“Her father falled on the ground by Sullivan’s,” Sadie offered, trying to be part of the conversation. She put the broom away and found a blanket to cover Edna’s legs.
“Farley! Foolish gommel lives at the bootleggers, he do,” said her mother.
“What’s a gommel?” asked Sadie.
“He’s off his rocker, he is,” said Mabel, ignoring Sadie. “With a father like that, don’t know why they acts so high and mighty.”
“What’s his rocker?” Sadie asked, looking at her mother in the rocking chair.
“She means he’s not all there,” said her mother, pointing to her head. “Nuts.”
“Yeah,” said Mabel, “and the house is some dirty, even if they do got a toilet.”
“Who needs a toilet, anyway?” said her mother.
Sadie glanced out the window where the outhouse was partly hidden behind a row of trees. She’d been putting it off for the last hour. She hated going out there. It was always dirty and it smelled really bad. In the winter it was so cold she had a hard time doing her business once she got there. And in the summer there were flies everywhere, buzzing around the walls and the seat and in the hole. Sadie was always afraid one would fly up her bum. She didn’t like to think what would happen then.
Mabel crossed her arms. “I wouldn’t use one if I had one.”
Sadie looked at her sister like she was crazy. “I would. I’d use it all the time, even if I didn’t need to go. I’d sit there and read the catalogue. You’re nuts, Mabel.”
Sadie put on her coat and her rubber boots. Outside, she picked her way through the tall wet grass until she reached the outhouse. Flies buzzed a flitted around the door.
“I wish we had a toilet,” she said.
1999
Gerry puts his plate in the sink and looks out the window. The empty clothesline is a white streak across the yard, cutting the night sky in two. Past a bank of clouds, he sees her again, standing in the window. This new image, his first in five years, has hovered in his mind all evening, entering his consciousness unbidden at random moments. If he closes his eyes, he imagines he can feel her body, warm to the touch of his fingers.
“Come and sit, Gerard.” His mother’s voice is thick.
Every muscle in his body feels heavy, almost soggy from the mix of tea and beer and beans and turkey. Still, he’s in better shape than his mother. Her “come and sit” had sounded like something far less pleasant. “I’ve been sitting all day,” he says as he refills the kettle in hopes of getting another cup of tea into her, unspiked this time.
Gerry pours boiling water into the pot and adds three tea bags. His mother would normally object to such wastefulness – one bag is enough for the both of them in her mind – but she’s staring off into space, a spiteful set to her mouth. He opens a new can of Carnation and adds milk and sugar to two clean mugs, then fills them to the top with the strong, dark brew. “Here you go, a nice fresh spot of tea.”
Sadie blinks at the mugs. “Why you messing more cups?”
“That last bit of milk tasted funny. I opened a new can.”
“Tasted fine to me.”
“But you didn’t have any?”
“Any what?”
“Milk.”
“Milk? ’Course I got milk.”
“In your tea, Ma.”
“What I said. Just look at it.”
“Not this cup.” His voice has risen. He deliberately lowers it and speaks slower. “I mean you didn’t have any milk in your tea last time, remember?”
She looks uncertainly into the new cup. “Oh…sure…that one.”
“I thought a bit of milk would protect your stomach from all that caffeine.”
“Sure. Right. Bit of milk won’t hurt. Nice to get a bit now and then,” she says with an odd cackle.
A burst of noise fills the air, sending his mother’s body on a tight little bounce off her chair. She glances around. It’s not until the second ring that her eyes light on the phone. Still she sits, a bemused look on her face. Gerry notices that the light on the answering machine he bought her for Christmas is flashing from an earlier message.
Sadie’s hand flaps at the air. “That be Gus or Kevin at the bar. Box’ll get it.”
Sure enough, it’s his brother. When Gus has left a message and signed off, Gerry presses the retrieval button to hear the first one.
“Hello, Sadie. Tom Kennedy here,” says an authoritative male voice. “I need to see Gerry after the funeral. Have him call me tomorrow. Thank you.”
