Children in the Morning

by Anne Emery

  “I heard this really cool song on the radio,” Richard Robertson said to Father Burke when we were beginning choir practice that afternoon. “A choir was singing it. And they went ‘hoo hoo hoo’ and ‘yip yip yip’ and did all kinds of animal sounds in the middle of it. Can we do a song like that?”

  “What you’re describing, Richard, is a choir having fun. Like a women’s choir singing the work songs of a chain gang or something with ‘Hey, nonny, nonny’ in it. Or, as you say, the hooting and braying of animals. Some of the most excruciating music in the world issues forth from choirs having fun. Well, no choir is going to have fun on my time. You are going to sing music that cries out to heaven in its beauty and poignancy. Pick up the Palestrina I gave you last week, Missa Papae Marcelli. Turn to the Kyrie.”

  Everybody scrabbled around for their music. Except Richard. And Ian. They didn’t have it.

  “Boys! Where’s your music?”

  Ian didn’t answer. Father Burke glared at him, then at Richard.

  Richard said: “I can’t find it, Father.”

  “Fortunately for you, I have a couple of extra copies in my room.”

  “I’ll go get them!”

  “No, I’ll go,” Ian said.

  “Neither of you lads will go. You’d be apt to lose them on the way back. Could you take a run up there, Normie? You know where my room is. All the music is piled on my table.”

  The other kids gawked at me. None of them were ever allowed to go up there. And now they knew I knew where his room was. But that was only because I was up there with Daddy a couple of times. Anyway, I said okay and I went out of the school, across Byrne Street, and into the priests’ house. I told Mrs. Kelly, the housekeeper, that I was on an important errand for Father Burke. You have to tell her something like that, or she doesn’t know what to do. So I went up to his room and opened the door. The room was really tidy and clean, except for books piled all over the place and doubled up on the bookshelf. Also lots of CDs. There was a cross on the wall and some paintings. One was a picture of the Virgin Mary and the Baby Jesus; He was really cute. Sometimes they have Him looking like a little old man, but not in that picture. It was done by somebody called Botticelli. I wondered if there were any more pictures by him. Angels, maybe. Anyway, I looked on the table, and there were all the music books. I picked them up and looked through them, and there were the Palestrina Mass books. I took two of them.

  Then I saw he had something else there, under the music. It was a whole bunch of newspaper stories. One was from 1983, the year I was born! Another one was from 1989. They were all about things that had happened to kids. Crimes, even a murder. And I remembered something Mum said on the phone about my visions and bad cases Mr. Delaney worked on, and I knew then that they believed me about my dreams! Father Burke had all this stuff. He knew I wasn’t just making it up about the things I was seeing. He wanted to find out what happened. But I would be the best one to figure it out because I was the one having the dreams. So I grabbed the papers, along with the music. I planned to hide them, then sneak back into his room after I had read them. I would tell Mrs. Kelly I was on another errand. It wouldn’t really be a lie, because if Father Burke knew I took the papers he would want me to return them. Some time. So it would be an errand for him. Now I had to figure out how to hide them before I handed him the music sheets. My locker. That would be perfect. I got back to the choir school and snuck along the corridor, opened my locker, shoved the papers inside, and then went to the classroom and handed Father the music. “Thanks, darlin’,” was all he said. Whew! We sang the Mass and I tried to do a really good job, so it would seem like nothing else had happened.

  But that night, I knew I’d been caught. I was home with Mummy and Tom, and the doorbell rang. Mum answered the door, and it was Father Burke. Uh-oh. I scooted into the dining room.

  “Oh, good,” Mum said. “Mass for shut-ins. I didn’t get out to church today, Father. How kind of you to bring me the sacraments.”

  “I’ll give you a sacrament you won’t soon forget, you blasphemous little rip! Now, let me in the door.”

