“Granda wasn’t pigheaded.”
“Adults have different sides to them, Gabriel,” he said. “They can be bad to some people and nice to others, all at the same time.”
Granny tut-tutted and said, “He was your father, Brendan.”
“I had to stay to help the poor people,” Uncle Brendan said. “I couldn’t come home because they needed me more than Granda did. Your granda always wanted me to be a priest. He wanted that and he got his wish. He knew I’d have to stay and help people if I were needed in Kenya, even if he was dying.” Uncle Brendan looked out the side window for a moment. “You’ll be able to help them, as well, if you feel the need when you’re older.” He turned back to me. “Do you think you’d like to help the poor and needy?”
Lights from an oncoming car shone inside as I thought about the question. Making new hairstyles was what I really enjoyed. But if I became a priest, I could fly in airplanes to Africa and convert souls.
“If I can be a hairdresser and a priest,” I decided.
Uncle stared out at the road.
“You can’t be both,” said Granny. “People must choose in life.”
“Don’t you want to be a farmer, like me?” asked Uncle John.
“Gabriel, you don’t have to choose between things like that,” said Uncle Brendan. “Besides, you’ve got plenty of time to decide. You mustn’t rush into things like the priesthood. It’s a very hard life and . . .”
He didn’t finish. He stared out the window, his lower lip quivering.
“And what, Brendan?” Granny prompted, watching the back of his head without blinking.
“I’ve forgotten what I wanted to say, so it can’t have been too important.” Uncle Brendan laughed, but the sound didn’t come from his belly like it normally did.
My grandmother lowered her head to look at her hands. Uncle Brendan watched her in the front mirror. She didn’t see him, but he was watching. The car was silent until Uncle John started whistling.
As soon as I stepped into the old woman’s bedroom, a terrible smell filled my nose. She was lying in bed, her skin the color of wet newspaper, staring up at the ceiling with watery eyes. A vase of bright pink roses stood just inside the door. It was nighttime and flowers were always taken out of the sick room before the person went to sleep. A bottle of Lucozade stood beside her dark, cut-glass rosary beads, light from the bedside lamp making them glitter like rat’s eyes. A missal with a curled-up cover was also on the bedside table. One curtain with big flowers and slim, curling leaves puffed out into the room due to the breeze sweeping in from the open window.
“She’s riddled with cancer, Father Brendan,” said Mrs. McCloskey, the woman’s daughter. “It won’t be long now. She’ll pass soon, please God. The doctor put her on morphine a few days ago. She’s stuffed to the gills, but it’s making the passage easier.”
The heavy stink I’d noticed was morphine, though it smelled more like rotten meat. The breeze couldn’t help in a room so stuffy with sickness. No one seemed to notice the stench. I couldn’t understand why the daughter was saying such terrible things in front of her mother, who was probably listening as she stared at the ceiling.
Uncle Brendan took a thin purple scarf like Father McAtamney’s from his pocket and hung it around his neck. He opened a tiny bottle of Holy Water and began praying as he sprinkled the woman.
“I won’t give your mother any Eucharist, as she can’t swallow,” he said, and he laid his hand gently on her shoulder. “Let yourself go,” he added. “Have a good cry.”
Mrs. McCloskey turned to me instead. “Son, would you take a sip of Lucozade?” She nodded at the bottle on the table. “The good Lord knows Mammy won’t see this bottle empty.”
I didn’t want to drink a dying woman’s juice. “That’s okay, Mrs. McCloskey. Don’t trouble yourself.”
“Such manners,” she said to Granny. “Isn’t he the fine wee gentleman?” She started toward the bedside table. “It’s no trouble, son.”
“No, thank you.”
“Don’t be rude and take a glass of juice when it’s offered,” said Granny.
I looked at the bottle. Visitors always brought it when they visited sick people, because it had glucose in it and was supposed to make people feel better. The bottle was wrapped in the crinkly gold-orange plastic paper and I loved to peer through when someone was sick at our home and had been given a bottle. Its color was brighter than any sunglasses and turned the world instantly happy, making the trees brassy-green and the sky brassy-blue, no matter what its actual color.
