A STORY OF THE TURK                Norman Belanger                           January 2015

a highly fictionalized recounting of events that may or may not have occurred.

   Grand meme and grand pepe died a few weeks apart from each other, in that sunless winter of 1969, when they were both very old.  it was said at the time by the family  that the couple  loved each other so much, neither could live long without the other.

   after my great grandparents passed away, we visited the shrine that was their apartment, in the basement of the mulitgenerational home in thornton, which was until that time strictly off limits. To me, that visit still has the vividness of a childhood dream.

   The place was dim and dusty. strange tapestries and ornate woven rugs covered the walls but did little to keep out the damp. a smell like dried flowers, something  secretive and dank, crept up from the floor.  there was a closet  space where the old woman slept on a cot, and there hung a heavy gold frame over a battered chest of drawers.

   from deep in the shadows, the picture of a young man looked back at me. his gaze was defiant, with a startling steadiness.  He had penetrating dark eyes, and a black mustache, he wore a costume- a blue fez, baggy pants and a white, blousey shirt. The hilt of a dagger was tucked into the sash at his waist.

“that’s the Turk” someone whispered, and a mystery was born. “who was  he?” I asked, but I was hurried out of the room. Still, I would never forget that portrait I saw only that once.  I would never forget those eyes.

   Over the 40 or so years since,though the aunts and uncles were reluctant to talk about the romantic figure ofthe Turk, I have pieced together the half recalled tales, and since I am the oldest son of an oldest son of an oldest son, perhaps it is my job to record the story as I know it.

What follows will be part family myth, part outright lie, part plagiarism, and somewhere, a bit of the truth. I don’t know which is which.

   I was told my grand pepe was joseph, that he was a Frenchman who sailed to cananda to work in the lumbermills. He married a 15 year old girl mary, the daughter of a mic mac indian and an itinerant worker. My great grandmother was known as marie to most who remembered her.

   They lived in a place called Three Rivers, or trois rivieres, in the wilderness, an  endless green forest of pines, where there was always snow. By all accounts, the mill town was a lawless, booming place after the first world war, a hard drinking, hard brawling, scrambling, rambling, hard living kind of a place, where home brewed whiskey and fistfights passed the long winter hours,where fornicating and rutting prevailed after the liquor was all drunk and the fists lay dormant, where the work day whistle blew in the lumber yard each dawn,where the machinery roared to life and the saws buzzed, where pine dust floated in the air and coated every surface not already whitened by the constant snow,where blue shadows brought early evening to the valley and the drinking and rousing resumed.

   As the story goes, mary and joseph enjoyed their first years together in a little white house where they welcomed children that came with a certain regularity.  there were four offspring, the talkative Jeanette, a tow headed toddler joseph junior, blue eyed  Bernadette in rompers, and Maurice still onthe breast, when one spring morning joseph senior hopped on his bicycle with alittle kit bag, supposedly to go in to town for a pack of cigarettes.  maybe, he was illiterate and could not read the signs directing him back homeward. maybe, he went on a bender and suffered amnesia brought on by wood grain moonshine from the neighbor’s still. Or maybehe simply left, took off, disappeared, abandoned marie and her brood to survive as best they could.

  how she did manage, is anyone’s guess,  though it’s been said she was a cook, she worked in a laundry, she wove patterned rugs to sell, she took in boarders. joseph was presumed dead when there was no word of him season after season after season.  a son born in late February of 1921, some 22months after the above mentioned ride to the tobacco shop, suggests that the young mother, if she grieved,  sought some solace in those cold nights bereft of her husband.  The father of the child was not named, and there is no birth certificate in existence.

a foreign man, a mr karaman,  rented a room in the home around this time. he was known for years by the family as Uncle Aga, though it can be supposed he may have in fact sired the boy child who was born that night of the white blizzard.  this was never acknowledged or confirmed by anyone in the family, but it was admitted by some that marie’s son was the very image of the swarthy turk.

    then, a miracle perhaps, the wayward pere joseph peddled back into the valley, back to the little white house, back to the wife and family he had left nearly 8 years before.  Jeanette was by then practically a teenager, working at the mill where she swept mounds of choking pine dust.  JJ was in school. Bernadette and Maurice had grown tall. And there was the child called louis, a dark eyed, dark skinned,stout son, unknown and unfathered by joseph but rechristened by him on his return and known forever more as norman, after the old French town where the  belanger family had come from. norman would one day grow up to become mygrandfather, my pepe, and I would be named after him.

     the depression came and the mill was shut down,seemingly overnight. the family, including uncle aga who still lived upstairs in his attic room, left Canada for  rhode island. supposedly,  uncle karaman had a half brother, or a cousin, or the cousin of a friend, someone named kutamar who worked in a paper mill and had a house on the outskirts of providence.  The man wanted a wife, and it was decided that Jeanette would be married to him in exchange for room and board until the rest of the family got its footing. The belanger clan would never leave the house on star street in thornton.

