Jennies boy, p.23
Jennie's Boy, page 23
“Yeah,” I said, starting to cry. “Dad drove really fast and hit some other cars.”
“Merciful God!”
“He’s okay, too,” I said.
“What happened?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. It was true. I wasn’t sure in any but the most literal of ways.
“Where are your brothers?”
“They went fishing. They wouldn’t go to the dentist with us because they thought Dad would duck into the Crystal.”
“And where is he?”
“He got in bed.”
She let go of me and made for the bedroom, reaching the door just as it opened. She went inside and the door closed behind her.
I was certain she would rip into him, but I didn’t hear a sound. After about ten minutes of silence, I made out their voices, low but insistent, questioning, as if each of them was asking the other what their next step could possibly be, as if each of them was exasperated with the other’s answers.
Then my brothers came storming up the back steps. I heard them kicking off their boots and throwing their fishing gear downstairs, talking excitedly. Craig reached the kitchen doorway when I did. Wide-eyed, mouth open in astonishment, he backed me into the hallway.
“WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FRIGGIN’ CAR?” he roared, as if the answer could only be that it was all my fault.
Before I could say a word, my parents’ bedroom door opened slightly. “The four of you, go to your room,” Jennie said in a quiet tone that unsettled us all. “Shut the door and don’t come out till I say so. Go on.” She closed the door.
In the bunk room, Ken and Craig loomed over me and Brian climbed into his top bunk so that he could stare down at me, too.
“What happened?” Craig whispered, glancing at the door. He sounded as if he hated having to ask me, hated having missed something so big.
As I described the car chase, Craig said “Holy frig” every few seconds and looked at Ken, who was blank-faced and pale, with drops of sweat running from his temples and onto the sides of his face. His glasses were fogged up. I wondered from how far away they had seen that the car was in the backyard, how far they had run to reach the house.
When I was done, Craig asked if I was sure that Dad had been trying to lose the station wagon and not just get to the Crystal as fast as he could. I told him how afraid and desperate Dad had looked, how he had hunched over the wheel and how he had seemed to forget entirely that I was in the car.
“Holy frig,” Craig said again, then started to laugh as if I had recounted some adventure he wouldn’t have thought me capable of having, or as if he was amused by how badly Dad had screwed up this time. “He never even stopped when the other car went into the ditch?”
I shook my head.
“Did he get hurt?” Ken said. “Did you?”
“My head hurts,” I said.
Ken put a hand on my head and gingerly moved it about until I said, “Ow.”
“There’s a lump there,” Ken said. “You must have banged your head pretty good on something. You didn’t notice the headache until now?”
I shook my head. “My arm hurts, too,” I said. “My bad one.”
Ken took off my jacket and rolled up the sleeve of my shirt. “There’s a bruise,” he said, as Craig and Brian craned to see.
Craig said, “I thought you can’t feel your arm.”
“I can feel it when something hits the bone.”
Craig tousled my hair as if my having been injured in a car accident was the first estimable accomplishment of my life.
Ken lay down on the bunk below Brian and put his hands behind his head and took off his glasses, still pale and sweaty.
“What do you think happened, Ken?” Craig said.
“Hit and run,” Ken said. “That’s pretty serious. And he was drinking.”
Brian started to cry. Craig lay down on the other lower bunk, and I climbed up and sat beside Brian. Craig wondered if Dad would go to jail. Maybe someone had been badly hurt or even killed. Maybe Dad would go to jail for a long time on the mainland, where we couldn’t afford to go to visit him. Maybe we’d never see him again, which would be fine with Craig and Dad, too, probably. Maybe we’d have to move to the mainland because of him. Everything would be different.
We waited for Jennie to emerge from their room, for the police to arrive, for the phone to ring. But nothing happened. Eventually Brian fell asleep. I climbed down and lay on the floor between the bottom bunks and wondered about Lucy and wished that I had asked Jennie how she was.
When we heard Dad and Jennie’s door open, Craig and Ken were out of their bunks in a flash. Ken helped me to my feet as Brian climbed down. There was a knock on our door. When it opened, Jennie was there. Her eyes were red from crying, but she wasn’t crying now.
She took hold of my good hand. “Come out to the kitchen, boys,” she said. She gently pulled me from the room, and the others followed us to the kitchen. The flask of Royal Reserve that I’d put on the counter was no longer there.
After we had all sat down around the table, she said she had something to tell us. She lit a cigarette and was quiet for a while. Finally, Dad emerged from the bedroom, shirtless, and padded in his slippers to the kitchen. He sat in the last empty chair, the one between Jennie and me.
“Dad,” Craig began, but Jennie shushed him. Dad merely stared at his hands, which lay on the table. He was clasping them so hard they were bloodless.
“No one says a word until I’m finished,” Jennie said. “Something happened this afternoon.” She looked about at my brothers and me as she spoke. There had been an accident, Jennie said, and she and Dad didn’t know the names of the others involved, but Dad didn’t think that anyone was hurt. We’d know why it had all happened when her story was done.
