The Son of a Certain Woman (25 page)

“Every night that you don’t call, I think about it.” Medina smiled at her. “And I sit by the phone every night, even when you’ve told
me you won’t be calling, just in case you do. I fall asleep by it. And when you do call, I have to go down the garbage lane and sneak in by the back, and later sneak back home again. All you have to do is use the phone.”

“It’s not ideal for either one of us,” my mother said.

“What would Pops do if he caught you?” I said.

“Jesus.” Medina put her head in her hands and shook it back and forth.

“Pops is Pops, thank God. Just remember that if we’re caught by
anyone
, they’ll take you away from me. For good. So keep your mouth shut, Perse. No tall tales at school. I don’t want to hear that you suddenly claimed to be well versed in the ways of Crazy Lizzies. We’ll all be fine, we’ll all stay together, as long as we keep this a secret. A solemn secret. I wasn’t sure about telling you because nothing is more important than this. Perse, you have to be as careful as Medina and me. Understand?”

I nodded.

Medina resumed her station against the rock, one foot flat against it as she smoked a cigarette of which little remained but the glowing filter. I watched her throw it aside emphatically as if thereby to rid herself of all the thoughts that were running through her mind. She turned back to us.

“The two of you would be just fine if not for me,” Medina said. “A mother and her son. If I stay, it will always be the way it is. Lies and secrets and sneaking around, wondering when we’ll be caught, how much time we still have left. It would be better for you two with me out of the picture. Maybe Percy’s right. What if Pops
had
heard me making funny noises? What if he had looked into the room? I remember how upset you said Percy was that night. I didn’t see him, I was too busy clearing out of the house like a thief who’d been caught in the act. Percy could just as easily have gone to Pops’ room instead of to the basement.”

Medina came over to me, stood me up and took me in her arms, resting her cheek on my head. “Completely out of the picture is where I need to be,” she said. “But what would be the point of me if not for you and Perse, Pen? I don’t even have the nerve to ride in a car. You’d get by no matter what. Not me.”

My mother quickly stood, pried me apart from Medina, took her face between her hands and firmly kissed her on the lips. She just as quickly moved away and glanced back at the road.

“You see?” Medina said. “You never know who might be watching, even up here.”

“Don’t ever speak again about completely removing yourself,” my mother said. “It would destroy me. And Perse. We’ve had our talk with Perse, so let’s go home.”

The fog cleared for an instant, and we stood silently, looking down to the harbour far below. My mother and I picked up the remains of the picnic and packed them in the cardboard box.

“Why do you love me, Pen?” Medina demanded.

“Oh Jesus, Medina, don’t start up with that again. Why do you love me?”

“I think maybe I’m the only lizzie you’ve ever met. I think maybe if you met one who could read and write and was smart and looked even half as good as you, you’d say so long to Medina.”

“You know that’s not true. It’s a hurtful thing to say.”

Medina angrily tossed aside her cigarette. “You don’t know what it’s like. Who would want to steal
me
away from
you
? Who would want to steal me away from anyone?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers? That’s what you’re saying. I didn’t settle for you. Jesus, Medina.”

“Well, I’m sorry. I’m just saying it’s not easy—”

“—having what you think you don’t deserve and what everybody else not only wants but thinks is available?”

“See? You put me into words better than I do. But why do you need me?”

“I need you because you’re you, period. I love you. I love what I see when I look at you. I don’t have to count the ways. I don’t have to put it into words.”

Medina turned back to look at her. My mother smiled at her. “I’ll start down the hill after you’re gone,” Medina said.

My mother took my hand and we walked to the car. She put the cardboard box in the back seat again, and after a great deal of effort she managed to turn the Rambler around, spinning the steering wheel as fast as she could.

As we began down the hill, with our headlights cutting a thin path through the fog, I knelt backward in my seat to watch Medina. She was posed exactly as she had been when we arrived, leaning against the rock. But she was watching us this time. I waved to her and she waved back. I turned to see my mother wave to her in the rear-view mirror, then blow her a kiss. I turned again and saw Medina blow back her kiss, then put her cigarette in her mouth, both hands in her parka, the sole of one foot lifted against the rock. She receded into the distance, faded into the fog as the car took us back down into the sunlight of St. John’s. “She should have come with us,” I said.