  Mr karaman then drops out of our story some time after the move from trois riviers.  My father’s uncle junior always maintained that aga was shot behind the sons of Italy club when he was caught cheating at cards. Auntie bernadette often whispered that she heard a jealous husband ran him out of town.

  still,  whatever his fate, his picture would remain on the wall of marie’s  bedroomfor the rest of her life,  in the private basement apartment of  the family house, the home where her husband and children and grandchildren lived,  she kept her secret, a memento of the mysterious handsome man with black eyes.

   The portrait of my greatgrandfather aga karaman itself seems to have vanished sometime after the death of the old people, quite possibly taken by one who wished to keep the whiteness of the family legacy unsullied by speculation, a relic lost in the mists of memory, soon to be forgotten altogether perhaps, another mystery unremembered, unspoken---until now.

the coming storm

“Hey Sleeping Beauty, you gonna stay all day in that hammock?”

I must have dozed off, I blink my eyes open, the bubble of a dream is popped.

In the late afternoon, the sun has mellowed, still it’s late August, hot out here in the garden where bees lazily buzz in drooping dahlias.   

“What are you doing?”

Glen and Dougie the houseboy are unloading two by fours from the truck, they must have bought out the store.

“Didn’t you hear about the storm?” Dougie laughs.

“What Storm?”

“Just a hurricane spinning up the coast”, says Glen, “it’s headed right for us.”

“Maybe by tomorrow afternoon”, Dougie slings a stack of boards over his shoulder and heads to the front of the house.

I stretch and yawn. My journal falls, it lands in the tall weeds. I was writing before I drowsed, about the morning spent walking out, alone, along the dunes under a perfect, cloudless sky. On the sparse rocky spit of shore at Race Point I sprawled on a pink ratty towel, and watched the water, that was flat, like glass.  There was barely a breeze to break the stillness of the hour, so I sat in that lonely place with just the squawking gulls disturbing the quiet.

But the bittersweetness of the day, like my nap, is over.   There is already banging, a buzz saw squeals, the guys are hammering and moving ladders, boarding windows. I make my way slowly, to the back screen door.

Emily, in a slack floral housedress, hovers over something bubbling gently on the back burner.

“What smells so good?”

“Irish stew,” she says.  The tea kettle whistles, she hums as she sets two mismatched mugs on the counter. “You want a cup?”

I nod.

At the battered table, she pushes the sugar bowl, the blue creamer, and a cracked crockery jug toward the center along the oilcloth. She settles into her chair with a groan. “Salut!” she says.

There is still the taste of salt water on my lips. I sip the strong hot tea, sufficiently sweetened, and laced with an ample jigger of the dark brown booze, it warms and burns, I am heady in its unfolding fragrance.

“High octane”, I cough.

“Not a bad little vintage,” she agrees.

We sit a while, in a long stretch of warm sunlight, a gusting puff of wind riffs the lacey curtains, and there is that late summer smell of garden vegetation: over ripe tomatoes, damp earth, long green grass, mixed with the high note tang of the sea.

“Those two sure are making a racket,” she says, shaking her head.

“Glenn said it’s coming right for us.”

She shrugs. “My bones hurt, that’s all I know.”

When I put my empty mug down, she takes it up in her rough red hands.  She swirls the dregs carefully a few times. Through finger smudged glasses she peers into the bottom,

“It’s a hawk, “ Emily says, pronouncing the tea leaves.

“A hawk?”

She shushes me, and looks from another angle, gingerly so as not to disturb the pattern. “It could be a raven.”

“A raven?”

She shrugs. “It’s either a hawk or a raven, it’s all in the interpretation of the wings.”

“And?”

“Something’s coming, that’s for sure.” She puts the mug down for emphasis.

“That’s very illuminating.” I laugh.

“You’ll see,” she says. After a series of grunts she is again upright and at the stove.

“Thanks for the tea.” I put the things in the sink, where she nudges my arm.

“Supper’s at seven.”

Up the back stairs, I can hear the men lugging boards and swearing, grunting, slamming shutters shut. Maybe it’s the effects of the day dazzled by the sun, or the potent whiskey, or the shift in barometric pressure, but I am buoyant, and float, my hand glides along the shellacked smooth bend in the wood, I eye the faded rose bouquet wallpaper and listen as the pine floor boards sigh. Ghosts flit in shimmering dust motes, they whisper in the corners, as the old place seems to ready itself for the coming storm.

