The Son of a Certain Woman

by Wayne Johnston

  “He’s not disfigured.”

  Sometimes they objected to my mother being single.

  “Engagement is not a sacrament,” a priest said to her after I was born. “You’re free to marry.”

  “Or not to marry.”

  “Don’t you want what’s best for Percy?”

  “The two of us are looked upon as damaged goods. The men who come sniffing around aren’t looking for marriage.”

  “I don’t think everyone regards you as damaged goods. There are men—”

  “Yes, I’m sure there are, but I don’t share your opinion that any husband is better than none at all.”

  “I was thinking of someone in particular—”

  “A widower from the Holy Name Society?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. A good man. You should resume the sacraments.”

  My mother grew so weary of these weekly chastisements that she stopped going to church altogether. Eventually the priests stopped coming to 44. I knew early in life that Penelope Joyce was more or less universally regarded as a lost cause.

  Pops tried to cheer me up by enumerating people from history and literature who had overcome disfigurements and physical limitations to accomplish great things. My mother told Pops she doubted that telling me my stain was “nothing” next to the disfigurements of others—real or fictional—would do me any good. She said that surely there were greater things I could aspire to than not being Quasimodo.

  My mother, because she said this sort of thing in public and was seen arriving home laden with library books, was looked upon as a know-it-all, which is to say someone who not only put on airs by conspicuously pretending to know it all but also—never mind the contradiction—did know it all. Educated men were held in high esteem if their education was put to some practical, money-making, family-supportive use, whereas educated women, especially ones who looked like my mother, were said not to know their place and were not to be associated with by those who did. No amount of reading books or pretending to read them could make up for being an unmarried mother or being rewarded for promiscuity by having a child who looked like me, as if the sacrament of marriage would have healed me in her womb. “It doesn’t matter how many books I read,” my mother told me. “You’ll still be seen as a bastard and an eyesore and I’ll still be a woman whose big tits predetermined her to be a slut.”

  As you may have deduced by now, my mother was an autodidact. Though a grade ten dropout, she could probably have overseen the studies of graduate students in half a dozen disciplines.

  Second-hand books, library books, hardcover, paperback and pocket editions lay haphazardly scattered on almost every flat surface—floors, tables, countertops, chairs, even beds. Our house looked as if whatever else went on in 44 was incidental to the reading of books. There were books whose covers had been scorched by cigarettes, mementoes of near-miss house fires, books stained with the bottoms of cups and beer bottles, smeared with ashes, sweat-stained with handprints, fingerprints. It looked as if we were not so much readers as we were hoarders of books. Pops and Medina nudged them aside to make room for their ashtrays, beer bottles, dinner plates and elbows as if the books were nuisances to which they were trying to adapt for my mother’s sake, for she was the only one who read them. (Pops said that he had once been a “great reader” but no longer had the “inclination” for it.) She owed a fortune in library fines, but no one else ever asked to borrow the kinds of books she liked, so the librarians forever deferred payment. I went with her to the Gosling Library on Duckworth Street where the librarians always smiled at me, so I may have been another reason that they more or less let her keep her books indefinitely.

  Pops won her over to what she called the “look-what-Percy’s-peers-have-accomplished” strategy of consoling me for my face and hands and feet. She helped me bone up on the freaks of life and literature—Helen Keller, the Elephant Man, countless circus sideshow geeks, the “long-conked” Cyrano de Bergerac who, she told me years later, tried to fuck women to ecstasy with the very nose that prevented him from going down on them. As if she had not chastised Pops for doing so, she invoked the hunchbacked, bell-ringing Quasimodo of Notre-Dame, as well as the limping, lisping, far-too-slowly-dying Tiny Tim Cratchit, and Shakespeare’s misshapen murderer of twin princelings, Richard III. And Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, who, at the end of the book, lit out for some Arctic place that sounded much like Newfoundland.

  “Books, books and more books,” Pops said as he surveyed the house. “A teacher dismayed at the sight of books,” my mother said, looking at Medina, hoping to coax a laugh from her, but it never worked, for Medina, who couldn’t read or write, regarded my mother’s books much as Pops did—as other people would a rival lover. My mother said she placed as many of the books face up as she could because it made them easier to find. Pops complained of the treacherously cluttered floors, books that slid beneath your feet on the once-white shag carpet, and offered to buy her some bookshelves, but my mother declined. She would go about at bedtime in her bathrobe, which she held together at the throat and at the waist as, bent over, she peered to make out the titles, often picking up more books than she could hold in one hand, her robe falling open as she did so, revealing cleavage and brown thighs. I think she kept Medina and Pops at bay with books, kept them from her bed with this conspicuous show of book browsing, which as good as said she planned to read straight through the night. She said she was doing little more than what other people did with church prayer books, merely “following along,” but Pops said it seemed she meant to “follow along” from start to finish every book ever written.

  My mother read late at night in bed, sitting up, chain-smoking Rothmans. When my door was open, I could hear her striking matches, exhaling cigarette smoke with a kind of sigh, turning the pages of the book that lay open on her lap. I’d fall asleep and, waking up hours later, would hear the same sounds, only by now they’d be punctuated with a cough.