“What’s that about?” Gerry asks.
“Mercedes’ will.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” He has an uneasy feeling in his gut.
“Nobody called you up in Toronto to tell you about the will?”
“No. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“So if you don’t know nothing about the will, then why you home?”
“For the funeral.”
Sadie folds her arms and looks pointedly off into the distance. “Didn’t jump on a plane when Mabel died. My own sister, that’s related. Proud of it too. Not like them Hanns. Too snooty to own up to us. Still you comes to hers. Travels all day, lies at work. Boils me. Poor Mabel dead in the ground.”
He waits for Sadie to finish and look at him. “I said why do I have to be there?”
“I just told you. Didn’t I? Well…sure, I suppose you’re in it.”
“Shit!” That’s just what Annie needs. “Whatever it is, I’m not taking it.” As soon as he says it, he knows he shouldn’t have, not in front of his mother.
“Why not?” she yells. “She owes you. All that running around. What’s the matter with you? She owes me too, wasn’t for me you wouldn’t be here. Lots that one don’t know, the rest of them too, but I knows, yes by Jesus—”
“Ma, stop,” he begs softly. His head feels like it might split in half. He’d like just five minutes alone to remember Mercedes without his mother’s interference. As for the will, he can only hope it’s a token, a symbolic gesture from one friend to another.
Sadie opens her mouth. She appears ready to rant, then seems to change her mind. “Fine, Gerard. We’ll wait and see.”
“That’s right, Ma. Everything can wait until tomorrow.”
Tomorrow he’ll see Annie. He’s already waited five years for that.
8
1999
Over fifty years have passed since the night Joe caught Paddy spying on Mercedes. Yet by the time he’s finished recounting it, his gentle face is spidered with angry red veins.
“The thing is,” he continues, his voice bitter, “I knows my father was no saint, but he’d never have gone and left Merce on her own after we went to New York if Paddy Griffin hadn’t talked him into it. I should have beat the daylights out of that bastard when I had the chance.”
Lucinda, her eyes dark circles of fatigue, is slumped in her chair. She looks sadder than she has all day. There is a sudden commotion from the back steps and she sits up straight. “Who on earth can that be?”
“Let’s just not answer it,” Annie suggests. “It’s almost midnight, too late for visitors now. And you two are exhausted.”
“I’d ignore it if it was the front but it’s got to be one of our own if they’re at the back.” Lucinda leaves behind an exhausted sigh as she goes to the door.
Annie hears the clack of the latch, followed by a ruckus as if somebody has fallen into the porch. She pushes back her chair. “Mom?”
“I’m fine,” Lucinda calls back to her. “We’ll be right in.”
Seconds later, Callum Hann makes his way into the kitchen, looking far worse than he had that morning when he’d woken Annie up to welcome her home. There are food stains on his sweater and his previously crisp shirt collar has collapsed and crumpled. The little hair he has left lies in random strands about his head.
“For God’s sake, Dad,” Lucinda is saying. “The doctor said take it easy. Look at the state you’re in. You’d never k
now you to be the same man from breakfast to now.”
Annie takes Callum’s arm. “Granddad, what are you doing here at this hour?”
“Well my Annie, I was home looking out the window when young Joe passed by. Never waved or looked in, just went right on by. So, I decided to join him.”
“Sorry, Cal,” says Joe. “The thought of Mercie laid out in the parlour got me to thinking, and I thought I’d come and stay here. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Sounds like just the ticket. I don’t think I could sleep out home knowing she was four doors down and gracing this earth for the last time.”
“But where am I going to put you?” Lucinda looks utterly worn out.
“They can have the twin beds in my room. I’ll take the couch in the basement.” Annie lays her arm on her mother’s shoulders. She seems shorter and frailer than Annie remembers. A flood of affection rushes through her and she kisses the side of Lucinda’s head. “Why don’t you head on up, Mom? You’ve had a long day and it’s going to be a longer one tomorrow. The last thing we need is you conking out on us.”
Lucinda gives in easily. “Maybe you can get Pat to cook them something?”
