The Whipping Club (23 page)

             
Adrian hit him across his bottom for the third time, softer, and the boy still cried out. Anger exploded from Adrian. “Are you playing games with me?”

             
“No, please. It hurts. Please stop.”

             
“What a pansy we have here, boys and girls! And this is the one who’ll have you believe he’s the tough guy.” He hit him hard. “Four! You’ll get ten of the best, my boy.”

             
The boy screamed. Adrian slammed the branch, shouting out the numbers until he came to ten. Adrenaline and anger flooded through him.

             
“You’ll stop your wisecracking now.” He slapped the tree limb against his thigh and made the boy crawl on all fours. “Is this your sack?”

             
“Yes,” the boy whimpered.

             
Adrian took out a plastic bag filled with Topps baseball cards and stuck them in his pants. “Now stand, boy. You and you and you,” Adrian said to the lot of them. “All stand in a row.”

             
They all did.

             
“You turn to them, Jackie boy, and then to me, with a full ‘I’m sorry that I said those things against the Jews,’ yeah?”

             
The boy did.

             
Adrian told him to run home in his underwear, and they watched him scuttle away. Jo and Adrian said goodbye to the young boy. He recognized the bewilderment in the boy’s eyes.
Sometimes we get lucky,
Adrian thought.
This was his day.

Ben just settled himself into the library when he heard a knock at the front door.

             
A police officer glowered on the stoop. “Do you have a son and a daughter, Adrian and Johanna Ellis?”

             
“I do.”

             
“Apparently, your son, Mr. Ellis, has beaten up young Jack Johnson. Principal Hinckley happened to be in his office and witnessed the attack, so there’s no doubt that it happened.”

             
“Adrian?”

             
Adrian came into the foyer looking like an innocent lamb. “Is this true?”

             
“He was hitting a boy a lot younger than him. And his sister has been calling Jo names. I just put him in his place, that was all.”

             
“He ran home naked, in tears, according to his father.”

             
Adrian shrugged.

             
“He’s also said you’ve stolen his baseball cards,” the officer continued.

             
“He’s a liar,” Adrian said.

             
“You don’t have his cards, Adrian?”

             
“No, Da.”

             
“No one ever knows the full story out of kids’ mouths,” the officer said.

             
The officer didn’t care all that much, Ben thought. “Children can be the most cruel, officer, particularly with the name calling,” Ben said. “A shame.”

             
The officer wrote on his pad and simply stated that if Adrian was seen on or near the Johnson’s property, he would be arrested.

             
“Adrian?”

             
“I won’t be going. I don’t even know where he lives, and I don’t care to.”

             
“Okay, you’ve been warned, young man. Do you understand?” the officer said.

             
“Yes, sir.”

             
Ben felt an urge to scream at this street urchin—his own son! Adrian walked toward the wall as if he knew he was in for it. Ben felt he somehow had to break through to him.

             
“Everything doesn’t have to end in violence, Adrian,” he said. Ben collapsed on the couch. “Come and sit.”

             
Once Adrian sat next to him, he pulled himself together.

             
“It’s true that children can be the most cruel. I’m sure part of you was trying to defend your little sister. She’s had a rough time with the name calling.”

             
Adrian nodded. “I’m not Jewish, but he called you a slime bucket.”

             
“Don’t be embarrassed or ashamed of who you are, Adrian.”

He put his arm around the back of the couch. “I want us to get to know one another better. I want to teach you a bit about traditions.”

             
Adrian seemed to be in another world, but Ben reached over and gave him an awkward hug.

             
“It’s okay, whatever happened. You’re not punished,” he whispered, his arm still around his shoulder.

             
Adrian held on tight. Ben looked over at the dining table. Perhaps tonight he’d teach Jo and Adrian about the four questions. Tell them a bit more about
Sukkot
and
Yom Kippur
, too, and what the Day of Atonement means, if he could hold their attention.

             
“You know. The Jews have always been persecuted, but we’re strong. You ought to be proud to be part of the faith.”

             
“Yeah?” Adrian said. “Are the Jews part of the one true faith?”

             
Ben sighed. “Never mind. It’s the Sabbath. We’ll eat now. I bought some white fish, some
rugelach
for dessert, hmm? You’ll try a little?” he said and rubbed Adrian’s back gently.

             
Adrian smiled as they rose. “Sure, Da. And I’ll keep studying. Thanks, Da,” he said.

             
Ben touched the top of his head, closed his eyes in a moment of prayer.

             
“Come on, let’s break bread.” He offered Adrian the platter of

matzoh,
ladled some fish on the cracker.

             
“I’ll try a tiny bit. Smells like arse weed, though.”

             
Ben put the platter down and sat, his head in his hands.

             
Adrian took the chair next to him. “Come on, Jo and Ma!

You Maggies!” Adrian shouted. “Let’s have ourselves a good feed.”

             
Ben looked at him. “No, Adrian. No shouting. And no talking slang in your home. This is not a place for bad behavior. Come on.”

