My mother sighed, knowing the inevitable argument that would follow.
“It's never the right time,” Uncle Victor said. “But we have to think beyond the moment. We have to look to next year, ten years from now. Look at your kids, Lou. Do you want them on short time, no job protection, no vacations?”
“My kids aren't going to work in the shops,” my father said, determination in his voice. Which made my brother Armand look away in dismay. “Education, Vic. That's the key to the future, not strikes.”
“But there'll always be shops, Lou. And people working in them. What we're doing will help people in the future, whether or not they're your flesh and blood….”
My father joined the picket lines, carrying a banner that read UNFAIR TO LABOR, and I watched him as he paraded in front of the shop with the other strikers, both men and women, my aunts among them. My father's face was grim and he walked stiffly, as if his legs ached. Many of the picket-ers laughed and joked as they paced back and forth, while others scowled or swung their shoulders belligerently, yelling “scab” and swearing at the foremen and office clerks who reported for work as usual when the whistle blew. My uncle Victor did not yell or curse. As a strike leader, he did not walk the picket line, either. He stood to one side, never alone, others clustered about him as he gave orders and answered questions, chewing his cigar. Armand hung out nearby, ready to run errands, eager, panting for action. He did not look at my father and my father did not look at him.
When Hector Monard reported for work a few moments before the whistle blew, a deadly silence fell. No one yelled or screamed curses at Hector Monard. The strikers regarded him in grim silence as he went by, eyes full of hate, more chilling to me than screams or shouting. There was murder in that silence. He walked with head high, looking neither right nor left, his lips curled into a sneer, the same sneer I had seen the day I brought my father's lunch bag to the shop.
Snow fell early that year, before Thanksgiving, followed by a cold wave that brought sharp winds that took the breath away and rattled the windows of the three-deckers. The strikers never stopped walking in front of the shop, holding their signs, stamping their feet on the frozen ground, bundled now in heavy mackinaws and overcoats, breathing white clouds when they spoke. As the cold intensified, they built small fires in trash barrels and huddled around them.
The strike lasted 121 days, ending on a Wednesday, a week and a half before Christmas. The end came after a night of violence during which my father was taken, along with three other men, to Monument Hospital, with blood gushing from his wounds.
But before the strike even began back in August, I had learned that I had become a fader.
First of all, the pause.
Then the pain.
And the cold.
The pause is a moment in which everything in your body stops, the way a clock stops. A terrible stillness that lasts only the length of a drawn breath—although it seems longer than that, almost an eternity—and then, at the onset of panic, the heart beats again, blood rushes through your veins and sweet air into your lungs.
After that, the flash of pain, like lightning, pain that darts throughout your body, so intense that you gasp at its brutality. But the pain is merciful in its quickness, gone as quickly as it comes.
The cold begins when the fade begins and remains all the time you are in the fade. It has nothing to do with the time of year or the seasons of the weather. The cold comes from inside, spreading under the surface of the flesh, like a layer of ice between skin and bone.
“The cold is a reminder that you are in the fade,” Uncle Adelard had said dryly. “In case you should forget.”
* * *
I stood on the sidewalk in front of my house in the deepening evening, darkness obscuring the three-deckers and the steeples of St. Jude's Church, although its white stone held on to the vestiges of daylight.
In the fade.
I can do anything, I thought, go anywhere, cross oceans, reach mountaintops.
But at this moment, what do I do?
No mountains to scale in Frenchtown.
No oceans to sail.
The cold invaded my body, causing me to shiver in the August heat, and I wrapped my arms, which I could not see, around my chest, which I could not see. I did not move, absorbing the cold, and then it became less intense, muted, bearable.
