“You don't know the first thingâ”
“I knows you were messing around with that poor stupid girl.”
Annie looks from one to the other, surprised that a conversation about Mercedes has veered off in this direction. Then again, Mercedes was all about accountability.
Aiden groans. “Don't tell me you're on about that Griffin slut again. Christ!”
“You made your bed.”
“Hard not to when she throws herself at you.”
“You could have said no.”
“Like you would, I suppose?”
Pat crosses his arms. “Like I did.”
“Yeah, right.”
“It's the truth.”
Aiden snickers. “Just proves the bitch would go to bed with anyone.”
Annie can't sit silent any longer. “For Christ's sake, Aiden, there's a youngster involved here.”
Aiden whirls on her. “Mind your own goddamn business, Annie.”
“No, I won't. Pat's right. You should have done the right thing.”
“Listen to you,” he mocks, “picking up for a Griffin.”
“Who happens to be raising a kid without a father.”
“Fucking Griffins are all sluts and homos and liars. Just ask Dad â he'll tell you.” Frank Hann had nursed a particular disliking for Sadie ever since she'd accused him of stealing from the church. “Like mother like daughter, I swear to God.”
“Not like you at all, eh?” Pat jumps back in. “Hand always on the zipper, then not man enough to own up to it when it comes back at youâ”
“Shut the fuck up, the two of you. I'm sick of your sanctimonious bullshit. As for you, Pat, I'm glad Aunt Merce got me off your stinking boat. And even if she did what you said,” he continues, his voice tight with warning, “you knows it wasn't me she was after. So in the end, whose fault was it?”
Annie hears a noise from down the hall. “Okay, that's enough. The last thing Mom needs is you two going at it.”
Aiden walks to the sink and pours a glass of water. He looks at if for a moment then turns and raises the glass high. “To Mercedes. May she finally rest in peace.” Only his mouth smiles.
Pat, looking relieved, gives in easily. “Good old Aunt Merce. Dead as a doornail and still pissing off the world.”
Lucinda comes in, followed by Joe and Dermot.
“Never known a woman harder to toast than Mercedes,” says Dermot. “She's like just-baked bread, she is - keeps getting stuck in the toaster until it finally catches fire.”
Lucinda rolls her eyes but she's smiling. “What are you like, Derm? A couple of belts of whiskey and out comes the philosophiser.” Her hand clasps his where it rests on her shoulder. “Speaking of bread, I got to get some from the freezer for tomorrow's sandwiches. Wouldn't want you crowd having nothing to soak up the suds.”
She bustles off, yelling back for someone to go keep an eye on the coffin.
“I'll be right in, Mercedes,” Dermot calls out as he reaches under the sink. “Stay where you're to till I comes where you're at.” His hand reappears holding a paper bag. He winks at them all as he heads back to the living room.
Pat and Aiden start to follow when Lucinda calls out from the basement. “Will one of you boys come down and give me a hand? This door is jammed again.”
They stop in mid-stride and glance back at Annie. They shrug guiltily, as if they've been caught in the act of doing, or planning to do, something forbidden. Annie is reminded of when they were kids, they with no sisters and her in a family full of girls. A furtive flash here, a quick glance there, always imagining Lucinda or Aunt Kitty looming over their shoulders. Or, God forbid, Mercedes. But how else were they to know what the other half looked like? Her father locked a newspaper over the fly in his pyjamas if he was in the same room with his daughters, and Pat and Aiden only knew their mother's underwear existed because she hung it in the furnace room to dry; Kitty Hann would never hang her brassiere outside on the clothesline. When it came to s-e-x, there wasn't a book to be found until high school, and then it was a beet-faced Sister Angela reading it out to them, tight-lipped, cheeks bursting.
Aiden heads down to help Lucinda. Several minutes later, he returns and places a mickey of rum on the table. Joe's eyes light up.
“You'd find booze in a nursery,” says Annie. “Better not let Mom see that.”
Pat is nodding. “Remember out in Bay D'Esprits. We'd be raiding the empty cabins to see what was left behind, and himself here never failed to find a few beers.”
“Except at Aunt Merce's,” says Aiden. “No booze there.”
“And the only cabin around locked tight as a jail,” Annie adds.
Pat raises the bottle. “To Mercedes, the first in a long line of women who failed to take a shine to yours truly.”
“Still no luck with the ladies?” says Annie.
“Same as ever.” Pat has always been awkward with women, too often saying the wrong thing in an attempt to be more like Aiden, who attracts the opposite sex with little effort. But Annie knows that Pat can be a girl's best friend when it really matters.
“I'd propose a toast but I can't think of a thing to say.” Aiden smiles innocently as Lucinda enters the kitchen laden with frozen buns and loaves of bread. Pat hides the mickey under his sweater.
Annie looks doubtful. “That'd be a first, Aiden Hann without a word in.”
Aiden looks straight at her. “Gerry Griffin's home. We'll get him to toast her.”
The words hit like a slap in the face. She should have known he'd get her back.
“Who's speechless now, eh?” Aiden smirks.
“You'd have a few things to say to that bastard, wouldn't you, Annie?” says Pat.
She warns him with her eyes to shut up. “So, Mom,” she says with forced calm, “what'll we do with these buns?”
