The Son of a Certain Woman (38 page)

“It doesn’t sound very contrite,” Pops said after hitting stop. “He could at least sound sorry even if he’s not.”

“He’s not going to sob his way through it,” my mother said. “That would make him a hypocrite, and hypocrisy the subject of next week’s apology. No wailing, no gnashing of teeth. You have enough there that McHugh and his minions can patch together any way they want.”

“All right,” Pops said. “McHugh is waiting for me in his office. He plans to broadcast the apology tomorrow afternoon if possible.”

My mother sighed and shook her head. “Well,” she said, “don’t keep the Grand Inquisitor waiting.”

Pops picked up the tape recorder and, holding it in front of him as if it might otherwise explode, hurried from the house.

“There you go, Perse,” my mother said. “That part’s done. By this time tomorrow, all this silliness will be behind you.”

I was relieved when, about fifteen minutes later, Pops came back without the tape recorder.

“McHugh says that it will need a great deal of work,” he said. “He said that he and the AV people might be at it half the night.”

“How did he seem when he listened to it?” my mother said.

“Obviously not pleased,” Pops said.

“I don’t suppose he let you hear his introduction.”

“I didn’t ask to hear it. He didn’t offer. Maybe he hasn’t recorded it yet.”

Pops told me about the Protestant archbishop Thomas Cranmer who, trying to avoid execution, recanted his Protestantism, then later recanted his recantation when he discovered that the Catholic Church meant to burn him at the stake no matter what he said or did. “You can recant your recantation all you like when you’re at home,” Pops said, “but don’t do it out there. Remember Cranmer.”

“Cranmer. Wonderful example, Pops,” my mother said. “From now on, let’s keep to a minimum the analogies to Percy’s life that end with people being burned alive.”

“Physician, heal thyself,” Pops said.

My mother smiled at that and nodded a subtle touché.

“Well, you should at least talk to him about how to comport himself after his apology,” Pops said.

“Come straight home with Brother Hogan,” my mother said later when Pops had gone to his room. “Don’t say a word to any of those children on the buses, especially that boy Sully from Torbay. Forget about the dollar that he owes you—you’ll never see it. If anyone tries to goad you into making the kind of jokes you made before, just ignore them. No more stories, not even about Jim Joyce. If you’ve given him a new identity, keep it to yourself. I don’t want it getting back to me that you’re saying now he’s the captain of a submarine so top secret it never surfaces or something. God, if people knew what you
could
have told those children, all this would seem pretty pale by comparison.”

I lay awake that night thinking of McHugh at work on my apology across the street. Perhaps he was finished and watching 44 from the window of his suite. I wondered what he was thinking at that second, if
he
wondered if I’d been able to get to sleep or had even gone to bed yet, much of the house still being lit. I imagined him on the eighth floor of the Quarters looking down at the now-curtained windows of 44, watching for any sign of movement, any
sign that Pops might be in my mother’s room or she might be in Pops’. I was sure he wondered what it was like to sleep with Penny Joyce and, in spite of himself, envied Pops. He probably found it as hard to believe as any of the boys that Pops had landed her or that Pops could do justice to a body such as hers.

I fell asleep at some point and woke about three-thirty to the sound of footsteps and muted whispers in the hall. I recognized the footsteps as my mother’s. She was heading back to her bedroom. I faintly heard the back screen door being eased open then shut with a click. Medina had been in my mother’s room. It was the first time I had ever heard her re-arrival or departure. Now that she was gone, my mother was free to pad less quietly back to bed in her slippers. It seemed strange that she had invited Medina over on a night when she must have known I would sleep lightly, if at all, unless she wanted company on a night when she knew
she
would sleep lightly, if at all. I thought of getting up and going to her room and asking her if she would come to mine and lie in the lower bunk for a while, perhaps until one of us fell asleep or even until morning. But she hadn’t slept at all yet. I felt jealous of Medina. I had no idea what it felt like to a woman when she came, and I wondered if it was possible for any boy or man to feel that way. I looked at the faded square of wall above my bed, and at the pictures of Saint Drogo that flanked Sister Mary Aggie’s prayer for unattractive people.

