“She said there were things we didn’t know, secrets, that we’re more related—”
His mouth closed abruptly. He seemed to think for a second before continuing in a fast yet shaky voice. “She said we were too related, that we couldn’t be together, that Annie…that she’d be ruined forever.”
Sadie found her voice. “You and Annie Byrne?” she growled.
“Yes. Listen, Ma—”
“You been sleeping with Lucinda’s daughter?”
Gerry nodded. His shoulders started to shake. Then he started to cry, bawling his eyes out right in front of her.
“Gerard! Stop that nonsense! Now what the fuck are you talking about?”
He told her all about it then, how they’d been going out for almost a year, how they wanted to go away together. And then, tears streaming down his face, he confessed that he was in love with Annie Byrne.
Oh Jesus. Oh God. Mother Mary help me.
Sadie’s knees were weak. She could barely stand up. She clutched the chair with both hands. When Gerry reached out to her, however, all she could see was Annie Byrne’s face. She smacked his hand away.
Sadie went to the holy water font and dipped her fingers in.
She took a deep breath and blessed herself. Then she got her flask and took a large swig.
“But I don’t care,” he cried. “What does it matter as long as we love each other?”
Sadie almost choked. “What does it matter! You want a bunch of retards for youngsters? Mother of Jesus, Gerard, how thick are you?”
“But Ma—”
“Don’t ‘but Ma’ me, you stupid fool. I could smack the daylights out of you, getting involved with the likes of that…that no good…” Sadie wanted to scream, to open her mouth and scream her lungs out. She needed to strike out, to hit something, someone. She punched her fist into her palm.
Annie Byrne! Fornicating with Lucinda’s daughter. God help me.
“You’re no better than the goddamn Griffins!” she railed.
“After all I done for you, the sacrifices, the lies, everything to make sure you were better than them, and now look at you, just look at you! It’s sinful, disgusting,” she screeched into his face.
“And yes, you knows what the church says, of course it matters that you’re related.”
Hang on. More related? Who? Him and Annie? Annie!
That witch, that slut… As Annie’s face filled Sadie’s mind she completely lost her train of thought. She started back in, ranting and raving, berating the Hanns and the Byrnes, the likes of which should not be free to walk the earth with good people like herself.
Out of air, she stopped, though she was far from finished. That’s when she saw the alarm on Gerard’s face.
“Ma, take it easy, calm down,” he said, his hand reaching out to her again. “You’re scaring me.”
She opened her mouth to continue, but all that came out was a wheezy breath.
I got to calm down. Got to make him listen. He’s the only good thing I got. If he goes over to the Hanns everything I’m after working for will be wasted. This whole stupid life will be one big lie. I got to try another angle.
Sadie put her arms around him, cajoling him and telling him that he had not known the evil of Annie Byrne’s ways, and thanking the Good Lord that they’d found out in time.
Suddenly inspired, she thought of Father Cunningham, the contrary old priest who had recently been assigned to the parish. She grabbed the phone. Her voice frantic, she begged him to talk to Gerard, now, tonight, before a mortal sin stained his soul forever. They would come right over, she said, dear Father, please don’t let him spend his life atoning for the mistakes of his youth, please spare him the pain she’d endured because of that exact same thing, please don’t let him break his mother’s heart. She could feel Gerard’s eyes fast upon her as she pleaded for help. She begged some more.
Head bowed, he went with her to see the priest.
And when that was done, when Father Cunningham was finished with him, she made Gerard swear on her life never to see Annie Byrne again, not even to say goodbye.
Why place himself into temptation, she said? Why tempt the devil? No, he just had to go away, from St. Jude the next day, from St. John’s as soon as possible.
Sadie phoned Mercedes and between the two of them they convinced him that they knew best. He would transfer to the mainland immediately. Mercedes would make the necessary calls. It was the only way, they told him, that all of it would be buried forever.
Still he resisted. “Please, Ma,” he begged. “I can’t just leave.”
