The Fall of the Year (25 page)

Father George was appealingly human in any number of ways. While delivering a blistering sermon from his pulpit on the cardinal sins of swearing and anger, he might become so angry that he would enjoin us, at the top of his lungs, “And don't you good people forget it, goddamn it!” After his angina set in, he would station me in the first row at St. Mary's to alert him, by raising my hand to my cheek, that his face was getting red during these interesting jeremiads. This private signal was supposed to remind him to calm down lest he sustain a stroke—but in fact he rarely noticed my frantic gestures or was too worked up by then to care if he did. Though he feared little else, Father George had a dread fear of a common cold. And while he liked most animals, cats made his skin crawl, and he'd cross the street to avoid one. He never wore a clerical collar outside of church but was famously fastidious about his dress and appearance. At home he wore a white shirt and necktie even when he was working in his extensive flower beds, transplanting an old-fashioned apple tree, or just raking leaves. At the hunting camp he always looked as though he'd stepped out of an L. L. Bean catalog.

 

Recently, since Father George's health had started to fail, I'd begun thinking seriously about postponing my matriculation at seminary, at least for a semester. But one night in mid-August, as he and I were sitting in the kitchen of the Big House visiting over a few beers, he confided something to me that, in its way, astonished me more than anything that had happened that summer.

“Frank,” he said, “I want you to be the executor of my will.”

I had known for years that I had been well provided for in Father George's will and that with the balance of his estate he had established a scholarship fund for graduates of the Kingdom County Academy. And, as much as I hated to contemplate Father George's death, I immediately agreed to act as his executor. But I was amazed when he went into his study off the kitchen and returned with a special bankbook for the scholarship fund, showing a balance of slightly more than $750,000, which he told me he'd amassed over the years as a result of careful investments and reinvestments of the original small fortune he'd made smuggling bootleg whiskey—not to mention interest on loans he'd made to the diocese for various charitable endeavors, which to me shed some illumination on why the monsignors he'd served under had allowed him to lead such an unorthodox life.

“Well, there's no point dwelling on this, then, son,” Father George said, returning the bank book. “But knowing that you'll take care of things for me when the time comes is a relief.”

“I'm sure you'll live another twenty years,” I said hurriedly. He just smiled and shrugged.

Over the next couple of weeks, I was further alarmed by the rapid deterioration of Father George's health. By the last week of August he'd stopped work on his “Short History” and in his extensive flower gardens and had begun going to bed right after supper. His spirits were flagging along with his energy. Some days he didn't shave. Until that summer Father G had been known as the champion walker of Kingdom County, out tramping the roads at all hours of the day, but recently he hadn't gone outside at all. He had missed the last two Sunday masses. Clearly he would soon have to retire altogether, though the thought of that was terribly discouraging to him.

To my surprise, it was Louvia DeBanville who finally summoned me up to her place and demanded to know what long-range provisions I'd made for my adoptive father. She insisted that at the very least I should use my influence to persuade him to hire a live-in companion to stay at the Big House. She added with vehemence that neither I nor the parish was doing right to let the stubborn old fool disintegrate from ill health and old age.

The fortuneteller was also right in predicting that Father George would not put up much of a fuss when I suggested he hire a companion. “You've been working too hard on all fronts yourself lately,” he said when I broached the subject. “Go ahead and advertise, son.”

 

One evening in early September, when it was just chilly enough for a wood fire, I was working late painting the inside of the basement social hall at St. Mary's when suddenly Father George appeared at the door looking ten years younger. He'd had a haircut, was freshly shaven, wore a neat white shirt, a tie, twill slacks, and a new pair of walking shoes.

“Frank,” he said, his voice stronger than it had been all summer. “You aren't going to believe what I'm about to tell you.”

“I don't imagine I could,” I said. “But you look like a million bucks.”

“I ought to look like a million bucks. I just let out the room you got me to advertise to a very special person. Her name's Chantal and she's from Montreal. She looks like a movie star, Frank. But the surprising thing is, she's like you. She's interested, I mean really interested, in this town and its history. She sat at the kitchen table and we visited for two hours this evening. You're going to like this girl a lot, son.”

I laughed. “She seems to have done wonders for you already.”

“You're right. She makes me feel alive again. And there's something else I want to tell you. Chantal knows amazing things about me. Things that she wouldn't have had any way of learning. She just knows.”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that I played ball in Canada when I was in college. And flew for the RCAF. I don't know if she's some kind of seer, but she knows things.”

“Come on, Father G. You don't believe in seers any more than I do.”

“Well, maybe not, but I believe in this girl. You will, too. We made a deal. She's going to drive me to the doctor's and so forth, do a half hour or so a day of light housekeeping, sort of keep track of me, in exchange for the room.”

“In exchange for which room?”

Father George hesitated. Then he grinned. “She wanted the cupola.”

“My room.”

Father George stood up and rubbed his hands over the stove. “You won't mind when you meet her. You can move into the bedroom off the kitchen. I'm telling you, son. You're really going to like this girl. She's moving in this coming Sunday.”

And he was on his way out the door, walking with more spring in his step than he had in a year.

I thought for a minute, then shrugged. A beauty queen who claimed to be clairvoyant wasn't exactly what I'd had in mind when I'd advertised for a live-in companion for Father George. But if having an attractive young woman hang on his every word and drive him around in his Roadmaster made my father happy, that was fine with me.

 

I divided Sunday afternoon between working on my whiskey-running novel and plugging away at the painting job at the social hall. Late in the afternoon, Father George came by to notify me that he'd be serving tea at the Big House in fifteen minutes.

“Tea?” I laughed. “Since when has the beer-drinking unorthodox priest of Kingdom County started serving tea? Are we talking about high tea here or low tea?”