“I’m not thirsty, Granny.”
“Nonsense.”
“I don’t like Lucozade, anyway.”
“Since when?” she asked. “You, who’s always sneaking it when I’m sick. You don’t think I know that?”
Mrs. McCloskey laughed as she poured some into the only glass on the table and gave it to me. I didn’t want to catch this woman’s cancer. I thanked her and pretended to sip, watching the threads of tiny bubbles float to the top. I tilted the glass so they’d think I’d drank a lot.
“Don’t spill it, pet,” Mrs. McCloskey said.
As soon as they looked back at the old woman, I edged closer to the pink, velvety roses, pretended to smell them and chucked the juice into the vase.
Uncle Brendan caught me. He looked at the glass, at me, back at the glass, and then nodded toward my feet a couple of times. I glanced down and saw juice had spilled onto the lino. Quickly, I wiped it away in a great curving streak with my shoe.
“Goodness, you must have been thirsty,” Mrs. McCloskey said. “Have another. You’re a growing boy.”
“I’m full to bursting, thank you.”
“One’s enough for him,” said Uncle Brendan, and he came over and put a hand on my head.
We went into the parlor, where my grandmother and Mrs. McCloskey joined us a few minutes later. I was sure I smelled the morphine there, as well. Mrs. McCloskey’s next-door neighbor was helping to serve visitors with refreshments and the woman gave me a cup of milky tea and a slice of cherry and raisin fruitcake. I didn’t even nibble it.
Father McAtamney arrived and went in to see the old woman, staying only a minute before coming out to chat to Uncle Brendan.
“His headmistress tells me he’s a smart young fella, though not above the odd trick or two,” the priest said, turning the conversation to me after they’d finished discussing the old woman as if she were already dead.
Granny looked surprised.
“Yet another Harkin with brains, as well as a few tricks to boot,” Father McAtamney said, and winked.
“He says he might go to Africa and cut hair and help in the missions when he’s older, Father,” said Granny.
“Is it a priest like his uncle Brendan he wants to be?” Father McAtamney asked. “Sure, he’s young enough yet. It’ll be a while before you know if there’s a call for you.” He chuckled. “By then, you’ll have discovered the lasses and will want to be out gallivanting with them.”
“What’s the call?” I asked.
“God calls some boys to be priests when they’re older,” the priest said. “Just like your uncle got a call. Isn’t that right, Father Brendan?”
“I suppose.”
Father McAtamney paused with his teacup before his lips and looked at him for a second.
“How does the call come, Father McAtamney?” I asked.
“Into your head.”
In two months, I would be an altar boy, wearing a black soutane and white surplice with lace crosses on its sleeves that my great-great-grandmother had embroidered. Uncle Brendan had worn the same surplice as a boy.
“Will being an altar boy help me get it?”
“It will.” Father McAtamney tapped Uncle Brendan’s knee. “What do you say, Brendan?”
Uncle stood. “I say it’s time for us to leave.”
“Father McAtamney says I’ll get a call to be a priest but it won’t be for a while yet,” I said to my mother, as
I threw open the door and barged into our kitchen an hour later.
She was stacking a milk bottle to cool in the red bucket of cold water inside the larder. “I’m praying ever so hard you will get a call one day,” said Mammy.
“You know about the call?”
“Yes.”
My grandmother and uncles entered the kitchen.
“The only thing that might stop God calling me is if I discover girls.”
Mammy took the teapot and walked up to the stove, but Uncle Brendan told her not to bother because he was “tea’d out.”
“You won’t be interested in girls or let them stand between you and the call if it comes, will you?” my mother asked.
“I won’t.”
“Take time to choose what you want to do, Gabriel,” said Uncle Brendan. “Remember, only you must decide this. Being a priest is a lonely life, though it’s full of people.”
Mammy’s eyes narrowed at Uncle Brendan. A strange quiet began, exactly the same kind as had happened earlier in the car.
