The Son of a Certain Woman

by Wayne Johnston

  I took the beaker and the spoon, dumped the contents of the beaker into the nearest lab sink, rinsed out the beaker and put it on a shelf with rows of others. I washed the spoon under the tap and put it in the nearest drawer. I stoppered the bottle. What to do with it I had no idea, until, looking around, I saw a small security safe high atop the cupboards to the left of Pops. Its door was open and inside it were dozens of other small glass bottles, green, brown, black. I found a chair and, standing on it, was just able to replace the bottle in the safe. I closed the door of the safe and, as I had seen someone do on TV, turned the numbered dial several times until it clicked. I replaced the chair, washed my hands, was about to take the pens and piece of paper from the desk when Pops grabbed one of my wrists. I gasped as if I’d fallen into ice-cold water. “I didn’t do it, Percy,” he said. “I thought about it, but I didn’t do it. Afraid to, I suppose.” He let go of my wrist.

  I was so relieved, I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him. He gently pushed me back, to give himself room to stand, I thought, but he stayed in the chair.

  “I put everything away,” I said.

  “Did you wash your hands?” he said. “There was enough in that glass to put me ten times under.”

  “I washed them,” I said. “I was careful.”

  “Good boy. Good Little Percy Joyce.”

  “Let’s go home, Pops,” I said. “McHugh might find us here.”

  “McHugh is asleep, if he ever sleeps. It’s three in the morning.”

  “It’s almost four,” I said. “Let’s go home before Mom notices we’re gone.”

  “I’m sorry I hit you, Percy. But everything is ruined. One way or the other, I have lost her. I almost wish the two of them could still go to jail for this. But they don’t put them in jail anymore. They pretend to think they’re only sick and put them in the Mental. Not even that, I’ll bet. But they’ll take you from your mother, and her days of working for Uncle Paddy or anyone else will be over. She’ll end up begging on the streets, her and the other one. Maybe, wherever you go, you’ll be better off without them. Small wonder your father went away. Where would the two of you be if not for me? I can’t believe it. She was almost married to a man once. She had a child by him. Isn’t that her true nature? That other one must have seduced her. But I can’t help thinking of what you said, that your mother must have felt like throwing up every night after she left my room. The very thought of me must have disgusted her. The other one is jealous of me, always has been, I see that. And now I am jealous of her. You know, Percy, I carried that ring box around with me, carried it in the pockets of my lab coat, turned it about in my fingers while I was teaching class. I have gone home when I knew there would be no one there but your mother, and three times, as I watched her at her typewriter, interrupted her and took out the ring. Once burned, twice shy, I thought, but she’ll come around. My Paynelope will come around. But the truth is that I have for fourteen years been little more than a piece of human camouflage, an alibi, a decoy for the two of them. As you have been in a way, Percy. I don’t know what I shall do about this. Something must be done, of course, this sort of thing going on right under my nose. I had hopes. But I’m just the punchline to a joke about the Joyce women. The worst imaginable kind of cuckold, the deluded fool who doted on a woman who was thought to be holding out hope that her husband would come back, doted on her, waiting for the day she removed the engagement ring, the signal that she’d be receptive if I proposed again.”

  “Everything will be the same if we don’t say a word,” I said. “Almost everything.”

  “Will it, Percy?” His eyes brimming over with tears, he made a washing motion of his face with his hands—something I had done as a child, fancying that, when I took my hands away, my face would be like that of other boys, clean, healed, wholly normal.

  “It will. The wedding will go ahead—”

  “But I’ll always know. Medina will always be there, always in the same bed as your mother. It will drive me mad.”

  “Medina always knew about you and Mom. It didn’t drive her mad.”

  “It nearly did. Something nearly did.”

  “Shhh. You should let them think they still have a secret,” I said. “But we’ll be the ones with the secret from now on. You and me.”

  “You and me?”

  I nodded.

  “Turning the tables?”

  “Right.”