  I couldn’t find “blasphemous” in the dictionary at first because I couldn’t spell it, but finally I did. It sounds bad, but they were only joking, not really making fun of the sacraments. He’s always telling her she needs to go to confession, but not to him, because then he would need to go to confession himself after hearing all the evil things she said. He pretends to think Mummy’s bad, but he knows she isn’t.

  “Mr. Douglas,” he said to Tommy, because my brother’s real name is Tommy Douglas.

  “Hi, Father. How you doing?”

  “Just grand, Tom, grand altogether. Still playing in your band?”

  “Oh yeah. I’m heading down to the basement to practise some riffs for a gig on the weekend.”

  “I’ll have to come hear you some time.”

  “Sure. Just don’t show up in your collar!”

  “No worries. I won’t cramp your style. I’ll come in-cog-neat-oh.”

  I heard Tom go down the basement stairs. Then Father Burke must have made some kind of signal to Mum, because she called to me and told me to go to my room and finish my lessons. I was supposed to be doing math questions. It seemed like a bad time to argue, so I went up to my room. I opened my math book and scribbler on my floor, just in case, then I snuck out again and sat by the hall register to listen.

  They yakked about boring stuff for a few minutes, then Mum said something about Giacomo phoning her about Dominic, and bringing his lawyer from Italy. Mum said she would get a lawyer of her own. I don’t know why, because she already is a lawyer and so is Dad. Anyway, after that, Father Burke told Mum about the news stories he collected.

  “These visions she’s having, well, we’ve gone over this time and again. That they may just be bad dreams that any child would have, or they may be related to more personal concerns. Ahem! But with the Delaney fellow on trial —” Father Burke says it like fulla “— and her knowing his children, they could be visions of something that actually happened in the past.”

  “Or something that is yet to come.”

  “Let’s pray that’s not it, given the tenor of the visions. Anyway, I can’t help you with the future, but I said I’d do some newspaper research, and I did. I put together a file of old cases involving crimes against children here in the city.”

  “Oh, God. Does anything match?”

  “Couldn’t tell ya.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The file disappeared before I had a chance to read the clippings.”

  “Disappeared! Who would have —”

  Father Burke didn’t answer, but I bet he made some kind of face or made his eyes go up, as if to say the guilty person is upstairs in this very house. Because Mum just said: “I see.”

  “I sent her to my room in the rectory to pick up a piece of music. I forgot about the news articles being on the table. When I went up there after class, I remembered and saw that the papers were gone. Don’t be in a lather about it, now. I’ll not be pressing charges!” Mum laughed, and then he said: “But we won’t want her reading those stories. Terrible things happened in a couple of the cases. So you’ll want to retrieve them from her before she reads them and gets upset. I’ll leave it with you.”

  “No, Brennan, hold on. I’ll go up and talk to her now.”

  Oh, no. I heard her feet on the stairs, so I scampered back into my room. I had the papers hidden already, so I grabbed my pencil and sat there looking like I was doing my math homework.

  “Hi, sweetie,” Mum said when she came in.

  I looked up. “Oh, hi, Mum. This math is really easy tonight.”

  “Good, good. Normie, did you by any chance borrow something from Father Burke’s room?”

  “Like what?”

  “A pile of news stories.”

  It woul
d only make it worse if I lied. They knew anyway.

  “I saw them and I knew he must be trying to help figure out what happened. So I decided to borrow them only for one night, so I can help him investigate.”

  “You wanted to see if any of the stories matched your dreams?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you looked through them?”

  “Only a couple.” That was true. I was going to get into them after everybody else went to sleep, so I only peeked at the first two, and they were nothing like my visions.

  “Father Burke and I are afraid those stories will upset you. It’s not very often that people do bad things to children, but you know there are some disturbed people in the world, and sometimes things happen.”

  “I know all that, Mum.”

  “So why don’t you give me the news stories, and I’ll look through them. I’ll ask you some questions about them later. You’ve told us what your dreams were like, so if we see something that matches up, we’ll ask you.”