After leaving the dentist’s office with Wayne, Dad had been chased by a car driven by two men to whom he owed a lot of money. She said the men in the station wagon were not the sort you could reason with, and there was no telling what they might have done, not just to Dad but to me. Immediately after the collisions, the station wagon had slowed down and turned off onto a side road, probably because the men thought the police were coming.
“Wayne said Dad drove like a maniac,” Craig said. “He drove around the house like one. You can see the tracks.”
“Your father did the best he could. Now, let me finish—your father only borrowed money from those men because of me.”
“That’s not friggin’ true,” Craig protested.
“It is,” Jennie said, welling up. “He borrowed it to pay back eight hundred dollars I stole from Ned. During the winter, every time I went over there at night, I stole money from the stash that Ned keeps beneath the mattress of one of the beds. The one in the Shrine Room. Ned’s never been to a bank. He’s never accepted or written a cheque. Cash only. That’s what he believes in. When I was ten, Lucy found out I knew where he kept his money. I found it by accident while I was making the beds, and she caught me counting it. She made me swear not to tell anyone and not to touch a penny of it, ever. She made me swear an oath to God with my hand on my heart.
“But when we ran out of money in January, I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t even know if Ned still kept his money in the same place. But it turned out he did. Every night, while Ned was asleep, I stole his money. I figured he’d notice sooner or later, but I kept on stealing it anyway, fives and tens and twenties until one night Lucy caught me again.
“This time, she never said a word. She saw me from the doorway and went back to bed. The next day, I promised her I would pay back every cent—before she died, I meant, but I didn’t say that. ‘Pay it back when you can,’ she said. ‘Don’t mention it to anyone, especially Ned.’ But I couldn’t stand the thought of her dying without me having paid it back. She might die thinking that I was still stealing from Ned. Or Ned might find out and she might die when they were on the outs.
“So I told your father. I told him that Ned would never lend money, never, not even if Lucy asked him to. He considers borrowing and stealing to be the same thing. She’s the one who loaned us money over the years, without telling him. She loaned us his money. So, in a way, Lucy stole from Ned, too, but not like I did. Ned either didn’t notice that money was missing or he did and never said anything to Lucy about it.
“I told your father how much trouble I was in. How much trouble we were in. I told him we had to do something. I knew about those men long before today.”
Dad rose suddenly and hurried from the kitchen and into the bedroom, closing the door behind him, but not fast enough to drown out the sound of his sobs.
“I don’t know how he found those men,” Jennie said. “They don’t advertise in the paper. He got hold of as much from them as he could, and I put the cash back beneath the mattress, but I still owe some to Ned. I just didn’t know what to do. We didn’t have a cent left. We already owed other people money. My family and your father’s. I didn’t know what to do. I almost got your father and Wayne and other people killed. I’m scared to death.”
She dropped her forehead onto her arm on the table. Her shoulders shook. I was more frightened than I had been in the car. Jennie had stolen money from Ned. It didn’t seem possible that Jennie had stolen anything from anyone. But she’d had to steal it, because Dad spent the rent, and because of me. My brothers looked terrified, too. It seemed to me that all order had been overthrown and could never be restored, because of Dad and me. Craig put his hand on Jennie’s arm. I put mine on her back. Brian put his next to mine. Ken put his forehead on the top of Jennie’s head and his arms around all of us.
The police didn’t come. The phone didn’t ring.
twenty-five
One day, after Jennie had come home to take a break—Dot Chafe was with Lucy—she told me there were afternoons when Lucy was feeling well enough for a visit from me. She reminded me not to say a word about Ned’s money.
I went over there and found Lucy in the Shrine Room again, in the single bed, beside which Jennie had set a kitchen chair for me. Lucy looked much better than she had the day of her false alarm. She sat propped up by pillows, her arms resting on the blankets, a set of new ruby-red prayer beads in her hands.
She was clear-headed most of the time, despite the painkillers she was on, though every so often she nodded off, and she meandered as she spoke, leaving one topic only to return to it.
“Have you got another miracle left in you for Lucy?” she asked me.
When I didn’t answer, she appraised the Baby Jesus.
“It looks odd, doesn’t it, a baby with a crown on its head. I wonder what baby food was like back then. How long would a crown stay on the head of an ordinary baby? Not long without a chinstrap. But I suppose the Baby Jesus is not like other babies. He could balance anything on his head, never mind a crown. Still, maybe the halo holds it in place. I’ve never met a youngster who deserved a halo. Or anyone who did, have you?”
She said that when she looked at her own boys when they were two years old, a halo was not what came to mind.
“I don’t want a wake. I’ll be in no position to prevent one, so Ned better remember that I said I didn’t want one. You remember. This house has already had one wake too many. Three days and nights with Leonard laid out in the living room. Just before Christmas.
“It’s hard to sleep when there’s a casket in the house. I don’t mean because of ghosts or anything like that, but that’s what the youngsters were afraid of. I swear they were never the same. Jennie wasn’t. It was so sad to see Leonard all dressed up. We had never spent as much money on clothes for him when he was alive.
