The Son of a Certain Woman

by Wayne Johnston

My mother said all I deserved was a good talking- to from no one else but her—a talking- to which, because of the apology, had been cancelled. She said that, as there was no knowing how long it would take to get the apology right, we should have dinner first.

  While we were eating my mother’s macaroni and cheese—usually one of my favourites, but I could barely force down a few bites—Medina said she had never witnessed a more “foolish” situation than the one we were in.

  “In what sense are you in it?” Pops said. “What about me? If Percy doesn’t do this, I either have to move out or lose my job.”

  “Why would moving out be such a big deal for a ladies’ man like you, Pops?” Medina replied, winking at me. My mother shot her a look.

  “Well, it’s just that I’m used to it here,” Pops said, his face and neck blotched red from embarrassment. “I’ve always found it difficult to adjust to new situations. And this location is very convenient, being so close to Brother Rice.”

  “Jesus, Pops,” my mother said. “We all know why you live here. Even Percy. Why are you still pretending?”

  “I really wouldn’t want to leave you and Percy in the lurch,” Pops said. “What other boarder would pay half as much as I do?”

  “Why do you pay soooo much?” Medina said, her grin lapsing quickly into a frown.

  “Has kindness become a crime?” Pops said.

  “Oh no,” Medina said, “not if you’re saving someone from the lurch. There’s no worse place to be left than in the lurch. You’re a saint for keeping them out of it out of the goodness of your heart. I’d rather be left in St. Anthony, where you were born, than in the lurch.”

  “Really,” Pops said. “How would you get there? It’s a long walk.”

  “It’s time for you to make your insincere apology, Perse,” my mother said. “You can read it with your fingers crossed behind your back. You can make faces at the tape recorder. Just say the words.”

  “We wouldn’t need Pops if you made more money,” I said. “You’re really smart and you’re a dropout. I’ll still be smart if I drop out.”

  “It’s not about how smart you are. It’s about a piece of paper that certifies how smart you are, even if you’re not. People are very impressed by documents that bear the official seal of someone or something. They will believe a lie if someone certifies it as the truth. In fact, the lie becomes the truth. The village idiot is certified as the village sage, and a sage is born. When so certified, right becomes wrong and good becomes evil. It’s too late for me to get a certifying piece of paper, but it’s not too late for you. All you have to do is read what’s on that piece of paper. We know that none of it is true. I bet a lot of other people do as well. I’ll help you with it. All you have to do is speak close to the machine, okay?”

  I nodded.

  “We’ll do the dishes later,” my mother told Medina. “I don’t know how long this will take and I don’t want to keep Percy up too late.”

  We sat at the Helm, me opposite my mother’s typewriter, my mother on my left, Pops on my right, Medina sitting beside my mother, arms folded, lips pressed tightly together as if she were staging some kind of silent protest. Pops put the printed apology on the table in front of me.

  “While Percy’s reading, no one else should make a sound,” he said. He told me not to touch the piece of paper.

  He pressed the record and play buttons on the tape recorder and nodded at me. My mother put her hand on my shoulder. I was startled when the reels began to move and the tape from one wound around the other with a faint whirring noise. Until then, I suppose, I believed that I wouldn’t have to go through with it, that McHugh would relent or my mother would think of an alternative that he would agree to.

  Everyone looked solemnly at the tape recorder when it started making noise. It was as though they had coaxed me into going through with some medical test and only now, as they were face to face with the device that would perform the test, did they realize what they had talked me into. And there, to complete the picture, was Pops, looking every bit the doctor in his lab coat, his stethoscope-like goggles poking from one pocket. I felt as though I would now be somehow attached to the machine, hooked up to it, and it would perform its task exactly as it had many times before, and that Pops, to whom it was all routine, would have no more regard for me than the tape recorder did. As if he was reading my mind, he said to my mother, “I’m going to record his voice, not extract his bone marrow.” But he might as well have said “vital signs” instead of “voice,” as if the machine’s purpose was to help them find out what was wrong with me, to coerce apologies from misbehaving children. My apology. I would soon be without my apology. I fancied it was something like the spleen. An apology that Pops would transport in the machine across the street to Brother Rice, where McHugh would regard it like a body part of mine that had been lopped off—a trophy he would keep forever on display in his office, a chastening reminder to all boys that their apologies could be removed.

  “Perse looks as white as a ghost,” Medina said.

  “Are you all right, sweetheart?” My mother put her hand on my forehead. “Damp. You’re sweating. You’re not feeling sick, are you, sweetheart?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Well, don’t throw up on McHugh’s machine,” Pops cautioned. But I couldn’t stop the train of thought that had started in my head. Apology. Biology. You must biologize. Boys dissecting formaldehyde-preserved apologies that boys before them had offered up to science.

  “Even your face looks pale,” my mother said. But I didn’t want to think of my face. I tried not to think of anything.

  “I may not be a nurse, but I know what someone who’s about to be sick looks like,” Medina said. “You should get him to the bathroom, Pen.”

  But I shook my head, convinced that, if I were to stand, I would get sick. I thought of Medina’s dislike of cars as I looked at the two spools of tape spinning slowly in opposite directions.