  “Would you put up with such humiliation just to be near someone you love? Would you still love them even though you knew they loved someone else and thought you didn’t know?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I would. I wouldn’t mind having visiting hours with a girl from Holy Heart. As long as she liked me. Even if she loved someone else. Even if she thought she was tricking me.”

  “Even if she was using you for money in a farce of a marriage?”

  I shrugged. “Mom likes you,” I said. “It’s better than a pity fuck. I might not even get a pity fuck from anyone. Ever.”

  Pops smiled at me. “No one has ever recommended a course of action to me on the grounds that it’s better than a pity fuck.” He pushed back his chair and stood up slowly, as if it pained him. His hands on his hips, head hung down, he exhaled deeply and cleared his throat. “So. We’ll keep our promises, is that it? You won’t tell and I won’t tell. We’ll never say a word.”

  I nodded.

  He looked at me as if my marred face was somehow the measure of his anguish. “It’s better than destroying you and your mother. We’ll all be destroyed unless the wedding goes ahead.”

  Together, we hurriedly left the lab and, seeing no one in the hallway or the lobby, went outside. We stopped at each possible place of discovery, made sure no one saw us, crossed Bonaventure, which this time was truly deserted, let ourselves into the house and snuck back to our rooms.

  THE PROPER ORDER OF CREATION

  MY heart sank when McHugh told my mother by phone that an extra review of the material we had covered in the catechism, one in addition to the final exam that would take place after she and Pops were married, would be necessary. There were, he said, some catechism questions that we had neglected to review. McHugh proposed that he and I meet in the room at the Basilica the next day after school.

  When McHugh arrived about twenty minutes late and without his various catechisms, I assumed he meant to quiz me from memory. He sat opposite me at the table as always. But he already seemed as agitated as he had been by the end of our recent sessions. His elbows on the arms of his chair, he made a cage with his fingers over which he looked at me, lightly tapping his fingertips together, chewing his gum.

  “What is Hell?”

  “Hell is a state to which the wicked are condemned, and in which they are deprived of the sight of God for all eternity, and are in dreadful torment. The damned will suffer in both mind and body. The body will be tortured in all its members and senses.”

  “Why can there be only one true religion?”

  “There can be only one true religion because a thing cannot be false and true at the same time, and therefore all religions that contradict the teachings of the One True Church must teach falsehood. If all religions in which men seek to serve God are equally good and true, Christ would not have disturbed the Jewish religion and the Apostles would not have condemned the heretics.”

  “Very good. You haven’t forgotten.”

  “No, Brother.”

  “It’s wonderful that your mother and Vice-Principal MacDougal are getting married, isn’t it?” I nodded and he looked about, as though in search of others who would more fervently agree with him.

  “She likes Pops a lot,” I said.

  McHugh stood abruptly and began to walk around the table with his hands behind his back. “Well, I should hope so,” McHugh said. “They are about to be married. I should hope that she likes him a lot. I should hope her feelings for him match his for her.” It was the first time he had not objected to my use of the name Pops. “Like is to
o weak a word for how he feels about her. A wife should do more than merely like her husband, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose,” I said.

  He made a full circuit of the room in silence, stopping just behind his chair, facing me. He folded his arms.

  “How do you feel about Mr. MacDougal?”

  “He’s nice.”

  “He would be a very lonely man if not for you and your mother. And me. I have known him since long before he met your mother. I don’t know what would have become of him by now if not for her and me. And you. He speaks of you as if you are his son. I think he wishes you were.”

  “Really?”

  “God knows why, but yes, I think he does.”

  McHugh took out of the inside upper pocket of his jacket what looked like a tightly rolled-up leather belt. He held it straight out in front of him and, grasping the open end with his thumb and forefinger, let it unravel until it hung, swaying at arm’s length like a snake that he had expertly captured.

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked.

  “No.” But I did know. It was narrow and longer but thicker than a belt, half an inch thick perhaps. He folded it once in half so that it no longer swayed in front of him. He raised it above his head and, snapping it like a whip, brought it down on the table with such force that the nearest ashtray jumped and wobbled about until he stopped it with his hand.