  That’s not what I wanted to do. I wanted to read them myself. But now I couldn’t. I thought of saying I’d left them in my locker, but she would know if I lied. She can always tell. So I had to give them up. But I didn’t want her to know where my hiding place was, so I said I would get them if she would go downstairs.

  “No, you just give them to me now, sweetheart. That would be best.”

  Lawyers always think people are doing something sneaky. She probably thought I was going to steal a couple of the papers and give only some of them back. But I wasn’t.

  “Okay, but turn around and close your eyes. I don’t want you invading my privacy!”

  “All right.” She turned away, and I went around the room, banging drawers and pulling things off shelves so she wouldn’t know about my hiding place under the bed. I have my secret box under there, and when she cleans she just shoves the box around with the vacuum cleaner. I’ve seen her do it. She probably thinks there are old toys or junk in the box, because I stuck a couple of old things on top.

  “Here are the papers, Mum,” I said and gave them to her. She said thanks and gave me a kiss, told me not to worry, and went downstairs.

  As soon as I heard the squeak of her chair in the kitchen, I went back to my listening post and sat down.

  “Ah. Now, let’s see what we have,” Father Burke said. “Her visions began with the Delaney charges, and they involve harm or danger to a child. So I searched for cases involving children and Delaney’s name. Also unsolved cases involving children, but I didn’t come up with much there. By the time this class of crime is reported, they seem to know who to arrest for it.”

  “Yeah, the stepfather,” Mum said.

  “Right, and there are a couple of cases of foster parents charged with physical or sexual abuse.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “Delaney’s a foster parent.”

  “There’s never been a whisper of any problems there. The department keeps bringing children to the Delaney home, for temporary placement. You can be sure it’s been checked out over and over again. And from everything I’ve heard, it’s a very happy family.”

  “Glad to hear it. Jenny and Laurence, the two Delaneys who come to our Four-Four Time program, seem fine. And devoted to their da. Now here’s a group of clippings about unsolved murders of young women. Teenaged girls.”

  “That doesn’t seem to fit, but who knows?”

  “A child was abused and murdered a few years ago, a little boy, but the killer was convicted and put away for life. No reference to Delaney. Another lawyer handled the defence.”

  “Not Monty Collins.”

  “No, not Monty on that one. He did a couple of the other cases, though.”

  “I remember.”

  “And here are the ones in which Delaney acted for the defence. There don’t seem to be any lingering mysteries about those cases. But that may not be the point. Normie may be seeing the connection between Delaney, the lawyer, and the clients he associated with in his work. It may be nothing more than that.”

  “Let’s hope that’s all it is.”

  “I also looked for unsolved cases and the name Beau Delaney. You’ll see them here. I didn’t get to them all.”

  They didn’t talk for a few minutes. Then Mum said: “Here’s an unsolved murder of a young guy. Suspected drug dealer. The only reference to Beau Delaney is that one of his clients was questioned, and Delaney made a statement to the press that his client had an alibi, and Beau was going to make a formal complaint if the police didn’t stop harassing his client.”

  “And here’s the Gary’s General Store case, the one where Delaney’s life was threatened,” Father Burke said.

  “The one they made a movie about. Righteous Defender. Wouldn’t we all love to have that title attached to our name?”

  “How did that go again? They discussed it in the documentary, but I’m not sure I have it straight.”

  “Beau’s client, Gower, committed the robbery with another lowlife. Beau got Gower off. A year later, Gower came back to the community and was murdered. The young girl who was left disabled, Cathy, had a brother, and the brother was picked up for the murder. Beau, obviously fuelled by guilt over representing the shooter and seeing the brother charged — Cathy’s family victimized again — launched his own investigation, found out the brother was innocent, and fingered the real killer.”

  “And people think the theology of the Holy Trinity is complicated!”