  “Can you turn the machine off, Pops?” I said. He jabbed at the stop button with such speed and force he must have thought that every fraction of a second counted. My mother went to the kitchen and brought back a glass of water, which I pretended to sip. I felt a little better now that I was no longer mesmerized by the spinning tapes that had reminded me of the close-up of relentless train wheels I had seen on TV the night before. When I nodded at him, Pops hit record and play.

  “To His Grace, the Archbishop of St. John’s,” I read, my voice so high-pitched from nervousness it came out as barely more than a squeak. Pops hit stop.

  “Don’t worry,” Pops said, “you can do it in bits and pieces. The head of the AV department will clean it up later with McHugh.”

  Pops hit record and play, I read the phrase again and Pops hit stop again.

  “He’s never going to sound like a grown man reading the nightly news,” my mother said.

  “I just want to make sure that his voice is as clear as it can be,” Pops said. “I want to make sure it’s intelligible. We wouldn’t want Percy to have to do it all over again tomorrow night.”

  “I bet Brother McHugh is finished recording his introduction,” I said, looking out through the window and up, across the street to the lights of Brother Rice high above us. I felt that I was reading to the Archbishop while standing right in front of him, reading the words he “wrote,” the ones McHugh rewrote for him, and which he would therefore want me to get just right. I tried not to think of the pictures of him in St. Bon’s in which, despite the shepherd’s staff he held and the pointy, funny-looking mitre on his head, he looked so severe.

  “Pretend that you’re just reading to the three of us,” my mother said.

  I next read the opening phrase almost buoyantly, as if I were introducing His Grace the Archbishop of St. John’s to an adoring crowd on the day of his triumphant installation. Pops hit stop again.

  “You’re not directing a movie here, Pops,” my mother said. “Percy, don’t worry about what it sounds li
ke or even what the words mean. Just read it like you were reading the back of a cereal box. Read it through no matter what you think your voice sounds like. If you’re not sure how to say a word, I’ll tell you, then you say it and keep going.”

  “Don’t go too fast,” Pops said.

  “And you keep your hands off the tape recorder,” my mother told him. “He’s had all the coaching from you he’s going to get. He’s not trying to boost the spirits of his people after some dreadful setback in the war. He’s just a boy who’s having words put in his mouth by a man he met once and hopefully will never meet again.”

  My mother hit record and play and I began to read in what seemed to be a monotone. I got to the phrase “I do hereby humbly apologize” and felt suddenly that I was guilty of far more than anyone, even Brother McHugh, suspected, far more than I was apologizing for, a life of transgression that forever set me apart from the rest of humankind. I burst into tears. My shirt and hair were soaked with sweat. My mother hugged me from behind, her arms around my chest, and kissed my cheek. I was too upset to derive any tittilation from the feel of her breasts crushed against my back. The transgressions that had set me apart and would set me apart forever seemed huge and far greater than what I was being asked to apologize for but didn’t feel the least bit apologetic about. So what that I had claimed to be the Son of God and a pen pal of the Pope. So what that I had brought to school a pornographic photograph acquired for me by my mother. I hadn’t changed the colour of the face of Baby Jesus in the missal in the chapel with a red Magic Marker as some boy, inspired by my claim to be Christ, was said to have done. It wouldn’t have bothered me if some other boy had claimed to be the nephew of the Holy Ghost or denied that God the Father had a beard, or claimed that his father worked with the lepers of Nigeria.

  “Hello, everyone, this is Percy Joyce … I am a grade nine student at St. Bonaventure College on Bonaventure Avenue in St. John’s. In the vicinity of Holy Heart High School I recently did and said some things that I should not have done and said. Many of you witnessed my inappropriate behaviour. Many of you heard about it from your fellow students … I claimed to be a worker of miracles, but I am just an ordinary boy with ordinary problems of my own. I pretended I could cure the sick. I made an even more grandiose claim that I think it would be best not to repeat even by way of apologizing for it … I made a mockery of the sacraments, which can be administered only by an ordained priest of God. I mocked our Holy Father. I made certain claims about my mother and father that were false … I assaulted Mrs. Madden. I made fun of humble Saint Joseph. Jesus, Mary and Joseph exemplify the proper relations that should exist between husband and wife, and parents and children. We should often ask them to sanctify our families by their example and intercession … I should not have pretended that I could confer upon myself the power to preserve others from harm by granting them my blessing. Although I bear the mark of my Creator, that mark has not endowed me with special powers or capacities … I mocked the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which is the central dogma of the Church. In the unity of the Godhead there are three persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. They are co-eternal and co-equal but truly distinct from one another. I confess to having done all these things … I am heartily sorry for having done them. I have made this apology of my own free will by way of asking forgiveness from anyone who, because of my behaviour, may have been troubled, offended or upset, and in the hope of returning the Seven Schools of the Mount to the state of studious quietude in which learning and the love of God may flourish. Again, I do hereby humbly apologize and solemnly vow never to repeat the transgressions to which I have confessed.”

  It seemed to me, as I made the recording, that there was no one else within miles. As if I had lugged the recorder to some remote, silent place on Signal Hill and shamefully apologized, unheard by anyone or anything but my machine, had gone to some long-ago-designated official place of apology where, in solitude, many others, some of them famous, had humbled themselves before technology and God.

  “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 quietl
y 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.

  THE GREAT UNVEILING

  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.