I could rationalize my lust for my mother this way: Throughout adolescence and young manhood and beyond, every heterosexual male not only harbours the desire, at some point in his life, to sleep with a truly beautiful, sensual, fuck-loving woman, but
believes
that he will, that it is not yet, not ever, too late, no matter how old he is. It is, of course, a delusion in most cases, but a sustaining one. To abandon all hope, however delusional, is impossible. It seemed to me, at fourteen, that the only truly beautiful woman I would ever have the faintest hope of sleeping with was
my mother. It was as simple as that. I was not goaded by any sort of neurosis or incest fetish to pursue her. She wasn’t just my best bet, she was my
only
bet.

But I know that it was not for these reasons that I pursued my mother. I pursued her because I was in love with her, body and soul.

I
FELL
asleep and was again wakened by a noise. The door of my room opened. My mother came in, wearing her bathrobe.

“Shhhh—” she said. “Not a word, not a peep.”

She went to the window of my room and opened the curtains, backed away from the window, still staring at it, lit by what might have been a street light or the first full moon in March. She slowly, almost teasingly, undid the belt of her black robe and let the robe hang open, let it part, the two halves of the front flanked by the loose ends of the belt. She wore nothing beneath it. I saw, in the silver light, a wider, lower cleavage than I ever had before, and, lower still, the full length of her legs, the insides of her thighs that I knew would be smoother than mine or any boy’s or girl’s. I saw finally her feet, slightly akimbo, as if she were posing for some lover photographer whose camera lens was pressed against the window from outside. In a movement that looked long practised, as if she had performed it many times, she drew back her
shoulders, causing the robe to shed like skin, slide slowly from her, pause around her upper arms, then fall to the floor around her feet. She looked like a statue whose loving sculptor was unveiling her at last. The Great Unveiling of Penelope. I saw her breasts, her nipples in what might have been a state of full arousal, her breasts at such angles to each other that a series of faint knobs—her sternum—showed in between. Below that, I saw more clearly what I had only seen in shade so far, the small swell of her lower belly, rapidly rising and falling as, I fancied, it must have done the night I found her with Medina, her wide back bared to me. I heard her breathe, saw her breasts and shoulders rise. Just below her left breast, her skin pulsed at a rate that seemed to match the racing of my heart. I saw the out-jutting of her hips, the V of her long legs that ended at the hollow that was darker than her robe. She stood thus for perhaps ten seconds, staring out the window as if mesmerized by some sight that had moved her to show herself at last to her one, her only child, the strangeling whom she must have known wanted even more, who wanted, wanted, wanted everything because he might otherwise have to reconcile himself to nothing, wanted her to hoist herself, climb into my bed and give me what she gave Jim Joyce the night I was conceived, what she gave to Pops for my sake, and something like what she gave, and was given by, Medina. I hoped I would not have to make do with what she had just now bestowed upon me, a gift offered at a cost I might forever be too young to understand. As though departing from a stage as a scene was ending and the curtains and the lights were going down, she swiftly crouched and grabbed her robe and left the room and gently shut the door, leaving the curtains open and my room lit pale and silver by what might still have been a street light or the first full moon in March.

I
WOKE
a third time to the smell of toast. My mother, Medina and Pops were in the kitchen. My mother and Medina were using an empty boiled-egg shell as an ashtray. I looked at my mother, who didn’t look like a woman who had performed a striptease for her son the night before; there was no hint of self-consciousness or embarrassment in her eyes. I wondered if this meant she assumed I understood that the Great Unveiling would neither be repeated nor be outdone, that she had done all she was willing to do for me.

“So it looks like this
is
the big day, Perse,” my mother said. “McHugh phoned Pops just a few minutes ago.”

Pops, in his lab coat, slumped in his chair, looked as though he wished his day hadn’t started with a phone call from McHugh.

“None of the other children know,” my mother said, “so don’t say a word about it to them.”

“They’ll be surprised,” I said gloomily.

“Good. Maybe your apology will be half over before they even know what’s up.”

“No, it won’t.”

Pops looked up. “Ready to face the firing squad, Percy?”

