14

‘Would you do us the honour of taking us to St Martin’s Cemetery, Father Seymour?’ Aunt Phil said. It conjured up an image of Father Seymour walking arm-in-arm between her and my mother, a widow on either side, leading them, with an air of grim chivalry, to their husbands’ graves, while the rest of the family walked behind him. It was the anniversary of my father’s death (and also of his birth, though this fact went unmentioned). Father Seymour consented to take us to the graveyard, though our procession was nothing like I imagined it, for Father Seymour could hardly have walked arm-in-arm between two widows who were taller than he was. What Father Seymour taking us to St Martin’s in fact consisted of was Aunt Phil walking well in front of the rest of us, then Father Seymour, keeping just far enough ahead of my mother going up the hill that, while he seemed to be walking with her, he did not have to speak to her. Then came Mary and me, far behind, pushing Sister Louise, each of us holding one handle of the wheelchair.

It was late March, but almost all the snow was gone. Though Fleming Street still had that grey, late-winter look about it, the weather was warm enough that we could shed the overcoats and boots we had been wearing since last December.

Then Aunt Phil reached the gates of the cemetery, she turned around, looking down at us as she might have looked down from heaven at five souls still struggling to make it. By the time the rest of us got there, she was strolling through the graveyard, pointing out the headstones of people who had been waked at Reg Ryan’s. ‘There’s one of ours,’ she was saying. She stopped to tidy up the grave, removing last fall’s dead leaves from the base of the headstone. No-one had ever been able to convince Aunt Phil that our obligation to our customers ended with the funeral, that we did not have to tend their graves for all eternity.

We followed her to her husband’s headstone, to ‘His’ headstone, rather, beside which was a stone bearing her name and date of birth, with the date of death still to be inscribed. We knelt on the concrete border of the grave while Father Seymour and Sister Louise led us in a prayer, and then we stood again.

‘He’s free now,’ Aunt Phil said, brushing the dust from her knees. ‘Free from the marriage bed.’

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ my mother said, looking around as if there must be someone in the graveyard who shared her exasperation at this remark.

Aunt Phil turned to face her, but before she could say anything, Sister Louise intervened. ‘Remember where you are,’ she said severely, looking at my mother and then at Aunt Phil. ‘Remember what day this is.’

Both of them stared at the ground, and it seemed for a moment that that would be the end of it. Father Seymour headed off towards my father’s grave, and we all began to follow him – all of us, that is, except my mother, who hung back, her arms at her sides; her purse, which she held by one hand, hung almost to the ground.

‘I’m not going,’ she said. The words came out with a great exhalation of breath, as if she was simply too weary to make the visit. ‘I’m not going, not today.’

‘I want you to stop this nonsense, Linda,’ Sister Louise said. ‘The children—’

‘I’m not going,’ my mother said, her eyes blinking back a sudden rush of tears. Then, as if she must say it so quickly that none of them could interrupt, she blurted out, ‘Mine was free from the marriage bed before he died.’

She turned and, all but trailing her purse on the ground, walked to the cemetery gates. There she stopped, but only to reach down and remove her high-heeled shoes, which she stuffed in her purse. She did it so matter-of-factly, it might have been no more than what one normally did when leaving a cemetery. Then she began to run.

Despite Aunt Phil, who tried to stop us, Mary and I hurried to the graveyard fence the better to see our mother. The Young Widow, her black dress hiked above her knees, was all but sprinting down Fleming Street, wearing nothing on her feet but nylons, her purse trailing behind her as though she might use it to fend off anyone who tried to stop her. What the people of Fleming Street must have thought upon seeing that long-legged apparition running barefoot down the hill, I still cannot imagine.

The rest of us went to my father’s grave without her, Aunt Phil, Sister Louise and Father Seymour all having tacitly agreed to ignore what had happened. Afterwards, once we had seen Sister Louise back to the convent, we headed home. Judging by the number of curtains we saw moving, it was noted by every household on Fleming Street that despite the Young Widow’s example, the rest of the Divine Ryans walked home, still wearing shoes.

At dinner that night, Aunt Phil said nothing to our mother, though she was quite impressive non-verbally, slamming down each plate just short of breaking it. After dinner, Uncle Reginald came downstairs, and when I had him alone for a moment, I told him what had happened, told him of how my mother had run down Fleming Street, with her dress hiked up above her knees and her black purse trailing pennant-like behind her. He smiled and nodded his head as if he had long been expecting that very thing to happen.