  “This is the Strop,” he said. “Its edges are like those of the many straight razors that have been sharpened on it. A barber gave it to me. I only use it on the boys who misbehave the most. The hard cases, the ones who otherwise would never learn. Half a dozen strops will cut your hands to pieces. The last boy I stropped was Stevie Coffin. He deserved it, didn’t he?”

  I was so terrified, I couldn’t speak.

  “He never did come back to school.”

  Nothing had ever scared me more than the sight of that strop. I pushed back my chair and ran to the door that opened on the vestibule. I turned the knob and thrust my shoulder against the door, but it didn’t open.

  “You have to know how to open it,” McHugh said. “You don’t need much strength, but it takes a certain knack. You’ll never manage it with those monkey hands of yours.”

  I ran the length of the room to the door by which McHugh came and went. It too would not open. I hammered on it with my fist and shouted, “Help, please, open the door.”

  “Calm down, Joyce,” McHugh said. I turned around and looked at him. There was no sign of the Strop. He patted his breast pocket. “I just wanted you to see it. I just wanted you to know what it would be like for you if not for Uncle Paddy. I’m sure you won’t tell anyone I called him that, will you?”

  “No, Brother.”

  “Actually, tell anyone you like. They won’t believe you. Now sit down.”

  I went back to my chair but didn’t sit down.

  “Fine,” he said. “Stand. Stand on your head if you like. Either way, that face of yours will look the same.” He began slowly to make his way around the table, touching the back of each chair as he passed it. He moved clockwise, so I started moving clockwise too.

  “You don’t have to run away from me, Joyce. You’ll never see the Strop again, I promise.”

  “I’ll stop if you stop,” I said. He stopped directly across the table from me.

  “I know what you know,” he said. He put on his close-mouthed, gum-chewing smile as if all such previous smiles had been leading up to this one. “Crimes against the Order of Creation. Crimes of the sort for which Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed have been taking place for years across the street from where I live, across the street from where the Christian Brothers of the Mount live and eat and sleep and pray, where the children of the Mount go to school.”

  “No, Brother.”

  “Yes, Brother. Your mother and your aunt by blood.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Could Pops have broken his word after all? Pops who thought of me as his son?

  “There must be a reckoning when the proper Order of Creation is disturbed. THERE MUST.”

  He shouted so loudly that I closed my eyes and opened them just in time to see him complete a lunging crawl across the table. He grabbed me with one hand by the collars of my blazer and my shirt and, as he climbed down from the table, removed the Strop from his jacket with his other hand, let it unravel, then folded it in half against his leg. One hand fisting my collars, he raised the Strop high above his shoulder.

  “Hands,” he roared.

  I held out my hands and started to cry.

  “You’re not the Coffin boy, are you?” he said. “You’re not that tough.”

  I shook my head.

  “Tell me,” he rasped, his face so close to mine I smelled the fruity gum that he was chewing. “Tell me what Penelope and Medina do when others on the Mount are sound asleep.”

  “I don’t know,” I sobbed.

  “Íf you tell me what they do, Uncle Paddy will see to it that they do you no more harm. You will have the best of everything.”

  I shook my head.

  “Close your eyes,” he said.

  I shut them as tightly as I could and waited for the first blow of the Strop, but he loosened his grip on my collars.

  “Open your eyes,” he said.

  I opened them to find that once again the Strop was gone. He put the thumb and index finger of his free hand into his mouth, took hold of his gum and withdrew it. He tore it in half, pressed one half into my left palm and the other into my right.

  “What should we do, Pen?” Medina said when, crying and still shaking with fright, I told them what had happened at catechism, what McHugh had said and done. She paced, arms folded, puffing rapidly on a cigarette, unmindful of the ashes that fell from it onto her sweater and the floor.