Seven
On the night of the station Mass, I insisted on wearing the surplice with the hand-stitched lace crosses. Uncle Brendan had asked me to be his altar boy. As he unpacked the bread and wine, he told me to light two candles already placed on the altar, which was actually our kitchen table. Mammy had taken it into the sitting room and draped in her best white Irish linen tablecloth.
“Put the bread, water, and wine on the side table and I’ll tell you when to bring it to me during Mass,” he said. He watched to make sure I didn’t spill it.
Martin was allowed to kneel beside me during the Mass. I warned him he wasn’t to touch the brass bell with the mahogany handle standing between us. Only I was allowed to ring the bell and only when Uncle Brendan nodded. Unfortunately, during Mass, I thought he was nodding when he wasn’t and I rang the bell so loudly and often that my mother took it away, muttering that no one could hear the priest during the consecration.
Afterward, Uncle Brendan walked around the house with a silver bowl and a rattle with tiny holes and blessed every room with Holy Water. The stuff kept splashing on my face every time he sprinkled, which meant I had to bless myself and say the same prayer over and over until he was finished. Following the blessing, all the women went to the kitchen to prepare the food while the men and Kate the nun sat in the living room.
Martin fingered the embroidery on my surplice. “Let’s put on a fashion show.”
“Good idea.”
While Caroline went outside to fetch James and Connor, Martin and I went into my parents’ room and searched in my mother’s wardrobe for the best things. By the time the others arrived, I’d put on a lilac dress with tiny sycamore leaves underneath my surplice. Martin chose a black petticoat and rolled stockings up his thighs. Connor and James refused to wear women’s clothes, not even when Caroline begged them to do it for a laugh. Instead, they raked through Daddy’s side of the wardrobe for his nicest shirts and ties. Caroline put on a skirt and blouse while I slipped into a pair of high heel shoes to finish my look.
“I’m going to do my face,” said Martin. He sat before the vanity and opened my mother’s makeup bag. “Are you as well, Gabriel?”
“Certainly not.”
“Suit yourself.” He patted on face powder and put on lipstick, looked in the mirror as he smacked his lips, and finally kissed a tissue, just like women do. “I still don’t feel quite dressed for our show.” His eyes darted around the room and then he went to the chest of drawers, searched about until he found the knickers drawer, and fished out a bra.
“Strap me into this, Gabriel.”
After I fastened the metal eyelets, he stuffed two pairs of my father’s socks into each cup. “Perfect,” he said. He fixed at the petticoat’s thin straps as he looked in the mirror. “I’ll take first place with this get-up.”
“Jesus, Martin, you are like a woman,” said Connor, and he wolf-whistled.
We took turns strutting up and down the hallway. As each person walked up and down, the others gave marks out of ten and wrote their scores on sheets of paper. My high heels clicked as I walked and Mammy’s handbag swung back and forth on my forearm like I’d seen her do at weddings, though the surplice’s sleeves kept getting in the way. My right foot slipped out of the shoe as I tried to do a perfect turn at the end of the hall.
“Falling out of the shoe doesn’t lower my score,” I said.
Martin walked down the hallway in bare feet, sweeping his fingers through his hair and pouting as he held his head at many odd angles. He looked so realistic because of the false tits. James and Connor agreed, but, when the marks were counted and he won, Caroline refused to accept the decision.
“I must win. I’m the real girl here.”
“I’m the only one with diddies,” Martin shouted. His face colored and he pointed at the bra angrily. “You didn’t even have the gumption to do that and you call yourself a woman. The judges’ decision is final. I won.”
Caroline’s mouth opened. She closed it quickly and pushed her ropes of hair behind both ears. “I see. . . . Very good, Martin. You win, hands down.” She took off the skirt and patted down her clothes. “Let’s have another competition. But first, I’ll go check if the sandwiches are ready.”
“I’m starving,” said Connor.
My sister left the room.
“That showed her,” Martin said.
“I think we’d better change quickly,” I said.
