Fit Month for Dying (8 page)

She leaned harder on the word with each repetition. If she had been writing it, she would have torn through the paper.

I could offer her little comfort that day except to tell her that I loved Greg, that I wished I had never married Leonard, that I wished I could have gotten an annulment instead of a divorce, but that I didn't have the grounds for an annulment nor the stomach for trumping up grounds for one if that's what she had in mind. I said I came to believe that Leonard only married me on the rebound after his paralegal fiancée had broken their engagement and run off to California with a young graduate student, but that he hadn't done it with malice aforethought. He simply believed he could live with the substitution and then found out he couldn't. I neglected to tell her, because it didn't seem pertinent to this conversation, that I had also come to understand that I had married Leonard not so much out of love as out of need. Mother had just died, and I didn't have another living relative to my name. Besides, I wanted to prove to someone — myself, probably — that at least one of the Corrigan women could marry solid, and Leonard was nothing if not solid.

Hubert had rallied to my aid that day. He scolded Philomena for carrying on with nonsense, and after Greg and I left he continued to lobby on my behalf until finally Philomena came around to at least accepting the inevitability of Greg's and my union. A couple of weeks later she told us grudgingly, wanting to make sure we understood her position, that just because she accepted the letter of our marriage, it didn't mean she accepted the spirit of it. And it certainly didn't mean she wasn't disappointed that her firstborn son was marrying someone whose slate was unclean and whose life wasn't suited to having a Nuptial Mass in
the Sacred Heart Church in the Cove.

Her own marriage, mixed as it was, had had to be a low-key affair, a side-altar “do” without adornment or decoration, without pomp or circumstance. Worst of all, she had had to forego the Nuptial Mass and with it the prayer she had wanted so badly. She had fervently hoped her sons' weddings could have all the flounces and frills to make up for her own spare ceremony.

We had been sitting at her table when she confessed this, as usual drinking her strong tea, and she immediately rose and hurried up to her bedroom and returned to the table with her Sunday missal. She sat back down beside her half-empty teacup and, after a few minutes of searching through the book, came upon the page she was looking for.

“'Tis the prayer I had hoped to have at me own wedding, but it was considered out of place for the occasion. A bit too high-toned. At least that's what my mother thought, so I never pushed for it. I wasn't the type then to push things.”

She began reading the prayer, and I could tell from the smooth way she read it that she had gone over this passage many times over many years. “
Look, in Your mercy, O Lord, upon this Your handmaid, about to be joined in wedlock, who entreats You to protect and strengthen her. Let the yoke of marriage to her be one of love and peace. Faithful and chaste, let her marry in Christ. Let her ever follow the model of the holy women. Let her be dear to her husband like Rachel; wise like Rebecca; long-lived and faithful like Sara. Let the author of sin work none of his evil deeds within her; let her ever keep the Faith and the Commandments. Let her be true to one wedlock and shun all sinful embraces...
”

She broke off at this point, shut the missal and asked, “Would you consider having this lovely prayer included in your service? Rules have slackened so much, you could probably get away with it. Anything goes now. They even makes up their own vows. Twists and turns the old vows around to suit their purpose. I even heard them saying on one of the soaps the other day, ‘Till love does depart.' Gives them a lot more leeway, I s'pose. Don't have to put up with each other until the grave sets them free.”

She passed the open missal to me so I could read the prayer for myself.

“I don't like that prayer as much as you do,” I confessed, taking the book but not attempting to read it. I didn't need a second reading or time to mull over her request. “But I'm sure we can find one we'll all like.” I could tell from the heavy way she closed the missal when I passed it back to her and by the way the lines around her mouth deepened that her disappointment was severe, and for a moment or two I considered retracting my refusal.

Later, when we were alone, Greg asked me why I had been so adamant in my refusal and whether I would reconsider including the prayer in our service. “Can't you humour her by doing that for her?”