  My mother, sitting at the kitchen table, said she wasn’t sure. What if McHugh took me from her? she wondered. She had all my life been reckless and indiscreet—“If discretion is a virtue, Percy, your mother is a whore.” She had thereby inspired so many rumours about everyone at 44 that there was no telling what sort of trumped-up charge McHugh might convince Uncle Paddy to quietly convey to those members of his congregation who had the power to do his bidding without discovery and with impunity. If I was taken from her, if she and Medina were cast out and vilified for life, and Pops was fired and left without hope of ever again earning a salary, all four of us would be destroyed.

  “Jesus, you’re the one who’s been telling us not to panic,” Medina said.

  “I’m still doing that,” my mother protested. “I’m just thinking out loud, letting off steam. McHugh is trying to panic us. I bet he hoped that, when Perse told us what happened today, we’d run. But if he had anything more he could try to flush us out with, he wouldn’t have held it back. Not with the wedding so close.” But she didn’t look or sound entirely sure of herself. She stared off into space as if trying to anticipate McHugh’s next move, or as if, in spite of what she’d said, she was spellbound by some vision of catastrophe.

  “Paynelope, His Grace has generously suggested that the diocese pay for a modest reception.”

  “Suggested?”

  “McHugh said ‘stipulated.’ ”

  “Has a honeymoon been arranged, Pops? How many other of my stipulations have you and McHugh vetoed without my knowledge? Not unless I’m kidnapped will I join you on a honeymoon. If the airplane or cruise tickets have already been bought, I hope that you and McHugh will have a wonderful time.”

  “It’s just a reception,” Pops said. “A modest, harmless party. Where’s the problem in that?”

  “The problem is you keep on tricking us,” Medina said.

  “Us?” Pops was furious. “At first, you didn’t even want to be there.”

  “I told you, Pops,” my mother said, “she’s a member of the family.”

  “A member of the family who said she was boycotting the wedding and will therefore not be attending the reception.”

  “
Yes, she will,” my mother said.

  “Believe me,” Medina said, “if it wasn’t for Pen, I would tell you to shove all your invitations up your arse.”

  “You’re jealous. You’ll be losing your partner in spinsterhood to me.”

  “He’s exactly right,” Medina said. “I’m jealous of Pen because she landed you, because you chose her instead of me. I’ve longed for you all these years, Pops. Loved you secretly, hopelessly. Wished that engagement ring of yours was meant for me. Every moment with you was a torment. But it would seem that Penny has won you with her wiles and good looks and you have let yourself be blinded to the more important things I have to offer. Oh Pops, don’t you see? It’s still not too late to change your mind. Choose me, Pops, choose me. Even if you don’t, I will come by as often as possible just to be near you.”

  This monologue was delivered in a deadpan monotone, Medina looking at neither Pops nor my mother yet speaking coldly to the latter, telling her in a kind of code, right in front of Pops, how hurt and confused she was. My mother didn’t laugh. Pops gave Medina a dismissive wave, went to his room and closed the door.

  “What next, Pen?” Medina whispered, tears in her eyes. “Which of the stipulations will be the next to go? Separate beds? Once-a-month visits? No children? Bit by bit you’re giving them what they want, Uncle Paddy, McHugh and Pops.”

  My mother shook her head. “No more,” she said. “This is all they get. This is where I draw the line, I promise.”

  Later, when my mother went out to the grocery store with Medina, Pops called me to the sunroom. He sat in his chair, looking morose. He said he’d been thinking—thinking that, someday soon, after they were married, he would tell my mother that he had guessed the truth about her and Medina. He would leave me out of it and convince her he would never tell McHugh. Everyone on the Mount assumed that, once they were married, there would be an empty bed, an extra room, at 44, now that he was sleeping with Penelope. So why not make things simple, spare everyone in the house the humiliation of sneaking around and pretending to look the other way and feigning ignorance—such a sad charade that would be. He would suggest to my mother that Medina move in with us, ostensibly to occupy the “empty” room but really to occupy the empty space in one half of my mother’s bed, the bed that my mother would leave, once a month, to come to his room and his bed. Time would tell if Medina could endure a succession of once-a-month nights alone in my mother’s bed, knowing where my mother was, with whom and for what reason.