The Son of a Certain Woman (52 page)

“I don’t know. I was thinking about girls, but now I’m not and it’s still— I think I might—”

“Oh sweet, sweet Jesus,” my mother said.

The door opened and Father Hamlyn burst in. “What are you waiting for?” he said. “Didn’t you read the programme? You were supposed to come out when the choir started the second hymn.”

“Sorry,” my mother said. She put her lips to my ear. “Keep the programme in front of your pants. Once you get out there, you’ll be too distracted—”

“
Please
,” Father Hamlyn cried. “You’re keeping the Archbishop waiting. Come on, come on. You, Percy, you go first.”

Holding the one-page programme at crotch level, all but pressing it against me, I left the room and turned right, toward the baptistery, which was just inside the two large doors of the vestibule. I looked down the middle aisle at the sanctuary on the high altar that enclosed the tabernacle. I started down the middle aisle, but two hands that I somehow knew were McHugh’s all but closed around my neck and turned me about. I couldn’t hear a sound above the organ and the choir.

At one of our catechism sessions, McHugh had had me memorize the prayer that was said by the Archbishop on the occasion of the elevation of the cathedral: “May the demons flee and the angels of peace enter as we, Thy humble servants, go inside. Behold the Sign of the Cross, let all the evil spirits flee. Give us salvation from our enemies and from the hand of those who hate us.” It seemed that those prayers had been composed and spoken specifically to ward off the Joyces, me foremost among them. The prayer had failed, for here we were, not just entering the Basilica but being escorted into it by a priest acting on the orders of the very archbishop who had spoken the exorcizing prayer. Me, the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, I thought. The Bastard, Mother-Banging Boy of the Basilica. The Rapist of the Baptist. The Ugly Mother-Lusting Lad of the Basilica.

Thus I set eyes at last on the inside of the Basilica. I had never walked beneath a ceiling even one-tenth as high and wide before. It seemed as if a many-floored structure had had its floors removed, had been hollowed out in the process of its transformation from a cathedral into this massive cavern. It seemed absurd that something so immense could be described as minor. Everything in it
seemed oversized—the statues in the recessed Roman arches that lined the walls between the windows, the finely detailed, etched-in-wood stations of the cross, the width of the centre aisle and even the side aisles, the length of the centre aisle that led up to an altar as expansive as the parking lot of Holy Heart. At the rear of the high altar, which was flanked by lance-like candleholders, was the eight-columned sanctuary McHugh had described to me that protectively housed a tabernacle the size of a small car, a gleaming silver globe atop two golden doors. Looming above the tabernacle, stretching more than halfway to the ceiling, was a tapestry of the risen Christ with an infant in his arms. Arching over all of it was a frescoed ceiling whose images I could not have made out unless I had stopped walking and craned my neck to look straight up.

Nothing in my line of vision bore the slightest blemish. Luridly coloured depictions of Christ’s gauntlet of agony on his way to Calvary were everywhere. Through panels of stained glass the height of hydro poles, sunlight shone in upon the congregation, each shaft of it teeming with motes of dust, while the walls between the windows shadowed the intervening pews, light and dark alternating from the base of the choir loft to the far-distant enclave of the altar.

I felt overpowered, my blasphemous irreverence shouted down by the earnest enormity of what lay in front of me, the evidence of money spent, of countless hours of mass labour, the imperial seriousness of whoever had designed the place, the force of the unyielding faith and conviction of its framers, its leaders and its congregants. Could so much have been done by so many in error, in vanity, pomposity, unfounded fear and worship of an entity that did not exist, that mere humans had come up with out of self-delusion or hypocrisy, come up with as a means of amassing wealth, acquiring and wielding power, quelling fear and justifying hatred, commanding adoration for which they pretended to be mere conduits for the omnipotent Creator of All Things, humbly
insignificant servants of God in comparison with whom the very universe was “minor”?

I looked up at my mother and squeezed her hand. She seemed to be as much in awe as I was, seemed not to notice my appeal for a reassuring glance, a wink, a smile, something, anything to show that, in spite of everything, our conspiracy was still intact. But the very sight of her inspired in me such a resurgence of desire that I was soon concerned again with the matter that, had I been free to, I could have taken care of swiftly with one hand. My hard-on wrapped in paper, I was suddenly facing a phalanx of bishops, all variously attired in layers of vestments. They simultaneously blessed me, making the sign of the cross with their outstretched right arms. I saw a portly, white-haired one wince when I looked him in the eye; for him, for all of them who lived outside the city, it was their first sight of me. Then it occurred to me that it might not be my face he was wincing at. I nodded to him and he tried to smile.

