Fade (21 page)

Let me point out that Paul disguised only slightly the identity of the teacher who rejected his story. That story, very much revised, later was included in the Baker collection of best short stories of the year (1949) and eventually became the first chapter and gave the title to Paul's first novel. (In his introduction to his later short-story collection, Paul paid tribute to this teacher for her honesty and candor.)

Paul and I were not close for the remainder of our year at Silas B. and did not become close again until our senior year in high school when Paul was chosen as Class Poet and I was chosen as Most Friendly in a poll of our classmates for the school yearbook. Two Frenchtown boys given praise and homage by their classmates, a kind of landmark for our time! In celebration, Paul and I sneaked into our grandfather's cellar and toasted our triumph with his homemade elderberry wine and pledged our undying loyalty to each other just before we both vomited onto the dirt-covered floor. Paul went on to be more than a high school poet, of course, while I eventually joined the Monument Police Force.

Along with 90 percent of my class, I was drafted into the World War II army in July of 1942, only five weeks after receiving my high school diploma and a few months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Paul was rejected because of a perforated eardrum, a minor affliction that caused many military rejections on the basis that no one with an ear defect could withstand the booming sounds of battle.

Paul was shattered by his designation as a 4-F and actually wept tears one night as we sat on the back porch at his house. It is difficult for people today to appreciate the wild patriotism of those years and how young men (and women) were eager to serve their country even at the risk of dying.

Many from Monument died during the war, either in battle or in war-related accidents. Their names are inscribed in bronze letters on the World War II Memorial in Monument Park, across from headquarters, a statue I see whenever I look out my window here in the office. Among the names on that Monument is that of Omer Bâtisse, whom Paul identified as Omer LaBatt in his narrative. Omer lost his life on Iwo Jima in one of the bloodiest battles of the South Pacific, a member of a Marine detachment that assaulted the island on the second day of fighting. Although he died a hero, I remember him as a big stupid hulk of a boy (this does not mean he could not die a hero, of course) who hung around the streets and picked up money doing odd jobs (probably strong-arm stuff) for Rudolphe Toubert. Thus, it's entirely possible that he bullied and chased Paul through the streets and alleys of Frenchtown, although Paul gave no indication of those happenings to anyone as I recall. As to the boy Omer accosted in the alley, I have been unable to verify any part of this incident. Since it involves the use of the fade, I take it as fabrication.

I must now address the topic of sex in the narrative, particularly as it applies to the store owner Paul named Mr. Dondier and also the twins he identifies as Emerson and Page Winslow. To Paul's credit, he used completely fictitious names for these characters and I am inclined to regard them as altogether fictional, although they are based loosely on actual people. I have little firsthand knowledge of the real twins he portrayed in the narrative, but I knew very well the man who might have been Mr. Dondier and I am frankly stunned at Paul's revelation and feel very strongly that he invented the entire episode. That store owner (it was not a meat market, incidentally) was above suspicion. The girl is nobody whom I can identify. If the fade is fiction—can it be anything else?—isn't it logical to accept everything connected with the fade, instances of spying, in particular, as fiction?

This same logic applies to the characters Paul named Emerson and Page Winslow. The act of incest Paul describes is shocking to me, although he was not explicit in his details and he has dealt with more explicit sexual scenes in his earlier books.

Page Winslow (to use Paul's pseudonym for her) stands out vividly in my memory because of one moment in my life. I saw her coming out of the Monument Ladies’ Apparel store one winter afternoon in brilliant sunlight, her hands hidden in a fur muff, a long brown fur coat enclosing her body. She stepped out of the store and through the snow and slush and into a waiting automobile like a princess passing through her subjects. She was probably the most beautiful girl I had ever seen and I felt my jaw dropping as I stood dazzled on the sidewalk watching her passage.

