The Whipping Club (32 page)

He and Johanna both snickered with that comment. “Be kind, now.”

             
“Have you never heard of a work in progress? Sure, Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Ma said with an Italian accent and her fingertips twirling in the air.

             
“Lucille Ball herself, right here in the flesh,” Da said.

             
“I should say not. Lucille Ball’d give her right arm to look like me.”

             
Da made a face at her like a chimpanzee and scratched under his armpit with his good arm.

             
“How is Gran?” Adrian asked.

             
“She sends you her love, and this.” She reached for her bag.

             
“We’re not allowed gifts, Ma, for the love of God! I’m begging you to follow the rules.” He turned his head around at Brother Ryder and felt a deep panic seeing him staring at their party. Ma put the wrapped package down.

             
“Bubbe sends her love, too,” Ben said.

             
“She does?”

             
“She doesn’t come round much, but–”

             
“I go to see her,” Johanna said. “Have sleepovers, go to
shul
with her and Da–”

             
“You look too thin, Adrian. Have another piece of chicken, please,” Marian said. “You, too, Peter. Come on boys, eat up.”

The two of them ate in a frenzy. “He’s missing a tooth, Ben,” Ma said.

             
“Can you keep your voice down, Ma?” Adrian said, looking

behind him at Brother Ryder for the umpteenth time.

             
Ben took his son’s chin in his hand.

             
“It fell out playing ball, Da.”

             
“You like sport, Mr. Ellis?” Peter quickly asked. “You enjoy rugby, sir?” Adrian noticed a few of the boys tossing a ball around outside with their fathers.

             
“Of course, son. The games are good, Peter. I should have brought a ball but with the bad arm.”

             
Adrian could tell Da regretted that he hadn’t thought to plan an activity for father-son time.

             
“With the bad arm, even writing’s a struggle, so ball is out of the question,” Da said.

             
“The arm’s getting better, though, isn’t it?” Ma said.

             
Da shrugged. “I guess so,” he answered, seeming a bit annoyed by her diagnosis.

             
“I’ve brought you a cap, Adrian,” she said, putting it on him. “You can use it to bat away these flies,” she added, waving her hands around to keep the insects off the food.

             
Adrian eyeballed her underneath the hat and could only hope that she understood that he was worried about what would happen to him and Peter in Surtane. And then he stared into the drive, and then back at her, hoping that she understood he wanted out.

Brother Mack startled Adrian, who was atop an old ladder washing the highest windows of the stone chapel.

             
“Those windows look clean enough, I’d say. Wouldn’t you?”

             
Adrian came down off the unsteady rungs. “I’d say so myself as well, sir. I’ll give the floor a proper scrub.”

             
“You can scrub, and I’ll sit and read my Bible. We’ll have our own private confirmation class,” he added, a smile crossing his face.

             
Brother Mack wished Adrian had been sent to the O’Brien Institute, which catered to the upper m
iddle class, or to St. Vincent
Orphanage for boys from middle-class families. He knew from his file that his parents were not working class poor. As it was, he would learn no trade but kitchener here, thanks to Ryder. A right bastard Brother Ryder had been when Adrian had asked for the timber trade. It was Brother Mack’s opinion that Eddie Ryder desperately needed to put in for a transfer.

             
“If you remember one thing from this Bible, remember all things come to good for those who love the Lord,” he said. “Now, you might think differently. You might think you don’t care a hoot about studying or thinking or listening, and scrubbing these floors is bad enough without listening to me go on. You might be thinking that. It’s all in the way you’re looking at a thing.”

             
Adrian gave him another nod.

             
“There’s good in everything; even if you can’t find it, it’s there. God will make something good from it. You have to have the right attitude, I suppose is what this is saying here. Many roads, but they’re all going to the same place.”

             
Adrian didn’t seem to know what he was talking about. Mack wondered if Adrian thought about what possible good could come from what was being done to Peter. Each day his friend was growing weaker, quieter, keeping more to himself. Adrian left the dirty bucket in the aisle by the third row and accepted the Brother’s invitation to sit beside him.

             
“You probably don’t want to read this, so we’ll just sit and talk. Tell me about your sister.”

             
“I don’t mind; I love reading. Johanna has a pink room, a tall bookshelf painted pink, too. Stuff
ed animals and loads of books.
Listening to her reading aloud
Blyton’s First Term at Malory Towers
and the “Teddy and Cuddly” magazine stories is great. Just thinking about her smooth talking leaves me embarrassed.”

             
“The pen is mightier than the sword,” Brother Mack continued. “You may not understand the logic of such a thought or what relevance it has.”

             
“A gifted thought it is,” Adrian said. “Brother Tyrone says this all the time. A gifted thought, he says, when we talk about life. And I’ll not play the judge, another gifted thought you’ve taught me.”

             
“And how is it in the kitchen? How is Brother Tyrone treating you?”

             
“He’s lovely. A good man. Very smart, too. Kitchen work is grand. I’m never hungry.”

             
He was stealing hot baked loaves for him and Peter, slipping them up his sleeves since the first day. Brother Mack knew but did not say.