Percy Joyce. The clerics from around the bay had heard of me, had seen my picture in the
Monitor
in black-and-white, but were not, it was apparent by the way they looked at me, prepared for what they saw. So this was the Archbishop’s pet, his heart-rending afflicted favourite. For this boy the great occasion had been organized, the boy on whom, and on whose mother, so much misfortune had befallen. The hands on the base of my neck increased their grip, pushing me slowly forward as the bishops parted to let us through into the baptistery.

In spite of McHugh’s assertion that my baptism would be the least of the reasons for this gathering, the Archbishop seemed to have done his utmost to make it the “theme” of the Mass. Because there, beside an enormous porcelain bowl, was the Archbishop, Uncle Paddy himself, mitred and holding his bejewelled, ornate shepherd’s staff. Thin, bespectacled, hawk-faced, his nose as prominent as Pope Paul’s, he smiled, but not in the way his Christmas card greetings had led me to imagine he would when at last we met
again. He looked as though McHugh had apprised him of everything he knew or suspected about the Joyces. He came toward me and placed his free hand on my head.

“Little Percy,” he whispered. “You’re not so little anymore, are you?”

“No, Your Grace,” I managed to say. He smiled again and, as he turned away from me, I saw a fully lit TV camera in the open doorway of the church, aimed at me. Of the man who was aiming it, I saw only the hands. At an emphatic signal from Father Hamlyn, who raised his own hands in traffic-cop fashion, the camera was shut off. McHugh stood in front of me.

“Hand me that piece of paper,” he said. I let go of the programme with one hand and motioned for him to lower himself to my height, all the while biting my lip to keep from thinking of anything related to girls and to distract myself from the sensation of my underwear rubbing the head of my dick each time I even slightly moved. McHugh crouched down, put his hands on my shoulders and stared into my eyes with undisguised menace.

I cupped my hand and whispered in his ear. “I peed in my pants a little bit,” I said. McHugh abruptly stood, looked about and motioned to an altar boy who was holding an incense-steaming thurible.

“Give that to Dawe,” he said. The altar boy gave the thurible to the boy beside him and was soon standing by McHugh. “Take off that surplice,” he said. The boy removed his surplice and, holding it in his hands, stood there wearing nothing but his red soutane. “Go to the sacristy and get another surplice for yourself,” McHugh told him.

As the boy set off, McHugh, without a word of instruction to me, swiftly placed the surplice over my head and inserted my arms into it until the lacy garment came down past my waist. I still held the programme in one hand; I had had to take it away from my crotch when McHugh raised my arms, but, judging by the faces of everyone around me, no one noticed the bulge in my
slacks. I looked down and saw that, although my hard-on showed faintly through the surplice, it was mostly disguised and, in all likelihood, would be mistaken by others for a mere bunching of the cloth.

Five Christian Brothers, one on each arm and each leg and one with his hands supporting me from underneath, lifted me and dipped me backward over the bowl. I was splayed out supine, eyes focused on the frescoed ceiling of the Basilica, cradled by five Christian Brothers who, if not for the surplice, surely would have seen my bulging crotch. There were two hands on my lower right leg, the bare part where my slacks pulled up. I recognized the grip as McHugh’s. Throughout the baptism, those hands gave me what the boys at school called an “Indian burn”—one hand twisting the skin on my leg one way, the other twisting it the other way, as if McHugh were wringing blood from my leg like water from a towel. I clenched my teeth to keep from howling, but not even the pain made me feel any less as though I was on the verge of coming. Using a barely concave silver cup, the Archbishop three times scooped warm chrism oil—olive oil, balm and water—and poured it over my forehead. I felt the crawling flood of it as he said: “I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” The Brothers raised me to a standing position.