  I hopscotched from book to book, trying to see if I could cross a room without touching the floor. I always did it in bare feet, which stuck better to the books than shoes or slippers.

  Medina, who had dropped out of school halfway through third grade, glanced at me when the subject of her illiteracy came up. I could see that she felt especially ashamed in front of me. During her two and a half years in school, she had only gone to school about sixty days. “I spent most of my time at home taking care of my sick parents and Jim Joyce,” she said.

  “An urbane threesome, to be sure,” Pops muttered.

  I tried to imagine what it would be like, living in a place where I could speak the language, my language, but couldn’t read a word of it. Words were everywhere. Simple things, like street signs, shop windows, phone books, might as well have been written in Chinese. Medina had managed to master playing cards because they consisted of pictures and numbers. She had “picked up” rudimentary arithmetic so she could get by with groceries, denominations of bills and coins. Pops said she often didn’t know before opening the can what she was having for dinner because stores were forever altering the pictureless labels. “You don’t know what you’re having for dinner until Penny puts it in front of you,” Medina retorted. My mother functioned as a kind of telephone operator for Medina, who would call her to ask her to look up numbers she didn’t want to ask the operator for lest she be asked to spell someone’s name or that of a street. Also, Medina often came by with her mail so that my mother could sort through it for her, write answers when they were needed, fill out various official forms and applications, address envelopes. She brought her pill bottles so my mother could read the labels for her. “Penny knows more about me than I do,” she often said.

  “The world is anxiously awaiting her biography of you,” Pops quipped.

  My mother practically read the newspaper to Medina, the obits, the classifieds, advertisements—she clipped coupons. She scanned the entire paper every day to see if there was something in it that might be of interest or value t
o Medina. She was her personal interpreter, her tour guide through the foreign country of the printed word.

  But one evening, Medina told me that not being able to read didn’t mean she wasn’t smart. “If the two of us were in China,” she said, “I’d be leading you around by the hand.” She claimed to have learned to get by using tricks that Pops and my mother knew nothing about. “I might come in handy someday when you’re in real trouble, Pops.”

  “You’re right, Medina.” Pops was sitting, beer in hand, his back to the kitchen as usual. “Better to be illiterate than ill-prepared for a sudden relocation to China.”

  “Whatever you say, Pops.”

  “There’s no excuse in this day and age for not knowing how to read and write,” Pops said.

  “What excuse is there in this day and age for not knowing how to wash your underwear?” my mother asked. “For not knowing how to iron your clothes without setting them on fire? For not knowing how many slices of bread it takes to make a sandwich? You’re a man, Pops. It’s a permanent disability that half the world is born with.”

  “I was once as frequent a patron of the Gosling Library as you, Paynelope.”

  “Like patron saint?” Medina said.

  “No,” my mother corrected her, “not like patron saint. It has a different meaning. It means someone who frequents a particular place.”

  “Patron. I’m not calling anyone a patron,” Medina said. “No one says the patron is always right. They line up like customers, just like at Woolworth’s. That old buzzard who works there checks them out like customers. So Pen, did you wake up one morning with the urge to be a patron of the Gosling Library? It would be a lot more fun to be a patron of the East End Club. Jesus. Eight books a week.”

  “Tomes,” my mother said. “That’s what big books are called.”

  “It must be nice to know what things that people never talk about are called,” Medina countered. “What are small books called?”

  “There’s not really one word for them. Slim volumes, I suppose.”

  “Slim volumes. Hmmm. What good do you think reading all these books will do you? I never hear anyone who works at the hospital saying, ‘Oh my, Medina, it’s been a long day. I can’t wait to get home to my tome.’ Or, ‘What are you doing this weekend, Mary?’ ‘Well, my dear, there’s a slim volume with my name on it just waiting for me on the kitchen table.’ At work they never stop going on about it, the Gosling this, the Gosling that. It’s crazy on Fridays, everybody trying to get off early before the lineup at the Gosling starts. In the morning all you can hear is people talking about how they polished off too many tomes and what time they got to bed. Some of them can’t get through a day without a straightener, a few pages of a slim volume on the sly. You pick the hardest-looking books, Pen. Your books really look like books.” She picked up a large, thick, black book from the floor. “You could kill someone with a book this heavy. Look, it’s got a ribbon like a prayer book.”

  “It’s to mark your page,” my mother said, tugging gently on the ribbon. “It’s a book of poetry. A lot of the books are poetry anthologies. Or the collected works of one poet. Tennyson, for instance. This one is an anthology of nineteenth-century English poetry. I never liked poetry when I was in school, but I do now.”

  “Poetry? Like Valentine’s cards?”

  “More like … Shakespeare.”

  “Oh, Shakespeare. At work there’s no better way to start an argument than to mention Shakespeare. Pen, you’d be better off getting a good night’s sleep than staying up till dawn reading books.”

  “Some people go to university for ten years or more after they finish high school,” my mother said.

  “Yeah, doctors. I see them every day. They don’t see me.”

  “Not just doctors,” my mother said. “Professors who teach and write books about the books they read.”

