Mercy of St Jude (2 page)

They hear the front door open and close, followed by footsteps padding down the carpeted hallway to the kitchen.

“Looks like we're not done yet,” says Dermot, easing himself upright and reaching for the bottle on the table. He's already had a few, yet his hand is steady as he pours. He passes Annie a dram of his special stash, reserved for weddings and funerals. He'd cracked it open earlier that evening when Father James stopped by. The heady aroma of incense lingers in the room.

Annie takes it gratefully. “Thanks, Dad.”

His hand touches her cheek. She reaches up and holds it there an extra moment.

Dermot pours two more. He gives one to Aiden and holds the other out to Pat. “Don't suppose you'd care for a drink?”

“I'm not here for the company.” Pat takes a quick swallow.

Dermot starts to sit down then changes direction to turn off the larger lamp and light the candles. The mustard-coloured walls take on a golden hue. He leans against the coffin and nods. “That's better.”

His Newfoundland brogue thickens with every sip of whiskey. Annie has heard her own voice grow flatter and faster since arriving home. In Calgary, she speaks more slowly and with clearer diction, a consequence of too many patronising remarks about her quaint accent.

Pat springs to his feet. “What the Christ are we going to do all night, sit and look at her?” His right hand, sporting a tattoo of a Celtic cross, runs through his overgrown dirty blond mane and matching scruffy beard, so unlike his brother, whose fine dark hair is always neatly trimmed, his face always clean shaven.

“Be one of the more peaceful nights you ever spent with her,” says Annie.

“No more than you.” He takes a sizeable drink then frowns at the small amount remaining in his glass. “She wouldn't even want me here.” His voice is sullen.

“I thought I was finally shed of her, too,” Aiden says. In recent years he'd been a frequent driver for Mercedes, running errands and generally being at her beck and call. It was the least he could do, she'd preached, after she'd helped him get an early parole.

“Now, now, sure you knows it's bad luck to be leaving a dead body unattended,” Dermot reminds them. “Besides, she'll be six feet under this time tomorrow.”

A draught blows in through the open window. Annie inhales the salt air coming up off the bay. A five-minute scramble down the hill behind her parents' house would have her feet in the Atlantic. As a girl she liked to watch out the kitchen window on a stormy day, snug by the wood stove, cocoa in hand. When the wind died down, she'd spend hours scouring the rocks, looking for treasure the raging sea might have flung up onto the beach. On calmer days she'd scale the cliffs along the shore. Hugging the layered rock face, she'd scan the waves, imagining what it would be like to be caught up in that great big ocean, unprotected by family, far away from everyone she knew.

The breeze makes the candles flicker. Their shadows dance on the wall and the coffin, leaving Annie with the unnerving impression that the corpse itself has moved. A shiver runs down her back. “Good Lord, I could have sworn Mercedes was about to rise up from the box.”

Pat hurries to shut the window. “That's nothing to joke about, Annie.”

“Always thought she had unfinished business with you, Pat.” Aiden leans back in his chair, his stocky limbs stretching out in all directions like a contented cat. His stutter is barely perceptible these days, thanks to countless hours talking to himself in the mirror. It still shows up occasionally when he's drinking.

“Frig off, Aiden. You're just tempting Satan with that kind of talk.”

Pat turns abruptly as the living room door opens. Sadie Griffin pokes her head in.

“Speak of the devil,” he whispers, sitting down next to Annie.

Sadie clip-clops in as if she owns the place, talking non-stop and charging the room with her unique aroma of yesterday's sweat and cheap perfume. In Annie's memory, Sadie has never changed. She's always been a little, grey-haired busybody.

“My dear Dermot, I just finished setting out Father James's brekkie and I thought I had to drop in to see our Mercedes…”

Annie groans under her breath. “Just what I frigging need.”

Pat nods sympathetically. More than anyone, he knows that Sadie Griffin is the last person Annie would want to see. “She's
here twice a day.” He leans closer, his voice low. “Old bag thinks she's family or something.”

In fact, the families are connected on several fronts. Mercedes' mother and Sadie's father were brother and sister. And Sadie's husband, Angus, was the son of their stepsister, Nell, who was also Dermot's mother by a different father. It's an incestuous muddle that does not sit well with Annie's family, although it doesn't seem to bother the Griffins.