“She’ll be all right. She’s used to walking by herself. God knows what we’ve done to your mind, Percy,” she said as she struggled with the clutch. She tried to explain the Oedipus and Electra complexes to me. “For you, it must be like having a head-on collision of complexes.” I had witnessed, she said, a version of what Freud called “the primal scene.” Not my mother and father, but my mother and my father’s sister, having sex. So she modified the Freudian complexes to fit my circumstances and hers: I subconsciously wanted to murder my father for abandoning me, my father’s sister for sleeping with my mother, Pops for sleeping with my mother, my mother for sleeping with everyone, my father included, every male on the Mount for wanting to sleep with my mother, every female on the Mount for pretending not to want to sleep with her. According to the new Percy Joyce complex, she said, a boy’s early childhood
instills in him a desire to kill everyone he ever meets. “But I suppose it only works that way if the boy’s mother is Penny Joyce. Christ, I’m such a slut.” Smiling wryly, she added, “But feel free to contradict me. I contradicted you when you said I was a whore and a hag.”

“Once a month with Pops?” I said. “The same day every month?”

“Yes,” she said, “Pops’ time of the month. I go to his room. For a little while. Late. But don’t even bother asking me which day. And promise me you’ll never listen at his door.”

“I never listened at your door,” I said. “You left the door open.”

“Promise,” she said.

“I promise. You and Medina—I bet it’s more than once a week.”

“That’s none of your business. If you try to catch us, you’ll wind up staying awake all night every night. We’re very discreet.”

“I already caught you once.”

“Jesus, 44 is not your average Bonaventure house, is it, Perse?”

“No.”

“I doubt it would qualify as an average house anywhere in the world. So, are you all right? Never mind the complexes—that was just for fun.”

“I’m all right.” I said it with as much conviction as I could muster, which was a great deal more than I felt. I had long known that Crazy Lizzies could wind up in the Mental, but the furtive manner of my mother and Medina’s admission, the fog they had conjured up, it almost seemed to me for the occasion, had made that fate seem real at last. I could lose them both. They could lose each other. Where would I end up? What would be my version of the Mental, what sort of institution would a boy as disfigured as I was, a boy whose mother and aunt had humiliated Uncle Paddy, end up in?

There followed nights when they put on the record player after Pops had gone to bed. Taking off their shoes, they slow-danced to Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves and Kitty Wells. “I’m crazy for lovin’ you,” Patsy Cline sang as my mother and Medina made their way
around the living room floor, Medina leaning her head on my mother’s shoulder, my mother smiling at me as I watched, sometimes beckoning to me to join them, which I did, the three of us in a huddle, my arms around their waists, my face pressed sideways against my mother’s breast. “Your mother’s a good dancer,” Medina said dreamily, her eyes closed as Patsy sang about walking after midnight, in the moonlight. I knew why, on such nights, I was allowed to stay up so late, knew that it was in case Pops, for whatever unlikely reason, emerged from his room. If he did, there I’d be, making the sight of my mother and Medina, and sometimes me, dancing seem fun, harmless, innocent, two tipsy women dancing with each other and a boy for lack of a man to dance with. They turned off the lights, but they left the TV on, the volume turned down low but the screen conspicuously flickering, visible to anyone who might be watching from the street, walking or driving past 44. Medina would slide her hands up and down my mother’s back, sometimes lower, and I’d watch my mother hastily grab them away and whisper something urgent in her ear, after which Medina’s hands climbed back to where they’d been, one on my mother’s shoulder, one in her shoulder-high hand; my mother always led, one hand on Medina’s hip.

It’s strange to think of your mother in bed with anyone, especially when you know your father hasn’t been to bed with her—or even seen her—in years. But it’s especially strange when you know that, just rooms away from yours, she sleeps with a man once a month and with a woman once a week—with the man for money, though the man in question convinces himself it might one day be for love, and with the woman for love that puts them in jeopardy of losing everything they have. How, being in love with a woman, could my mother stand to do it with a man? How could the man who knew the price that he was paying not sense or guess what
her
price was? It is also strange when you are a boy who has never really touched a girl except by accident, to know that on any given
night such things might be going on behind the closed door of your mother’s room.