             
Adrian’s head went down, and Ben was the cruel one now, as his son’s face and neck turned the color beets in a bowl of
borscht.
He felt helpless—there was too much to teach—and he was at a loss for words. He dropped his head back into his hands, his temples pulsating.

Ten days left with his new family, Adrian realized they had melded into a unit, no longer awkward and formal as they were their first month together. Full of promise, he chose to ignore his own all-consuming worries. Instead, he thought proudly of how natural it was for him to jockey into his role as big brother. It had been his idea to make a pledge with Jo to be more careful, more cautious, about their play. Jo agreed, but tried to make light of it. She shook her head at him, called him a worrywart.

             
On the last Sunday in August, enjoying the evocative smell, Adrian swept the stray, dry needles and the fallen red berries that decorated the Christmas tree Ma bought (since he would not be back again for good until Sister Agnes signed away her rights). He listened to the record
Music for the Sabbath
and found the Hebrew soothing,

almost like the Gregorian chants he loved so well. Recently, to please his da and out of his own curiosity, he’d been stealing time in the

library to try to read from
The Joys of Yiddish
. That afternoon, when his da returned home for tea, Adrian greeted him with a wide smile and the Hebrew word
shalom
.

             
Da put his arm around him and told him that the next time Gran and Father Brennan came to take Adrian to the Church of the Sacred Heart for Mass he would come, too, to show him the altar where the word
shalom
was carved into the lectern. “We’re all praying to the same God,” Da added, handing him a ten pence for ice creams at Quinlan’s with Johanna.

             
Adrian grabbed Jo and they ran off to get their sundaes. Afterward, licking their fingers, they
meandered to the Church of the
Sacred Heart to see if they could please their da and find the
shalom
themselves. They peeked through the window beside the great wooden double doors and marveled at its marble pillars, mosaics, and especially the three stained glass windows sitting directly above the hand-carved, wooden confessional box.

             
They had come to see the lectern and were disappointed to find the front doors locked. Noting that it was well before the seven o’clock evening Mass, they sneaked behind the church and found that they could easily scale the outside of the building and climb up unnoticed to the second-tier window ledges. There they could get a close look at the altar and touch the brightly colored stained glass windows, to boot.

             
They peered inside but did not notice Mrs. O’Rourke entering through an open side door. She sat in a pew, pressing her rosary beads, a full hour before the service began.

             
Once situated above ground on the wide ledge, it didn’t take much to go from pretending to balance on a tight rope to attempting other acrobatic routines they had wanted de
sperately to see at the circus.
There was still a chance their da would change his mind, Adrian thought.

             
After a few successful handstands performed by Adrian, Johanna tried to outdo him with a longer handstand than his. Because of her enthusiasm, her hard black shoes smacked into the staine
d glass
depiction of Saint Peter. In a backbend, Jo fell through the window and onto the wooden confessional.

             
Adrian stared dumbstruck through the cracked window at his stunned sister, lying on the roof of the confessional, the breath knocked out of her.

             
He was through the window, crawling onto the confessional roof when an alarmed Mrs. O’Rourke came running toward them. Somehow she found a way up onto the confessional and pulled Johanna into her arms. A bit of blood speckled on Mrs. O’Rourke’s dress.

             
“Get help!” she shouted at Adrian, who was still staring at his dazed sister.

             
He climbed back out through the broken window and jumped down to the grassy ground. He ran fast down the Donnybrook Road, past the Sisters of Charity, and into the graveyard. Frantic, having lost all sense of direction, wanting to find his way home where his mother would ring a doctor for Jo, Adrian ran haphazardly ahead.

             
Jo, for the moment, was more surprised than hurt. Mrs. O’Rourke called after Adrian, screamed. She sped out the front door to phone for an ambulance from the corner newsagent.

             
Adrian kept running.

             
When Adrian arrived breathlessly at the house, Da was waiting for him and he could tell from the exasperated expression on his face that he already knew about the accident.

             
Within six minutes, an ambulance arrived at the church, but Johanna was nowhere to be found. Flustered by the fall and afraid of the consequences, she had disobeyed Mrs. O’Rourke’s orders to wait until her return and, instead, went chasing after Adrian. That’s what Ben heard.

             
With Johanna gone, Mrs. O’Rourke pointed the ambulance in the direction of Mount Eden Road, assuming the children were well on their way home. That’s what the medical men said upon arrival at the house. Mrs. O’Rourke and one of the medical assistants went to the Donnybrook Garda Station across the way. The woman explained about the broken church windows and the possibility of broken bones as well, they told Ben.

             
Da grabbed Jo when she came through the door and lay her down on the oak wood floor, a towel underneath her. Ben put his hand on her forehead. Ma joined him there to attend to her with a wet towel.

             
“You’re all right,” Ma whispered, dabbing her sweaty face. When the ambulance workers left, Marian stood to escort them, but the sound of a siren brought her quickly outside.

             
As the neighbors gathered in the Ellises’ driveway, Mrs. O’Rourke emerged from the back seat of a police car. Adrian ran into Ma’s arms and she held him, calmed him down before looking around for Mrs. O’Rourke, who stood by her own front door.