“Just read the words!” I said. “Just hear them! Just take in the message. It's as if the burden of keeping our marriage together will depend upon my virtues. Or in my case, my lack of virtues — I'm certainly no Sara or Rachel or Rebecca.”

I recited the last line for him, slowly and clearly. “‘
Let her be true to one wedlock
.' Can't you see that I'm already one marriage and one divorce too late for being true to one wedlock? We'd be a laughingstock if I read that out loud at the altar. Your mother is so used to reading those words, she no longer listens to their meaning.”

As it turned out, my acceptance or refusal of that particular prayer became of no consequence. When Philomena learned the following week that we were getting married in St. John's in the Unitarian Church, she fiercely rescinded her earlier capitulation. She would not be coming to our wedding; the whole thing was a blasphemy.

She had been standing beside her kitchen stove, a dishcloth in her hand, ready to attack the stack of dinner dishes when Greg told her our church plans. For several seconds she was stunned into silence. When she recovered her composure, she tossed the dishcloth on the counter with a swing that said now she had heard everything.

“What? Not even Anglican or United? Not even a regular Protestant church?” She squared her shoulders and hiked her bosom, readying herself for the fight of her life. “Over my dead body. Not while I'm on this side of the grave.”

We hurriedly explained that we had tried but not succeeded in arranging for a United or an Anglican wedding. One difficulty was my divorce. Another was that churches were already booked; we hadn't given enough lead time. Finally, we had chosen the Unitarian Church because good friends of ours belonged to it, and they were going to be our witnesses.

“Might as well get married in a park. Or in a hot air balloon, like those Hollywood people I saw on that thing the other day.” She pointed to the television in the den. “And if they want to do that, that's fine by me. That's their folly. 'Tis jest not fine fer my son.” She looked me squarely in the eye, as if the plans were mine alone. “Surely ye must know you're not only flying in the face of God by this marriage. Yer going to make Hube and me the disgrace of the Cove.”

On the way back to St. John's that evening, Greg explained to me why his mother was so hard-headed about our marriage.

“You have to realize it has more to do with her own marriage than with ours. And it has a lot to do with Danny and the guilt she feels over his leaving the Church. She blames herself for going against her parents' wishes and marrying Dad, and she blames Dad because he never insisted that Danny come with her and me to our church.”

He told me how the two religions had slept fitfully between his parents throughout most of their marriage. “She used to throw it up to him that he had signed papers before they got married saying he wouldn't interfere in her bringing up the children in the Catholic religion, and yet he acted as if he had signed nothing. She felt he was always looking for ways to skirt around his sacred promise.”

I found it difficult to imagine a stubborn, stonewalling Hubert. “That doesn't sound like a thing your dad would do,” I said. “It doesn't sound like Mr. Hube at all. He doesn't seem the type who wouldn't live up to his word.”

“Oh, he had his ways back then,” Greg said, giving me a tight, wry smile. “They both did, for that matter. I used to hate Sundays because they either argued before church or became silent afterwards. The silence sometimes lasted all day.”

“But what would cause the fuss?” I inquired, not fully understanding the circumstances. “Would your dad want you and Danny to go to his church with him instead of both of you going with your mom?”

“Nothing that outright. Danny used to want to go to church with Dad, and Dad wouldn't say no to him. She wanted him to say ‘No, go with your mother.' That's how it went. It used to drive Mom crazy. Especially since she surmised that Danny was doing it just to get her goat. But that wasn't the case at all. Danny just felt sorry for Dad going to church alone. And I used to feel sorry for him, too, for that matter. I just didn't have Danny's courage to run counter to Mom. I took the cowardly way out. I used to go to Mass and spend the time praying that the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church would merge so it would be impossible to tell one from the other, and then I'd come home feeling like Judas for my seditious prayers. On Sundays I always felt I was on the rack. Only it was my heart, not my limbs, being jerked in two directions.

