Children in the Morning (14 page)

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?”

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“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 77

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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 78

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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.

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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 Saint 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.”

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“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?”

“Never mind. We’ll just wait. Maybe they’ll go away.”

“What seems to be the trouble here, lads?” That was Father Burke.

He went over to where they were standing.

“Nothing, Father,” Connor answered.

“Laurence’s brothers, would you be?”

“I’m Connor and this is Derek. We came to see Jenny and Laurence.”

“And somebody was bothering you on the way?”

“Just these guys who, well, I don’t know. It’s okay.”

“What is it?”

Father Burke just stood there looking at them. He’s used to making kids tell the truth. The two brothers shuffled their feet and looked at each other, then Connor said: “They followed us before.”

“Do you know who they are?”

“No. We don’t know them at all.”

“Have they said anything to you?”

Connor looked at Derek and then back at Father Burke. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t remember.”

You could tell Father didn’t believe them, but he didn’t say anything. He walked over to the door and went out. By this time Jenny was with the boys, and they all kind of huddled together. Father Burke came back in and said there wasn’t anybody out there.

“But it was true, Father! They were there,” Connor said.

“I know. How are you planning to get home today?”

They all looked at each other. “We’re going to walk. When Laurence and Jenny are finished.”

“Well, why don’t you treat yourself to some — what’s over there today? — banana bread and mango juice, and listen to your brother and sister play a couple of tunes. Then I’ll give you a ride home.”

“All of us?”

“I’ll not be leaving anyone behind.”

So they stayed and had something to eat, and heard some music.

Then all the parents came and picked up their kids. Daddy came to 81

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get me, so we went out with Father Burke and the Delaneys. He told Daddy he was driving them home, and he gave Daddy a kind of look that said:
There’s something going on here.
But Daddy didn’t ask.

Instead he said: “How many shoulder belts do you have in your car, Brennan?”

“Em, four.”

“And there are five of you getting in the car.”

“Right. I’ve never had more than four people before . . .”

“And you’re not going to now. Who wants to come with me and Normie?”

“I do!” Jenny said.

Daddy knows all the bad things that happen to people, like getting in accidents without seat belts on and getting murdered. And he goes to court for the very people who killed someone or let them in the car without their seat belts. I wouldn’t want to do his job.

“So you’ve got some more family members in the Four-Four Time program, eh, Jenny?” Daddy asked.

“No, those are just my brothers being chased by somebody.”

“Who’s chasing them?”

“I don’t know. Bad guys.”

“Kids or grown-ups?”

“Big kids.”

“Why are they after your brothers?”

“Nobody knows!”

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Chapter 7

(Normie)

Our baby was sick that night, and he was so bad Mum had to rush him to the hospital! He could hardly breathe. She stayed overnight at the iwk — that’s the name of the children’s hospital, and we’re lucky it’s not very far from our house. Tom got me up on time for school, and made breakfast for us both. When I got to school, I saw Father Burke with two priests carrying suitcases. They sounded like him with even more of an accent in their voice, so they must have been from Ireland, and all three of them were laughing. I ruined it for them. I couldn’t help it. I blurted out that Dominic was in the hospital. Father Burke had a big smile on his face but it disappeared in one second, and he looked shocked. He told the visitors that he would get Michael

— that’s Monsignor O’Flaherty — to show them around the church and school, because he had to leave. I went into my classroom then, and I figured he took off and went to the hospital. He really cares about the baby, and all of us. I told Mrs. Kavanagh in class about the baby, and she got the whole class to say a prayer for him.

And the praying worked, or maybe Dominic just got better 83

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enough to leave the hospital, because he was home when I got back from school in the afternoon. But he was still really sick, and stuff kept spewing out of his nose. He also had a little cough, which sounded cute, but you knew it was painful and he was upset. I kept wiping his nose, gently, with a Kleenex, and putting a cold face cloth on his forehead. There wasn’t much else we could do. So, after supper, Mum told me to go upstairs and write the story I was supposed to have passed in at school the day before. I went to my room and got my scribbler and pencil, and tried to figure out what kind of a story to write. It was supposed to be about a bird, but I didn’t feel like doing that, so I just kind of sat there. I’d rather write about a cat, or a little kid. Maybe a cat story with a bird in it, and the bird gets eaten early in the story and then I could write the rest of it about the kitty. I was just getting it figured out when I heard the doorbell, so I went to the front window to see who it was. Father Burke, with a bunch of books under his arm. He was probably on his way to teach a night class. I wanted to go to my listening post, but that made me feel guilty.