Her brother, known as Emerson Winslow in the narrative, remained in our class at school until his junior year. I knew him slightly, enough to greet him with a casual hello as we passed. He always looked—the word we would use these days is
cool.
Never ruffled. He did not move in any clique but could have been the leader of his own clique if he chose to. The scene Paul wrote in which the brother and sister made love was all the more shocking to me because of what happened in the future. The girl Paul called Page Winslow died at the age of sixteen in a boating accident off the coast of Maine. Later that year, Emerson, who was a junior, left Monument High School. There were reports that he enrolled in an exclusive prep school in northern Vermont. Someone later said that he became a conscientious objector during World War II and served as a medical aide in a hospital in England. I know this much to be certain: The boy Paul named Emerson Winslow is now a contemplative monk in a Roman Catholic monastery in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.

It is now 2:43
A.M.
by the digital clock on my desk and my back aches and my eyes are on fire.

A moment ago I read over what I have written thus far and, frankly, do not like the way I sound on paper. The police reports I write are impersonal and there is a specific vocabulary available for your use with certain words serving as crutches—
perpetrator, warrant, incarcerate, unlawful possession,
etc. In writing this report, it was necessary for me to develop an instant and completely new vocabulary. I have tried to be objective, as if giving testimony in court, where the only impression I have to make is one of honesty and competence. Have I accomplished this at the cost of sounding less humane and compassionate than I really am?

Thus, this report provides no clue to the high regard I have always had for Paul, how proud I and his family have been, our concern for the happiness that always seemed to elude him. He never married, never knew the bliss of wife and children. He never took advantage of his fame, never traveled to foreign places (he turned down dozens of speaking engagements and invitations to visit places like the great cities of Europe). He avoided interviews, did not allow his picture to be taken, devoted himself completely to his writing, and to his family—his parents, brothers and sisters, cousins, nephews and nieces. He was loyal to old friends. I have not mentioned Pete Lagniard and how, as a silent partner, Paul set Pete up in a printing business. (Pete, who was perhaps the only character in the narrative portrayed with utter truth and no fictional touches, died of a heart attack in 1973 while attending a Red Sox baseball game in Fenway Park.) Paul seldom left Monument or Frenchtown, always lived alone, gave most of his money away (he supported his parents). His only pleasures aside from his writing (if writing was a pleasure for him) seemed to derive from his nephews and nieces, whom he obviously adored and who visited him often, making his apartment their headquarters in Frenchtown.

My fingers stumble as I finish this report and sadness holds me in its grip. Am I sad because reading the manuscript has brought back the memory of days long gone that could have been happier for all of us? Writing about Paul and his narrative has been like looking into a mirror as I typed. A trick mirror, maybe, like the kind found in carnivals and amusement parks. The tricky mirror of memory—making it difficult to separate the real from the unreal.

I believe what I have written is the truth, however. I am convinced that I have sifted fact from fantasy, fiction from reality.
Thus, what Paul has written in the manuscript is fiction. Without any doubt or conjecture. To believe otherwise is to believe in the impossible.

My grandfather, Detective Jules Roget, does not look like a detective, and he does not look like a grandfather, either. I think of detectives as tough-talking private eyes in the movies and I think of grandfathers as kindly old men with potbellies, silver hair, and spectacles perched on red noses. My grandfather Roget is not like either of those. His voice is soft, almost a murmur. He has only touches of gray in his iron-black hair. He is tall and slim, without the slightest hint of a paunch.

He also does not resemble the person who wrote the report on the manuscript. That is, obviously, the side of him I have never seen—the police detective whom suspects face under questioning. Yet I was grateful for that relentless logic, that impersonal parade of evidence he marched past my eyes in the report.

Paul's narrative of life in Frenchtown fifty years ago had enchanted me. I delighted in the autobiographical overtones simply because I have devoured every piece of material about him and here was new, exciting stuff. The people in the story—from his parents to his uncle Victor to his best friend, Pete, and even the brief appearance of my grandfather—held me in thrall. I never for a moment considered that the narrative was more than just that—the fragment of a novel, fiction. In fact, as I read the manuscript I realized that Paul had been reaching into new territory, the realm of fantasy. I grieved for all the lost possibilities because this probably was the last thing he had written.

