The Son of a Certain Woman (35 page)

A fury-faced middle-aged woman with jet-black dyed hair and eyebrows came out of one of the largest houses on Bonaventure, still in her slippers. She grabbed me by the arm and said, “You see what you’ve done, you sinful, selfish little brute. You’ve got them all at it now. A lot of good boys and girls all saying God knows what. And you had us fooled. We thought you were a good boy. A smack across that face of yours is what you need! A good smack across the face from your mother like the one she gave to someone else’s boy. Maybe she needs one too. Your face and those hands and feet are your excuse for everything, you saucy little crackie. You bless one more bus, kiss one more piece of pavement, make fun of the Holy Father one more time, and I’ll send you home to Penny Joyce without a tooth left in your head. It might be an improvement.”

I slapped her in the face hard, as hard as I could. I left the white marks of my oversized fingers on her cold red face. Her eyes went wide and she put one hand up to her cheek as if to gauge how much damage I had done. “You
hit
me,” she said, staring at me with astonishment. I expected her to hit me back. I wouldn’t have ducked, I wouldn’t have run. I knew that I had crossed a line that children never cross. I wanted to be punished for it right away because I knew that, the longer my punishment was deferred, the worse it would be. But she turned slowly around and began to cry. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t— I’m sorry.” She quickly made her way back to her house and went inside.

“McHugh said you hit Mrs. Madden,” my mother said. “You hit her so hard you made her cry.”

“You hit that boy from Brother Rice! Mrs. Madden said that if she knocked out all my teeth, it might improve my face. And she said that what
you
need is a good slap in the face like the one you gave O’Keefe.”

“In that case, you should have hit her harder than you did.” She took me in her arms and began to hug me, but in spite of the scent of perfume on her neck, I pulled away, pushed her aside, my hands on her hips.

In my room, I lay down on the upper bunk. I wished I hadn’t given “Francine” to Sully, from whom she had been confiscated by McHugh, who, I fancied, now had her on
his
wall above
his
lonely bed. All I had now was a square on the wall that was less faded than the wall around it, the place that Francine had occupied for years.

Pops said that McHugh wanted to pay us a visit, to come to the house and talk things over with everyone present.

“Everyone?” my mother said. “You can tell McHugh what I told you:
You
are not one of us.
He
is not one of us. Us is, we are, Percy and me and Medina, so even if I was inclined to let McHugh inside the house, I’d send you away until after he was gone. I might even send you to your room. Second, McHugh will never set foot inside this house again. It’s bad enough that he did it once without my permission. It’s bad enough that he can
see
this house from where he lives or whatever he calls what he does after school. It’s bad enough knowing that he is always just across the street without having him over to
counsel
us about our lives, to advise me in front of Percy, and Percy in front of me. Pops, here is something that will never happen: I will never serve McHugh a cup of tea, never ask him, ‘Milk or sugar?’ I will never put out a tray of biscuits for him, sit on the edge of my seat and wait for him to speak while my hands are folded primly in my lap. I will never watch him cross
the street as he makes his way to 44, never open the door and stand back to welcome him inside. McHugh, in his all-black uniform and his clerical collar, will never see the inside of this house again unless he breaks the goddamn door down.”

“He said he would be here at seven-thirty,” Pops said.

My mother took Pops by the elbow and guided him toward the front door. “Go over there now,” she said. “Don’t phone him. Go over there. I don’t care what you tell him, but if you have to, tell him I will call the police if he turns up on my doorstep. Or tell him that he and I can have a nice inconspicuous chat on the sidewalk in front of Brother Rice. I’ll keep grabbing his hand and I’m fairly certain he’ll keep pulling it away. I don’t think it will set the neighbours to talking at all, do you?”

More than anything, she said, McHugh wanted to be
seen
crossing the street to our house. In fact, he would probably go back and forth half a dozen times just to make sure he was seen, make sure that it spread through the neighbourhood that Director McHugh was at last taking unprecedented measures to deal with the Joyces.

From the front window, I watched Pops, who had donned his lab coat, cross the street, all but running.

“Get away from the window, Perse,” my mother said. “Let’s not give McHugh reason to think he has us worried.”

I reluctantly moved away from the window. A few minutes later, Pops returned, holding in his hand a sheet of paper that bore the official stamp of the Basilica.

“It’s for Percy.” Pops held it out to me. “It’s from the Archbishop.”

“I’ll read it,” my mother said. She did so in silence and then out loud:

Pops handed her another piece of paper, this one unadorned with a stamp or letterhead of any kind. She read it out loud.

My mother thrust the second letter back at Pops. “Tell him that Percy and I will meet him in his office at five-thirty. You will meet us there—don’t come home before the meeting, and after the meeting don’t leave the school until half an hour after we do. Do whatever you like with that letter, but get it out of this house.”

She asked Medina if she would go with us to the meeting, for moral support. “Jesus.” Medina sighed. “All right.”

“I don’t understand why everyone is so upset.”

“McHugh says that just to hear someone claiming he can perform miracles or to see him pretending to perform them makes some people doubt that miracles ever happened,” Pops said.

“I’ve never witnessed a miracle.” She blew smoke in Pops’ direction. “It’s easy to claim that someone walked on water two thousand years ago. It’s not as if you can dare them to try it again.”

