The Whipping Club (27 page)

             
She wondered about Ben’s wounds of separation from his family and everything he had grown up with. Perhaps he felt like an orphan.

             
“You must be very proud,” Ma said, observing their new ginger velvet couch with matching club chairs that they’d recently purchased at a furniture sale in Ballsbridge, then touching an heirloom on the mahogany bookshelf. There was tension in Ma’s movements, pretense always a drain on the system. And yet, over the years, Marian considered that she had grown closer with Ma. After Da’s death, Ma showed more compassion, compassion she thought once was only for her father. Together, silently, they shared their loss.

             
“It’s just a silver jar handed down from Ben’s grandparents, no religious significance.”

             
“Don’t be acting the maggot, Marian,” Ma said, leaving the library, opening up the living room curtains. “I’m having my cake now.

And turn that bloody television off,” she said.

             
Ma sat at the dining room table now with that genteel smile and began cutting her homemade tart. Brown sugar caramelized on top, a whipped cream in a bowl.

             
Marian dutifully turned off the television. “Ah, Telefis Éireann, you’ve saved my life,” she sighed.

             
Ma grimaced, passed a warm cake plate.

             
“No harm to have television debates, Ma,” Marian said, opening the window, her voice rising better than the Dublin transmitter. “Bishop Flanagan, last night on
The Late, Late Show
, said that there’d been ‘no sex in Ireland until the introduction of television.’ I had a good laugh at that one,” she said, sitting down for her pie.

“How would he know; that’s the real scandal,” she muttered.

             
“Marian,” Ma said quietly. “Because he and all the other bishops speak to the people and educate people, they know what’s on the minds of their people,” she said. “All you ever want to do is shock people with dirty comments. You’re a real McKeever.”

             
“We seem to be living in the Dark Ages, that’s all, Ma.” She wanted to add that the Church and State behave as incestuous bedfellows, keeping the whole of Ireland in a guilt-ridden headlock, but she held herself back.

             
“Maybe so, but smut on the television day and night is not the

answer,” Ma said. “Look, let’s remember the Russians could blow up the world any minute. And the rate we’re going up North, we’ll blow each other up right here on our own soil. No more talk.”

             
They were silent then.

             
“Why didn’t you have more children yourself, Ma?”

             
Ma chose her words. “We couldn’t afford more. We wanted to do it right.” She stood to go abruptly and put away her knitting in its tote bag. “And anyhow, Da—one of fourteen. Down the country, living with the animals in the house and all the noise, he didn't want his own house crammed up and shite everywhere. No, the one was enough for him. Goodbye for now.”

             
Ma McKeever left Marian to wonder as she got her worn woolen coat. How many times had Ma said, “As long as I don’t know about it, I can handle it.” A faint shadow crossed Ma’s face when her guard was down, when she thought no one was watching. Her blue eyes crinkled at the menorah in the library. She probably thought it was some kind of antique.

             
Ma stood there for a moment, confused, and then walked outside and toward the bus stop. Marian went into the kitchen and stared out the window at the brown tomato stalks shaking in the wind.

Ben knew he looked horrible. Unshaven. A wreck. Another five days passed before she opened the door a slit, and he saw that Marian was exhausted, too. They gazed at each other. No words. And then she opened the door wide, and he felt an enormous sense of relief.

             
He walked into the foyer. She was wearing a pink dress, her soft hair falling out of place. He leaned and whispered, “I’m sorry,” into her ear. He loved her smell. He loved the lightness of her touch against his skin. He knew he was going to fall in love with her the first time they met, couldn’t wait to interview her for his article to commemorate the Zion School’s fiftieth anniversary, couldn’t stop watching the gorgeous girl by the garden, doing a cute American West skit with her little students.

             
Cowgirl, your turn for a photograph,
he’d said, and he’d lightly touched her soft cheek with his when they both reached down for the school’s camera. She laughed, removed the cowboy hat she wore for the skit, and tried to fluff up her frizzy hair. The tykes ran toward her. She caught her heel on the box garden’s rubber edging and tripped into rows of white and blue daisies. Ben took a snapshot before helping her to her feet.

             
“Well, thank ye, Mr. Reporter,” she said, brushing off moist dirt from her hands and dress.

             
“Journalist, Cowgirl,” he corrected her.

             
“I ain’t no ordinary cowgirl, ye hear,” she said, walking away as gracefully as she could and ordering her students back to the classroom. Ben caught up to her and held the school door open.

             
“You come to your alma mater to do a story, but you get a hot and sticky Annie Oakley instead,” she chuckled as she dipped into her classroom leaving him outside.
             

             
“How’s my favorite cowgirl?” he said quietly now.

             
“Missing my favorite journalist,” she answered, and attempted a smile.

             
They held each other as they walked up the stairs and lay down together. They made love with the tenderness of two ailing people.

             
“It wasn’t going to help Adrian to have me, his Jewish father, show up in Sister Agnes’s face. I don’t want to be the cause of any more upset.”

             
“Whisht,” she said.

             
“Nothing happened, just so you know.”

             
“I know. Where have you been staying?”

             
“You know where.”

             
She laughed.

             
“I can barely look at my son when I think about my part in this,” Ben mumbled. “It’s like taking your biggest mistake and having it stare at you, sitting with you at the table every day until you can’t bear the guilt and the reminder anymore.”

