The Son of a Certain Woman

by Wayne Johnston

  THE APOLOGY OF PERCY JOYCE

  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.

  Through the half-open windows at the back of the classroom came what seemed to be a faint echo of my apology until I realized that I was hearing it from the also-open windows of St. Pat’s across the street, delayed by about a second.

  “I recently said and did some things that I should not have said and done,” I bellowed as if daring someone to contradict me. “I claimed to be a worker of miracles,” blared the boy with the authority and conviction of someone whose claim to be a miracle worker was beyond dispute and would not be revoked. A couple of boys put their hands over their ears until Brother Hogan mimed that they should remove them.

  “I was born on an important day in the calendar of the Church, a day especially important to the faithful of St. John’s, whose city is named after the saint who prophesied the birth of Christ, who prepared the way for Him, baptizing believers in His Name.

  “My birthday falls on the day this city was discovered almost five hundred years ago by a namesake of the Baptist, John Cabot, a man named to invoke his blessing on the life of exploration he would lead. I should not have blasphemed against my patron, the greatest of all the saints.”

  Even my inner voice was drowned out by my recorded one, every trace of my self-consciousness was shouted down. I went on staring at my desk but did so wide-eyed, for I was half convinced that, at long last, it was the real me I was hearing. “I made certain claims about my mother and father that were false … I made fun of humble Saint Joseph—”

  It sounded more as if I had bullied the helpless henpecked husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who, together with the Son of God who had been fathered by the Holy Ghost, was forever scorning history’s most famous cuckold.

  “I mocked the doctrine of the Holy Trinity—” I said as if I understood that doctrine as well as any Church theologian and had therefore mocked it more cleverly than anyone ever had before. It went on like that to my final line. “I confess to ha
ving done all these things. I am heartily sorry for having done them,” I said as heartily as the whole apology had been delivered. “I do hereby humbly apologize and solemnly vow never to repeat the transgressions to which I have confessed.”

  I knew the apology was over, but for a few moments no one else did, not even, it seemed, Brother Hogan, who for some reason stared expectantly at me. I wondered if I should have concluded by saying, “Thank you for listening,” by signing off in some manner not indicated by Brother McHugh. Then came a smattering of applause that Brother Hogan put a stop to by once more whacking the blackboard with his yardstick. The PA box squawked again.

  “Thank you, Percy Joyce,” Brother McHugh’s recorded voice said at normal volume. I exhaled for what seemed like the first time in minutes. The apology was over. My mother had been right. It seemed—quite miraculously—all behind me now. McHugh, having overseen the editing of the tape itself, was surely satisfied. I looked forward to my walk home down Bonaventure, not even minding that Brother Hogan would escort me, for I would surely not need his protection. I was once again the Boy of the Hour. A sense of triumph replaced the one of dread I had felt since I first set eyes on the tape recorder. I was astonished, exultant, to find myself unscathed by Uncle Paddy and Brother Gus McHugh.

  The PA box squawked again. “On a final note,” Brother McHugh’s voice said. I imagined him in his office at Brother Rice, listening to himself as he was about to add his final note. I thought of Sully in some classroom at Brother Rice with my dollar in his pocket. I thought of Pops in the chem lab, no doubt feeling as relieved as I did, soon to return to 44, as I was.

  “I would like to inform you,” Brother McHugh said, “of a decision that Percy and his mother made between them just today. I’m sure many of you know that Percy has not yet been baptized in the Catholic faith or any other, although his mother and father were both baptized in the Catholic faith just after they were born. Percy and his mother have decided that Percy will be baptized a Catholic at some point in the near future and as soon as possible thereafter take the sacraments of Confession and Communion. They wish to announce also that Percy will take Jerome as his baptismal name, which is the Christian name of Brother Rice vice-principal MacDougal. I hope that all of you who are listening will congratulate Percy and welcome him at last into the One True Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.”

  The sound of several pairs of hands clapping came from the PA box. “God bless you, Percy Joyce,” McHugh said. Brother Hogan, smiling warmly at me, put down his yardstick and began to applaud, inciting the boys of my homeroom to do the same.

  The classrooms on either side of ours erupted in applause, followed by those on the other side of the hall. Soon the whole school was ablaze with noise, clapping, howling, thumping, stamping, cheering. I heard the same tumult from St. Pat’s across the street, from Holy Heart and Brother Rice down the hill, from Our Lady of Mercy Convent School, the Presentation Convent School on Barnes Road, the squeals of the little orphan girls of Belvedere.