“The stain doesn’t help,” Medina said. “Some people are superstitious about that stain. They pretend to feel sorry for Percy, and I guess they do, but deep down … I don’t know … they don’t want to get too close to someone God might have it in for.”

When I got home from school the next day, my mother told me not to change out of my St. Bon’s uniform. She told me to sit and watch television until it was time for our meeting with McHugh. I watched her at the Helm from the living room. She stopped typing for long periods of time, nervously smoking one cigarette after another. She was wearing her newest blouse, a plain but tight-fitting dark blue one, and a tight black skirt and black pumps. She looked relieved when, still wearing her green hospital uniform, Medina arrived.

“Didn’t have time to change,” Medina said. “I guess it’s time to face the music.” She sounded even more nervous than my mother looked.

“I guess so,” my mother said. She looked at me and faintly smiled. “I thought girls would be his biggest problem. I guess I can’t be blamed for not preparing for the day my son would claim that he was God.”

In McHugh’s office, the walls were festooned with diplomas, certificates of merit, awards, depictions of the Sacred Heart and the Blessed Virgin, small but ornate and finely detailed crucifixes like the ones in his suite.

I was surprised to see Sister Celestine, the long-reigning principal of Holy Heart, Sister C as she was called, sitting beside McHugh behind his desk, the two of them in high-backed leather chairs. Medina, my mother and I sat opposite them on wooden chairs, and Pops sat at the window, half on the sill, half on the radiator, awkwardly posed. He wore his lab coat, the strap of his safety goggles dangling from one pocket. I noted—and it seemed strange—that the only person there not wearing a uniform of some kind was my mother.

Sister C sat rigidly upright, her hourglass-shaped headdress rising high above her head. McHugh said Sister C was there because the “foment” I had caused had taken place on the grounds, the parking lot, of her school, and involved many of her students. Sister C wore black glasses, from behind the thick lenses of which she stared coldly at me. She spoke slowly, deliberately, giving an air of impenetrable composure. I wondered if, years ago, Mary Aggie had been imitating Sister C when she spoke as if she was unfazed even by the fact of her mortality and imminent entrance into Purgatory.

“I remember you.” Sister C turned to Medina, who was so startled she all but jumped from her chair. “You were in my grade three
class. I remember all my students, everything they said and did and didn’t do. Yes.”

Instead of answering as I was sure she would, Medina blushed and examined one of her hands as if she had never noticed the shape of it before.

“I remember you too.” Sister C faced my mother. “The smart one. Smart but lazy. Full of backtalk even after you were strapped. So long ago.”

“I remember you too, Sister,” my mother said. “Less fondly, I’m sorry to say, than you remember me.”

“Still the same,” Sister C said, sighing as if she had known when my mother was a child that she would never change. She closed her eyes as she spoke, as if reciting from memory. “Both of you. Yes. But God has seen to it that you got what you deserve.” She looked at me as if to say, “You’re what they deserved.”

“I’m glad to see they’ve modernized the Mercy habit,” my mother said.

“Are you aware I am now Mother Superior at the Mercy Convent?”

“No, but that explains the air of superiority. Mother Superior. That’s quite an accomplishment for a woman who has never had a child. Are you aware that I am now Mother Hysteria at 44 Bonaventure Avenue? Give my regards to Mothers Inferior, Mediocre and Deplorable.”

“The one beside you isn’t saying much,” Sister C said, again closing her eyes, faintly smiling. “She learned what was what long ago. We wouldn’t be hearing a peep from you either if you’d been dealt with in the same way that I dealt with her. Oh no, not a peep.”

“But here I am, a Peeping Mom.”

I watched in surprise as Medina raised a hand to wipe a tear from her eye, but her hand shook so badly she let it drop into her lap.

“What’s wrong, Medina?” I asked. My voice broke, I was so nervous.

“Medina’s fine,” my mother said. “It’s a classic case of protégé and tormentor meeting up after years apart.”

“Be careful, Penelope. It’s never too late for comeuppance.” Sister C smiled.

“Or to somehow lose your living daylights. A woman your age could easily misplace them.”

“Miss Joyce,” McHugh said, “perhaps someday you’ll put your clever words to better use.”

“That tongue of hers,” Sister Celestine said, her tone gentle, “will never be of better use until someone removes it from her head and feeds it to a dog.”

McHugh turned to me suddenly, as if he felt the conversation was derailing and he needed to regain control, and asked if I understood why we were meeting. Before I could answer, Sister C leaned forward. “An air of disrespect, irreverence, even near insurrection is sweeping the Mount. The students are flouting all that they’ve been taught, at home, at school, in church. They are making jokes about the teachings of the Church. Percy Joyce, do you think your troubles are more important than those of others? Do you think you’ve been overburdened, singled out for persecution? It would be a mistake for you to assume that, because of His Grace, you can do what you like and get away with it. You are as God created you. One day you will stand alone before God, without an alibi, without excuses, without someone like your mother to plead your case. All alone, yes.” She nodded, smiled, as if picturing the moment of my reckoning.

“Well said,” my mother exclaimed. “It really is a shame that someone so given to nurturing has no children of her own.”

McHugh, persevering, asked me again if I understood why we were meeting. I nodded, but he said, “Tell us why, Percy.”

“I made up some stories. Just for a joke.”