The Son of a Certain Woman (29 page)

“But you know what I see, Little Percy Joyce? I see a spoiled, coddled mommy’s boy whose mommy is glad Daddy is gone and doesn’t lose a second of sleep wondering why God has been so mean to her. I don’t know what your mother gives a damn about besides her Little Percy.

“I know she’s not the miserable, discarded woman His Grace thinks she is. Would she be married if not for you, Percy? Is it the prospect of having you as a stepson that keeps men away? His
Grace believes that, partly, your mother is reluctant to remarry because she’s afraid that a man who’s not your blood father would mistreat you. Perhaps he would. I’m sick and tired of you and I don’t even have to live with you.

“Somehow it doesn’t all add up, though. My vice-principal tells me that, for a woman with a problem child, Penny Joyce is pretty cheerful.” McHugh moved his head closer to mine. Blood pounded in my temples. I was terrified of what he’d say next and had no idea what my response should be. It occurred to me that he might be working up to telling me that he knew about my mother and Medina, that, contrary to their belief, Pops knew about them and had told him.

“Listen to me. Are you listening?”

I nodded. He moved away from the wall.

“I know how to hurt boys in ways that leave nothing but little red marks that can easily be explained away. It’s called ‘snapping.’ It’s not like getting strapped. Some boys think it’s worse. You’re about to get snapped.” I thought he had misspoken. “Yes, snapped,” he said. “Not strapped or stropped. That comes later. Snapped comes first. Do you know what it is?” I shook my head. “Every schoolboy except one as coddled and as spoiled as you knows what it is.”

His hand darting out so fast I couldn’t dodge it, he snapped my left eye, launching his index finger from his thumb. I stared at the floor through a blur of tears, feeling as though there were a million grains of sand behind my eyelid.

Still I thought this was some sort of prelude to strapping. I was certain I would be strapped, stropped, certain he would make minced meat of my hands and explain it to the Archbishop in some way that exonerated him, that would convince the Archbishop that I was a lost cause who had made many look like fools. I foresaw the end of Uncle Paddy’s patronage and protection, the start of open season on Percy Joyce.

But the “snapping” continued. He “snapped” each of my earlobes. It felt as if he were holding a match to them. I covered them with my hands. He snapped me in the diaphragm with such force I couldn’t breathe. I had to fight to keep from throwing up. He flicked the head of my dick with his finger as precisely as if its location were traced on the outside of my slacks. A sickening ache shot all the way to my stomach. I almost puked. I grabbed my crotch with both hands and would have doubled over had he not prevented it by cupping my chin in his hand. With his other hand he pulled my hands apart.

He snapped my left nut. Even as I was doubling over with pain, it occurred to me that he had been using that index finger of his on boys for years, so casually adept he was at hitting just the right spot. He snapped my septum and my eyes and nose watered freely, my nose stinging so I thought it must be bleeding.

“That’s what I can do by barely lifting a finger,” he said. “Think about that. Remember it. You’d best keep this little dust-up to yourself. His Grace would never believe you if you told him what I did. And he’d know that I’d never make up those things you said about me.”

I squinted, pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, which felt as if they would otherwise have popped straight out of my head. “Say one word and I’ll start all over again,” he said. “Understand?”

Hands still pressed to my eyes, I nodded my head. He pulled my hands away from my face. I saw him through a reddish blur of tears. He gave me a plaid handkerchief. “Clean yourself up,” he said. “You look even worse than usual.” I wiped my eyes, my running nose, my face. “Fold the handkerchief and tuck it neatly in my jacket pocket, all the way in where no one can see it.” I did as he told me.

“Now follow me. There’s something at the school that you should see.”

“Are you going to strap me?”

“Follow me.”

At the end of the tunnel, there was an iron door that read: “Brother Rice High School. Please lock the door behind you.”

He put the key into the lock. “Who said anything about strapping? Though I must say, you’re quite the little crybaby, aren’t you? The other boys take their punishment like men. But you will always be your mommy’s little boy. ‘Little Percy’ she’ll be calling you when you’re thirty-five and she’s still wondering if your diaper might be of better use if she put it on your head.”