In the raftered attic eaves the sight of my little bed in its nook gives me the dreamy vision of a night, when moonlight might shine through the oblong glass panes, when you might again be waiting for me under the clean white cool coverlet, when we might laugh together, touch each other, when eyes might be bright in the darkness.

I open the window wide.

Out on Longpoint the lighthouse stands mute, stark against the clear blue expanse of sky. Miles away, a tempest approaches, but now the water is mirror smooth, and silvery glittering.

Still, something stirs underneath the placid surface, something palpable, a pulse of life, something that flutters in my chest like the wings of a raven, or a hawk, a hurricane is coming, something is coming,

I lean out. “Yes” I say softly, so the still air might carry the word across the bay, like a prayer, a wish, a flickering, glimmering hope:

“YES”.

Songs my father sang

this story appeared in red fez issue 93

“Dad, what are you looking for?”

“My keys”

“Your front pocket, remember?

“You sure?”

He’s checked three times already, for his keys, which are always in his front right pocket. The bus ticket is inside his coat, buttoned up. His wallet is in the back right side of his old baggy jeans.

“Here they are,” he nods, smiling.

I nod back, smiling.

“What did you order?”

“A burger”, I say, “you got a Reuben”

“Right, sure,” his spoon stops stirring. “Hot tea is good”, he says, “with lemon.” He brings the steaming ceramic mug to his lips. His hand trembles. The tea bag string dangles in mid air.

“What’re you drinking?”

“Scotch” I say. To be honest, it’s not my first.

“I used to drink scotch,” he says, “I loved a nice whiskey”.

He did love his liquor.  In his day, he was a drinker, a hard drinker, the funny, happy drunk, most of the time.  There were other times. Like mornings when we tiptoed past him as he dozed, passed out on the kitchen floor, with his one shoe on. Those were days we were leery to waken him, because we knew better.

 I am sitting across the table from my father, in a loud, brightly lit spot on Mass Ave. College kids are whooping at the bar. A Patriots game blares from five huge screens, which captures his attention while we wait for our food. His fingers tap on the table top. He hums a bar of a song, Stardust, I think, one of his favorites. He loves the old songs, all the old songs: hillbilly ballads, folk, country, rock and roll, Rogers and Hart. In my earliest memories, he is always singing. He sang while he stood at the sink , naked, in the upstairs bathroom while he shaved with a safety razor.  He sang when he drove, with his arm dangling out the rolled down window, regardless of the weather. He sang on Sunday mornings, when we skipped church and he’d make us fancy breakfasts of French toast, or pancakes, or crepes, with sausage and ham. “I Just Want To Be Your Teddy Bear,” he crooned with a sneering lip and swiveling hip as he dished out our plates.

“You gonna put on some pants, today?”

He would look down at his saggy once white boxers, and shake his head at my mother, “I don’t think so, no not today, “ and then standing in the middle of the gingham curtained kitchen, with a cast iron skillet in his hand, he’d belt out: “Born FREE, as Free as the Wind BLOWS!”

“Well don’t let the neighbors hear, for Christ’s sake. “

“…As free as the Grass goes, Born FREE!” He’d go on, not hearing, apparently.

“Just pass the syrup, would you?”

He’s still humming, still tapping. I look at him,  at his shaggy white shoulder length hair, his brown eyes, his moustache. People say, since I grew a beard, that I look like him. My mother calls me the Turk. “Say what you will,” she says, still begrudgingly, “despite a number of moral deficits, you father has always been a handsome bastard.”

 I watch my dad, still handsome, as he chews a mouthful of sandwich. I watch him blot his face with a tiny paper napkin. I know him, this man, my father. At least I think I do.  His hands, old now, were strong hands, the hands of a hardworking man, a boilermaker. Those hands would wrap you in the head if you got smart, and gently put on a bandaid if you scraped your knee when you fell off your bike. He always carried a rough white handkerchief to wipe faces clean with a good amount of spit. He tweaked noses.  