“I know he’s a better cook than me, but I’ve had a lot less to drink. Don’t worry, I’ll get them a mug-up and settle them in.” Playing caregiver to her mother is a new role for Annie, yet they both adapt with little effort. “Go. And take Dad with you.”
“Thanks, Annie.” Lucinda’s hand grasps her arm. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
With her parents off to bed, Annie pokes at the embers in the wood stove and puts the kettle on. The two old men sit, quiet and peaceful, as she cuts a blood pudding into rounds and starts to fry them up.
“Well, Joe, our Mercie is really gone, isn’t she?” Callum eventually says.
“Dead as she can be.” A note of wonder steals into Joe’s voice. “Can you believe we’re this old? Sometimes I looks in the mirror and sees the old man looking back at me. ‘Who’s that old geezer?’ I says to myself. To think that our Mercie is but a corpse in the next room and here we sit, two old farts, still alive, still breathing.”
“Growing old and ugly beats the alternative,” Callum says. “Better to be old than…” He stops.
“Than what?” asks Joe.
Annie turns around.
Callum is staring out into the night beyond the kitchen window. He seems lost in thought or memories, perhaps both. Annie is reminded of summer vacations in Bay D’Esprits. Her grandfather would sit for ages looking, not out to the horizon, but over at the cliffs on the other side. Once when she was about nine or ten, she asked him what he thought about when he looked across that ocean. “I thinks about life, my Annie.” He’d paused briefly before adding, his voice almost a whisper. “And I thinks about death.”
“I’m not sure Merce would have agreed,” he says now.
His tone catches Annie’s attention. “You saying she knew she was going to die?”
He nods. “She wasn’t scared to talk about it either. She told us what she wanted and who she wanted to be there.” He looks at Annie. “That’s why your mother badgered you into coming. Merce told us that more than anyone you had to be here. We promised we’d see to it. After that, she called for the lawyer to review her papers. Once she got everything arranged she seemed settled about the whole thing, like she’d made her own decision.” He sighs. “I hope I’m that peaceful when my time comes.”
Annie spreads butter on several slices of her mother’s bread, which is almost, but not quite, as good as Mercedes’. “But I thought she died suddenly.”
“In the end she did, I suppose. But that’s dying, isn’t it? No matter how slow it is in coming, that one moment must be sudden. There’s no going back, no undoing it.” He pauses, then continues matter-of-factly. “Lucinda spent the afternoon with her, then Sadie Griffin dropped by that evening with communion. Sadie come out and said Merce wasn’t looking good, maybe she needed a drop of tea. By the time I made the tea and brought it in, she was gone. Just like that. Sudden. Alone.”
“What exactly did she die of, anyway?” asks Annie.
“Hard to say. She’d been poorly for a while. Then old Rufus died. Took the good out of her, that did. Other than that, we don’t know. She refused to go to the hospital. And she never went to a doctor in over forty years.”
“I always found that odd, an educated woman like her refusing to go to a doctor.”
“She used to say she’d rather put her faith in God than some man who thought he was God.” Callum’s voice is tense with a resentment that he makes no effort to hide.
“They say only the good die young.” Joe’s voice is angry as well. “You’d think with her disposition she’d have outlived us all.”
“Don’t talk ill of her, Joe, not tonight. I know she was hard at times, but Merce was a complicated woman. She had a hard complicated life.”
Joe rounds on him. “Christ on the cross, Cal, sometimes you don’t got the sense God gave a cat. What was so complicated about her and her life? She turned mean, is all, after the old man left her to fend for herself.” He folds his arms and looks away. “Worse things could happen to a girl, my Betty could have told you that.”
Annie glances swiftly at Callum. He has told her all about Joe’s tragic marriage, how Betty committed suicide after their baby died, but she’s never heard Joe speak of it.
Callum reaches out to him. “I know Mercie wasn’t the easiest person, but she did everything she could for me and Lucinda when we landed on her doorstep.”