I walked toward Spruce Street heading for Third, where the streetlights shone brighter and the store windows splashed lights on the sidewalk. Kids had gathered in front of Lakier's, and I spotted David Renault licking an ice-cream cone as he watched Pete Lagniard and Artie LeGrande matching cowboy cards on the sidewalk, on their knees, flipping the cards expertly. Theresa Terrault, who giggled and pressed herself against boys and wore tight sweaters and skirts that displayed her budding breasts and rolling hips, leaned against a mailbox, the only girl on the street. Other girls quickly made their way home to the tenements when darkness fell before their brothers came looking for them. Theresa was only thirteen but she did not go home.
I approached with caution, not trusting the fade altogether, wondering whether it would abandon me without warning. Pete Lagniard cursed softly as he lost one of his favorite cards, a Ken Maynard.
Theresa's giggle lit up the night with merriment and I paused, looking at her, my eyes sweeping her face, her flashing eyes, round cheeks, dimples deep enough to dip your tongue into. Then to her small breasts. I drank in the sweetness of her body. I realized that I could never do this before. I could look at the movie screen or pictures in magazines but always had to avert my eyes when looking at a girl or woman in real life, the way I had agonized in my aunt Rosanna's presence, not knowing where to look. So now I filled my eyes with Theresa Terrault, staring deliciously, realized that I could, if I wanted, walk up to her and actually touch her.
I shivered as a wave of cold swept my body.
“What's that?” she cried suddenly, looking around, hugging her arms across her chest.
“What's what?” Andre Gillard asked. He had been showing off in front of Theresa, doing a fancy dance step, and now glanced up at her.
She shrugged, looked around as if a wind had suddenly risen to chill her.
“I don't know,” she said, her lips turning downward in a pout. “Something …”
Shivering in the heat, she looked directly at me, six feet away, standing at the edge of the group.
I recoiled, leapt back a step or two, risked exposing myself by making a sound. But a sound wouldn't matter, would it, if she couldn't see me? Could she see me? Had I begun to lose the fade? I looked down, saw nothing, only my absence, and remembered what my uncle had said: You will be there but not there. They will not see you but they will feel you there, know your presence.
The moment passed and Andre Gillard kicked his heels as he leapt in the air and Pete Lagniard yelled to him to cut it out, Andre was spoiling his concentration, and Theresa Terrault looked admiringly at Andre once more, giggling behind a hand with blood-red fingernails while I beheld her loveliness, the slenderness of her body, her softness.
Andre and Theresa began to walk away together, away from the glow of the streetlight. Andre's arm circled her shoulder and she leaned against him, and her giggle carried on the night air.
Pete and Artie paid no attention to the departure as they concentrated on their game while David Renault finished his ice-cream cone, the last piece disappearing into his mouth with a satisfied smack.
Andre and Theresa continued down Third Street, in and out of the shadows, caught in the glare of a streetlight for a moment and then becoming lost in darkness. I saw them duck into an empty doorway.
Should I follow?
Should I watch them wherever they went and spy on what they did?
I looked around, at the three-deckers on the other side of Third Street, opposite the stores, saw the lights in windows, glimpses of people sitting on the piazzas in the cool evening air.
I could go anywhere, I thought. Into any of those
tenements. Spy on whomever I chose. Watch them talking and arguing and making love. See the women take off their clothes as they went to bed. Stand close enough to touch them. I could slip into parlors and bedrooms.
I was lifted on a wave of possibilities and thought of all the possible heavens at my fingertips.
Why was my uncle always so sad when he talked about the fade?
The cold was still with me as I left Pete and Artie to their card game with David Renault as their solitary audience. I walked in the direction Andre and Theresa had taken, uncertain of my destination.
At Dondier's Market, I saw a light burning inside and Mr. Dondier at the cash register tallying the day's receipts with pencil and pad, touching the tip of his pencil to his tongue as he always did, so that his tongue had a permanent dark spot at its tip.
Mr. Dondier, such a serious man, seldom a smile. I wondered if I could make him smile.
Better yet, could I play a trick on him, among the fruits and vegetables and canned goods, something I never had the courage to do until this moment?
The fade now gave me courage.
I opened the door and closed it carefully. Mr. Dondier looked up, pencil poised at his lips, the overhead bulb shining on his bald head. He looked at his watch.