Some Saturday mornings, that last year he lived with us, my dad would take me to his office on the outskirts of Providence, and on the way we’d stop at a diner for Western omelets and thin white buttery toast. These were special days, when I was allowed to drink coffee, a scoop of Nescafe, some hot water, Cremora, and three whiffs of sugar from the heavy glass dispenser. At the boiler works, my dad was the boss, and owner.  Sitting in his swivel chair in the paneled nook where he did his business, I loved playing secretary. I banged out letters on the Selectric typewriter, I answered pretend phone calls: “I’m sorry Mr Belanger is in an important meeting, may I take a message?” I tapped a sharp pencil on pink ‘While You Were Out’ notepads, scribbled, “Mr Spock” and checked off the box “returned your call”, and circled “urgent”. One time while I was playing, I used the White Out to paint my nails, because Carol Burnet, when she played Mrs Wiggins on her show, would always be manicuring herself when her boss wanted her to do something, which was hysterical.

Nelson, one of the pipe fitters, stood in the doorway, “What the Hell are you doing?”  

“Nothing.”  

He nudged Randy, his buddy, and rolled his eyes. “Freakin’ Queer” he said, and Randy laughed. He stopped laughing when my dad walked in from the next room. He had heard. There was a look on my father’s face I did not understand, but it was more than sadness, more than anger. “Go on, son,” he said to me. “Go get in the car, I should take you home to your mother now.” Half way down the corridor from the office, I could hear him yelling, but I don’t know what he said.

I was not brought to the office on Saturdays, after that.

In the spring of that year he would leave us behind, to start a new life with a new family, a girlfriend with two young daughters. There would be no more singing in our house, no more fancy breakfasts, no more tiptoeing after the fighting. “You’ll be man of the house now,” he said, the day he left.

 He’s going through his pockets again, whistling “Begin the Beguine”, this time emptying the contents next to his plate and saucer. There is the handkerchief, neatly folded, and his change, about three dollars in quarters, dimes, and pennies, the wallet, a black plastic hair comb, his keys on a ring that says ELVIS LIVES, and then, he places down a rock, a round flat smooth green stone, in the center of everything.

“What’s that?”

“What?”

“The rock.”

“Oh, that’s my rock.”

“What’s it for?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Did you always have that?”

“I don’t remember,” he says, “but for a long time. It’s just a thing.”

From my own front pocket, I pull out a grooved stone. This is the secret talisman of my heart. I picked it up, one perfect day on Race Point. I’ve carried this rock for years, decades, I don’t know why.  Its ridges are worn from the rubbing of my hands, worn by daily anxieties, fears, heartbreaks, griefs. It is warm with prayers. It is charm and superstition.

I look at him, how peculiar, how strange, these two objects in the middle of the table seem to be, inert, imbued suddenly with something new I don’t understand.

My dad sits there. “Would you look at that?” he says. “The apple never falls far from the tree.”

I nod, wondering at the mysteries of the man across the table, as elusive and familiar as the lyrics to an old song, as he smiles at me.

“Let’s get some pie,” he says, and he puts his things away.

note: this story, about me and my dad, is creative non-fiction. while elements are factual,  details are the creation of the writer.

Saturday night

http://www.potluckmag.com/december-2016/2016/12/9/saturday-night-sucks

this piece was accepted by Potluck Magazine for November publishing.

“So, tell me, how was the date?” It’s Jett. He must have radar. He calls the second I walk in the door.

I hold the phone in the crook of my neck as I pop a Lean Cuisine into the microwave. “How do you think? It’s 10 pm on Saturday night and I am home about to Netflicks Dark Victory.”

“That bad?”

“No, it wasn’t awful, but pretty typical.”

“Where’d you meet this one?”

“OK Cupid.”

“Ugh.”

“No shit.”

Ok Cupid, as you probably are aware, is another online dating service for us busy singles looking for connections. If you have never taken one of these mate matching quizzes, they are a perplexing series of questions, seemingly unrelated, and all equally weighted:  “Do you believe in God?”; “Do you like cats?” ; “Is fidelity in a relationship important to you?” ;  “Do you enjoy soup?” I don’t know of the validity of these inquiries. You answer these, and about a 100 more, and of course you are careful to use your “best” answers. Why yes, I am conscientious. No, I don’t like people who lie, etc. They take your responses and put them through the hopper, and out comes a list of your matches. Like magic. Personally, I’d take an atheist over a cheating cat lover.
I think they should have more essays. I loved essays in school. You could bullshit your way through pretty much anything. For instance, which Golden Girl are you, and why? If I had known my ex was such a Blanche, it may have saved me a bit of heartache down the road, who knows? Tonight’s date was a Rose, no doubt about it.

“Tell me all about it. Details. Spare nothing.” I can hear Jett settling into his couch, sipping something with ice. Jett is fatally married to Bernard, so my forays into the world of dating provide theater for him. In former days, we all went out on double dates, triple dates, when all of us in the circle were coupled up, but now my canary in the coalmine adventures into the single life are both titillating, and cautionary tale.

