by Anne Emery
So all along we’ve probably been swearing whenever we’ve mentioned their name. I shouldn’t say this, but I got even more curious to see one of these “angels from hell” after Jenny told me about her mum saying their name.
I asked Jenny: “Who was your mum talking to when she said it?”
She looked at me as if I had asked a question she didn’t understand, or it didn’t make sense to her. Then she said: “She was all alone when she died, so there couldn’t have been anybody there for her to talk to.”
“So the bad words were the only thing you heard?”
“Yeah. She must have been thinking about something, or remembering something bad, and swore really loud, to herself. How can we find out if ‘Hells Angels’ is swearing? Is there a list?”
“I don’t know. If there’s a list, maybe it’s a sin to look at it!” We were both quiet then, trying to figure out what to do. I said: “Let’s ask Father Burke. I saw him out in the hallway.”
So we went over to see him. Jenny was too shy, so I did the talking. “Hi, Father.”
“Normie and Jenny. How are the girls today?”
“Fine thank you, Father. Can we ask you something?”
“Sure you can.”
“Is it okay if we say something that may be a swear word, but we don’t know for sure? ’Cause that’s the question we have to ask.”
“Ask away.”
“Is it swearing if you say ‘Hells Angels’? Especially in a loud voice?”
He didn’t laugh but his eyes looked like he was going to laugh, if you know what I mean. He said: “It’s not swearing, but don’t let me catch you girls roaring up here on a motorcycle and coming in with a Hells Angels patch on your jackets! Then I’ll think you’re up to no good, the pair o’ youse.”
“What do you mean?” Jenny asked.
“The Hells Angels are a motorcycle gang and some of their activities are, well, not the sort of activities we’d encourage in young Catholic children.”
“We won’t act like them,” I promised him. “Why would your mum say their name, Jenny?”
“Your mum?” Father Burke asked, looking at Jenny.
So Jenny told him: “I was scared Mummy might be in hell because she said ‘Hells Angels!’ But if it’s not a swear word, then it’s not a sin, right?”
Father Burke squatted down in front of Jenny and held her hand. He said: “It’s not a sin at all. How long have you been worrying about this, Jenny?”
Jenny’s eyes flicked over to me and then back to Father Burke. “I wasn’t worried all the time. She just said it once, uh, one night.”
“Well, you can be sure your mum is right there with God in heaven. Everybody knows what a lovely and kind woman she was. I’ll bet she’s watching over you right now.”
“I hope she’s not mad at me, for thinking she might have been a sinner!”
He just shook his head as if to say no, Jenny had no reason to worry.
“I’m sure your dad would reassure you that there’s nothing to worry about with respect to your mother’s soul! Did you tell him about it?”
She shook her head again.
“How come?”
“Because in our house you’re not allowed to say ‘hell.’ My brother got in trouble one time for telling one of my other brothers to go to hell. We’re not allowed to say ‘Jesus’ in a bad way either, or ‘God.’ So I didn’t want to say it or get Mummy in trouble for saying it. Even though she’s dead now.”
Father Burke said: “Ah. The perils of a Catholic education.” Whatever that meant. “I’m sure you won’t be in trouble if you talk it over with your dad. He’ll set your mind at ease.”
Then he put his arm around Jenny and hugged her because she started to cry. He wiped the tears off her face. “When I say my first Mass tomorrow, I’m going to say it for your mum, and for you and your whole family.”
“Okay. That’s good. Thank you, Father.”
“But in the meantime I think you should have something to lift your spirits a bit. What do you like as a special treat, Jenny? Chocolate? Ice cream?”
“I like both!” she blurted out. Then her face turned red, because she must have thought she was being greedy.
But he just said: “Sure don’t we all! A chocolate sundae perhaps?”
“Yeah!” Her eyes were really big.
“What else do you like on it?”
“Sprinkles!”
“How about you, Normie?”
I was glad I was getting one too, but I tried not to let it show. After all, it wasn’t me whose mother was dead. But it would be rude not to answer, so I said: “I like marshmallow on mine. Whenever I get one. It doesn’t have to be today.”
“Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you girls go on with your music and I’ll go out and get some stuff for ice cream sundaes, and we’ll have kind of a sundae-making party. You two girls will be in charge of making them for the other kids, scooping up the ice cream and putting the toppings on. How does that sound?”
“Great!” Jenny and I both said it at once, and we had big grins on our faces.
So he left to go to Sobeys or wherever priests buy their groceries, and we practised our piano lessons, but we had our minds on the treats to come. When he arrived back at the choir school, he had everything you could imagine. Chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream, chocolate sauce, butterscotch sauce, marshmallow sauce, coloured sprinkles and cherries, tall plastic sundae dishes, and long see-through sundae spoons in all kinds of colours. He set everything out on a table and called me and Jenny over, and gave us these plastic scoops. Hers was red and mine was blue. The kids freaked out! He told them me and Jenny — Jenny and I — were going to make them whatever kind of sundae they wanted, with as many toppings as we could fit on. He made us wash our hands first, but that was okay. It only took a couple of minutes, and then everybody lined up for their homemade sundaes. Most of the kids wanted every single kind of ice cream and topping we had, but they wanted them in different orders, so then everybody could compare the designs before gobbling them up. Jenny and I had so much fun it didn’t even matter that we didn’t get to make our own until the end. Then we remembered to make one for Father Burke. He said it was brilliant. Jenny seemed to forget all about the Hells Angels.
