“Poor Sadie. I actually feel bad for her.”
“It's all in the blood, and Sadie and Angus got the same in their veins.”
Annie says nothing. She's not so sure she wants to know any more.
Joe is undeterred. “They were all originally from Little Cove before they moved into here. There was only a few families there, and the brothers and sisters from one family married brothers and sisters from another family, and so they got more related. After that it's the luck of the draw for the youngsters. Some are okay, others not.”
“For heaven sakes, Joe,” Lucinda pleads, “it's all gossip and hearsay. Don't be talking about stuff like that, not tonight.”
“All I knows is that half the Griffins were bad in the head.” His lip curls up in distaste. “The worst of the lot was that Paddy though, a sick dirty thing from day one, he was.” He slaps the Formica table and the cups and spoons rattle in their saucers. “I should of took care of him when I had the chance. Nothing but a goddamn pervert, that Paddy Griffin.”
1943
It was a typical spring night in St. Jude, the ground still frozen, a hint of a thaw in the air. Joe Hann had spent the evening playing darts at the town bar, Patron's Pub. Joe liked his beer and he liked his whiskey. He also liked to spend time with the ladies, unlike his older brother, Callum, who, at twenty-one, found himself tongue-tied around women. Callum had passed the night at home reading, alone except for his father, whom he'd carried upstairs earlier. Through the open window he could hear the shrieks and laughter of children playing hide and seek in a field down the way. His ten-year-old sister was among them. At nine-thirty, he went to call her in. She came right away. Mercedes liked to curl up in bed with a book before sleep.
Joe decided to go home early so he could go fishing the next morning and still get back in time for Mass. He took a shortcut through the woods, past the bog meadow, which would bring him up behind his family's rundown house on the outskirts of town. This route also made it easier to enter through the rear door and avoid the squeaky hinge in the front that Mercedes had been complaining about for weeks and which he kept forgetting to fix.
The sliver of moon that lit his way through the woods gradually withdrew behind a mist of clouds. Rounding the last clump of trees on the final approach to the house, he came upon Paddy Griffin, pants undone, grunting in the darkness.
Paddy was Joe's uncle, sort of, not that Joe had any respect for him. When Paddy was well into his thirties, he had married Joe's mother's stepsister, Nell - she was sixteen at the time - and taken her to Toronto. Nell returned six years later, alone, pregnant, the mother of two girls. She gave birth to Paddy's son, Angus, six months later, by which time she'd taken up with Henry Byrne. Two months after Angus was born, Nell was pregnant again. When she died giving birth, Henry, heartbroken, went out fishing one night and never made it back. With Nell and Henry dead, Henry's parents took on the job of raising the baby. They named him Dermot.
“What the hell are you up to, Griffin?” Joe called out.
Paddy started frantically pulling his clothes together. “Just having a piss. Who the fuck wants to know anyway?”
“It's me, Joe Hann. Christ sakes, piss into the trees at least so I don't walk in it.”
Paddy started to stagger and sway all of a sudden, mumbling incoherently.
“Get on home,” Joe advised. “Don't want to pass out. Gets awful cold at night.”
Paddy spun around and, with a surprisingly sure step, ran off into the darkness.
Heading once again towards the house, Joe's eye was drawn upward to where an oil lamp illuminated his sister's room. Through the window he could see the back of Mercedes' head. Her small hand came up to guide a hairbrush through her long dark hair, past her bare shoulders. Joe immediately dropped his eyes back to the ground.
He wondered why she hadn't pulled the shade. Then he remembered. Weeks ago, maybe even longer, she'd asked him to fix it. It hadn't seemed important at the time.
Swinging back around, he searched the empty darkness. Nothing was visible except the shadows of a late-night wood.
First thing the next morning, he repaired and hung Mercedes' shade. Fishing could wait for another day. The front door's hinge continued to squeak.
One evening after supper, when Mercedes went out to play ball, Joe asked Callum what he knew about Paddy.