On top of that, fifty years earlier Angus's father, Paddy, also known as the town pervert, convinced Mercedes' senile father, Farley, to go to Toronto with him. The two men were never seen again. The Hanns have mistrusted the Griffins ever since.

And rightly so, in Annie's opinion. The Griffin lineage is riddled with undesirables, heavy drinking types always on for a fight, loans left unpaid up and down the shore, illegitimate babies scattered from bay to bay. Each generation seems to perpetuate the family's objectionable ancestry more than the last.

“…the poor thing,” Sadie is prattling on, “she had her bad days but she was a good soul, never spared when it came to helping at the convent or them youngsters in Africa, sending money when yourselves hardly made ends meet, such a wonderful woman…” She barely pauses for breath, her covetous eyes touching everything and everyone along the way as her kitten-heels clack across the wood floor to where Dermot stands by the coffin, whiskey glass in hand. “…hard to let go isn't it, Derm, though Lord knows you weren't that lovey-dovey when she was alive but you got to leave her in peace.” Sadie's voice rises in pained, cheerful admiration. “Some lovely in that black dress, my, it does become her with them silvery tresses, imagine never needing a dye job, never looked better.” She dabs her dry eyes and takes Dermot's empty glass and plunks it down on the coffee table. “Now, Derm, leave her be so she can go with the Lord, and come back out to the kitchen and we'll get a cup of tea into you before I heads out the road, it'll fix you right up…” Still nattering, she tucks her arm into his and hustles him out of the room.

Pat waits until the door shuts behind them. He nudges Annie. “Remember that night we wrote on her sidewalk?”

“Christ, don't remind me. ‘ANGUS IS GAY, SO THEY SAY,' in red spray paint. Sadie scrubbed at that for days. Finally had to cover it over with black shoe polish.”

“He was still a goddamn fag, no matter what colour you paint it,” says Aiden.

“And you're still a homophobe.” Annie wags a finger at him. “Better be careful, Aiden. A gay friend of mine in Calgary says there's a little bit of queer in all of us.”

Pat holds out his palms as if weighing the options. “Gay or Sadie? I'd pick gay.”

“Redneck Calgary?” Aiden looks doubtful. “Didn't think they had queers out there.”

“I'd rather be one there than here, with small-minded gossips like Sadie running the place.” Annie sighs. “Poor Mom, just what she needs tonight, Sadie in there shaking her tail feathers at Dad.”

They all nod knowingly, for therein lies another point of contention between the two families. Years before, Dermot and Sadie had been going around together, but once he laid eyes on Lucinda, Sadie was salt. And who would blame him? Except Sadie, who was more likely to blame Lucinda anyway.

“I'm telling you, Annie, that one still got the hots for your father,” Aiden says. “He'll be lucky to make it down that dark hallway in one piece.”

“Don't be so foolish, Aiden,” Pat scoffs. “They're all too old for that nonsense.”

“Mom'll be getting rid of her some fast.”

Sure enough, within the minute they hear the front door open, followed by Sadie's voice. “We'll be seeing you tomorrow, Lucinda, and now go get some rest, you're looking that dragged out you are and call me if you needs anything, what's family for now, Lucinda dear, just call anytime.”

There is a mumble, presumably from Lucinda. The door shuts extra firmly.

“Did you hear her going on? ‘Some lovely in that black dress.'” Aiden's imitation of Sadie is bang on. “‘Silvery tresses' my arse.”

“‘Never looked better,'” adds Pat. “What a stupid thing to say.”

As Annie listens, images of Mercedes drift through her mind, unsmiling, serious, alone. Mercedes had only ever seemed to thaw when she was with Callum or Lucinda, or Gerry Griffin, of course. Once upon a time she was like that with Annie too, but that was before the day they faced each other down. “You'll be a nothing in a nothing town,” had been her aunt's parting shot. Annie, her heart filled with hurt, had fired back, “Fuck you, Mercedes.”