The store smelled, as usual, of coffee and oranges and pungent odors I could not identify, odors that clung to Mr. Dondier himself the way the smell of celluloid followed my father.
His pencil leapt across the pad as he resumed his work, and I advanced stealthily. Moving closer to him, amazed at my boldness, I watched as he tabulated the figures, his lips moving with his calculations. I shivered a bit.
He raised his head.
“Who's there?” he called.
He looked directly into my eyes and for a frantic moment, I was again afraid that the fade had failed and I was visible, standing directly in front of him. Then I reasoned that he would not have asked “Who's there?” if he could see me.
Wetting his lips, he bent again to his work, small beads of perspiration on his forehead, like dew on a melon. He looked up again, eyes slitted, scrutinizing the store, trying to see into all corners, muttering words under his breath that I could not understand.
He looked so apprehensive, so weary and haggard, that I knew I could not play any tricks on him.
Finally he placed his pad and pencil in the little box next to the cash register and walked to the front of the store, peered out at the street through a window, and then snapped the lock in place. Glancing over his shoulder, he walked urgently through the narrow aisles of the vegetable section to the back room. I waited a moment near the meat counter before following him. I was barely aware of the cold now.
In the back room, he had turned on the gooseneck lamp that threw a flood of light on the clutter of account books, papers, and pencil stubs on his old desk. Taking a small key from his vest pocket, he inserted it delicately in the bottom drawer. He pulled out the drawer, reached inside and brought forth a quart bottle of whiskey. He lifted the bottle, drank from it in huge gulps, gasped, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and placed the bottle on the desk top.
Looking around, he called out again: “Anybody there?”
He uncapped the bottle and drank again, his eyes watering from the sting of the whiskey. Shuddering, he sat down on the old piano bench that served as his office chair. He replaced the bottle in the drawer and sat with head bowed. He did not move for several moments and my legs began to ache. I turned as someone rattled the front door and knocked on the window.
Mr. Dondier leapt to his feet and made for the doorway, so swiftly that I had no time to draw back and he almost brushed me as he passed.
I watched his progress to the front door, saw a slender figure faintly through the windowpane. Mr. Dondier unlocked the door and drew it open.
Theresa Terrault stepped inside, hurriedly, glancing over her shoulder as she entered.
“I thought you weren't coming,” Mr. Dondier said, locking the door behind her, “so I closed up a few minutes ago.”
“I couldn't help being late,” she said, her voice like a little girl's. She was a little girl, despite the flashy sweater and the budding breasts.
“I heard some noise in here,” he said. “I thought you sneaked in early and was playing a trick….” As they came toward the backroom he touched her cheek, then her breast. “You wouldn't play tricks on me, would you, Theresa?”
“No, Mr. Dondier,” she said shyly.
I stared at Mr. Dondier and Theresa in disbelief. His daughter, Clara, was in my class at school, a happy girl who laughed quickly and easily, and blushed as often as she laughed. She was the same age as Theresa, but Theresa was a poor student who hated books and homework and had been kept behind. Now my cheeks burned as I saw Mr. Dondier, who collected at the ten o'clock mass on Sunday mornings, pull Theresa to him and run his hand over her breasts.
“Wait a minute,” she said, drawing back, extending her hand.
Mr. Dondier fumbled in his trousers, took out his wallet and extracted a bill whose denomination I could not see. One dollar, five dollars? He placed it on the desk, his hand trembling. “It's yours,” he said. “After …”
She giggled as he raised her up, lifting her under the arms and setting her on the desk, facing him. She pulled back her skirt, revealing knobby knees.
Mr. Dondier sat down on the piano bench, his face red and sweating and his eyes strange and staring, as he raised her legs onto his shoulders and plunged his face between her legs. He moaned and his shoulders jerked violently as he burrowed between her thighs. Theresa looked down at his bald head, still moist in the light of the gooseneck lamp. Her eyes were vacant, lusterless, as if she were not really there, as if Mr. Dondier were using someone else's body.