  The boys of St. Bon’s stood up, desks scraping on the floor, and soon I was certain that all the students of the Mount, except for me, were on their feet. I was certain that my mother could at least hear Brother Rice celebrating. I wondered what she would think was going on. Such a riotous celebration for the apology I had laboured to record? And what would she do when she heard what McHugh had done? Still, though I foresaw something of the tumult that was imminent, I couldn’t help smiling, grinning from ear to ear.

  Brother Hogan yelled that class was dismissed. I stood, but before I could move toward him or he toward me, two of the bigger boys in class hoisted me on their shoulders and carried me from the classroom into the hallway, downstairs to the lobby and outside to the parking lot in front of the playing field. They turned right and carried me to Bonaventure as throngs of cheering and laughing boys followed. But I saw, my heart sinking, that it was a mock celebration, that the world had tilted in an instant in favour of my supposed champions, His Grace and the Director, that all things were to be enfolded in their outstretched arms, that my mother and I, and Pops, and Medina, had been duped by powers whose pawns we seemed fated forever to be. Different, variously coloured rivers of students poured from the snow-covered side streets onto Bonaventure, the blue of St. Bon’s, the green of St. Pat’s, the dark blue tunics and light blue blouses of Holy Heart, the maroon of Brother Rice. I should have felt, as I had when I pretended to be God Himself, like some champion athlete who had just returned home from victory on the Mainland. But the sounds of it all around me were changing subtly, more laughing than cheering, and I realized that the point of this celebration had become as much to mock the importance of my conversion as to acknowledge it. There I was, displayed aloft at the confluence of the rivers, surrounded by a mob of boys and girls performing a kind of mass parody of adulation, some chanting my name but more simply skylarking, wrestling, throwing hats and even textbooks into the air, the melee blocking Bonaventure, on which some cars were hemmed in by students who looked bent on overturning the vehicles or dragging their occupants out onto the street.

  The neighbourhood residents who were at home at that time of day may have spotted me and attributed the uproar and traffic stoppage once again to that disfigured, flounder-faced, troublemaking Joyce boy. The cars blew their horns in protest, but the boys and girls would not give way until, at the Curve of Bonaventure, they began to peel off home onto the side streets on the right or race back up the hill along the sidewalk. The two boys on whose shoulders I had ridden down Bonaventure set me on the sidewalk outside 44. One kicked me in the backside and said, “There you go, Percy, now you’re a Catholic.” Then the two of them ran back up the hill.

  Many other boys and girls still milled about and, now that the mob had dispersed, yelled less complimentary things at me.

  “Nice apology, Percy. Getting baptized. Easier than getting strapped, I suppose. I wouldn’t mind apologizing instead of getting strapped.”

  “Don’t worry, Percy, we still believe you’re one of the Holy Triplets. Three in one. Like a Swiss Army knife.”

  “Percy Jerome Joyce. Got a nice ring to it!”

  “Maybe a ring came with it—did Pops pop the question to Penny, Percy? Why else would you take his name? I bet you and your mother will be taking his last name too. Did Penny pop her buttons? Jesus, I’d love to see that.”

  “Oh Brother McHugh, I’m sorry I lied, but I’d rather not be crucified.”

  Still, I couldn’t resist the urge to wave just before I went inside, a final acknowledgement it might have been of the worshipful adulation of my peers I had so longed for. When I opened the door, my mother came running to meet me and took me in her arms.

  “Well, if it isn’t Jerome the Baptist, home at last,” my mother said when Pops arrived just after eight. Medina had come over as soon as she could get away from work, and they’d been there for hours, sipping beer at the kitchen table.

  “I’m sorry, Paynelope,” Pops said, slurring his words, his hands hooked thumbs out in the pockets of his lab coat. “I was afraid to come home, so I went to the East End Club for a beer. No overcoat. Dressed like this. Got a lot of compliments.”

  “Welcome home, Jerome,” Medina said.

  “Saint Jerome is one of the Doctors of the Church,” Pops said. “There are thirty Doctors of the Church and none of them are women. Too bad.”

  “There are no Nurses of the Church either,” my mother said, “but if you don’t soon shut up, you may need a doctor and a nurse.”

  He laughed sheepishly, went to the fridge and took out a beer, forgot to open it, then slumped noisily into his armchair in the sunroom.

  “Well, that’s it,” my mother said. “That’s the last straw. I can’t go around telling the truth, telling people that what McHugh said isn’t true. At best, people will think I’m even crazier than they thought. I can’t get away with calling McHugh a liar. What proof do I have? And with all of the Mount celebrating Percy’s convers
ion, what am I supposed to do? Uncle Paddy either connived with McHugh about this, or he’s as pleased as punch to hear I’ve come round at last to his way of thinking. Either way, there’s no turning back from this.”