Sadie leaned in so close that they were practically sharing the same mouthful of air. “If you don’t do this I can promise you one thing. Mercedes will pay the price. I knows all about her, Gerard, there’s nothing gets past me,” she bluffed. “You should know that by now. But her secret’s safe with me, long as you does the right thing.”
“What do you know?”
“Never you mind what I knows. You just listen up. You owes me, Gerard,” she said, “and you owes Mercedes, bless her kind and gentle heart, the only good Hann to walk this earth.”
Hah!
“You do what you’re told and no one need ever know. If we all vows to keep the secret, it can be done. I knows how to keep a secret, the Lord knows I do. I can keep a secret better than anyone alive, believe you me.”
“What are you talking about, Ma?”
“Don’t you worry. You does what I says no one will know about any of this.”
He hung his head. “Please don’t make me do this.”
Sadie grabbed his head and lifted it to look at her. “I’m warning you, Gerard. I knows more about Mercedes and the whole lot of them Byrnes and Hanns than you can shake a stick at. There’s stuff goes way back, stuff that the Griffins are caught up in too, bad stuff, Gerard. So if you gives two shits about us, and about your precious Mercedes and even that goddamn Annie, you’ll do like I says. I’ll not be telling you twice. Now get packing.”
He stared at her for the longest time. Then he went to his room and took down his suitcase.
Several days later, Sadie’s phone rang. She’d calmed down by then, through sheer force of will. Occasionally, however, it all flashed back at her, and she could feel the pressure of her blood raging through her heart.
“Hello?” Sadie’s voice was sweet, welcoming even.
“Could I talk to Gerry please?”
Hah! The little slut finally gave in.
“Who is this?” Sadie asked innocently.
“It’s Annie Byrne, Mrs. Griffin. Is Gerry there? We found some gloves.”
“Oh, Annie, is it? And how is your dear mother?”
Yankee whore.
“Fine. She thought the gloves might be Gerry’s.”
“Gloves, eh? Hmm, no, no I don’t think they’ll be his. I’m sure he had them on when he left. Isn’t that right, Debra?” She turned to her daughter who was feeding the baby porridge at the kitchen table. Debra shrugged.
“When he left?” said Annie.
“Yes, Gerard went on back into St. John’s a few days back.”
“Why? I mean, I didn’t think he’d be gone back so soon.”
“Yes, well neither did he now,” Sadie said, somehow managing to stop herself from yelling out that if it wasn’t for Annie, he’d be in St. Jude having breakfast with his mother that minute. “But your aunt needed something and he couldn’t refuse her now, could he?” Sadie rolled her eyes in disgust. “And just because it’s Christmas and I barely seen him all year, for pity’s sake, that’s no excuse not to do a little favour for Mercedes, good woman that she is. You’re lucky to have such a—”
“Aunt Mercedes sent him back to town early?”
“My, yes, she phoned here in a right panic, the night of your father’s party it might have been, yes I’m sure it was, said she had to see him right away, and the next thing you know, he’s off to St. John’s.” Sadie was thoroughly enjoying herself now. “And I
don’t mind you know, he’s such a good student and a hard worker too, and now moving to that Dalhousie, didn’t Mercedes go there herself, a long time ago of course, isn’t that right?” She hadn’t meant to give quite so much information but the moment had gotten the better of her. She’d won.
There was only a breathy silence on the other end of the line.
“What colour were they?” Sadie asked.
“Huh? What?”
“The gloves, dear. You said Lucinda found some gloves?”
Hah! Gloves, my arse!
“Oh, right. Never mind, it doesn’t matter.”
“Well, I’ll tell him you called,” Sadie lied. “But he got more important things on his mind than gloves.” Sadie was beaming as she hung up the phone.
“What are you grinning about?” Debra asked.
“That there was Annie Byrne.”
“That witch. What did she want?”
“Something about gloves. Nothing important.”
“That crowd pisses me right off.”