I felt myself turning crimson with shame from head to toe. He opened the door. Directly in front of us was a set of steps that led up to what I assumed was the bottom floor of Brother Rice. On our right, a closed door read: “Quarters of the Christian Brothers of the Mount: Absolutely No Admittance.” McHugh opened the door and eased me through, his manner now relaxed, his expression one of faint amusement.

We were in a narrow, barely lit vestibule of some kind, facing an elevator door above which a panel was numbered from one to eight. McHugh pressed the button and the door opened abruptly. “After you,” McHugh said with a mock flourish of his hand. He followed me into the elevator, which was lined with imitation wood panelling. “Press eight,” he said. I pressed the button and the elevator slowly rose, shuddering slightly each time we passed a floor. When the eight above the door lit up and the door slid open, I saw what looked like the corridor of a cheap hotel; on the floor was a light blue carpet that set off to garish advantage the lemon-coloured walls.

“Follow me,” he said again as he slowly turned left and sauntered down the corridor with his hands in the pockets of his slacks, whistling with his gum still in his mouth.

There were no doors, it seemed, but at last we reached one. There was nothing written on it, not even a number. With a key
much smaller than the tunnel door keys, he opened the door to what he said was his “suite. “I have the whole eighth floor to myself, so to speak.” He sounded boastful. “There’s nothing else up here but storage space.”

The suite was more expensively decorated and furnished than our house—two leather sofas, a gleaming cherry wood dining-room table, overhead a grapnel-like chandelier. There was a framed copy of da Vinci’s
Last Supper
on the wall above the couch, stretching from one armrest to the other. On the wall opposite, there was a silver-framed certificate of some kind, a citation of service perhaps, that bore what I recognized as the official stamp of the Vatican. Although I saw but one room of it, I could tell the suite was small, smaller than his office, where, for reasons I had never considered but now understood, he spent so much of his time. The suite was too cramped, even for a single person.

The floor was made of hardwood that gleamed as if it had just been polished. I detected the smell of some sort of detergent; it seemed the place had been cleaned just before my “visit.” I pictured one of the Presentation nuns on her hands and knees, doggedly scrubbing the floor with both hands beside a pail of grey soapy water. There were many small crucifixes on the walls or on wooden stands on the two coffee tables—silver, bronze, marble, wooden crucifixes—as though a collector of them, a hobbyist who sought them out, lived here. But there were no depictions of the Sacred Heart or the Blessed Virgin Mary.

“The living room,” he said. “Now you’ve seen more of where I live than most people have.” The only other door to the room was shut. I assumed it led to his bedroom.

On the far wall was a large south-facing window. “Take a look,” he said.

I went to the window and noticed first the distant view—St. John’s, the part of it to the east of downtown, the brightly coloured houses of the Battery, Signal Hill topped by Cabot Tower, the
grey Atlantic whose whitecaps were lopping through the Narrows, causing the hull of a small outbound ship to rise and fall as though it was deadlocked with the current. I looked down at a sharper angle and saw, first, Bonaventure Avenue and, second, our house, the red and green facade of 44, the leaf-strewn veranda, the massive Block out front. I could see straight into the kitchen, which was unoccupied, and almost straight into the living room, where I saw my mother typing at the Helm, a cigarette in her mouth. McHugh stood beside me, the sleeve of his jacket touching mine, the two of us sharing the view in a manner so seemingly congenial it was as if the “snapping” had never happened—though every part of me that he had snapped still ached or burned.

“That’s Mom,” I said, pointing. She was wearing a pink blouse and her hair was pinned up behind.

“Yes,” McHugh said. “That is your mother. There she is, beavering away to buy men’s gloves and boots for those paddles you call hands and feet. I sometimes, when I happen to look out, see her at that table, or in the kitchen. The view at night is especially good. I’ve seen Medina Joyce, I’ve seen our Vice-Principal MacDougal in his chair, with his back to all of you as if he’s been punished and put in the corner. And, of course, I’ve seen you.”

“I didn’t know where you lived,” I said. “I mean, which floor you lived on or which side of the Quarters.”