Later, Sister Louise and Father Seymour came over, it being only right, Aunt Phil said pointedly, that a man’s family gather on the anniversary of his death. Still, not one word was said about what had happened. In fact, nothing much was said at all, until my mother spoke up.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘I’d like to stop working at Reg Ryan’s and go back to school.’

Aunt Phil, Father Seymour and Sister Louise, though they were soon voicing their opposition to this idea, seemed a little relieved, looking at one another as if to say, ‘So that’s what it was all about.’

‘You’ve no need to go back to school, Linda,’ Aunt Phil said, almost reassuringly, as if our mother did not so much want to go back as think she had to. ‘You and the children will be well looked after.’

‘Of course,’ said Sister Louise, taking Aunt Phil’s tone. ‘Of course you will. It’s only natural that on a day like this you’d start to worry about such things.’ There was much nodding of heads. It seemed my mother’s run down Fleming Street had been explained away without anyone having had to say one word about it.

My mother sat there for a while, saying nothing, looking now and then at Uncle Reginald who kept smiling at her. Then she spoke up again. ‘It’s not just the children,’ she said. ‘I’d just like to go back to school, that’s all, do something else besides help run a funeral home.’

‘Reg Ryan’s,’ Aunt Phil said, ‘has been good enough for everyone else who ever married into this family.’

‘I’d just like to get an education,’ my mother said.

‘Of course you would,’ said Uncle Reginald.

‘Now don’t you start,’ Aunt Phil said, pointing at him, ‘don’t you start.’

‘Why shouldn’t a young woman like Linda have an education?’ said Uncle Reginald.

‘More people have ruined their minds by getting an education,’ Aunt Phil said, ‘than have gone to hell, and that’s saying something.’

‘Donald had an education,’ said Uncle Reginald.

For a while, there was silence. Then Aunt Phil turned to Sister Louise. ‘To think,’ she said, almost tearfully, her voice breaking, ‘to think that this man has his father’s name.’

‘I’d rather have his money,’ said Uncle Reginald, at which Aunt Phil stood up and pointed at him.

‘You’ll burn,’ she said, ‘you’ll burn,’ as if he had already burned, as if there was nothing on the chair across from her but a pile of ashes. Soon after, with Father Seymour and Sister Louise doing their best to keep Aunt Phil and Uncle Reginald apart, the gathering broke up.

* * *

One night, later that week, I woke to the sound of someone whispering my name. ‘Draper Doyle.’ My first thought was a visitation – after so often appearing to me from a distance, my father had finally made up his mind to come closer and to talk to me. Sitting up in bed, however, I saw, looking at me through the barely opened door, not my father but my mother.

‘Draper Doyle,’ she said again.

‘What?’ I said.

She motioned with her hand. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘we’re going to my room.’

When I got out of bed, I saw Mary standing behind her. Mary put her finger to her lips, then began to tiptoe down the hall in a kind of parody of stealth, lifting her feet much higher than she had to, crouching over like one of those absurdly devious cartoon villains. I started to laugh but my mother put her hand over my mouth and kept it there until all three of us were in her room and the door was closed.

‘What are we doing?’ I whispered. Instead of answering, the two of them sat crosslegged on the bed. The room was so dark I could hardly see them.

‘Draper Doyle,’ my mother said, in a kind of mock French accent.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Would you lak to join zee Reseestance?’ It was hard to believe that this was my mother speaking.

‘The what?’ I said.

‘Zee Reseestance,’ she said. ‘Eeet wahl be danjerous but vary exciting, mon ami.’

Finally, abandoning the accent, my mother told me what was going on. She said that she and Mary had been ‘meeting’ every night for a week, and had decided that it was time to ‘bring me in’.

‘So,’ she said, ‘would you lak to join zee Reseestance?’

I said I would, though I still had no idea what it was.

It turned out that the ‘Resistance’ had been Uncle Reginald’s idea. In fact, it was really group oralysis, without the oralyst.