So why now does she feel this strange compassion? Because Mercedes died a spinster? Because she never enjoyed the routine contentment of sharing her bed with someone who loved her, of finding a warm, wanted body next to hers in the black of night? At least Mercedes had made that decision herself.

She hadn't allowed Annie the choice. For that Annie would never forgive her.

The cool June wind whips up off the waves, over the breakwater
and onto Water Street. An empty chip bag flies up off the
ground. It soars for a moment, then drops. Every now and
then, a whiff of decaying seaweed, of dead fish perhaps, rushes
up from the shore. Sadie Griffin is small against the wind, insignificant
against the force of the ocean. Still, she moves forward,
her path almost straight. Sadie barely notices the cold.
Indignation keeps her warm.

Goddamn Hanns. Frigging Lucinda. Fed up with the lot of them.

Sadie's hand catches at the thin scarf around her neck. The wind has loosened it so that one end has come free and is whipping about high in the air. She pulls it down, tucks it into her coat and forges onward.

Door practically hit me on the arse she shut it so hard. Pity poor Derm, stuck with that one forever. And them two brothers, not a decent brain between the pair of them. To think they used to make fun of my Gerard. Well, look at them all now. Gerard showed them, he did. And that Annie. I knows all about her, I do. Too chicken to lift her head up in the parlour there. Couldn't even look me in the eye. Thank God I got Gerard away from that little tramp. Imagine messing around with one of them Hanns. Hah! One Hann less now Mercedes bit the biscuit.

Sadie looks up only when she passes the priest's house.

Lights off. Good, I didn't forget. Wonder what Father will have to say tomorrow. Father James, now there's a good one. Wouldn't mind cleaning his house. Fine looking man. Fine arse on him, too. Nothing better than a priest.

Sadie looks at her watch. She picks up speed, elbows bent, fists into the wind.

Gerard be here soon. Home to his mother. Ah, Gerard. My Gerard.

Gerry Griffin eases up on the accelerator. He turns off the highway and onto the road leading into St. Jude. He rolls down the window and listens, trying to distinguish the ocean from the noise of the engine and the wind flying past the car. Before he hears it, he sees it, the white tips dancing on a sea of black. It's one of the few things he misses.

He takes the first right up a street of middle-class houses, some well kept, others not, all in better shape than the one he grew up in. Two doors down from her house, he pulls over. He draws a long, deep breath. The instant he opens the car door he sees her. He pulls the door shut. She stands in the window, her face more clear to him than is possible at this distance, the fair skin framed by almost-black hair, shorter now but still thick, the distinct line of her nose that comes to a small sharp point above her lips, her mouth, soft and full. And her eyes. He has pictured her face every day for five years; always he stops at her eyes, one moment green and warm as late-summer grass, the next, so vulnerable, so wounded. Always he is left with that memory.

She moves away from the window. He is about to open the door again when he realizes that his face is wet with tears. This is not how he wants her to see him.

He drives on, down Main Street, past the Trade School, the town hall, the gas station. Near the centre of town is Burke's store, where old Mona Burke started selling groceries to make ends meet after her husband failed to return from a fishing trip. Over the years, extensions, including a motel wing, were added haphazardly; little of the charm of the original red barn remains. Burke's sells everything now, from groceries and fishing tackle to furniture and appliances. His mother shops there every day.

He parks in front of a small clapboard house at the other end of town. The lampshade by the door is still missing, leaving a bare bulb to illuminate the broken top step. The paint is still peeling. He wonders if his brothers drank away the money he left for repairs. This time he'll hire someone to do the job.

He's not long in the house before Sadie rushes in.

“Gerard, you're here!”

She looks windblown but otherwise much the same as when he was home six months earlier. Her dark eyes are only slightly faded and, except for the two deeply pitted frown lines on her forehead, her face is oddly smooth for a woman near sixty. On top of her head are waves of grey, her old-woman-do, he calls it. She can afford to have it coloured and styled but, even though it makes her look older, she refuses to change it. His monthly supplements would allow her to quit working if she wanted, to stop cleaning house for others and put her own feet up for a change. But she says no, she'll just grow old and die if she sits idle. She says nothing about the tidbits of gossip she picks up along the way, but Gerry knows that gossip keeps her young.