I was still stuffed when it came time for dinner that night, which was too bad because we all went out to eat at Ryan Duffy’s. I love it there, so I ordered what I always get anyway, fish and chips, even though I could only eat half of it. The whole family was there, including Tom’s girlfriend, Lexie, and also Father Burke. The sundaes didn’t stop him from eating all his steak. Daddy was with us at first but he had to leave before dessert and write some kind of emergency paper for the Supreme Court, which he was supposed to finish at the office but didn’t. He said goodbye to us and left.
Father Burke looked at Dominic in his high chair and then at Mummy and said: “Have you told him yet?” He meant Daddy.
He said it in a really quiet voice, and that made me pay attention. Tom and Lexie were talking in their regular voices, so I knew they weren’t talking about anything secret.
“No. Anything to do with the baby puts him all out of gear. He won’t want to hear about it.”
“He can hardly miss it once things heat up.”
“I’ll deal with Monty when I have to, not a moment sooner.”
“Mother of God,” Father Burke muttered. Then he put his hand up, and the waiter came over. “Another Irish here. MacNeil?”
“Nothing for me, thanks.”
The waiter brought the Irish, which is a nickname for a kind of booze. They say it’s even stronger than beer.
“Do you really need that, Brennan?” Mum said to him.
“Do I hhwattt?” That’s what it sounded like, as if ‘what’ had all kinds of extra letters in it. He looked at Mumm
y as if she had said something crazy.
“Do you need another glass of whiskey? Do you need to drink?”
“I enjoy a drink, MacNeil, I don’t need it.”
“Are you sure you know the difference?”
“What are you on about? You’ve managed to skate away from the topic of most importance here, custody of little Dominic, which you should be dealing with, and instead you’re giving out to me about my drinking!”
They were talking even more quietly now. Tommy and Lexie didn’t seem to hear them, but I did.
You would think Father Burke would say to Mum: “It’s none of your business!” But he always tells them what to do, like telling Daddy he should sell his house and move back in with us. And they gave up telling him it’s none of his business because he just laughs, or says he was put on the earth to see that God’s will is done. So I guess he figured it was his turn to be told what to do.
She was still going on about it. “I’ve been concerned about you for a long time, Brennan. You drink too much.”
“Amn’t I a big strappin’ lad who can hold his drink? The amount I sip may be ‘too much’ for the faint of heart and the delicate of stomach, but it is not too much for me.”
“I beg to differ.”
“What else is new? At some point in your life you’ve differed from every other member of the human race and if you had the time, you’d make a point of telling every one of them face to face exactly why they are poor, benighted, misguided eejits, and you and you alone are one hundred percent correct.”
“So you don’t think your drinking is a problem?”
“Of course it isn’t! What’s got into you?”
“Prove it. Don’t drink it.” She looked at his glass.
“Are you daft? Leave a glass of Jameson sitting there, unconsumed? Think of, well, think of all the labour that went into perfecting that glass of whiskey. Distillery workers dedicated to their craft, spending hours . . .”
“Spare me the labour theory of value, Father Marx. Though now that you mention it, I should drink it myself in solidarity with the workers. And of course this way it won’t be a temptation in front of you for the rest of the night.”
“Jaysus Murphy, now there’s a new twist on cadgin’ a drink. Tell someone he’s a drunk, then take the jar away from him, and down it and get rat-arsed yourself.”
“I can hardly get rat-arsed on the wee drop you left in the glass, Brennan. Give it here. Prove to me and to yourself that you don’t need the stuff. Go without it for a couple of weeks. See how you do.”
“I’ll do fine.”
“Glad to hear it.” And she took his glass, drank the rest of the whiskey, choked, picked up her glass of water and gulped it. Mum can’t drink very much. Which is probably a good thing. Then she turned to me and Tom and Lexie and asked if we’d like to see the dessert menu. There’s something people say about questions like that, something about the pope and bears pooping in the woods, or being Catholic, I don’t know what it is, but it means “duh, that’s obvious!”
Father Burke lit up a cigarette and blew the smoke up towards the ceiling. I saw Mum turn around as if she was going to growl at him about that too, but she decided not to.
I had a lot of work to do with the dictionary after that night out, finding “custody” and other words, so I was up really late sneaking the story into my diary. I was very sleepy the next day but I had to act as if I wasn’t.
(Monty)
Tuesday was the night I could claim, with justification, to be a choirboy. I was a member of the St. Bernadette’s Choir of Men and Boys, directed by Father Burke. We sang magnificent traditional sacred music, then customarily observed another sacred tradition: we went to the Midtown Tavern. Dave arrived with two draft as soon as we sat down.
“Em, none for me, thanks, Dave,” Brennan said.