That first night, we talked about something that, as it turned out, had occurred to each of us at one time or another. Why was it, Mary was the first to wonder out loud, that, despite her size, Aunt Phil was able to walk so much faster than the rest of us? It seemed it would remain a mystery until our mother ventured the theory that Aunt Phil had achieved such perfect equilibrium between her bosom and her backside that their net effect on her was zero. There followed a kind of silent fit of giggles, a furtive snorting which might have convinced anyone listening from outside that, our lives depending on it, the three of us were trying to keep a cow from mooing.

The Resistance began meeting almost every night after that. Our ultimate mission, our mother said, was to locate and destroy the enemy’s ‘dehumourizer’, a little-known household appliance. After we swore an oath to the accomplishment of this task, she explained that according to Uncle Reginald Aunt Phil had had something called a dehumourizer installed in the house twenty years ago. ‘Does anyone else find it funny in here?’ she’d say, then go to turn on the dehumourizer, the location of which only she knew. The dehumourizer, Uncle Reginald said, might even be disguised as something else, a toaster, a dishwasher. One thing was certain, it seemed to me. She had had it on full blast since we moved in.

One night, the subject of our group oralysis session was my boxing match. If a Catholic had had to fight a Protestant, my mother said, why had they not sent Aunt Phil up against Millie Barter? We’d have been sure to win, given that Aunt Phil outweighed Millie by at least a hundred pounds. We tried to imagine it. ‘In the blue corner, weighing eighty pounds, that mesmerizing Protestant from down the street, Millie “The Mosquito” Barter. Barter. And in the red corner, weighing one hundred eighty pounds, the Mighty Mick herself, the Bruising Floozy From St John’s, the one, the only, Philomena. Mena.’ I tried, without much success, to imagine Aunt Phil in boxing shorts and boxing gloves. I fared better with Millie Barter, imagined her shaking her whole body to keep loose before the fight, her aged white head bobbing back and forth, her frail liver-spotted little arms performing a mesmerizing series of uppercuts.

After rolling in giggles on the bed for a while, the three of us sat up against the headboard, my mother in the middle.

‘Mom,’ Mary said, ‘are you going to get married again?’

My mother made a face and shrugged.

‘Is it because of us?’ Mary said. ‘Is it because no man would want to marry a woman with two children?’

‘Where did you hear that?’ my mother said.

‘Aunt Phil,’ Mary said. ‘She said you don’t want to get married anyway, but even if you did, it wouldn’t matter, because of us.’

Shaking her head, my mother said something under her breath, then put her arms around us, hugging us tightly to her. She looked back and forth between us. ‘Who wouldn’t want to marry us?’ she said. ‘They’d have to be crazy. Why, just the other day, I put an ad in the paper. Young Widow adept at running funeral home, nine-year-old boxing goalie, and twelve-year-old prone to wearing bras outside her clothes seek arrangement with sensible young man—’

‘But Mom—’ Mary said.

‘But Mom nothing,’ my mother said. ‘You worry about your own love life. From what Draper Doyle told me, it could use some worry.’

‘I never told her anything,’ I said, before Mary could accuse me.

‘You did so,’ my mother said, ‘you told me Mary is madly in love with a boy named Sir Egbert Hippiehead, a.k.a. Harold Noonan.’

Mary groaned and, pulling away from my mother, covered her head with a pillow.

‘I hate Draper Doyle,’ she said. ‘I will never speak to him again.’

‘Yes,’ my mother said. ‘Sir Egbert Hippiehead. If you don’t want him, maybe I’ll marry him. Maybe I’ll write him a letter. “Dear Hippiehead, how I long to run my fingers through your hair.”’

Mary gave a muffled groan from beneath the pillow. ‘Yeccchhh,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t kiss him if God told me to.’

It wasn’t long before these night-time meetings began to affect how we carried on throughout the day. It got so that if the three of us were even in the same room, we started laughing. We could let nothing go by without remarking on it. Mealtimes were especially bad. With Aunt Phil, the subject of a good many of our secret jokes, sitting there among us, we couldn’t help ourselves. Just looking at one another set us off.

At first Aunt Phil made nothing of our strange behaviour. She seemed to think that if ignored it might go away. One night, however, when we had cow’s tongue for dinner, we got to her. I kept mooing all through dinner. I put mustard on the tongue. ‘You hate mustard,’ Mary said. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but the cow likes it.’ Among the questions arising from this remark were: 1) Could a cow’s tongue taste the people who were eating it? 2) Could the people who were eating it tell what the cow’s last meal had been? ‘I swear,’ Aunt Phil said, getting up from the table and looking at my mother, ‘that you and your children are going crazy.’