“Nothing good. Mona Burke was talking down at the store, said her cousin up in Toronto heard some pretty nasty rumours. Apparently the reason Nell left him was she caught him doing something to one of their little girls, the dirty bugger. Mona hinted Paddy had some kind of disease too, from a whore up north. Not that I believe everything out of Mona's mouth, but there's something about that man makes my skin crawl.” Callum reached for Joe's plate. “Why you asking?”
Joe had a queasy feeling in his gut. “Well, I was heading home through the woods last week and I bumped into him taking a leak, at least that's what he said he was doing with his hand on himself. I don't know why he'd be back there at that hour, and it seemed some queer the way he was staring right at the house. After he took off, I saw Merce was up in her bedroom, and I still hadn't gone and fixed that shade yet.”
Callum was staring at the ceiling, up in the direction of Mercedes' room. “That filthy disgusting pig.” His voice was bruised with rage.
“Now Cal, slow down.” Joe laid a calming hand on his brother's arm. “We're not sure what he was up to. Let's just keep an eye on him.”
“We better tell Merce so she can stay clear of him.”
“Go on, there's no need for that, is there?”
“Sure there is, so she keeps her distance.” Callum stood, his hands full of dishes.
“If we goes telling her that stuff, she'll be scared to leave the house. Besides, she's too young to know about what he was doing at himself.”
“Joe, if she's old enough for him to be looking at her like that, she's probably old enough to understand what he was doing.”
“Lord's sake,” Joe whispered, “she's ten years old. Just because he's a dirty bastard don't mean she got to hear about it.”
“She got a right to know so she can protect herself.”
“Go on, Cal, she don't need to be knowing stuff like that yet.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Who's going to tell her, anyway?” Callum hesitated. “Well, you saw him there, but I can talk to her if you want.”
“Look, I probably got the whole thing wrong,” Joe backtracked. “I bet he was just having a piss. Yeah, now I thinks on it, that's all it was.”
Callum eyed him doubtfully. “If he comes near her⦔
“Don't you worry,” Joe promised, coming over to help with the washing up. “If he shows his face near here, I'll cut the legs out from under him. All three of them.”
As it happened, the problem resolved itself. Model citizen that he was, Paddy had gotten into debt with several local businesses and abruptly left town. Nobody was disappointed. Even his mother at the post office appeared relieved to have him gone.
By the time Callum and Joe decided to try their luck in New York a few years later, their biggest worry was how their sister would manage left in the questionable care of their father. To make life easier for her, Callum had electricity and plumbing installed and arranged for Burke's to extend credit to Mercedes, and Mercedes only, for food and supplies.
They'd forgotten all about Paddy Griffin.
1946
St. Jude was originally a fishing village. As such, it had its share of widows. When the sea took a man, it took his family's livelihood as well, leaving his wife and children to make do. A few ounces of meat would flavour a pot to feed a family of three or six or ten. Hand-me-downs were handed down a few more times. With no man in the house, life was extra hard. When Sadie Griffin's father drowned, her mother was six months pregnant. Sadie had been making do since the day she was born.
“Big bow wow, Tow-wow-wow⦔
Five-year-old Sadie Duffie sang a ditty as she swished the broom across the wood plank floor. Her singing stopped at the sound of someone running across the gravelled yard and up the rickety front steps.
Mabel Duffie's plump body burst into the kitchen. “Ma! Ma!” she yelled, sending the cat scurrying into the neat pile of dirt that Sadie had just swept together.
“Mabel!” Sadie yelled.
“I saw the toilet!” Mabel panted.
Sadie turned to her mother. “Look what she done.”
“Weren't me. Stupid cat did it.”
“I hates that thing.” Sadie smacked at the cat with the broom. “Go away, cat.”
Edna Duffie's crooked arthritic fingers placed a small piece of salt beef onto the boiling cabbage. She peered at her older daughter over the steam. “Get on, girl. They really got a toilet?” “Who? Who got one?” Sadie asked. She'd never seen a real toilet.
“The Hanns. Merce bragged about it all week. Wouldn't shut up for nothing.”
“So they don't got to go to a outhouse no more?” Sadie could not imagine that.
Mabel shrugged. “Don't know, but the toilet's right next to her bedroom.”