The microwave beeps. I burn my hand on the little plastic tray. Peeling back the thin film, the steam rises up with a pungent tang. “They have a lot of nerve calling this Linguine Alfredo.” I lean against the counter and twirl a forkful.

“So?” Jett is getting impatient. “Tell papa everything.”

“Where do I begin?”

“Where’d you meet him?”

“Border Café.”

“Jesus. Why?”

“He said it was his favorite place in Harvard Square.”

“That should have been a red flag right there. No taste. But at least you were close to home.”

“And the magaritas are decent.”

“What did he look like?”

“Not bad, really. Kind of slight, slim, sandy blond. Non threatening.”

“Bland?”

“Pretty much.” I blow on the molten lava glop of pasta.

Paul, my date, was already there, sitting at the bar, even though I was ten minutes early. I like to be the early one, it gives me a chance to settle, check in, check out the place, maybe get a preparatory  drink. “There you are!” he waved. “I was about to send out the bloodhounds!”
“Am  I late?”
“Oh just kidding, can’t you take a joke? Come and give me a great big hug!”
I was groped and enveloped in a cloying scent I eventually recognized as Shalimar, a fragrance more associated with my grandmother, now deceased some years, than an evening of conquest.
“Wow you are so much cuter than your profile picture! I love the beard! Can I touch it? please?”
He was stroking my facial scruff when the bartender came over. “Cocktails?” she asked.
“Yes. Please.” I said.

“So what did you talk about?” Jett swallows a hefty swig of his drink.

“He did most of the talking.”

“Oh, one of those.”

“He talked in exclamation points. He was very emphatic, enthusiastic.”

“Annoying.”

“Pretty much. Oh, he kept calling the waitstaff  ‘Girlfriend’. Like: “OOH Girlfriend I love those shoes! You are all that, Girlfriend!”

“Embarrassing. We don’t say that anymore. No one says that anymore.”

“And twice he told me to ‘Talk to the Hand’.”

“No!”

“I swear.”

About midway through our Cuervo Gold margaritas, while waiting for a chicken quesadilla to arrive (he insisted we split something, “It’s more romantic!”) Paul gave my upper thigh a squeeze. “This is going well, don’t you think? I feel an instant chemistry with you, it’s amazing!”
“Maybe it’s the tequila,” I said, deciding to ignore his hand.
“You are so funny! OMG. Laugh riot! I’m being serious, silly billy. I really think we could have fun!”
“What do you enjoy doing?”
“Oh, you’ll find out!” He licked the salted rim of his glass and gave me a wink.

“Was there anything good about it?” Jett sighs. I think in his heart he wants a happy ending for me. So do I.

“The drinks were strong.”

“Well that’s something. Sounds like you needed a good buzz to get through it.”

“I had three. The first two I sucked down like lemonade.”

“You must be drunk.”

“Little bit.”

“Me too.”

Paul matched me drink for drink. He got loose, and giddy. His face flushed red. He laughed a lot, and loudly. Then suddenly he got quiet. His hand, now on my shoulder, tightened its grip. “I have a serious question for you.” He looked at me, with mouse like gaze, his eyes bright and timid. He looked small in the brightly lit space. On the sound system, Elvis was singing “Viva Las Vegas.”
I nodded for him to go ahead.
“What are you looking for? I mean really. Are you looking for just a hook up? I couldn’t deal with that, no way Jose. That’s two snaps and a bag of chips. Sorry, Charlie. No dice." He finished his drink with one gulp. "I want someone special, someone to love me, really love me! You know?"
“Well, sure,” I said.
“I’m so tired of the game! Aren’t you? Isn’t this lame?”
“You made a rhyme,” I observed, unable to comfort him because I am hurting too, but as usual in an uncomfortable situation, I shrug it off, make a joke.
“What?”
“Nothing.”

Jett is in motion. “I gotta scoot soon Babe, the husband and dogs just came home with Chinese.’

“Ok, I’ll talk to you tomorrow? Tell Bernard and the puppies I said hello.”

“ Ok. So, you going to see him again, Mr Shalimar?”

“What do you think?”

“Guess not,” Jett sighs again, deeply, still hoping for that happy ending.

So am I.

I left Paul on the corner, after a quick hug. It was snowing. “Nice to meet you, handsome,” he said. “Call me?” He made a sad face, and gestured like he was holding a little phone, or a seashell, like he was listening for the sounds of the ocean whispering inside his empty hand.

this story was submitted to publication to Potluck magazine.