  Medina sniffed. “Jesus, if you start writing books about books.…”

  “She’s merely trying to better herself,” Pops spoke up again from the sunroom.

  “Who will she be better than when she’s finished?”

  “She’s got a good head start on you.”

  “I never see you reading books, Pops,” Medina said. “What are you trying to do, worsen yourself?”

  “I’ve had my fill of books.”

  “So you’ve bettered yourself to the hilt, is that it?” Medina quipped. “You could read another thousand books and still show no improvement.”

  “The time comes when one gives up on books.”

  “I’ve often wondered what one does when the time comes.”

  “You haven’t forgotten the books you read, Pops,” my mother said. “You even quote them from time to time. And you almost always get my allusions.” She smiled at him. Medina’s colour rose and I watched her eyes dart back and forth between Pops and my mother.

  “He gets your what?” Medina asked.

  “Allusions,” Pops said. “Literary allusions.”

  “What the fuck are they supposed to be?”

  “Remarks about particular books,” my mother offered. “The characters in particular books. Lines from poems.”

  “It’s true,” Pops said. “I do get you, don’t I, Paynelope?”

  “You get her?”

  “I get her meaning.”

  “Well, I get her too, Pops. A lot.”

  “You’re secretly erudite?”

  “I’m secretly something, Pops. You can be sure of that.”

  “You’re the Abbott to my Costello. And I’m the Abbott to Paynelope’s Costello.”

  “I’ve heard of Abbott and Costello.”

  “Would you like to know who’s on first, what’s on second—”

  “What the fuck are you—”

  “Ceasefire!” my mother yelled.

  “See. She doesn’t even understand TV,” Pops protested.

  “I watch it when I’m here,” Medina said. “I haven’t got a TV. Don’t want one.”

  “That’s it,” my mother fumed. “Enough, enough, enough.”

  The three of them were silent for a while. I wondered if it would help if I said something.

  “So what happens when you run out of books, Pen?” Medina asked. “Do you get a Girl Guide’s medal or something?”

  “There are more books in the world than anyone has time to read. In university they keep track of what you read and write and give out what are called degrees. You can get a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree or a PhD.”

  “Pops, you’re a bachelor.” Medina grinned at him. “Whoever taught you how to be one must have really known their stuff.”

  “I spent one year at university,” Pops said. “That’s all you needed back then to be a high school teacher. Brother Rice’s principal, Brother McHugh, has a master’s degree in theology.”

  “Religion,” my mother said to Medina.

  “Oh my,” Medina said, “a master of religion, what does that mean now? He must have spent a long time bettering himself. What’s he better at than other people? My great-uncle was a master mariner. Never went to school in his life. All he could do was sail a ship across an ocean of ice without getting himself or other people drowned. But who would you rather have around in a storm at sea, a master mariner or a master of religion?”

  “You’re not a master of anything,” Pops said.

  “I’m better than you at talking. I can talk the arse off you.”

  “Whereas I must confess that, often though I’ve wished that I had seen the last of it, I could not with the help of ten men remove your arse from this house by any method, least of all talking, even though I pay for the beer you drink.” Pops went to his bedroom and closed the door.

  Medina sighed. “I don’t suppose you’ll ever give up on books, Pen.”

  “No. But I could teach you to read. You’re so smart. You’d learn quickly.”

  “So you keep saying. I’m not good enough the way I am, that’s what you think. I don’t want to know how to read an
d write. That’s what I keep saying.” She started to cry. She leaned her head on my mother’s shoulder. “Would you rather have a friend you could talk about books with?”

  “No, sweetheart,” my mother said, tenderly stroking her cheek and smiling reassuringly at me.

  “I can’t put things into words like you. Or even Pops.”

  “It’s not always bad to be lost for words. Besides, you have your own way with them.”

  “Oh fuck, look at me and look at you—”

  “Don’t you think Medina’s pretty, Perse?” My mother raised her eyebrows at me.

  “She’s really pretty,” I said quickly.

  And she was, in a way I see now but didn’t then. I haven’t done her justice yet. She had large brown eyes and the kind of ski-jump nose that these days some women pay plastic surgeons for; frank, lively, smart eyes that made her seem ever-vigilant, never at ease. She was big-boned but not fat, each of the features of her face and her body slightly out of proportion with the others, so that whatever she wore never suited more than part of her. A sweater that fit at the shoulders was too long at the hem. A skirt that was tight and flat at the front sagged in wrinkles at the back. It was as if her body had been well designed but badly made. Her chin moved from centre to left, centre to left, when she was nervous or upset. On a man such a chin would have been dismissed as weak, as pointing to some profound lack of assertiveness, self-confidence. But it made her seem endearingly genuine, incapable of swagger or feigned poise. By not trying to create an impression, she created a sweet one. She was exactly what, at first glance, she seemed to be.

  “She should be paying you for all you do for her,” Pops said when he came out of his room after the front door had banged shut behind Medina. “She takes advantage of you. You should charge her admission every time she comes to visit. Does she ever bring her own beer or thank me when she’s drinking one of mine? She treats the house as if it’s hers. I’ve never seen such disgraceful ingratitude. And you’re her only friend—”