             
“Brother Mack, do you think you might try again to transfer Peter into the bakery, sir?”

             
“And what do you think might happen if the two of you are

always together?” He rested his arm around the back of the pew.

             
“I’d be glad to switch with him and work the timber trade, and have him work in the bakery. I’m worried, sir, for Peter. He’s in poor health, sir,” he added.

             
“We’ll see what can be done.”

             
Adrian’s nerves skidded as the heavy chapel door swung open and Brother Ryder marched in. He jumped up, went for his mop.

             
“Have you not finished the floor?”

             
“Leave him alone. You could eat off these floors. We’ve just been talking.”

             
Brother Ryder peered at the two of them. “Talking again, is it,” he said, lingering for a moment. “About what?”

             
“We just thought we’d ask once again if Peter might join Brother Tyrone’s crew as a Kitchener.”

             
Brother Ryder shook his head.

             
“Well, I better go,” Brother M
ack sighed, closing his Bible.
“I’m on duty at the playing fields.”

             
After Mack left, Brother Ryder felt the familiar urge come over him and he remembered Peter was alone in his bed. No way to put the brakes on, he’d once heard a drunk use that phrase, and he understood what that meant. He knew the pattern: the guilty act,

exhaustion, sleep. Sometimes, after an incident, he awoke with a heaviness in the head and unsure of what exactly had taken place.

             
“I’ll go and have a word with
Peter,” he muttered to himself
and left.

Johanna ran the tap over the dishes still in the sink. Ma was throwing her a party, she’d announced last week, for no reason. Because. Jo knew the party was intended to fix their family.

             
“Da will be here any minute with Bubbe and those Jewish children. And the twins, too—Ma! Look at me,” Jo cried suddenly.

“Ma, you never look at me!”

             
“What are you going on about, Johanna,” Ma said, squeezing her shoulders. “You look grand altogether. And, oh, here comes Gran.” Marian left the kitchen to answer the door.

             
“What about the plates sitting everywhere?” Johanna called after her. “The place is like Johnny foxes,” she muttered.

             
But she couldn’t blame Adrian, nor would she want to. She was confused lately, she told herself. Five months past her eleventh year she experienced “the chan
ge into womanhood.” Her mother
explained all about it, and about the “roller-coaster feelings” that accompany it. All without much sympathy, Johanna thought. She tied an apron around her waist and continued the relentless kitchen clean up.

             
Can’t Ma give me a break? This one day, my “party” day? Why
was Ma always such a big mess, she wondered. She hated her. Ma looked forward to her next visit to Surtane, she told Da last night, so her mind could rest. All she ever wanted to do was rest. Rest from nothing, Johanna thought, emptying bits of rashers and scrambled eggs into the trash and all Da’s damn cigarette butts smelling up the place.

             
“Could you please take out the bins, Ma? Hello, Gran.”

             
“
Conas ata tu
?” The old woman hefted a whole turkey in her arms. “How are you?”

             
Typical Gran, she walked right into the kitchen with an enormous bird she brought with her and opened the cooker to keep the turkey warm.

             
“I’m grand.”

             
Johanna watched her ma dutifully lift the dustbin, watched her through the kitchen window putting the garbage in the bin. After the slashing rain, everything looked speckled in mud; a late-planted morning glory added a lovely blue.

             
She wondered whatever happened to Ma’s blather just a couple of weeks ago, gushing over all the fancy table settings in her
Woman’s Week
magazine, ranting that she could make her a party every bit as chic as an American housewife. She was like the barber’s cat. Full of wind and piss. Talk, talk, talk—about the garden, garden books everywhere, about ritzy garden parties that were not to be.

             
And Ma going on about how they’d buy a color television soon, and Watusi and funky chicken dance records, too. American mammies would not outdo her. Not Ma. We’ll keep up with the best of them, she said.
She’s become a dunderhead,
Johanna thought.

             
“Don’t be glum,” Ma said. “I’ll finish up in here. Go on with Gran into the living room. Put on the Beatles. Enjoy your party.”

             
“
My party?
What are you talking about, Ma?”

             
Johanna slipped out back and clipped some yellow roses for the hall table. She wondered sometimes what Da had seen in her ma, he being so different. Even with his arm, he found time to watch her tennis lessons and listen to her schoolyard antics, so caring and interested in everything she did.

             
“The door knocker,” Gran said.

             
Johanna touched her dark wilting curls as she opened the door to see her pals Anna and Rona standing there. They gaped at each other and then at her. Here she was, wearing velvet-striped bell-bottoms. Paul McCartney himself would have been impressed. They jumped up and down in delight, and Johanna straightened her black velvet choker with the gold peace emblem sewn into the middle.

             
Just then Da and Bubbe pulled up and out of the car came three boys and three girls, all dressed in fancy clothes.

             
“Hullo,” Johanna said and smiled at the ones she recognized. She never before saw such big ribbons stuck like paper airplanes into girls’ hair. All of them in puffy dresses, too. They looked like a confirmation class, except for the two boys sporting the spiffy Davy Crocket raccoon hats.