“Ah,” she said, waving a hand disgustedly. “Too puritan for your own good.” She stood up slowly, holding her left side, and went to the cupboard, where she extracted a forty-ounce bottle of rum. “Drop o’ this will fix what ails ya.”
“I don’t drink.” He found his gaze transfixed by the way the sun illuminated the copper-coloured drink through the thick glass. It looked so beautiful and harmless, like fairy juice. His mother and grandmother had been warning him away from liquor since he was old enough to know what it was.
She pulled down two shot glasses and filled both, setting one on the table in front of him. “Drink up.” She sat down and lowered down her drink, sucking in hard and hollowing her cheeks as if her lungs were on fire. She exhaled like a dragon. “Your turn.”
He stared at the glass, caressing it with one doubtful finger.
“Pick it up.”
Before she could say another word, he picked it up and brought it to his lips. He could feel her dark-blue eyes urging him. “Drink!”
He tipped up the glass until the warm liquid touched his lips, washed over his tongue and slid down his throat, on its way to the coils of his stomach. The explosion of heat radiated his entire being, inside and out. Immediately, he wiped sweat from his forehead. Encouraged by the originality of the experience, he sipped again and sat quietly, waiting to be struck by a bolt of lightning or for his mother to come bursting through the door, screaming eternal damnation.
“It’s good,” he said when it was all gone.
“I told you.”
He could barely hear what she was saying. The room looked slightly fuzzy around the edges, and the ceiling seemed to have lowered to within his reach, while the floor had risen to meet him. He felt he had outgrown the room, with a body too large for the chair and arms too long for his body.
“Whenever you wants another drop, you just come on over and Bridie’ll fix you with a drop o’ the devil’s cure. Okay?”
He nodded. Meanwhile, he continued to sit and talk to her about everything he thought was wrong with school, his parents, the whole time wishing he could have another drop of the demon rum. Somewhere along the way, he picked a cigarette out of her pack and lit it. His first drag inspired him to start hacking, but he managed to stay seated and to let it burn down between his fingers while he occasionally inhaled.
Then Morgan came in, still wearing that red dress that made her look like a girl from the Sears catalogue. “What are y’all talkin’ about?”
“Life,” said Miss Bridie. “Siddown and have a drink with us.”
She studied her mother’s face, the cigarette between Finton’s fingers, and then the bottle, which she snatched from the table and carried with her as she turned and bolted upstairs. She halted on the second step and called out, “Finton, can I see you in my bedroom for a few minutes? I have something to show you.”
The boy and the older woman exchanged glances. Miss Bridie just waved her hand dismissively. “Go on, b’y. We’ll catch up later on.”
Up the staircase, Finton followed the red dress.
“Close the door,” Morgan said when they were inside her bedroom, which smelled like lavender perfume.
There was only a small single bed and a white chest of wooden drawers with a mirror. Beside the bed sat a white chamber pot that reminded him of the one his grandmother kept by her own bedside. Along the ceiling were several wooden beams. He couldn’t help imagining her swinging from one, eyes wide open as she tried to die.
Because the sunlight didn’t reach this part of the house, Morgan’s room was darker than downstairs, the only brightness emanating from the window beside the bed. He stood with his back to the door, watching her and surveying the backyard. Outside, he could see the marshy bog alongside the swollen river and the dirty, white diaper waving from a branch.
She stepped out of her shoes, then turned around and pointed to the zipper of her dress. “Come help.”
Legs suddenly numb, he stumbled forward and seized the tiny zipper between his fumbling fingers. A pang of nervousness seized his stomach. He hesitated.
“What are you doing?” Morgan asked.
“Nothing.” He sniffed once and licked the dryness from his bottom lip. He pulled the zipper down slowly across the curve of her spine so that she seemed to spill out of it like a ripe fruit. Her flesh was the whitest he had ever seen.