Joe ignores the gesture. Despite the exhaustion and the liquor, despite the long journey from New York and the reason for coming, despite all that or maybe because of it, he does not back down. “Good? To you and little Lucinda? That must be why she was in such an all-fired rush to get on her own. Lucinda knew better than to get pregnant by Dermot Byrne and you knows it. As far as I’m concerned, she figured it was the best way to get out from under the clutches of her Great Aunt Mercedes.”
Callum looks bewildered. “I just don’t understand why you’re so bitter.”
“She’s the only one gets to be bitter? Look, me and her got on fine when she was little, but she got too full of herself, or something, I don’t know. Ever since that time she went to New York, I could never talk to her after. I wouldn’t have minded for me. But what about little Sheilagh? What about Betty?” His voice chokes with years of resentment. “Merce didn’t even come when they died. She was in New York and she didn’t even show up for their funerals.” Joe shuts his mouth firmly then, but his fingers twitch on the table and his leg jigs up and down beneath it.
Not so Callum. Eyes all but closed, he sits in his chair, drained, unmoving.
1959
Three months after his wife died of a brain tumour, Callum and ten-year-old Lucinda returned to St. Jude. Mercedes had barely a week’s notice but she assured Callum that it was enough, that it was all she needed, and she welcomed them back home. With all of the renovations she’d done over the years, Callum barely recognized the place.
After Judith’s death, Callum had hoped that life in New York might actually improve. This callous honesty was never voiced to one living being; it was barely given definition in his own mind. Yet, after having lived with Judith for more than a decade, the thought was unavoidable. However, except for the barest civility from her sister Ruth, and her father, who was also his boss, the remainder of Judith’s family wanted nothing to do with them. Callum didn’t care what they thought of him, but he could not expect Lucinda to understand. Having survived ten years with an angry, resentful mother, years of trying, and ultimately failing, to live up to Judith’s high society standards, Lucinda did not need further rejection. Quiet and reserved, she had grown into a serious young girl who cautiously watched the life that swirled around her, yet said little about it. When Judith died, Lucinda withdrew even further. She would let no one enter, not even her father. Her slender frame became even thinner as she ate
less and less. Finally, hoping for a second chance for himself and his daughter, perhaps for his sister as well, Callum decided to return to St. Jude.
But from the beginning, Lucinda was uncomfortable around her aunt. She said Mercedes was too proper in the way she acted, the way she dressed, the way her hair was never loose around her face. “And she’s so bony, she’s all bones and knuckles. And her eyes are really weird, like they’re too hot or something,” she told Callum.
Callum laughed. “Is that all?”
Lucinda hesitated. “She’s always watching me.” Her voice was low, secretive.
“She’s just glad to have you here.”
“But, Daddy, she scares me.”
“You’re still getting used to each other. Merce will stop that soon.”
But Mercedes didn’t. For long moments, minutes even, she would stare at Lucinda, sometimes with a small smile playing on her face, at other times more sombrely. Lucinda did her best not to be left alone with her.
One early fall morning, Lucinda awoke with a sore throat and stuffy nose. Despite the heat crackling from the wood stove, Callum could see shudders ripple through her. Mercedes offered to stay home with her but Lucinda insisted on going to school.
Callum spent the day repairing his boat, but headed home early to see how she was feeling. As he approached the house, her voice carried to him through the screen door.
“Mother said you were crazy. ‘Your father’s crazy sister’ she called you. She said to watch out for you if Daddy took me back here. She said to call Aunt Ruth in New York if I needed anything.” Her voice kept rising. “She said Aunt Ruth knew everything about you and she’d know what to do if you ever tried to take me away.”
Callum ran to the door. By the time he reached it, Lucinda was screaming. “Stop it. Stop staring at me. Where’s Daddy? Where is he?”
He rushed inside. Mercedes was sitting at the table, so still she could have been glued to the chair. Across from her a wild-eyed Lucinda clasped a soupspoon in her hand like a weapon. The only sound was the sizzle and spit of flaming wood.
“Go to your room, Lucinda. Right now,” Callum ordered.
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