Sadie looked fondly at her daughter. “And why is that?”
“So full of theirselves, thinks they’re better than everybody.
Like I was at the store the other day and that Sara and Beth were over by the magazines, and I knows they were talking about me, tittering away when I walked past them.”
“That Annie’s quite the tart from what I hears.”
Debra laughed humourlessly. “Nothing but a stuck-up tomboy.”
“Is she now?” Sadie watched her daughter carefully. “I suppose that comes from hanging around with them two cousins all the time.”
Debra slid another spoonful of food into Mark’s mouth.
“Not much good comes of that, now does it?” Sadie added.
Debra glanced over at her mother, then back to her son to scoop up the excess food from his chin with the side of the baby spoon. “Open wide, Markie.” She shoved the spoon back in.
Annie slid the phone into its cradle. She turned to the window. A fresh layer of snow blanketed the ground. Not a single footstep broke the fragile surface. Perfect for making snow angels. You just needed someone to pull you up when you were done. You couldn’t make a good snow angel on your own.
What was that devil of a mother of his talking about? Why hadn’t he called her to let her know he was going back? And what did Mercedes need him for, anyway? Annie was tempted to confront her aunt, but she was still too embarrassed.
She returned to university before the end of Christmas break. As lost as she felt without Gerry beside her, she was grateful to drop the pretence that all was well. The first thing to catch her eye when she opened her door was the white envelope.
“Dear Annie,” he wrote, “I hate to have to tell you this way, but I don’t know how else to do it. We can’t see each other anymore. It’s just the way things have to be. I hope you won’t hate me. By the time you get this I’ll be in Nova Scotia. I’ll never forget us. Goodbye Annie.” It was signed, simply, “Gerry.”
She sat on her bed in a fog as fragments of memories ran through her head - their first night at Dewey’s, the days, and especially the nights, spent together, the Boxing Day party. Her mind kept zeroing in on her aunt’s face. What could have been so horrible that it rendered the woman speechless?
Confusion turned to anger. Why would he just up and leave? How could he get on that plane knowing how hurt she would be? It didn’t make sense. She read the letter again. “By the time you get this,” he’d written. Gerry wouldn’t have expected her back on campus this soon. Maybe he hadn’t left for Nova Scotia yet. She rushed to the bathroom and scrubbed her face with cold water, then took the stairs two at a time.
As she passed through the front entrance of his residence, the click of the door latch resounded behind her. There was no one around to hear it. On the second floor she slowed her stride. A light shone from an open doorway.
Gerry lay on his bed, his eyes closed. His right hand, long fingers outstretched, rested on the small bear she’d given him for Christmas.
The act of waking up took him mere seconds, but it seemed to happen much slower. His eyelids rose. His eyes settled upon her face. The warmth in his smile sent her heart singing, so that although everything up to that moment had pointed to the end, she was so desperate for hope that she would have accepted the most farfetched explanation. But in the next instant, his eyes shot wide open.
“I got your note.” She held it out, let it drift to the floor.
He pushed himself off the bed. “Annie, I’m so sorry.”
His room, the place they’d loved and laughed together, now seemed devoid of life. A cluster of mismatched suitcases was stacked against the bare wall.
“What’s the hell is going on?” she said.
“I’m transferring up to Dal.”
“Why now?” Her voice cracked. “Why not the fall like we planned?”
“I can’t explain, Annie. Please just let this be.” His eyes were shining, the first tear waiting for the next blink.
Seeing him there, his face in such pain, his voice filled with sadness, and all of it so unexplainable, sent a surge of anger through her - at him, at herself, at whoever or whatever it was that was responsible. “How can I let it be?” she cried out, fear making her desperate. Yet she could tell that there was no point, that something bigger than her or them had insinuated itself into their lives. Still, she couldn’t give up. “Talk to me, Gerry. Please.”
His gaze fell to the linoleum. “I fly out tonight.” It was a cold statement of fact.