“Mom, will you sleep in the bottom bunk tonight?” I asked my mother. She shot me a dubious look as if to say she had guessed my ulterior motive. “You in your bunk, me in mine, that’s all.”

“I might snore. And I’ll definitely smoke a cigarette whenever I wake up. And I wake up a lot.”

“So do I.”

“Okay. But just for tonight. And I’m not staying if you start in about pity fucks again. I’m not going to wake up to find you in bed with me, am I?” I told her no and sighed as if I couldn’t believe she thought I was still obsessed with
that
. By having her sleep in my room, I could at least make sure that, on certain nights, she didn’t go to bed with Pops or Medina.

When she came into my room that first night, she was wearing her bathrobe over her pyjamas as she sometimes did on cool nights after she had had a bath. My mother’s wool-woven bathrobe was a modest heirloom of her mother’s. It was jet black, an almost perfect match with her hair, as were her eyes the perfect complement of her dark complexion. If not for the pyjamas, I would have seen the parts of her not hidden when she wore nothing but the robe—her long, thin neck, the first knob of her breastbone, her wrists, her beautiful brown feet which she so rarely displayed around the house. She undid the belt of the robe, shrugged off the robe with a single flex of her shoulders. The pyjamas were light blue and covered every inch of her from the neck down.

She climbed into the lower bunk, the bedsprings squeaking. “Jesus, Perse, I can’t stretch out full length.”

“Lie on your side,” I said. My bunk shook every time she moved. Until she lit up for the first time, I could smell her perfume. It mixed with the smoke already in her pyjamas and her hair.

“Some people were made for sleep,” she murmured. “And some people were made for keeping one eye open all the time.”

“One eye?”

“It’s just an expression. It means you’re never less than half awake, never more than half asleep. Just in case.”

“Of what?”

“Sabre-tooth tigers. Other night owls who might steal your food. Or worse.”

“Evolution.”

“That’s right. The survival of the lightest sleepers.”

“What kind of fuck is Pops?”

“
Perse
.”

“I just mean what is it called. It’s not a pity fuck.”

“Desperation.”

“A desperation fuck?”

“Remuneration. Maybe. Jesus, I don’t know.”

“If you did it with me—”

“My only child, my only son, is trying to seduce me. It would be a felony fuck! I told you, don’t start.”

“If no one knew, what would it be called?”

“A deep, dark secret. Very deep and very dark.”

I leaned out over my bunk to see if I could make her out. She lit up another cigarette. I briefly saw her face flash in the dark. She briefly saw mine.

“What if you knew my face was your fault?”

“That’s it,” she said. “You’re on your own.” I heard the bunk loudly squeak again as she climbed out. “Your face is not my fault.” She sounded as if she was crying as she stormed out of the room. She slammed the door behind her.

For nights on end, I listened at the door of my bedroom, trying to hear other doors opening and closing. Pops’ door, my mother’s
door. The back door and then my mother’s. My mother tiptoeing to Pops’ room then back to hers. My mother and Medina tiptoeing from the back porch to my mother’s room. I was certain my mother would have an excuse ready if Pops opened his door and saw them in the hallway. But no excuse would do if he saw them as I had. I told my mother that I could stay up and keep lookout for Pops the nights that Medina came by for a second visit, but she said, “Nice try,” and added that the when-and-what of her and Medina and her and Pops was none of my business. “That’s all I need, knowing that you’re in the living room, one door away, ears open for every sound, waiting for Medina to come out and go home. Can you imagine how embarrassed she’d be if she had to pass by you each time? Or how embarrassed I’d be? You stay put in your room and don’t leave it except to use the bathroom.” Some nights I heard my mother dial what I had no doubt was Medina’s number and later heard the door open for her. But I knew that I wouldn’t have heard it if I hadn’t been trying to, or if I was drunk like Pops. Once or twice, I thought I heard my mother go to Pops’ room, but I wasn’t sure. Always too sleepy to listen for the end of the visits, I’d fall asleep.