She reached up to her shoulders and stripped the red dress to her bony hips, then skimmed it the rest of the way to the floor. She gently stepped out of the garment and, with one bare foot, shoved it aside. Sensing the immorality of his gaze upon her nearly naked body, Finton focused on the pool of scarlet fabric lying on the floor, gleaming and empty.
She wheeled around to face him, a strange, beseeching look in her eyes that he’d seen only in black and white movies starring Ingrid Bergman. “Well.” She planted her hands on those alluring hips, and again he licked his dry lips. “What do you think?” There was a smile in her voice that frightened him. Her belly was white, so soft-looking that he yearned to reach out and touch it, run his fingers down over it, lean forward and kiss it. She was standing before him in only her white bra and underwear, and he felt himself changing. Embarrassed, he turned towards the window.
“Finton?”
He forced himself to look at her again and was glad of his willpower, for he’d never seen anything like her before. In some ways, he had always seen her like this—she’d merely adapted to his daydreams. And yet, there was something changed in her too, as if she was no longer the Morgan who had once been his babysitter or the girl next door, nor even the one who had tried to burn her mother’s house to the ground. This was a brand new Morgan—one who would not be contained or put back in the box when he was done with her—or, more to the point, when she was done with him. “I shouldn’t be here,” he said, surprising himself with the ability to speak.
She stepped forward and took his hand. She kissed one of his fingers, then took the same finger in her mouth and slid it in and out between her lips. She pressed his other hand to her left breast and, at the very same moment, he felt something let go inside of him—as if his soul had popped out of his body. At first, he thought he had peed in his pants, but quickly recognized it as something else, warm, sticky, and messy. “Oh God,” he said, backing away, taking his hands with him. “I got to go.”
“I won’t hurt you,” she said, reaching towards him with naked arms like branches of the whitest, rarest tree and luring him back inside. He shut the door gently, worried that Miss Bridie would hear the sound of his acquiescence. He didn’t like the idea that she was down there at the kitchen table, laughing to herself at the frailty of his soul.
“Stay with me.” The young woman spoke in a comforting voice that weakened his knees and rendered his flesh pliable, his spirit malleable. “I’ll make a man out of you.”
Her words reminded him of the difference between them—she twenty-four and he almost thirteen. Lying on top of her, with her hands down his pants, he felt like a little boy, and he knew he would never want to leave this bedroom or her.
He quickly discovered that Morgan was hungry and that he—his flesh, his cock, his very breath—was her sustenance. When he was inside her, she grabbed his bum and pulled him deeper, never getting enough, needing more from him than he was able to give. She wrapped her legs around his, pulling him tighter, bringing him further than he thought was possible. For him, there was plenty of Morgan—she gave him life, restored his soul, made him feel as if all that existed before this moment was vacant and dull. When he entered her, the world expanded and contracted all at once. When he pulled himself from her, he felt empowered, ready for battle.
When they were finished, he was energized and hungry. He had done what she’d asked, been what she commanded. But when they were lying together in the grey afternoon light, she’d started to laugh. Her face had changed, too, and her features had hardened like clay, with thin cracks appearing at the corners of her eyes and mouth. He
touched her right breast, drawing a finger gently around the curve, allowing his thumb to stray to her nipple. She didn’t flinch, but laughed again. “That was fun,” she said. “Bet you can’t wait to tell your mother about this.” She’d instantaneously transformed from a goddess into a wicked girl who had torched her mother’s house and stabbed her—a thought with a certain reality attached, which suddenly appalled the most decent part of him. Even as he scrambled out of her bed, he was uncertain of the nature of what they’d done, but he knew they could never do it again.
Fortunately, Miss Bridie was in the living room, probably snoozing, so he scrambled out the door as quick as he could. As he ran home, tucking his shirt into his pants, Morgan’s laughter still rang in his ears like the most awful church bell he could imagine, signaling the funeral for a friend who’d been indispensable to his survival and sanity. The laughter dissipated as he came closer to home, but all he could think about was how ashamed of him his mother and grandmother would be, particularly in light of the fact that he’d forgotten his underwear. There was no doubt that leaving his shorts tangled up in Morgan Battenhatch’s bedclothes would get him excommunicated.