Struck with a hurt she’d never known existed, she started to go. But she couldn’t do it. She could not walk away. At the risk of any pride she had left she needed to know what had gone wrong.
She turned back, not caring that the tears were running down her cheeks. “Gerry, you have to tell me. What are you doing this for, what happened to us?”
His eyes pleaded with her, but whether it was for understanding or forgiveness she couldn’t tell. He took a step towards her then stopped abruptly. A mask came over his face, and his voice was hard and bitter. “I guess you could blame Mercedes. She convinced me, said we’re too related to be together.”
“But Gerry, we talked about that—”
“Oh, I know. But then she had the nerve to say I wasn’t good enough for you anyway. That I was a Griffin and I should know better and just be grateful.”
“That’s crazy.”
“The old bat threatened to call back my loan if I kept seeing you, and when I told her to piss off she had a little chat with my mother, said her son was a fool to wreck his chances on a girl. Then she swore she wouldn’t lift a finger to help my brothers and sisters. Now that may not seem like much to you, but to my mother, Mercedes stands out as her only hope to get us out of the poverty that’s been the Griffins’ lot in life.”
He wasn’t looking at her, but was instead shifting through some papers on his desk. Annie saw the airline ticket among them.
“Gerry, come on—”
“And the more I thought about it,” he persisted, “the more I realized that I’m sick to death of it all - the Byrnes and the Hanns, the holier-than-thou and smarter-than-thee attitudes, sick of trying to fit in. That’s why I never wanted anybody to see us. I knew it wasn’t right. So I’ve had it. I’m getting the hell out of here.”
He shuffled his suitcases together between himself and Annie. Her entire body yearned to touch him, to let the soft blades of his hair run through her fingers, to hold tight to the fine strands and never let them go, never let him leave her. She made a move towards him.
Taking a step back, he looked directly at her. “It’s done, Annie. Let it go.” A firm voice. Not a tremble from those lips, lips she’d kissed a million times if dreams could count.
She studied the person before her, this Gerry Griffin she had known for most of her life, and loved for the only part that mattered anymore. This man who she had given every bit of herself to had transformed into an unfee
ling bastard.
Somehow she made it back to her own room. Locking the door, she switched off the lights and slept like the dead. No dreams. No nightmares. Nothing.
Until five a.m, when she awoke in an instant. The previous day’s events slammed back into her consciousness, sending an odd wavy sensation through her stomach. She stumbled to the bathroom. She would never have believed that love could make you sick, but there she was, puking into the toilet. She might even have laughed if she wasn’t so busy throwing up. How corny was that, to actually get sick to your stomach over a guy?
Two days later, she was still sick, her gut a seesaw on a nonstop rollercoaster. Then, as she was trying to get to sleep that night, she sprang bolt upright. She grabbed her calendar from the dresser. Panic rose like fresh vomit in her throat.
Oh sweet Jesus, how could she have been so stupid?
19
The dorm echoed with the lifeless sounds of pipes and floorboards. Annie lay on her bed. She watched the clock and waited - for the weak winter light to filter through her window, for the nearest drugstore to open, for confirmation of a truth she already knew.
Abortion was not an option. Church on Sunday and daily during Lent, prayers every night and confession every month, the Stations of the Cross and the body and blood of Christ - these rituals framed her life. She was a Catholic, clearly fallible, but not a murderer. Annie had never questioned this doctrine before. She didn’t now.
Gerry was constantly on her mind. He was always there, hovering in the next thought, the next breath. What if he knew she was pregnant? Surely he’d change his mind. On the other hand, if he cared so little, did she want him in her life? Still, didn’t he simply have a right to know? He’d never said if he wanted children, but she suspected he did. As for her, there’d been daydreams of hazy domesticity far off in the future, a presumption of motherhood years away. She’d been more concerned with dreams of a career and an exciting life beyond St. Jude. A life with Gerry Griffin.
Mercy of St Jude Page 24