“But that's about the only thing they ever seriously argued about. So I don't want to give you the idea that I was hard done by or anything. And even the religion issue settled down after a while. Once we got to be teenagers. Danny gave up going to any church. After we moved into the Cove and there wasn't a regular Anglican minister on hand, religion stopped being such a problem. She goes to Mass, and whenever the Anglican minister comes to the Cove, he goes to his church. Other times he goes fishing. And sometimes while she's at her church, he will turn on one of those evangelical programs on television. Seems to work for them, so I let it go at that.”

I married Greg on a sultry August afternoon, the first fine day in a long string of wet days. I married him less than a year after I met him, less than a year after he had successfully managed my political campaign and gotten me elected to the House of Assembly. And I married him without Philomena's blessing. All of Mr. Hube's crusading on our behalf, all of Greg's imploring, all of my apologies didn't make a dent in her resolve. Even telling her that we both intended to keep on going to the Catholic Church even if we couldn't partake of the Sacraments didn't mollify her the slightest bit.

“Some grand day!” the guests said when they met in the dark-by-contrast vestibule of the Unitarian Hall on Empire Avenue in downtown St. John's where Greg and I had just merged our lives. When I came outside after the brief ceremony, I could smell the carnations bedded beside the low iron railing surrounding the front of the building. Their heavy pink and white blooms drooped in the sun and threw soft shadows on the grass. As I breathed in the headiness of the flowers, and as I tasted the air that smelled like fresh green kelp, and as I felt the silkiness of the sun on my bare arms, I told myself that this was indeed a grand day for a wedding. Even though I had no family to witness this marriage, and even though Hubert and Philomena were conspicuously absent, I still felt it was a grand day for my second venture into matrimony.

But just as I was thinking these thoughts, a seagull circled the churchyard, barely clearing our heads, scanning the grounds for food. After a few circles it realized it had been duped — there was nothing but paper confetti on the ground — and it gave a loud, shrill screech and flew off towards the harbour.

That screech, as it faded out into the Narrows, took with it the joy that had drenched me just moments earlier. Memories came at me, indistinct and clouded, as if from a great distance. The more I tried to push them back, the more they crowded in, jostling one another for elbow room. It was as if the screech of that gull had awakened in me old sorrows. Dennis Walsh's face slipped into my mind.

I reached out and gripped Greg's arm tightly, trying to reassure myself that just because the happiness that had lived in me once had died, there was no reason to believe it would die a second time. As if he understood my need, he unfurled my hand from his arm and clasped it tightly in his own as we walked about the church grounds mingling with our guests.

As soon as good manners permitted, we slipped away and drove to the Cove. Although Philomena had refused to attend our wedding and Hubert had refused to defy her and come by himself, they both insisted we go out to see them before we left for our honeymoon in Europe. It was early evening before we arrived. The weather was still sultry, and no wind at all. Not even enough to make a ripple on the pond. Even the sea was calm, and the sun that was dropping down into it over beside Red Island was the colour of blood, promising another good day to follow.

The whole village smelled of freshly washed clothes. Philomena's clothesline was filled cheek to jowl with towels and sheets and underwear and socks, the underwear discreetly pinned to hide any remaining stains, the socks spooned together heel to shin in pairs of blacks and browns and greys. Hubert's socks. The clothes hung on the line without a stir or a flutter, and I knew that before nightfall Philomena would be complaining that everything had dried as stiff as a board and as rough as sandpaper. She liked it much better when the sheets bellied out like wind-bloated sails and when Hubert's shirts flew off the line and strangled themselves on the pasture fence.

Philomena's clothesline had always reminded me of Grandmother's clothesline. Grandmother's was in the back yard, gallowsed between two gangly spruce trees. The midway point was always propped up with a forked stick so the clothes wouldn't droop on the ground. Many times during the day she would go to the line and grab a handful of blue-bordered flannel sheet and bring it to her nose to glut herself on the scent of salty air mixed with whatever flowers were blooming: lilacs, honeysuckle, wild roses, goldenrod.