             
As he talked, her face seemed to relax, though she did not speak.

             
After a smoke, Ben got up and looked out the window. He wanted to reach down and rip a clump of grass, recalling the pregnant girls he saw at Castleboro Mother Baby Home on all fours ripping the grass with their bare hands, shoving it into their apron pockets, a sight he couldn’t get over. A hand on her lower back, a big girl had wiped sweat off her forehead, a streak of dirt remaining there, and he wondered if Marian had been subjected to this humiliation during her stay. He couldn’t think about it anymore. He reached down and touched Marian’s cheek. She began to cry. He buried his face into her neck and held her.

             
“Don’t let the tormentors win,” he whispered. “You have to get over what happened. We both do. We have to move forward.”

             
She wiped her cheeks.

             
“I’m not thinking about that hellatious time anymore–”

             
“Not thinking about it doesn’t help, Marian. You’re just doing what you have all along. You can’t bury it. You have to confront it.”

             
“Listen to me. I’m thinking about Adrian, that’s it, and you should bloody well be, too. I am only concerned with making things right.”

He lay down beside her and said, “Maybe the mistakes we made, maybe they can’t be undone.”

             
She looked at him, narrowed her eyes.

             
“It’s one thing to imagine, Marian, but it’s another to face reality.”

             
“That sounds like Father Brennan. Here we go,” she said, getting up.

             
“Hey, I’m committed to having this family in one piece again, Marian. But we have to think about Johanna, too. We have to move on, one way or another. You’re obsessed with the past, and you’re harboring guilt more than anything else, and it’s hurting all of us. We’re a family already and we–”

             
“Listen up, Ben, for the last time. Nothing you can say will make me give up on Adrian if that’s what you’re getting at. I gave him away once, and I want him back. God damn it! Why don’t you feel the same way? I need to bring him home. You’re wearing me thin. You’re either with me or you’re not, but I’m never going to turn my back on our son again. Never.”

             
She was red in the face as she slipped on her dress. There was no talking to her.

             
“Marian, calm down. We need peace around here.”

             
“I’m going to do what needs to be done,” she said loudly.

             
“I’m going to mow the lawn,” he mumbled. “The grass needs cutting.”

Ever since Sister Agnes decided
Adrian needed more discipline
before he was to be ready to reenter society, Marian felt everything in sluggish waves.

             
Marian pleaded with Sister Agnes to give them one more chance, to let him try the Muckross School in their neighborhood. But after this last incident, Sister Agnes explained, Johanna’s school would not be willing to accept Adrian. She was sorry, but Sister Agnes believed that they had rushed Adrian, and she worried he’d become a threat to himself and society. This was not a punishment but a protective step along the way, that was all. Over the Christmas holidays, she had already transferred some of his friends from Silverbridge to the Surtane Industrial School for Boys, so he wouldn’t be alone. His closest friend Peter was one of the transfers. He’d learn a musical instrument there as well, and be in the band. He’d be well looked after, and most of all, he’d receive the discipline he desperately required. Sister Agnes handed her the stuff—comics, baseball cards, hard candies—she’d found hidden under his cot, told Marian to keep them at home. They wouldn’t be allowed at his new school. If all went well, after a year at the school, she’d be only too glad to relinquish her rights and send Adrian on to the Ellises.

             
At a special hearing, with Adrian present, Judge Moran agreed with Sister Agnes that at least one year at Surtane would be best for everyone. Marian stood in the court, protested that he was her child, that he belonged at home. The judge sentenced Adrian despite her pleas. He ordered Marian and Ben into his private chambers. There he told them that he had been advised to place the girl in a correctional school as well.

             
“The girl? What girl?”

             
“Your daughter, it appears, would benefit.”

             
Ben said, “We understand, but–”

             
“We understand? What? Ben! What do we understand?” Marian yelled.

             
“Let’s hear what Judge Moran has to say before we rush to any conclusions,” he snapped at her. He was fearful, the kind of fear that paralyzes, she knew this. He needed to listen thoroughly before replying. He needed the judge to know, too, that he was not a loose cannon; he was certain it was their only hope of saving Johanna.

             
“She’s made quite a few disturbing comments to her teacher, her principal, and to Sister Agnes,” Judge Moran said.

             
“Johanna?” Marian said in disbelief. “I don’t bloody understand what you’re saying.”

             
“Let’s listen to the judge, Marian,” Ben insisted.

             
Judge Moran looked down at his papers. “Apparently, last year or so, when interviewed, Johanna claimed your wife hit you over the head with a heavy object.”

             
“Hit my husband!” She turned to him for help. “It was the newspaper— tell him! I tapped you on the head with it! She’s just turned eleven, for heaven’s sake.”

             
“Calm down, Mrs. Ellis, or this conversation will end.”

             
“Quiet, Marian. Now,” Ben said.

             
Marian gave him a disgusted look.

             
“I understand you’re upset, but your daughter Johanna doesn’t understand all that’s happened in your past, and we wouldn’t want her harmed, so I would be willing to place her, as well, Mrs. Ellis, is what I am telling you,” Judge Moran repeated, with decreasing patience. “St. Mary’s for Girls down in Galway has available spots. She damaged church property and ran from the law.”