“I’ve lived here since before you were born. Then I used to watch the deacons come and go with their duffle bags. Your mother wore a bathrobe, a black bathrobe, when she worked back then, and when she met those young men at the door. But now she dresses like someone who deals with the public even though it’s always the same old man who comes by to fetch things from her. Why is that? It seems like it should have been the other way around, don’t you think? Proper businesswear for those poor young deacons and a bathrobe for a man too old to give a damn about a woman like your mother.”

I said nothing for fear of setting him off.

“Whenever you look out your kitchen window at night and you look up and see that the lights on the top floor are on, you’ll know I’m home, still up, still wide awake. I stay up late. I don’t sleep very well, sometimes. My job is always foremost in my mind. It’s possible that, some night when you look up here, you’ll see me standing at the window. If you do, wave to me. I’ll wave back. Just like two close friends.”

“Why did you make all the boys think you were going to strap me?”

“The boys jumped to their own conclusions. I never said a word about strapping you, did I?”

“No, but—”

“Not even in the tunnel, when there was just the two of us, did I say I would strap you, let alone do it, did I?”

“No, but you snapped me.”

“I have no idea what you mean. I was angry with you. The other boys saw that. His Grace hasn’t forbidden me from getting angry with you. But I didn’t do anything to you. Can you prove that I did? You already look—well—you look like your old self again.”

“You hurt me.”

“I had to drag you to get you out of harm’s reach. The things those boys were saying, the way they were ganging up on you—I had to get you out of there as fast as I could. I’m sorry I hurt your arm, but I couldn’t help it. I wouldn’t repeat those lies of yours to your mother if I were you. She’ll lose her temper again. His Grace has only so much patience.”

I knew he was right. My mother would almost certainly provoke some sort of showdown with McHugh that would imperil Uncle Paddy’s patronage of me.

“Why did you bring me up here?”

“I’ve seen where you live. I wanted you to see where I live.”

“Why?”

“It makes us even.”

“But you’ve never been
inside
our house.”

“Yes, I have. Once, when you and your mother went out, Vice-Principal MacDougal invited me over and showed me around. It’s a very nice house. More spacious than my suite, but not as well appointed. Tell your mother that.”

“I will. But she’ll be mad with Pops.”

“He’ll tell her that I called him and told him I was coming over and asked to be let in.”

“Is that true?”

“It might be. I can’t remember. But no harm’s done either way, right?”

“I suppose.”

“You let McHugh in here and didn’t tell me?”

“He showed up at the door when everyone was out. He knocked. What was I supposed to do? Send him away? He’s my boss.”

“Jesus,” my mother said over and over as she pulled the curtains on the Bonaventure-facing windows.

“Pulling the curtains shut in the afternoon will make him think we have something to hide,” Pops said, with a furtive glance at me.

“It will make him think
I
have something to hide,” my mother retorted. “Pops, I don’t give a damn about what McHugh thinks. But I can’t believe that he said what he said, that I don’t seem the least bit bothered that Jim Joyce ran off, that I don’t seem the least bit bothered about anything.”

“Then why close the curtains?”

“Because I don’t like being spied upon. I don’t like the idea that Big Brother McHugh is always watching. The eye in the sky that sees everything. Did you know his window was so high up and overlooked Bonaventure?”

“I had no idea. I’ve never been up there. He never mentioned it.”

“Jesus. Scaring the shit out of Percy. Hurting his arm. I’m sorry I hit that O’Keefe boy. I shouldn’t have. But I was face to face, for the first time, with what Percy has to go through every day. Why did McHugh take Percy up there? What point does he think he’s made?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why does he want us all to know he’s got his eye on us? You tell him everything that goes on here anyway.”

“I never volunteer anything. I just answer his questions.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“You should have let me go to St. Bon’s by myself,” I said. “Boys like O’Keefe never
do
anything to me. All they ever do is call me names. I’m used to it.”

“You shouldn’t have had to get used to it. And what was I supposed to do, with you coming home beat up like that?”

“All
you
ever do is make things worse because you lose your temper. Like you did with that stupid sermon. Like you did with Francine Dunne’s mother.”

“That’s because I just don’t know what the
fuck
it is I’m supposed to do with you.” She began to cry and laid her head on her arms, which were folded on the kitchen table.