“Could you be a little more ominous, Pops?” my mother said. “We don’t want to send Percy off to school feeling too carefree, now, do we? Perhaps the offer of a blindfold and a final cigarette would put him more at ease.”

“Well,
I’m
here for moral support,” Medina said.

“Who can feel apprehensive now that Medina’s here?” Pops said.

“Knock it off, you two. Perse, you don’t have to do anything today but sit there. You don’t even have to listen. Cover your ears. You already know what you said.”

“Except for McHugh’s introduction,” Pops said.

“You’re not gifted when it comes to reassurance, are you, Pops?”

“I’m a realist.”

“Well, Percy isn’t. He’s one of those rare early-teens optimists. Unlike you, he doesn’t believe that the worst will be over when he’s dead.”

I left them there and walked up icy Bonaventure, past Brother Rice and Holy Heart to St. Bon’s. The day dragged as I knew it would.

At 2:45, the PA box in my homeroom let loose a squawk of static that set the whole class, even me, to laughing.

“Hush up,” Brother Hogan commanded. Next there sounded the only voice other than that of the principal of St. Bon’s that I had ever heard coming from the PA system.

“Attention faculty, students and staff. This is Director McHugh. Please pardon this interruption of the last class of the day.”

I scrutinized Brother Hogan, by whose blank expression I could tell that all the teachers of the Mount had known of this “interruption” in advance.

“You’re about to hear a recorded announcement from one of your fellow students. It was recorded, and copies were made of the recording, so that all the faculty, students and staff of the Seven Schools could hear it at once and so that the burden on Percy Joyce could therefore be minimized.

“The announcement as such speaks for itself, but I would like to say a few words before I hand things over to Percy Joyce.”

I stared at my desk and felt myself blushing all over, my face and body, I fancied, all the same colour for the first time in my life. The boy behind me nudged my arm and a murmur of surprise started up among the boys, only to be quelled by Brother Hogan, who whacked the blackboard with a yardstick so hard that a cloud of chalk dust formed, rose and fell.

“As most of you know, Percy is an academically outstanding student, an obedient student, respectful of his peers and his teachers. You may also know that he began and continues to live his life in somewhat unusual circumstances. To speak publicly of all of these would be neither appropriate nor necessary.

“You all know Percy, in the sense that he is easily recognizable. But no one is disfigured in the eyes of their Creator, nor should they be in their own eyes or in the eyes of others. God has given us the free will to choose how we deal with things that cannot be controlled or changed. One such thing is Percy’s supposed disfigurement, which, for the most part, he has borne with grace and forbearance, in such a manner that it has made him a stronger, more appealing, more exemplary person than he might otherwise have been.

“There are times in life, however, when all of us stray from what we know is the one true path of righteousness that, because of the mercy and sacrifice of God, will lead us to salvation.

“Most of you, perhaps all of you, know just how far Percy has strayed from that path in recent days. There is no better person to speak of this matter than Percy himself. Both he and his mother have repeatedly told me that he wants nothing more than to make
amends. I ask that you listen to his remarks with open minds and reward him as God Himself rewards all true confessors—with forgiveness and the everlasting gift of hope.”

For a while after McHugh stopped speaking, nothing but low-level static came from the PA box. I could feel the other boys staring at me but didn’t dare look up.

“All eyes on the blackboard,” Brother Hogan said. “You don’t need to look at Percy while you listen to his voice.”

Finally, “I” began to speak. That is, the words “Hello, everyone, this is Percy Joyce” boomed from the PA box at a much higher volume than McHugh’s voice had. It sounded as if it were coming from one giant loudspeaker located somewhere outdoors on the Mount so that even pedestrians, motorists and people in their houses could hear me. “I am a grade nine student at St. Bonaventure College.…” Even had my voice not been so surreally amplified, the version of my apology that was being broadcast sounded nothing like any of the versions we had recorded at home the night before. The person speaking sounded so unlike me that several boys turned round and looked in awe at me, as if they believed they were just now hearing my real voice, the real, commanding, confident, forthright Percy Joyce who spoke as grown men did in public service announcements. I wondered if my voice was thus magnified and flaw-free on all the PA boxes in the school, in all the classrooms at St. Bon’s, in all the classrooms in all the Seven Schools of the Mount.