“Rubbish,” Martin said. “We’ll do another show and tell Caroline she’s excluded. She’ll just complain when I win again.” He looked me up and down and added, “You should take off that bloody surplice. It looks ridiculous over a dress. That’s why I marked you down, severely.”
“Why are you rude boys teasing the life out of poor Caroline? Can’t you play nicely together?” Aunt Peggy called. Her heels clicked faster than mine had done as she came down the tiled hall. When she came upon us, her mouth went goldfish-like. “Your mother’s frocks.” She turned to James. “What’s going on here?”
“We’re playing dressing up and Caroline’s angry because Martin made tits from socks to make a better woman and won.”
Caroline smirked from the doorway.
“James, what did you say?”
“Sorry, I meant to say diddies, Aunt Peggy.”
“You boys have minds dirtier than public lavatories.” She glared at Martin, whose fingers worked furiously behind his back. But he couldn’t do it himself and needed my help. Aunt Peggy grabbed his arm and ordered us to go to the sitting room. Martin struggled and dug his fingers into her beehive, loosening a long piece of hair at the top that she didn’t notice. It looked like a horse’s tail as she swung her head back and forth.
“Let me get out of this bra first, Aunt Peggy.”
“No.”
“You’ve no right to hold me so tightly.”
She yanked him powerful hard. We scampered down the hall like lambs. I could hear the low hum of conversation behind the closed sitting room door as we drew near.
“Caroline, open the door and go inside,” Aunt Peggy said.
As we spilled in, Kate the nun put her white hands to her face. Auntie Celia was the first to laugh, followed by the nun, then Uncle Brendan.
Aunt Peggy let go of Martin, crossed the room to the other door, and called into the kitchen, “Eileen, come in here and get an education about the need for balance.”
“What are you going on about now, Peggy?” Mammy shouted.
“Gabriel’s dressed in your second-best frock and Martin’s in one of your bras and wearing makeup.” Her loose hair drifted back and forth as her head moved. “Caroline, it seems Gabriel and his cousin want to be little girls.” Aunt Peggy snorted. “Shall we send Martin and Gabriel to school in pinafores and bobby socks?”
“Aunt Peggy, this is all a game,” I said. “I don’t like wearing women’s clothes. We’re doing a fashion show.”
“Why isn’t James in a froc
k?”
I didn’t have a good answer and looked from adult face to adult face until I came to my father’s. His lips were clamped and his eyes drilled into Martin. Mammy looked surprised when she came in, but only for an instant. Then she laughed.
“James also knows a very bad word, Eileen,” said Aunt Peggy. She shook her head again. “A very bad word.” Mammy’s eyes followed the swishing horsetail. “You’ll have to wash his mouth out with soap. Tell your mammy the bad word.”
“Fart.”
The adults laughed.
“I’m forever telling him not to use that word.” Mammy smiled. “James, you must use the word ‘wind’ instead.”
“No, no, no,” said Aunt Peggy. “That wasn’t the bad word.” As Aunt Peggy’s head shook, Kate the nun burst out laughing. “James, tell the truth and shame the devil in front of Sister Pious.”
I caught Caroline’s eye and bared my teeth.
“Tell your uncle Brendan the disgusting word and he’ll ask God to forgive you,” Aunt Peggy said.
“I said ‘tits.’” James bit his lip as he glanced over at me.
Daddy threw back his head, laughing from his belly.
“Where did you hear such a word?” my mother said. “I want the truth now, or your uncle Brendan won’t ask God to forgive you.” She looked at Kate the nun, then at Uncle Brendan. “He certainly hasn’t heard it around here. They’ve picked it up from that Noel and Jennifer living across the fields.” She turned back to James. “One last chance or you’ve got a date with a very big stick, my lad.”
James flinched. “Gabriel told a story with that word in it . . . but he used it only once.”
“What was the story about?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Gabriel, tell your story to Uncle Brendan and Sister Pious right now.”
“I can’t remember it, either, Mammy.”
“I don’t believe you. You’ve got the memory of the taxman.”
“I don’t remember. Honest to God, I don’t.”
“Where did you hear the word?”
A Son Called Gabriel Page 8