“This is definitely high tea,” Father George said. “You'll see why when you get there. Chantal wants very much for you to come right over. We'll have dinner later.”

“Chantal what? You haven't told me her last name.”

Father George chuckled. “Just Chantal. It's like a stage name, I guess. It turns out she's a professional astrologer.”

“I'll be there in ten minutes. Maybe she can read my future in tea leaves. Like Louvia.”

But the girl sitting at the bird's-eye table in the Big House kitchen when I walked in bore little resemblance to Louvia. She wore a deep blue dress, the color of the late summer sky; her long hair was dark and shiny and fell below her shoulders; and her wide-set eyes were the same blue as her dress. She was already smiling at me as I came through the door, and I was so surprised that I reached out for the edge of the table to steady myself.

It was those eyes and the smile, the unmistakable delighted irony in them, that made me positive. Chantal was the baker's girl from the patisserie in Little Quebec, who had kissed me earlier that summer.

And it seemed to me that she was fully aware of the effect her presence had on me and delighted by that, too, because she covered her mouth with her hand as if to conceal laughter.

“Chantal, I'd like you to meet Frank Bennett,” Father George said.

“Hello, Frank Bennett.” Chantal smiled her ironical smile. “How nice to see you again.”

To Father George, who was pouring our tea, she said, “Frank Bennett and I are old friends, you might say. Isn't that so, Frank?”

I looked around the kitchen, but the bird's-eye table, the blue porcelain stove, the worn yellow linoleum I'd grown up with, all seemed unfamiliar.

“Why are you holding the table down?” she said. “It isn't going to fly away.”

I looked at my hands, still gripping the edge of the table, and slowly let go.

“So. You didn't know I intended to visit Vermont for a time,” Chantal said. “When I saw the ad in the newspaper, I came to see Father George immediately. Here I am. It's all settled. But what about that prying old woman you were squiring around last summer? Your ancient grandmother, the self-declared witch? Did she ever get her recipe?”

I laughed. “No. And she's no witch. She's a good friend of mine.”

“I'm not surprised,” Chantal said. “You should see the ancient gypsy woman he consorts with, Father. A born troublemaker if one ever existed.”

“You've got that right,” Father George said. “I know all about her.”

“Frank was very forward with me,” Chantal said. “I think the old woman put him up to it.”

Father George laughed out loud. Everything about Chantal seemed to please him. “I don't quite know what's going on here,” he said. “But you two obviously don't need me around to carry on a conversation. I'm going to put three big steaks on the grill.”

 

“Chantal,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“That's for me to know and you to find out.”

“You said the same thing to me in Little Quebec. How can I find out if you won't tell me?”

“I did some research before applying for this job. It has interesting possibilities. You're a very suspicious young man, Frank Bennett. You don't seem to trust anyone.”

“I trust Father George. Do you know that he's sick?”

“What are you endeavoring to say? That having a young woman flitting about will be too exciting for him?”

“I'm endeavoring to say that I'd like to know why you came here.”

At Chantal's suggestion we went out to the porch and sat down on the glider where, on that long-ago snowy night, Thérèse LaCourse and Peter Gambini had waited for Father George to make a decision that would change their lives forever. “You and I have important things to discuss, Frank. I haven't forgotten how you lured me out to the old stone oven. Then, before I knew what was happening, you were making unwelcome advances. I'm certain now that the old matchmaker put you up to it.”

“That's not quite how I remember it. And how do you know Louvia's a matchmaker?”

“I know a great deal. Not like the aged female impostor who merely pretends to know things. Your consort.”

“Let's leave Louvia out of this. Why were you smiling at me that way in the kitchen?”

“What way?”

“The way you are right now.”

Chantal made her dismissive, blowing-out-a-candle noise. “That's for me to know,” she said, and stood up. “I'm going to my room now. The room that used to be yours. I have a great deal of important business to take care of up there. Call me when dinner's ready.”

 

During the next week it became clear that Father George's life had been transformed. He went for long morning walks, usually with Chantal. Often, on the way back to the Big House, he stopped in at the social hall to show her off to me. In the afternoons Chantal drove him out into the hills, to Lost Nation Hollow, Lord Hollow, Pond in the Sky. Chantal, he told me, was a marvelous driver, a wonderful listener, a spellbinding storyteller in her own right. When I returned home to the Big House in the evenings, I found the pair laughing together like old friends.

The village seemed divided in its assessment of this new development in their priest's life. Some Commoners said flatly that Father George was infatuated by the attentions of an extraordinarily attractive and intriguing young woman and that it was inappropriate for her to be staying in the Big House with us. Others felt there was nothing wrong with the situation. I had no idea what to think. Of one thing I was sure, however. I was becoming more attached to this beautiful young woman than I had ever been to a girl before. To make a peculiar situation more so, Louvia had stopped me on the street soon after Chantal arrived and accused me of deliberately establishing her at the Big House so I could see her regularly. Of course I was quick to remind the fortuneteller that finding a live-in companion for Father George had been her idea in the first place. In fact, I suspected that she was jealous of Chantal, who had set up her astrology practice in the Big House cupola and was already draining off some of Louvia's customers, as well as conducting a lively business by mail with clients as far away as California and even Alaska.

My interest in Chantal seemed to delight Father George almost as much as she herself did. One rainy evening when we all sat talking in the kitchen, with the manuscript of the “Short History” stacked up two feet high on the table next to the large green cardboard box Father George kept it in, Chantal picked up a sheet of typescript. “Page three thousand eighty-four,” she said. “Your ‘Short History' isn't so short after all, Father. But what does it say about your own history? Nothing. Somewhere in all these pages you should have written your story.”

I grinned to see my father grilled the way Chantal usually grilled me.