However, confronted by Meredith's reaction to the story, her doubts, her veiled hints, her troubled countenance, I had allowed myself to regard the manuscript as possibly, just possibly, autobiographical.
What if
… Paul Roget's own question coming back to haunt me.

Having finished my grandfather's report, I slumped with relief on the sofa. The fade, of course, had to be fiction. To think otherwise was to confront the impossible, as Gramps, that most rational of men, had pointed out.
That way madness lies
— Shakespeare, whom Professor Waronski quotes incessantly.

“Finished?” Meredith asked a few moments later, peeking around the corner of the bedroom doorway. She had sequestered herself with a Broome manuscript while I read the report.

Hugging the report to my chest, I nodded.

“Impressed?” she asked as she sat beside me on the sofa.

“Very,” I said. “It was like a dash of cold water, Meredith. Just what I needed.”

“I agree,” Meredith said. “When I first read it, I clutched it just as you're doing. Like holding on to a lifesaver.”

When I first read it
… Shit—would the doubts begin once more?

She evidently saw my face change—did color drain from my cheeks again or did I just register surprise? She said: “Please bear with me, Susan, okay? Let me play the devil's advocate for a little while. …”

Again I nodded, not trusting my voice this time.

“You see, Susan, what your grandfather writes in his report isn't entirely contrary to my interpretation of the manuscript if we put the fade aside for a moment.” This was the first time she had mentioned the word. “Can we?”

“Let's,” I said, still stingy with words.

“Okay, then, invisibility aside, I am certain that Paul was writing the truth. About his family, his aunt Rosanna, his friend Pete, the whole bit. You see, your grandfather continually betrays himself in that report. For instance, he saw his aunt Rosanna one way, Paul saw her another way. But he does not deny her existence. In fact, he doesn't deny the existence of any of the people in the manuscript. He only denies the way Paul portrayed them. And who can say whether your grandfather is right and Paul is wrong? The point is that the characters in the manuscript were clearly recognizable to him. And this is not true of Paul's other work, except for the father and son in
Bruises
and even then the resemblances to Paul and his father were superficial. In none of his other novels or stories were the characters recognized as real people. But in this manuscript, everybody is. The first names are real names.”

I got up and went to the window and looked out at the night, the lights winking distantly across the river, the water pebbled like a certain kind of black leather. Lights flashed in the air as a helicopter whirled its way through the sky. I sensed that Meredith was waiting for me to say something.

“But where does all this lead us, Meredith?” I asked, turning back to her.

“It leads us to the fact that Paul Roget has written his most realistic, autobiographical novel yet. And if he wrote it that way, then he wanted us to believe what happened in the novel. And we must believe all of it or none of it.”

“I have a theory,” I said, not certain whether I
did
have a theory at all. “Maybe Paul had to create a real world so that the reader would
be forced
to believe the fantasy. But that doesn't mean the fantasy was real.” A dart of pain appeared above my left eye, like an old enemy, asserting itself when I've pulled an all-nighter before a big exam or have written long past the arrival of fatigue.

Meredith joined me at the window, our shoulders brushing. “I never tire of this view,” she said. “It's always changing, never the same.”

The intimacy of the night and the moment gave me courage. “Why are you so adamant, Meredith?” I asked. “Why do you insist that Paul was writing the truth?” Plunging on, I said: “Do you realize what the truth would mean? That the fade was real? That Paul had the ability to render himself invisible? That he killed a man fifty years ago in Monument?” I almost shuddered saying these words.

“I know, I know,” she murmured wearily, regretfully, leaning her forehead against the windowpane, her eyes closed. “It's crazy, but …”

I waited, hoping she would say: You're right, your grandfather is right, let's call it a day, let's put out the lights and go to sleep. Weariness enveloped my own body and that vulnerable spot above my eye pulsed with a brighter pain.