Sadie tried to picture needing to go in the middle of the night and only having to walk to the next room. She couldn't. “Did you go pee on it?”
“No. I wanted to but she didn't say to, and I wasn't going to let on like I cared.”
“Why? She's our cousin.” Sometimes Mabel didn't make much sense to Sadie.
“Some cousin. Wouldn't even show me the answers on the history test the other day. Thinks she knows everything, that one.”
“That's the Hanns for you,” said Edna. “Chock full of their-selves. Don't know why Mary ever married that Farley. The death of her, he was.”
“That Merce is nothing but a tomboy,” said Mabel. “Whenever we plays ball she always wants to be on the boys' team.”
“I likes playing ball,” said Sadie, sweeping around Mabel's feet.
“So she got a eye for the boys, eh?” Edna eased herself into the rocking chair.
“Nah, don't know they're alive other than to kick the ball. A few of the older fellows were teasing her the other day and she swore at them, right out loud, too. Sister Anne heard her though the window. Got in some trouble, she did. Serves her right.”
“Her father falled on the ground by Sullivan's,” Sadie offered, trying to be part of the conversation. She put the broom away and found a blanket to cover Edna's legs.
“Farley! Foolish gommel lives at the bootleggers, he do,” said her mother.
“What's a gommel?” asked Sadie.
“He's off his rocker, he is,” said Mabel, ignoring Sadie. “With a father like that, don't know why they acts so high and mighty.”
“What's his rocker?” Sadie asked, looking at her mother in the rocking chair.
“She means he's not all there,” said her mother, pointing to her head. “Nuts.”
“Yeah,” said Mabel, “and the house is some dirty, even if they do got a toilet.”
“Who needs a toilet, anyway?” said her mother.
Sadie glanced out the window where the outhouse was partly hidden behind a row of trees. She'd been putting it off for the last hour. She hated going out there. It was always dirty and it smelled really bad. In the winter it was so cold she had a hard time doing her business once she got there. And in the summer there were flies everywhere, buzzing around the walls and the seat and in the hole. Sadie was always afraid one would fly up her bum. She didn't like to think what would happen then.
Mabel crossed her arms. “I wouldn't use one if I had one.”
Sadie looked at her sister like she was crazy. “I would. I'd use it all the time, even if I didn't need to go. I'd sit there and read the catalogue. You're nuts, Mabel.”
Sadie put on her coat and her rubber boots. Outside, she picked her way through the tall wet grass until she reached the outhouse. Flies buzzed a
flitted around the door.
“I wish we had a toilet,” she said.
1999
Gerry puts his plate in the sink and looks out the window. The empty clothesline is a white streak across the yard, cutting the night sky in two. Past a bank of clouds, he sees her again, standing in the window. This new image, his first in five years, has hovered in his mind all evening, entering his consciousness unbidden at random moments. If he closes his eyes, he imagines he can feel her body, warm to the touch of his fingers.
“Come and sit, Gerard.” His mother's voice is thick.
Every muscle in his body feels heavy, almost soggy from the mix of tea and beer and beans and turkey. Still, he's in better shape than his mother. Her “come and sit” had sounded like something far less pleasant. “I've been sitting all day,” he says as he refills the kettle in hopes of getting another cup of tea into her, unspiked this time.
Gerry pours boiling water into the pot and adds three tea bags. His mother would normally object to such wastefulness â one bag is enough for the both of them in her mind â but she's staring off into space, a spiteful set to her mouth. He opens a new can of Carnation and adds milk and sugar to two clean mugs, then fills them to the top with the strong, dark brew. “Here you go, a nice fresh spot of tea.”
Sadie blinks at the mugs. “Why you messing more cups?”
“That last bit of milk tasted funny. I opened a new can.”
“Tasted fine to me.”
“But you didn't have any?”
“Any what?”
“Milk.”
“Milk? 'Course I got milk.”
“In your tea, Ma.”
“What I said. Just look at it.”
“Not this cup.” His voice has risen. He deliberately lowers it and speaks slower. “I mean you didn't have any milk in your tea last time, remember?”
She looks uncertainly into the new cup. “Ohâ¦sureâ¦that one.”