The Son of a Certain Woman

by Wayne Johnston

  “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.”

  “What stories?”

  “Just for a joke?” Sister C interrupted incredulously. I nodded. She turned and faced McHugh. “His backside would be the colour of his face if he were one of mine.” She said it matter-of-factly, as if for her to lose her temper was simply not possible.

  “But he is not one of yours,” my mother said. “Nor is he one of Brother McHugh’s. He is one of mine. He is my only one. My only child. By your own free choices and to the great detriment of the human gene pool, neither of you has a child.”

  “Such insolence.” Sister C coldly faced McHugh, her voice when she spoke still eerily serene. “Why are you permitting this? I can see now why this wicked boy acts up the way he does.”

  McHugh addressed my mother. “None of the students on the Mount will ever forget what he’s done. When he blessed the buses, they cheered him on as if he was an athlete. Sister Celestine tells me she has never seen students in such a frenzy. When they witness the flouting of the one thing that, as we tell them daily, will sustain them through their lives, the Truth as it was shown to us by the One True God, their impulse—their common but unnatural impulse—is to rebel, run wild. They saw that the least among them blasphemed but was not struck down, not punished in any way. The heavens did not open in protest. So? The contagion of Satan, whose greatest sin was Pride, spread through them like a plague. Satan knows he is foredoomed and will lose the war, yet he has his little victories. The frenzy of which Sister Celestine spoke is something I have seen before, children running en masse to their destruction like the Swine of Gadarene. It is something that must be put down or disorder will prevail.”

  “You have found your voice at last, Brother McHugh,” Sister Celestine said, eyes closed. “You have found your voice at last, praise be to Our Heavenly Father.” She looked at my mother and faintly smiled.

  “I believe none of this would have happened if Percy had had a proper religious upbringing and family guidance,” McHugh said. “If he had been baptized and raised as a Catholic. If he were taking the sacraments, going to confession and Communion, none of this would have happened.”

  “That’s right,” my mother said. “Baptism would have washed the stain right off his face.”

  Sister C turned her thick lenses on my mother. “That’s how the Devil talks, Penelope. In mockery of God Himself. Ironic riddles. Irony is the trademark of the Devil.” She slowly crossed herself.

  “Not to mention the foundation of most of the world’s great literature,” my mother said. “Hence the famous expression: Shakespeare’s hands are the Devil’s workshop.”

  McHugh smiled as though at a failed attempt at wit.

  “You don’t seem content, Brother McHugh,” my mother said. “Being a Christian Brother must be like being a male nurse. Answering to priests who are less than half your age—acne-ridden boys who can forgive your sins and give you whatever penance they wish. Most Catholic parents pray they’ll have a boy, but if they have one, they don’t go on to pray: ‘Dear Lord, please endow my son with wisdom and guide him through his studies so that he may honour You and us by growing up to be a Christian Brother. May he one day teach grade eleven, live all his life in a single room and be a good sport about it.’ No, it’s a priest they pray for. To parents who wanted a priest, a Christian Brother would be a kind of consolation prize. A consolation priest. Honourable mention in the clerical sweepstakes.

  “And what about you, Sister? The Brides of Christ are the charladies of the Church. Who are the celebrated women of the Church? A handful of horribly martyred saints, most of them virgins up to the day that they were raped. And the Blessed Virgin Mary.”

  “Mocking the Blessed Virgin,” Sister Celestine said as placidly as if she were identifying a species of bird. She pointed at me. “No wonder you look like something that slithered out of Hell itself. You need to have the demon beaten out of you. Yes. All the meetings in the world won’t make any difference to the likes of him and these two.”

  “Brother McHugh mentioned Pride,” my mother said. “Whenever I think of Pride, I think of the getup priests say Mass in, preening like gold-laméd peacocks.”

  “God’s generosity is infinite.” Sister Celestine bowed her coif. “But his patience is not.”

  “That makes him imperfect.”

  “No wonder that boy has the mark of the Beast,” Sister Celestine said, regarding me as if Satan himself could not disturb her equanimity.

  Medina suddenly stood up. “Leave my nephew alone,” she hissed, “or so help me God, I will break that beak you call a nose.” She shook her fist at the nun, and I saw her face was smeared with tears. “You used to strap me all the time. But do you remember the day you told me to stay behind in the classroom for doing something wrong? Because I do. I don’t even remember what it was, but you locked the door of the classroom and you beat me black and blue with a yardstick. I was eight years old. Eight. You hit me like you were chopping down a tree and you kept hitting me after I fell down. If I hadn’t covered my face with my arms, you would have knocked my teeth down my throat. I don’t know how you didn’t break my arms. And all the while you screamed like I was a fire you were trying to put out.” My mother put her hand on Medina’s arm, but Medina shook it off. “A grown woman of God does that to a helpless little girl? That’s why I dropped out. I was afraid to go back. I told my mother I would run away if she sent me back to school. But I’m not a helpless little girl anymore, Sister C. You get out of here now or so help me God, I’ll jump across this desk and stuff your sacred rosary down your throat and use your teeth to make a new one. Go. Now. Get the fuck out, you sadistic cunt.”