Trying to master his panic, Finton ceased running. Tried to breathe. He gazed up at the bungalow atop Moon’s Lane, drew a long, deep breath and resolved to complete the walk with dignity. He’d barely begun strutting up the hill when he tripped on a rusted fender that had been lying on the same spot for so long it had become part of the environment and now seemed deliberately placed there to punish him on that day. Blood spilled from the cut like wine from a chalice and, even in that moment, he recognized the necessity for sacrifice, even if he wished it were otherwise. Falling to one knee, he tried to press the gash closed and cried out for his mother. But no one heard him. No one came running. He clamped both hands around the wound and tried to imagine the Planet of Solitude. He focused hard on comets, stars, and the apple tree. But when he opened his eyes, he knew he hadn’t gone anywhere. Disappointed, he stood up. Blood trickled down his leg, drenching his sock and tainting his shoe as he limped up the lane.
When he finally got inside, he could barely contain his tears. His mother was on the telephone. Her eyes widened as she gazed at his bloody leg. “What did you do?” She clamped a hand over her mouth, the other over the receiver. “Father Power is on the phone. He wants to see you.”
Finton groaned, suspecting trouble. After a few more words to the priest, Elsie hung up the phone and dashed towards her son, swearing over and over, “My sweet, sweet Jesus.” She pushed up the ripped leg of his trousers to reveal his wound. “Oh Jesus, Finton—what are you after doin’ to yerself?”
“What does Father Power want?” he asked, all the while thinking that all of this was God’s punishment. Although Morgan could certainly bear some of the blame, he should have been able to resist temptation. Jesus was in the desert forty days and forty nights, and, despite hunger and thirst of the highest order, still managed to spurn the devil. Finton Moon was confirmed by the bishop one minute and the next minute lying naked with the girl next door. Some prophet. Some priest he would make.
While his mother retrieved supplies from the bathroom—ointment, gauze, and white hospital tape—his grandmother haunted the entrance between the kitchen and living room, shaking her head while stringing the rosary beads through her hands. She wasn’t speaking, but her lips kept moving.
Elsie came back with a pan of water and laid it beside the chair. “Take off your pants and put your foot in this while I clean your leg.”
He remembered his mislaid underwear. “I can just roll it up.”
“That’ll cut off your circulation.” As she squat down and waited for him to undo his pants, for reasons only a mother would know, she also sniffed his shirt. “Why do you smell like smoke?”
“That’s why.” He motioned his hand toward his father, who had emerged from the living room, smoking a cigarette.
“What’s going on?” he asked, but the way Tom scrutinized Finton made him wonder if he knew.
“I cut myself on an old car part.” Finton motioned towards his bandaged leg.
“Why don’t you just heal yourself?”
Everyone looked at him then. Even his brothers had emerged from playing records in the bedroom to lay eyes on the unexpected scene that posed disturbing questions. “Yes, come to think on it,” said Nanny Moon. “Why is the healer not healed?”
He was grateful for the distraction, but Finton was unable to think of an answer.
His excommunication would happen on the same day as his Confirmation. Anyone could see it and know he deserved it.
Father Power had mentioned to Bishop Connor about the boy who was rumoured to heal the sick and make the lame walk. “If so many people are talking about it,” the bishop had said, “it’s time for you to have a talk with him.” The priest asked Elsie if it would be all right for Finton to join him for supper that evening.
“I’ll go with him,” Tom said. “One of us has to.”
Nanny Moon had argued until her face was a faint shade of purple that it was her right to go with Finton because she was the most churchgoing of the Moons, as well as the oldest. But Tom had countered that he was the boy’s father and that was that.
“Well, Jesus did go among the sinners,” Nanny Moon mused and reluctantly agreed, but she still spent the rest of the afternoon sulking.
Meanwhile, Finton couldn’t guess why he’d been invited, but he was suspicious it had something to do with the Confirmation debacle.
“I don’t know what to wear,” he said, his foot still soaking.