“I never saw the point of a wake. No one who was alive could stand to be stared at and talked about so much. I know more than one person who’ll get their licks in when I’m in no condition to talk back, people who’d run now if I said boo. No wake, no. There’d be no one here but Ned at night, and me laid out in some other room. He’d think about Leonard. He’d think about things that he forgot. Why should he put himself through that?
“I’ll miss Ned. And you. I’ll miss my children. But they have their wives and husbands and their own children. Leonard has no one.”
It was as if Leonard had hold of her and Ned and was slowly but surely tugging them to the other side.
She looked at me, then, and said I better be ready—that body of mine might still have things to throw at me, even though it had already thrown more at me than God had thrown at Job.
“Whatever happens to you, make sure you don’t clam up like Ned because of it. Don’t wallow in misery. No one’s ever had a stretch of happiness so long that they got fed up with it.
“It’s been touch and go with you since you fizzled out when you were one. Once you’ve been close to the other side, it’s hard to feel at home in this one. That’s why I’m back in this bed. It was touch and go with me, too, before you lit the candle and said your prayer that day, but not for nearly as long as it has been with you.
“Even after I was back on my feet, I knew it wouldn’t last. You may be young, but most of you is still back there where you were when you first got sick—ready to cross over. You have to try really hard to resist the other side, or else you’ll wind up there before your time.” She paused. “No one would ever mistake this for a pep talk, would they?”
It occurred to me that Leonard hadn’t lingered long enough for people to get tired of him being sick.
“Until you came along, I’d never known people to look at a child and say that he’d seen better days. Still, unless God takes you before your next birthday, you won’t be seven forever. Things change. You will. It might not seem like that to you right now, but it’s true.
“You read more books in a week than anyone I know has read in their entire life. I never saw the point of books, but there might be one. You better hope there is. You have a lot of time invested in them that you won’t get back.
“I worry a bit about Ned. The man has cobwebs on his vocal cords. Five minutes in the confession box on Saturday. That’s more talking than he does all week, unless you count the rosary.
“Mind you, he might not even say a word in there. The priest might have to guess his sins. ‘Am I getting warm, Ned? One knock for no, two for yes.’ We’re a perfect match, a woman who doesn’t like to be interrupted and a man who never says a word. Still, it would be nice to know if he listens to me. I’ve never seen him taking notes.
“You’re stronger than people think you are. You rarely complain, which is just as well, because complaining takes energy and you have none to spare. You were put on earth for a reason, although it wouldn’t surprise me if God himself can’t remember what it is. There’s nothing wrong with getting off to a bad start—it might save you a lot of disappointment, or you’ll give someone, your mother maybe, a pleasant surprise by making something of yourself. There’s nothing wrong with being a complete flop right from the start. It’s better than getting everyone’s hopes up for nothing. That’s what most people do before they fizzle out.”
“How long was Leonard sick?”
“A few months. Really sick for a couple of weeks. He had to have his own room. Me and two of my sisters took turns staying with him. He couldn’t be alone. We were worried that the rest of the youngsters would catch it, but they never did.”
“Was he scared?”
“He was too sick, too tired, to be scared. Were you scared the night they buried you in ice?”
“No.”
“Leonard made his first confession and took his First Holy Communion a month before he died. Right here in this house, because he was too weak to go to church. He was such a sweet boy, but he wasn’t strong like you. When the doctor said tuberculosis, I knew he never had a chance.
“You have it in your head that you’re like Leonard. That might be my fault. You’re nothing like him. You remind Ned of Leonard, but everything reminds Ned of Leonard. Don’t you worry about me. I can take care of myself.”
If there was nothing to be afraid of in heaven, I asked her, why did it matter that she needed to be able to take care of herself?
“It takes a while to get the hang of a new place. You should know that, after the number of times you’ve moved. There are people who have been in heaven a long time. It might not be easy to fit in with people who’ve been there a thousand years. I bet that people were a lot different a thousand years ago. I know there were kings and queens all over the place. What will they make of me? I’m sure I’ll be put in my place more than once. I can be a bit of an upstart. I might rub someone the wrong way. I’m not used to being new in a place, because I’ve never been anywhere but the Goulds. I can’t even stand St. John’s. People walk right past you without even saying hello. And there’s a lot more people in heaven than there are in St. John’s. They might be a bit uppity.”
She said that, over the years, whenever one of her relatives was close to death, she thought about asking them to look in on Leonard until she got to heaven, but she could never find the right moment to ask a favour from someone who was dying.
She said that going to heaven might be like going to sleep in one place and waking up in another. That had happened to her once. When she was a child, she was outside, and she fell and hit her head on something. When she woke up, she was in bed in the house. There was nothing in between. No dreams. No sounds. There wasn’t even darkness.
She said, “You don’t remember passing out, you remember waking up, but what about if you don’t wake up?”
She was sure she would wake up tomorrow, but she couldn’t help thinking she might not. She couldn’t help being a bit scared. But maybe going to heaven wasn’t like that. Maybe you did see things along the way. The moon, the sun, the stars. Maybe you could feel the wind like you did in the back of a truck. Maybe you could hear it. But maybe you were wide awake and everything was dark and you couldn’t hear a sound. It might be like that for a long time because heaven was so far away.