  Sister C looked blank-faced at McHugh, who looked away. She slowly rose. Boots faintly scuffing, she eased past the desk. “Little Medina,” she said softly. “You’ll be nothing but the little girl you once were when you stand before the Lord on Judgment Day and wish you’d heeded me. But it will be too late.” She coasted past me out of McHugh’s office, her headdress held high. Except for the sound of her shoes, she seemed to glide out, easing the door closed behind her. We listened to the measured, unhurried receding of her footsteps.

  Medina sat down. “Bitch,” she whispered, her hands shaking even as they lay there in her lap.

  “Sister Celestine is … very devout,” McHugh said. “And now, no doubt—in spite of how she seems—very upset. She is not accustomed to the sort of words you used.”

  “Quite right,” my mother said. “A lifetime of celibacy has such a mellowing effect on people. Even if she’d been dressed like me, no one who witnessed that display of inner peace would doubt she was anything but a nun. And certainly Percy looks unfazed, as I would expect any wicked beast with an indwelling demon to be.”

  “Thank Christ she’s gone,” Medina said, exhaling as if she’d been waiting to breathe since she walked into the room and saw Sister C beside McHugh.

  “You are mocking a clerical order of the Church and you are mocking me, a servant of God, a teacher and a servant of the poor,” McHugh said, but he didn’t sound upset and he wasn’t looking at Medina but at my mother. “You’re trying to provoke me, Miss Joyce. It won’t work. Driving Sister Celestine away is one thing, but driving me away is something else. Percy’s aunt would be well advised not to misjudge me.” He paused and smiled gently at us all. “Let’s get back to the matter at hand. His Grace requires some sort of gesture of contrition from Percy. He says that such a gesture is absolutely necessary if you wish to maintain your present … arrangement.”

  “If Pops goes on boarding with us, Pops loses his job. Or Pops moves out and keeps his job. Either way, I lose the room and board he pays me for, is that it?”

&nbs
p; “I don’t believe that’s all he pays you for, unless he’s been misleading me. I’d tell you to find another tenant, but I’m aware of just how much you … rely on my vice-principal. And how much he relies on you. His Grace is aware of these things as well.”

  I glanced at Pops, who was twisting the strap of his safety goggles round his finger, his face as pale as I had ever seen it. I looked at my mother, who was trying in vain to seem unperturbed.

  “Do you”—she managed—“have an actual recommendation of some sort to make?”

  “I do,” McHugh said. “I would like Percy to apologize.”

  My mother shrugged and looked at me. “Say you’re sorry,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I realized I was fighting back the urge to cry.

  McHugh laughed. He said I couldn’t discharge my debt by apologizing only to him. I must apologize to everyone. Every student in every school. Every nun and priest, every Brother and teacher and staff member in each of the Seven Schools. I must apologize in person to His Grace.

  “And how is he supposed to do all that?” my mother said.

  “Not in print,” McHugh said. “A printed apology that appeared in, say, the Monitor would end up blowing around the neighbourhood, plastered to telephone poles, the door of your house, Miss Joyce, even those of your neighbours. Percy, because of his delicate nature, his usual passivity, would probably come home with copies of such an apology taped to the back of his blazer or stuck in his hair.”

  “What, then?” my mother said.

  “Via the public address systems, Percy would read an apology written by me, with counsel from His Grace, to the students, clerics, teachers and staff of every school.”

  “No,” my mother said. “I’ll do it. Put the words in my mouth, not his. Everyone thinks I’m more to blame than him anyway. Perhaps I am. I’ll read the apology. I’ll testify before the Committee on Un-Basilican Activities. I’ll name names.”

  McHugh smiled and shook his head. “Percy must apologize. His Grace was very insistent about that. I need your decision as soon as possible. We can’t have this situation getting worse.”

  “Or blowing over and being forgotten.”

  “An apology is not nearly as severe a punishment as any other student would receive. This is how we’ll proceed. We’ll record Percy reading the apology and play it over the public address system in the schools. He could read it into a tape recorder, right here in this office, in front of no one but his mother and me.”

  “Can you not see the absurdity of this? You want to treat my son like some sort of prisoner of war who, unless he wants to be shot, has to say over the radio that the cause he was fighting for is evil and therefore doomed to fail.”

  “It’s your exaggerations that are absurd. Students at Brother Rice and other schools on the Mount have apologized to the entire student body in their own words in person during assembly in the gym. The point of having someone apologize in front of his peers is to teach them the value of contrition and humility. What I’m proposing would be much easier for Percy.”

  “Percy doesn’t even belong to the Church he supposedly sinned against.”

  “He enjoys, and therefore has abused, the protection of the Church.”

  My mother sighed. “What do you think, Percy? You read into a tape recorder and get it over with?”

  I shook my head.

