The Son of a Certain Woman (39 page)

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 having 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 conversion, 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.”

She got up from the table, a glass of beer in one hand, went to the sunroom and spun around Pops’ chair. “You knew about it all along, didn’t you? Percy getting baptized. Taking your name. McHugh may as well have announced the day of our wedding.”

“I’m sorry, Paynelope, but McHugh is a hard man to argue with. No one will think all this has anything to do with
us
.”

“For the umpteenth time, there
is
no us,” she said quietly, then slowly poured her glass of beer over his head. It must have been warm, for he didn’t draw so much as a single extra breath but merely sat there, eyes closed, as the beer ran down all sides of his head, frothing up his face, trickling down beneath the collar of his lab coat and his shirt. He wiped the beer from his eyes and the rest of his face with the sleeves of his lab coat.

“There,” my mother said. “There you go, Jerome. Properly baptized.” She went back to the table, sat down and lit up a cigarette.

Medina threw back her head and laughed. “That head has a big beer on it.”

Pops struggled out of the chair and, removing the lab coat as he walked, slowly zigzagged to his room and closed the door behind him. Medina laughed again. “He’s so drunk he barely noticed.” Pops soon emerged from his room wearing a different shirt and pair of slacks, his hair matted down with beer.

“No harm done,” he muttered.

“The harm is being done at this very moment,” my mother said. “The Apology of Percy Joyce. A famous day in the history of the Mount. I don’t suppose you and McHugh have set a date for the baptism yet. Don’t lie to me again, Pops.”

“I’ve never lied to you, Paynelope. Left out some things, that’s
all. Sins of omission, that’s all. No date set yet. But His Grace has agreed to baptize Percy in the Basilica.”

“I don’t care if the Pope has agreed to baptize him in the Sistine Chapel. Have you and McHugh made any other plans that I should know about?”

“World domination,” Pops said.

“You do understand that you and I will never get married, don’t you?”

“Never say never.”

“You should say it in this case.”

“Why don’t you want to marry me? No one else is beating down your door. There is a dearth of suitors in your life.”

“My door gets banged on more often than you think, but I keep it locked.”

“Sorry. Where do I rank among the many thousands beating down your door?”

“You’re all deadlocked in a last-place tie.” She looked at me and smiled and faintly shook her head. I wasn’t sure if she meant to tell me that she didn’t see me as being on a par with sub-par Pops or that I must keep quiet about Medina.

“Do you still carry a torch for Jim Joyce, Paynelope?”

“I do not carry so much as a single unlit match for Jim Joyce.”

“He turned you off marriage for life?”

“Something like that.”

“Still. You never know. That’s what McHugh says. You never know. He tells me don’t give up, you never know, she might come round.”

“So there it is. That’s what he wants.”

“I’ve asked you three times to marry me, Paynelope.”

“
Three times
?” I said.

“Yes,” my mother said as offhandedly as if she had meant to provoke this disclosure from him.

“McHugh says we’d all be better off with your sort-of sister-in-law out of the picture.”

My mother and Medina traded looks. “Why did he say that, Pops?” my mother asked gently.

“I don’t know. I give him such glowing accounts of her.”

“What do you tell McHugh about Medina?”

He turned to Medina. “I wouldn’t pick you if you were the last woman left on earth. You are loathsome.”

“I’m so loathsome I could cry.”

“Go to bed, Pops,” my mother said. “Go on, now. Unless you’d like another beer, so to speak.”