One night, later that week, when I was wakened by voices, I thought it was Mary and my mother come to get me again. But then I realized that the voices were coming from Aunt Phil’s room. I got out of bed as quietly as I could and tiptoed down the hall, putting my ear to Aunt Phil’s door.

‘There is no need for such theatrics,’ Aunt Phil was saying.

‘No,’ my mother said, ‘I suppose not.’

‘Frankly,’ Aunt Phil said, ‘I’d have thought that I deserved better treatment.’

For a while, there was silence, and then I heard what I took to be my mother sitting down on Aunt Phil’s bed.

‘Aunt Phil,’ she said, ‘I think it would be best for everyone if the children and I moved out.’

‘Nonsense,’ Aunt Phil said. ‘We could never afford it.’

‘I’m not asking you to afford it,’ my mother said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well. We wouldn’t just be moving out. We’d move away. We’d—’

‘Away?’ Aunt Phil said. ‘What do you mean by away? Away from Fleming Street?’

‘Well, yes,’ my mother said, ‘but further than that. To some place where jobs are easier to come by. I’ll need a part-time job—’

‘My dear, you’re talking nonsense,’ Aunt Phil said. ‘What kind of life could you give the children? They’re used to a much better life than you could give them, I assure you.’

‘I can get some sort of job,’ my mother said, ‘and go to university part-time if I have to. I’ve thought it out—’

‘My dear, you can’t have thought it out. You can’t have. Here, in this city, on this street, you belong to one of the better families. Anywhere else, you simply wouldn’t belong.’

‘Aunt Phil, I’m sorry to have to say this, but I’m not asking for your approval. Now I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for us, I really am, but we’re moving out.’

‘Well,’ Aunt Phil said. ‘I’m just as sorry to have to say that I can’t let you.’

My mother laughed. ‘Can’t let us? What do you mean you can’t let us?’

‘Exactly that,’ Aunt Phil said. ‘If you feel you have to go, I won’t try to stop you. But I cannot let you take Donald’s children.’

‘Donald’s children?’ my mother said. ‘Donald is dead, Aunt Phil. They’re my children. And besides, how do you propose to stop me from taking them?’

‘You’re a single woman,’ Aunt Phil said. ‘You’ve no education, no job to go to, no prospects.’

‘So?’ my mother said. ‘I’m not saying we’d have an easy time of it—’

‘So,’ Aunt Phil said. ‘So. Since you make me say it, here it is. We wouldn’t need to add much to that list of shortcomings to convince a court that you’re unsuitable.’

My mother said nothing.

‘We wouldn’t want to do it, of course. But we would do it if it meant the future of this family.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m sure I don’t have to say it straight out,’ Aunt Phil said. ‘Now you know what I mean. Who do you think the courts would listen to, if it came to that?’

‘I can’t believe what you’re saying—’

‘My dear, if you can’t, then you must have been born yesterday. Now none of this need happen. None of it will happen as long as you give up this foolish idea.’

‘You’re telling me,’ my mother said, ‘that you would make up some story about me, take my children from me?’

‘My dear, it’s time that you grew up. You can’t have thought that we would just let you walk away with the children. Now if you feel you have to leave, I won’t stop you, but the children stay with us.’

‘That’s what you want, isn’t it?’ my mother said. ‘Now that I’ve said what I’ve said, you want me to leave. Go off by myself. That would be very convenient, wouldn’t it?’

‘Don’t be absurd,’ Aunt Phil said. ‘You’re still a part of this family. If you want to be.’

‘My God,’ my mother said. ‘You don’t expect us to go on as usual after this, do you?’

‘I would have no trouble doing so,’ Aunt Phil said. ‘You will have to make up your own mind about it. Now please go back to bed. Tomorrow is a day like any other.’

With that I heard footsteps coming towards the door and just managed to duck into the bathroom across the hall before my mother came out, crying, her two hands over her mouth. I watched through the crack in the door as she went down the hall to her room. Then I tiptoed back to mine and got in bed.