“Oh, Theresa,” Mr. Dondier moaned, his voice muffled as he gasped her name and reached around now to clutch her buttocks.
Vomit rose in my throat, my heart pounding so dangerously that I backed away instinctively, my cheeks hot and pulsing.
I had to get out of there.
As I headed for the front of the store, the image of Mr. Dondier and Theresa Terrault burned in my mind, like the dancing spots that linger after you've stared too long at a bright light. Blinking away the image, I made my way through the aisles, careful not to upset the displays of merchandise.
I opened the door quietly and slipped out, hugging the shadows of the entrance, waiting to see if the street was empty. A car passed, headlights dim, the driver a shadow behind the windshield. The cold was intense again. I hurried down the street, my sneakers gliding over the sidewalk, trying to outdistance my thoughts.
Later, in the shed at home, I endured the pause and the flash of pain as I forced the fade away and saw, to my relief, first the vague outlines of my body and then my bones and flesh. Then the clothes I wore. I stayed there a while, sitting on the floor, knees drawn up to my chest, exhausted, body limp, as if I had traveled long distances.
Glancing out the small, dusty window, I saw the moon hanging remotely in the sky. I concentrated on the moon, filling my mind with it to blot out the memory of what I had seen in Mr. Dondier's back room. But what about the others I had spied on earlier? David Renault and Artie and Pete Lagniard, my best friend. And the people in the three-deckers carrying on their lives behind the walls of their tenements. If I had followed any of them, spied upon them, entered their homes, would their private lives have also revealed secrets? Dark and nasty secrets it was better not to know about?
Finally, the moon was gone and I slipped into the house, past my father dozing in his chair near the radio, my mother already in bed. I stood for a moment in the doorway to my bedroom, looking at my father, listening to the small sounds of the tenement, and I seemed like an alien to those sounds, a stranger to this place that was my home. I was filled with guilt and shame, as if I had committed a terrible sin. I undressed and slid into the bed but did not sleep for a long time.
That was the second time I
summoned the fade.
The first time had been in the presence of my uncle Ade-lard in my grandfather's house on a Saturday afternoon when everyone was gone and he tilted his chair back against the wall, and gave his command:
“Do it.”
He had given me careful instructions. Told me to lean against a wall that was not there, to close my eyes to shut off distractions, concentration coming easier in the darkness. Told me to expect what he called “the pause.”
Now I closed my eyes and leaned against the invisible wall, body taut, elbows bent, legs stiff, prepared to withstand strong winds, hurricane, rain, sleet, thunder.
Suddenly, there was nothing.
I was in that pause he had mentioned, all sensations gone, breath caught and held, my entire being a void, a blank in space. Was this what dying was like? I wanted to scream, cry out in terror, but before I could do anything at all, pain flashed throughout my body, a stinging, savage pain that found its way into every part of my being. I heard a moan, like the sound of a wounded animal, and knew the sound came from me although it was not like any sound I had ever made.
I opened my eyes and saw my uncle on his chair at the same moment that the cold invaded my body, exploding from inside and spreading through the same bones and sinews that were singing with pain.
Then, without warning, the pain stopped. Did not recede gradually or diminish in its impact but simply stopped. And the cold was balm after the searing pain.
My eyelids fluttered and I realized I had not actually opened my eyes to see my uncle—I had seen through my eyelids. My eyelids were gone, not there. Just as the rest of me was gone.
“How do you feel?” my uncle asked. There was an abundance of sadness in his eyes, the sadness I had seen that first day on the piazza.
I was surprised to find my voice normal when I spoke. “Fine, now. It was terrible for a few minutes, all those sensations.”
“Seconds,” he said. “Three seconds, maybe.”
“That all?”
He nodded.
I lifted my hand, held it in front of my eyes, and could not see it. Studied the space where my hand should have been, where my hand actually was. Not there.