  Chapter 6

  (Normie)

  We were learning about sins on Monday in catechism class. Mrs. Kavanagh said there used to be more sins and you got in more trouble for them in the old days, but sin is still with us today. Ian put up his hand and asked if it was a sin to disguise your voice in the confession box. Mrs. Kavanagh said it might be like telling a lie but she wasn’t sure, so she would ask Father Burke. Ian squawked: “Don’t tell him it was me asking!” And the whole class burst out laughing. Then Kim asked what would happen if you committed a sin and went to confession, but then you ran home before saying your Hail Marys or whatever your penance was, and you got run over by a bus and died. Mrs. Kavanagh said she didn’t think it would be a problem, at least for our souls, but she gave us a lecture on crossing the street safely.

  Ian was teasing Kim afterwards at Four-Four Time, making a noise like a bus and pretending he was going to knock her down. “You’re dead! You died in a state of sin! Going to hell. Next. Beep beep.” And he went after another kid and pretended the same thing. Jenny Delaney asked what he was doing, so I said it was all about dying with a sin on your soul. Then I told her I remembered something about telling God you’re sorry even if you don’t get to confession. There’s this prayer you can say, the Act of Contrition, and it’s supposed to work too.

  Jenny looked really worried: “But if you don’t have time even to say the prayer, if you sin and then die a second later, does that mean you go to hell?”

  “I guess so,” I said, “or you have to wait for hundreds of years before you can be with God in heaven. It’s an in-between place you go to. I can’t remember the name of it. Anyway, people have to say prayers to get you out of there.”

  “That doesn’t sound good!”

  “I know, but you don’t have to worry about it. Cross at the crosswalk, and look both ways, and you won’t get killed. Or just don’t commit any sins.”

  “It’s not me.” Jenny looked around to make sure nobody was listening. “It’s Mum!”

  “Your mum wasn’t a sinner. They wrote all this good stuff about her in the paper.”

  “I know. She was always really good. Except just before she died. She committed a sin! Or what might be a sin, I’m not sure.”

  I was worried then too. “What did she do?” I whispered.

  “She swore!”

  “No!”

&nb
sp; “Yes! My sisters and brothers don’t know this because I was the only one awake. And even then, I fell back asleep and didn’t get to save her. I don’t know how I could have saved her, but maybe I could have done something. Anyway I was so tired I went back to sleep.”

  “There’s probably nothing you could have done. You shouldn’t worry, Jenny.” Then I couldn’t help it, I was curious. “What swear word did she say? Don’t say it yourself, just say the first letter.”

  “Well, I’m not sure if it was swearing, but it sounded like it. She said ‘Jesus!’ I know it’s bad to say that. Then she said ‘hell’s angels!’ in a loud voice. I think that’s swearing. That’s all I could hear, so whatever else she said must have been in a normal voice and maybe wasn’t bad.”

  Hells Angels! That probably was a sin, a sin I had committed myself, and so had my whole family! We have all said those words in our house. I have done my own personal research into angels; I’m trying to figure out if Father Burke is one himself, even though he doesn’t look it, because he has spirits around him when he’s on the altar in church. You should see the picture I drew of him looking happy all in white with wings in my diary. I added a picture of Dominic peeking around the bottom edge of the robe by Father’s feet. Dominic can crawl now, so it’s really cute. Anyway, I’ve seen all kinds of pictures of angels. And I could never figure out how the Hells Angels — who are a motorcycle gang! — are allowed to call themselves that name. Hell is bad, so they must be saying they are bad angels. I figured they looked more like devils. I always secretly hoped I would see one. I only saw them speeding by on their motorcycles, but never up close, standing still. And whenever we drove by their clubhouse, which is near where Tommy’s girlfriend lives, we would see all the motorcycles outside but we never saw any of the gang members themselves. Tommy always takes that street to get to Lexie’s apartment, even though he doesn’t have to. He slows down and stares at all the bikes. And one time our family had a barbecue with the families of a bunch of lawyers, and one of them — Katie Sheehan’s dad — said he had actually been to a Hells Angels lobster party!