few of the stores. The sin, Paul, is that I
wanted
that money, wanted to go on a big spree. But could not. Had to give it back. Maybe that is the real curse of the fade. That I couldn't use it for pleasure.”

I said nothing, amazed at last that he was speaking so frankly and afraid he might stop if I made a comment.

“And women. It was the same with women, worse, I guess. I have never been a lady's man—awkward with them, shy. I was nothing particular to look at. The fade never helped. It was only good for spying on them, or standing close for a moment before they felt me there. One night, in this rooming house in North Dakota, I wandered the corridors after one o'clock, burning for a woman. The fade made me burn, set me on fire. I found a door unlocked, had seen the woman who occupied the room. Young, beautiful. I slipped into her room, saw her sleeping, in a nightgown, no blankets, a warm night. I stood by her bed. Moved closer. Lifted my hand, gentle, gentle, easy, touched her shoulder. She moaned, stirred in her sleep, her body moving, which made me burn more. I caressed her. Know what I mean, Paul?
Caressed
her. Her eyes flew open, I pulled back my hand. She screamed. I have never heard such a scream, such terror in a voice. Screamed and screamed again. She stared at me. Not at me but at the space where I stood. She
sensed
me there, knew something was there and this made it more horrible for her. Everybody came running, knocks at the door, lights went on, and I was almost trampled, had to fall back against a wall. She did not stop screaming for a long time and then cried, could not be consoled, and I had to remain there, looking at her. I heard her say: Something touched me.
Something
touched me. On my knees, in a corner of the room, I saw what I had become. A something, a monster. This is what the fade made me. A monster.”

But I already knew that.

And knew that I, too, was a monster.

During all those years we shared the fade, during all of my uncle's comings and goings in my life, we spoke only once of my uncle Vincent, who was his brother, and my brother Bernard, who was his nephew. The conversation took place during the time of Bernard's wake.

My uncle had appeared without advance notice, as usual, as if emerging from the fade, on the steps of my grandfather's house, the second evening of Bernard's wake. In those days, the wakes went on for three days and three nights, around the clock, at the home of the deceased, the house never empty or silent, coffee always bubbling on the stove, the smell of food mingling with the sweet-sick scent of flowers. Bernard's coffin was placed in the parlor, all the curtains drawn. A bouquet of white carnations hung by the front door announcing the death in our family.

I could not bear to look at Bernard in the coffin, his beauty waxen now and unreal, his First Communion rosary in his pale clasped hands. Yet I was drawn again and again to his coffin, knelt to pray even though the words were empty and meaningless.

My mother turned out to be the strong one in the family, bustling about the rooms, presiding at the stove, greeting my aunts and the neighborhood women who brought steaming dishes and platters of sandwiches and pastries into the house. My father was mute with grief, standing wordlessly near the coffin for long periods, his eyes like shattered marbles.