“Sure.” Dave laughed and put the glasses on the table.
“Really, I’m not having any tonight.”
“Are you okay, Brennan? Are you under doctor’s orders or something?”
“No. Well, yes, in a way.”
Dave looked at me as if I could explain Brennan’s aberrant behaviour. I couldn’t. I just shrugged and told Dave to leave both draft for me.
“So, what would you like then, Brennan?”
“Just bring me a . . .” He stopped. Must have drawn a blank. “What else do you have?”
“Pop, juice, water . . .”
“A ginger ale! That would be just the thing.”
“Would you like a little umbrella in the glass, and a twist of —”
“You bring me a little umbrella, David, and then you can shove it up your arse so far it’ll choke the breath out of ya, and ya won’t be able to gasp out your Act of Contrition before dying unforgiven and unmourned.”
“Got it. Back in a sec.”
After Dave had gone and returned with the ginger ale, ungirlified, I said to Brennan: “What’s this all about?”
“Nothing. Why should it be about something?”
“Are you sick?”
“What kind of a world are we living in, when a man orders something different one night of his life, and everyone blathers on and on about it?”
“All right, all right. It just seems unusual, that’s all. You here in the Midtown, without —”
“Have you nothing else to converse about, Montague?”
“I’ll come up with something.”
“Maybe it’s time you thought about adoption.”
“Whoa! Where did that come from? If you’ve gone off the sauce to clear your head, it’s not working for you! Adoption is for guys who have a wife, but no children. I have children, but no wife. Remember?”
“I’m talking about young Dominic.”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you.”
“That child needs a father.”
I looked at him. There was a whole world of things I could say in response to that, but I wasn’t going to give voice to any of them. That did not mean I was unmindful of the little boy growing up — so far — without a father in his life. The truth was that I was seriously concerned about it, about Dominic, but I could not bring myself to get into it with Brennan. Or, God knows, with Maura. All I said was: “Next topic.”
We eventually got on to the subject of travel, and reminisced about the road trip we had taken together to Italy. Burke suggested it was time to think about Ireland as our next destination, so we made some half-arsed plans for that. I mused about what the ginger ale would be like over there, and got a damning look in return.
(Normie)
We had concert practice on Wednesday. We were going to be on cable TV because our bit was part of a whole night of concerts to raise money to help the poor. The grown-ups’ choir school was going to sing a couple of pieces, too. And Father Burke was doing one himself. He was standing at the front of the room with sheets of music, trying to decide between two songs. One was an Irish song called “Macushla,” which I liked. But the other one I liked even better, “La Rondine.” It’s about a little bird flying away. It has a really nice tune and there are words in it that sound like Mummy and Daddy’s name: Monty and Maura. Well, it’s actually monti e mare, mountains and sea, in the song but it almost sounds like their names. I told him to sing that one. “For you, mia piccina — that means ‘little one’ — I’ll sing ‘La Rondine.’” Other school choirs were going to be in the show but they weren’t as good as us. It’s not their fault, though; we are a choir school so there would be something wrong, and Father Burke would kill us, if we weren’t the best.
We practised “God So Loved the World,” by a guy called Stainer, and “O Vos Omnes,” by Croce, over and over again. Monsignor O’Flaherty came by to hear us, and said we sounded like the heavenly host of angels. He is so nice! He’s the boss of the priests but he’s never bossy. He
went up to Father Burke after we finished singing.
“Brennan! Could you find it in your heart to say the morning Mass for me tomorrow? Mrs. O’Dell is going into surgery in the morning. Doesn’t look good for her at all, God bless her. They found a shadow on her —”
“No need to go into the details, Michael. I’ll be happy to say your Mass.”
“Thank you, my son. You won’t find the wine too rich for your blood, now, will you?”
“Em, no, Mike, I’m pretty well accustomed to it now, after a quarter of a century celebrating the Eucharist.”
“Oh, I just thought you might have become a little sensitive to alcoholic beverages! I notice you didn’t have your customary nightcap the last couple of evenings when you got in. Not that there’s anything —”
“Blessed St. Gobnait! Can a man not change his habits and be left in peace for it?”
Monsignor looked up at him. “Are you feeling all right?”
“I’m feeling no worse than I always do. And no better either!”
“Well, I’ll leave you . . .”
“Good!”
See? If Monsignor was bossy he’d boss Father Burke around, but he just laughed and went on his way.
Then the after-school music kids started arriving. There was one little girl who was really cute. Laurie. She had red hair like mine. She looked at me, and I knew she liked me helping her, so I went over to her.
I had just sat down beside Laurie, and started teaching her how to sight-read do-re-mi, when I heard somebody bang the door open and come barging in. “We gotta hide in here!” I looked up and saw two of Jenny and Laurence’s big brothers talking to Laurence. Their names were Connor and Derek.
Laurence said: “How come you’re hiding?”
“They’re after us again!” Derek said. “I think they followed us from school.”
“They better not come in here!”
“Go look out the window.” Derek gave Laurence a little push. “They probably won’t recognize your face.”
“How do you know?”