My Walk with Claude — part 4

She took my hand again and we got up from the park bench.  We started to walk again.  There was a man selling ice cream from a truck.  She suggested that we get something from him.  “A perfect day to get something from Ice Cream Jimmy.  He has been selling ice cream here in the park since I was a little kid.  His ice cream is always the best and most refreshing stuff in town.  Let’s go over and see what we can get.”  Ice Cream Jimmy was a stocky guy, not fat, but solid at about five foot seven or so.  He looked like he had eaten his fair share of ice cream over his time in the park.  He was wearing a blue short sleeved knit shirt, and on his head there was a black hat that said ‘U. S. Army Vet’.   He was also probably the only person in the whole park on this exceedingly, warm day, that was wearing long pants.  I guess his ice cream kept him cool.   His truck just said ‘Jim Daley – Ice Cream’ on the side, with a few pictures of the large variety of ice cream treats within.  It seemed that Claudine wasn’t sure what to get. There was just too many choice for her to find just the right one.   She finally said “Let’s have a couple of popsicles Jimmy, that would be very refreshing on a hot day like today.”  She told him that we wanted two cherry popsicles.  She gave him the money and then handed one to me.   Ice Cream Jimmy looked at her and asked her if that was all she wanted, as he had some really fine ice cream bars, cones and sandwiches, and was sad that she settled on the pedestrian popsicles.  She said: “That’s it for today Jimmy, maybe next time we will splurge a little.”   We went back to our bench and sat there in silence as we ate the popsicles and watched the young kids play in the park.  Claudine was concentrating on her popsicle and seemed lost in thought.  When she was finished she handed me her popsicle stick and asked me to take them as she wanted to save them for some of her plants back in her house.  I put both of the sticks in my back pocket, and we started slowly walking away from the park.  She seemed reluctant to leave, but knew that she had more to tell me, and she didn’t have a lot of time to finish her story.

Claudine seemed to be walking a bit slower now as she continued again.  “As time went on, my father rarely came back to the store, he seemed to have lost any further interest in working, but at the same time he would not think of ever selling the store.  That had been my parent’s life, his and my mother’s life together.  If he sold it, he would be acknowledging that my mother was truly gone from his life.   So I began to spend all my time keeping the store going and learning how to stay up to date with modern trends in hardware and insuring that we had everything that a local handy man or contractor might need.  We started to lose some business to the encroaching big box stores, but we managed to make enough to support myself, my father and those that worked for us.  My father barely listened to me when I gave him the updates of how the store was going, he just wanted to be sure that we were still taking care of our loyal customers.  He usually just sat in his recliner chair in the living room and watched the world go by out our front window.  He gradually withdrew from what was going on around him.  I think he never could reconcile the fact that my mother was gone and why she had to die so young.  I tried to keep him interested in life, but he no longer cared for much of anything, including food and drink.   He just gave up on living and so he died. “  She stopped again and squeezed my hand, I stopped as well and when she looked at me, I noticed that she was no longer the young girl that had started out with me on this walk.  She too was looking a bit older, more in middle age maybe.  She was no longer the young girl of Parisian dreams and love.  She was a mature woman now.  He hair was mostly the same, not any gray showing, but there were now a few worry lines in her face.  Her eyes were still bright, but a few tears were there as well and her face was lightly flushed.  I noted that I seemed to have aged, right along with her.  I could feel some of my old back pain again.

We began to walk.  She guided me through the back streets of town.  “After dad died, I did my best to keep the store going in his memory.  I was now at the point in my life, that I was no longer being courted or asked out.  My whole life had been my father and the business and my memories of Patrice.   Now it was looking like it was too late to start a new career or even think of a new man in my life.  After another five or six years, I decided to sell the store to one of our long time employees.  I gave him a generous deal and after awhile I just stopped working there altogether.  I started teaching French classes a few nights a week at the high school, just for those who were  beginners.  It was not much money, so I also started working part time on the weekend at the library.  I also volunteered at the church and helped with the rummage sales and cooking for the pot luck dinners.  During this time, I finally stopped receiving any letters from Eliane.  I contacted one of the women that I knew from my teaching days in Paris, and she was able to let me know that Eliane had died last year.  Since we never met again, I just never stopped to realize how old that she was, I just expected her to keep living, while waiting for word from Patrice and his eventual return.  I guess she was 95 when she died.  She, like me, always hoped.  It must have been what kept her going.  So now my last contact with my early life in Paris was gone.  I often thought that I might go back and try to find some kind of link or news of Patrice or his father.  But then I thought that if Eliane had not learned of anything by the time she died, it was most likely that I would find little news myself.”

copyright@2023 bill melnik