“Father Power won’t care as long as you’re clean.” His father lit a cigarette, puffed and squinted. “Are your underwear good?”
“These are the only pants I got and they’re all bloody.” Finton then proclaimed what everyone had been waiting for: “I’m not going.”
“But the parish priest is expecting you!” Nanny Moon scowled. “You wouldn’t put off supper with the Lord if he asked.”
Finton stood up in the pan of water, sloshing it enough that it threatened to overspill its plastic sides. “He’s not the Lord. He’s only a priest.”
“Jesus have mercy on your soul.” Nanny Moon blessed herself furiously. “You used to be such a good boy.” She glanced at Elsie and murmured, barely loud enough for Finton to hear. “I expect that’s his other side comin’ out.”
“That’ll be enough o’ that kind of talk,” Elsie scolded as she urged him to lift his foot out of the pan and into the towel she held forth. He slipped, but his mother caught him and patted his foot and his leg dry one at a time. “Finton, you’re just gonna have to wear the pants you got on.”
“I could wear my jeans,” he said hopefully.
Even as she murmured the “Our Father,” Nanny Moon’s eyes bulged as if she might have a stroke, although she constantly amazed Finton with her skill at upholding her part in a conversation while praying. “Jesus didn’t wear jeans when he gave the Sermon on the Mount. Or when he turned the money-lenders out of the temple.”
“No,” said Tom. “He probably wore the same ratty, old robe he always wore. No shoes either.”
“No shoes, no shirt, no service,” Clancy laughed from behind his father.
“You’re all going to hell.” Nanny Moon shook her head sorrowfully, still counting her beads.
“I’ll just wear these,” Finton announced, unrolling the hem of the pants he was wearing. He winced as he pulled the cloth down over his injured leg, wondering why, indeed, he hadn’t been able to heal himself.
As they cruised along in silence, Finton found himself thinking about the morning and afternoon he’d had—a strange confirmation, followed by his first taste of sex. His body still thrummed with the memory of his orgasm, an ejaculation that had taken just a few seconds. They didn’t have to wait long for his second coming either, or even his third. Each time, Morgan had looked as if she was both doing him a favour and devouring his soul. Only now in the qu
iet of the car, alongside his father, could he recall the details, and the more he thought about it, the prouder he was. He had been so scared, both during and after, but now he wanted to scream to the whole world that he’d lost his virginity.
“Doin’ okay there?” Tom asked.
“Yup.”
“Don’t be too nervous now. He’s only a man.”
Finton was relieved that his father couldn’t read his mind. “So why did you want to come with me?”
“Be serious, b’y.” Tom smiled mischievously. “Sending you down there with religious people, with either your mother or Nanny Moon to protect ya? That’d be like sending the wolves to guard the lambs from the lions.”
As Finton pondered what his father meant, Tom turned on the car radio, and “Superstition” blared at them. They both reached for the volume knob, but Tom smiled and relented as Finton turned it up. The same song was still playing when they pulled into the driveway. The evening was darkening, so the lights were turned on in the priest’s house, which had been built adjacent to the church, down a long, straight driveway a couple of hundred yards from the beach. The huge white building was three times the size of the Moon bungalow, with an extra story and a massive foundation. It was a spectacular sight, rising up from the rocks with the mountains as a backdrop and the ocean practically bordering the front yard. The priest’s door boasted a brass doorbell—a feature lacking from most other houses in Darwin. Finton had seen them only on TV.
Millie, the middle-aged housekeeper with her hair in a bun, answered the door and greeted them warmly before leading them into the parlour where the priest was watching television in denim jeans, powder-blue short sleeves, and a thin white collar. The casualness was startling, like seeing his mother in her underwear.
Father Power rose quickly and extended his hand to Tom, who shook it heartily despite being surprised by the gesture. Nanny Moon would be proud, Finton thought.
Father Power asked what they thought of the cold weather they were having.
“Makes me want to go someplace warm,” Tom said and cleared his throat.
Finton Moon Page 20