  “That wouldn’t quite be getting it over with,” McHugh said. “Percy would have to sit among his classmates as the tape was played. Just once. Just his own classmates. Not all of St. Bon’s School or all of the other schools.”

  “You’re negotiating,” my mother said. “You’re negotiating the terms of my son’s surrender.”

  “There is another option. Percy need not apologize. You and he could agree that he be baptized and make his first confession and take his First Communion. That would more than make up for what he’s done. When it comes to religion, conversion is the most profound and sincere form of apology.”

  “He’s not going to become a Catholic just to satisfy your notion of revenge, are you, Percy?”

  I shook my head again.

  “We’ll think about the apology,” my mother said.

  “Get back to me very soon, Miss Joyce,” McHugh said.

  Pops remained behind with McHugh as the three of us left his office and the school and crossed Bonaventure to 44.

  “Pops,” my mother said when he got home—he had just opened the door and was still standing in the doorway of the porch—“why did you tell McHugh about our arrangement?”

  We were sitting around the kitchen table. From across the room, Pops looked sheepishly at her, at me and then at Medina.

  “They know, Pops,” my mother said, rolling her eyes. “They’ve known for some time.”

  “Why did you tell them?” Pops said, gesturing at Medina and me.

  “I didn’t. They figured it out for themselves. Just like everyone else on the Mount seems to have done.”

  “Well, so did McHugh,” Pops said. “He guessed it. Or he heard the rumours in the neighbourhood. Everyone guesses, assumes. Or something, I don’t know. He caught me by surprise.”

  “Did he really?” my mother asked. “Are you sure that, deep down, you weren’t just dying to tell him, to brag to him that you were banging Penny Joyce no matter what the consequences of such a boast might be?”

  Pops shook his head. “No, no, it was nothing like that.”

  My mother tongued her front teeth, her lips pursed. “You might have told us Sister C would be there.”

  “I didn’t know about Sister C. Look, Paynelope, what am I supposed to do? On the one hand he’s my boss. On the other—”

  “There is no other hand, Pops. Not another word.”

  Pops crossed the floor to his room and slammed the door.

  I begged my mother again and again to go back and ask McHugh to let me “write” a letter of apology for the Monitor rather than read one into a microphone, even once.

  “I’m with Percy,” Medina declared. “Even if I could read, I’d be so nervous I’d choke up or something.”

  I was suddenly terrified of the idea of “choking up,” even of crying while hundreds of students listened to me sob and struggle to find my voice. And what if I couldn’t make it through the apology? I suspected that McHugh would make me try another day, and another, over and over until I managed it. I pictured students in classrooms all over the Mount listening to my disembodied voice the way they did to the principal’s, my voice louder than ever before, its every tremor magnified. I pictured the kids cracking up at the sound of Little Percy Joyce’s voice making a public announcement, Percy Joyce’s eerily magnified voice emanating from the metal box above the classroom door. And who knew what McHugh would write for me—what an exercise in self-humiliation the apology itself might be? Who knew what he would make me admit to? Perhaps things that I had neither said nor done. I thought that an apology in the Monitor was far preferable, especially given that almost no one read the Monitor anyway.

  But my mother said McHugh was right, that every student in the neighbourhood would be going round with a copy of my apology in their pocket, that copies of it would be blowing around the neighbourhood for months, years, there, always there, on the ground, everywhere I looked. She sent Pops back to McHugh, telling him to return with a copy of the apology. Pops came back with a single sheet of paper. It bore the title, centred over the text, “The Apology of Percy Joyce.” My mother said it seemed that McHugh and His Grace meant it to be as famous and influential a recantation as Galileo’s. She read it, shook her head, rolled her eyes and sighed, “I suppose it could be worse.”

  So as not to disrupt classes on the Mount, my apology would be played over the PA systems of the seven Mount schools more or less simultaneously just before school let out, after which Brother Hogan would escort me from my homeroom down the hill to 44.

  The next afternoon, Pops returned from Brother Rice with a large reel-to-reel tap
e recorder in the use of which, he said, the head of the audiovisual department at Brother Rice had instructed him at length. My mother briefly glanced at it, then went on typing. Medina came over just after five and shook her head when she saw the machine resting on the table at the opposite end of the Helm from my mother and her typewriter.

  We all stared at it as if we couldn’t account for its presence in the house.

  “Brother McHugh says that he will read a recorded introduction to Percy’s apology,” Pops said. “He’s recording it tonight at the school.”

  I thought of Brother McHugh and I simultaneously engaged in the same strange task, he on one side of Bonaventure, me on the other.

  “I suppose it’s not much comfort to you,” my mother said to me, “that, during the Inquisition, people who pissed off the Church would have much preferred your punishment to the one they got.”

  “Very funny. You wouldn’t be making jokes if you had to apologize into a tape recorder.”

  “What is it with McHugh and punishment anyway?” my mother asked. “He must have been a delightful, pet-torturing tot. I can just see him practising on walnuts with a thumbscrew. Experimenting on himself with the rack he got for Christmas.”

  “Paynelope.”