I looked up at the choir loft and saw a girl dressed in a light blue blouse and a brown tunic. She looked down at me and smiled as no girl had ever done before. I wondered why, wondered what she was thinking. Was I somehow out of bounds, now, rendered harmless by my baptism—or perhaps made more appealing? I smiled back and she looked away. I felt a faint heraldic spasm, followed by enough seepage to turn the fly of my underwear wet and slick. I clenched to pre-empt a further spasm and wondered if, in the confessional, when I had to speak, I’d be able to without spouting over.

The Archbishop gave me a small lump of what he said was salt, “To signify the wisdom imparted by Faith,” he said, and instructed
me to put it in my mouth and let it melt. I did as he said. He gave me a foot-long, lit candle and whispered, “Follow me.”

Behind His Grace, I proceeded up the middle aisle of the Basilica, throughout the whole of which our footsteps echoed. An entire row of girls from Holy Heart turned all at once to face me as if in response to some command. I remembered lurking outside Mercy, watching the girls come down the steps, their bare legs pink, goose-pimpled from the cold. Look at the Archbishop, I told myself, look at his vestments trailing on the floor behind him, look at his shoulders that, even layered in gold-woven cloth, seem so thin and bony.

Instead, the memory of how the chrism oil had felt came to mind, the slow, warm crawl of it across my forehead, as did the thought of how it might feel if I applied it elsewhere, or if my mother did, her hand slick with it. I recalled the night of the Great Unveiling, her tits upright and nipple-crowned. I felt another spasm, a near shudder that I fought back with a clench so tight I wondered if, inside, I might be bleeding. I focused again on the Archbishop, who, in this very church, eleven years ago, had preached a Sermon on the Mount for Percy Joyce. On the mount.

The smoke from the incense-piping thuribles made my eyes water; tears that may have been mistaken for sheer joy ran down my face. I went where I was told to go, did what I was told to do, was steered, guided, pushed every which way by hands that sometimes were McHugh’s and sometimes others. I attended to urgent instructions from a dozen unfamiliar voices. I heard my name spoken next to my ear, over and over, by men I was certain I had never met but who said “Percy” as if they had known me all my life. “Follow me, Percy. Don’t walk too fast, Percy. Be careful, Percy, you’re stepping on His Grace’s vestments.” Blood pounded in my pants as if my dick had traded places with my heart. “Light this candle from this candle. Don’t let the wax drip on the floor. Read these words out loud. Speak louder, Percy, but don’t shout.”

It occurred to me that my mother and Pops were surely being scrutinized themselves. The unlikely winner of the Penelope Joyce sweepstakes was Pops, never mind how much his ticket cost, the boys of the Mount appraising my mother out of wonder that she let Pops have his way with her, may have let him have it all and then some just last night.

His Grace and I each opened a door of one of the wall-side confessionals, His Grace handing his ceremonial staff to an assisting priest. I stepped into that little phone booth–like compartment for the first time in my life and, with beads of sweat dripping down my face, knelt and leaned my forehead against the screen and considered letting go, letting it happen in here where no one would notice the changes in my posture and expression, where no one would hear if I moaned louder than I ever had.

“Bless me, Your Grace, for I have sinned, this is my first confession.” Someone said it, it must have been me. It was not until I was in the musty darkness of the confessional, no longer conspicuously on display, that I felt truly afraid for my soul, in whose existence I did not believe. Just seconds after a soul-cleansing baptism, I was, in the words of the catechism, about to bring upon myself “the dreadful torments of body and mind” that, as a punishment for mortal sin, would eternally endure. “The body will be tortured in all its members and senses.” I was about to make a confession that was not humble, not entire, not sincere just after I had received the first and greatest of all the sacraments while in a state of faithlessness and tumescence, which was surely the most mortal of all mortal sins.

I recited, by way of “confessing,” my apology of months before verbatim to His Grace, who forgave me without hesitation and assigned me a lengthy penance that consisted of many prayers I had learned from the catechism. I rose to leave, but he wasn’t finished with me.

“You have had a difficult childhood, Percy,” Uncle Paddy said. I saw him in shadow, sitting side on to the screen, to which his ear
was almost pressed. “You have already endured more than most will endure in a lifetime. And, being but a child, you have yet to endure the greatest of the sufferings that will come your way. I believe that you have a vocation, Percy. Offer up your suffering to God. Devote your life to Him and become a priest of God. I say this as much for the sake of others as for you. You can do great good, Percy. You were made as you are for a purpose. Do you believe me?”