Lucinda is glaring at Aiden but when she looks at Annie, her expression softens. “I'm not sure. You want to give me a hand?”
Annie nods, grateful for any excuse to get away.
Joe, who had started to doze off at the table, perks up. “I never understood why Merce took such a shine to that boy.”
“I think she felt bad for him,” says Lucinda, “growing up without a father like she ended up doing. He certainly brought out the soft side of her, don't you think, Annie?”
Annie says nothing. She does not want to think about Gerry or Mercedes. She doesn't want to remember the last time the three of them were in the same room together. Nothing was ever the same after that. Nothing's been right since.
Joe glances towards Pat. “She liked him better than some of her own, I'd say.”
“Gerry was good to her, too.” Lucinda rests her hand on Annie's shoulder. “Turned out to be a smart young fellow. I'd say he surprised a lot of people.”
“What do you say, Annie? You surprised how smart he was?” Aiden's eyes have that glint of cruelty Annie has noticed before, though it's rarely been directed at her.
She's suddenly had enough of it all. She's fed up with pretending, with feeling like a victim, with saying the right thing. “Hard to find smarter than him or Mercedes,” she says, her voice choked with bitterness. “They made a fine fucking pair, they did.”
1991
From an early age, it was apparent that Annie was more academically inclined than her sisters or her cousins. By age four, she had taught herself to read. By the time she went to school, she could do basic math. As she grew older, she preferred books, generally on science or nature, for birthday and Christmas presents. While Lucinda and Dermot were pleased that she was so bright, they found her unending questions exhausting. Annie soon learned that Callum and Mercedes' house was a more hospitable environment for her curiosity. And although she found her aunt intimidating, Mercedes always took her seriously, as did her grandfather, both of whom talked about Annie's attendance at university as a foregone conclusion.
Each report card, she and Cathy Green, along with Francis Fowler, would compete for first place. Annie usually came out ahead. Their academic rivalry continued into high school, where the enrolment nearly tripled. While most towns along the shore had their own elementary school, they were each too small to support independent high schools, so students from Royal Cove to Harbourville were bussed to St. Jude. None of the new influx did much to challenge the status quo, however, and Annie, Cathy and Francis continued their three-way contest.
Gerry Griffin was not in the running.
The ultimate prize was a scholarship to Memorial University of Newfoundland, awarded annually to the top student in Grade Twelve. Annie had always assumed, deep within her competitive mind, that it would be hers. When the marks were posted, she was stunned to see that Cathy had won. Not by much, but she'd won.
Even more shocking was the third place winner. Gerry Griffin had beaten Francis Fowler, and he'd come perilously close to overtaking Annie herself.
Gerry wasn't stupid, he wasâ¦well, he was a Griffin. He had never shone scholastically, nor was he expected to. Gerry did, however, consistently do better than the Hann brothers, a fact which Mercedes never tired of pointing out. “If you paid as much attention as Gerry,” Mercedes would scold, “you'd be able to put two and two together.” Being compared unfavourably to a Griffin annoyed Aiden immensely, but he was far too lazy to do anything constructive about it, and instead resorted to calling Gerry names and making snide remarks about the Griffins in general. Unlike his brother, Pat didn't seem nearly so bothered about the negative comparison. Having flunked the first grade, he had fairly low expectations of himself, as did Mercedes.
As for Annie, she had paid little attention to Gerry's academic achievements, which was not to say that he himself had gone undetected. She noticed his eyes, brown and clear, and his hair a few shades lighter than his eyes. She noticed that he didn't smile too often, but when he did, a dimple creased his right cheek. His nose was different too, slightly bony with a rise in the middle, a Roman nose perhaps. And in Grade Nine, when Sister Angela had him stand next to Annie for their class picture, she noticed that his shoulder was finally higher than hers.
Annie and Gerry had rarely played together as children. He was always busy with chores or running errands for Mercedes, and seldom played ball or kick-the-can with Annie and her friends. When he did join in, he seemed to hang near the fringe, not fully participating, as if he felt he didn't belong there. Or maybe he was nervous that his mother might show up and berate him in front of everyone for wasting time when he had work to do. Annie had disliked Sadie more than usual the day she'd done that.
Nor did they hang out as teenagers; Aiden couldn't stand him, and Pat, even though he was older, tended to follow Aiden's lead. As for Annie, she generally tried to ignore him. Occasionally, however, in school or church, or at the store perhaps, Annie caught him looking at her. These random moments always left her with a funny feeling in her stomach, but she'd never stopped to consider if it was funny-good or funny-bad. Gerry would immediately turn away, as would she - except for that one time in Grade Ten Science lab when she found his dark eyes watching her. In a flash of defiance she stared back, expecting him to blush and look away. He didn't. He smiled. Feeling the heat race up her neck, and furious with herself for instigating the whole stupid exercise, she stuck her tongue out at him, then quickly looked away and laughed loudly at something she pretended Cathy had said. When Cathy asked what was so funny, Annie laughed again. Cathy gave her an odd look but no one else noticed, thankfully. After that, she avoided Gerry in and out of school. If he was at Mercedes' house when Annie was there, she barely acknowledged him, at the most condescending to a nod of her head towards his pimpled puberty-stricken face as she waltzed past him. If anyone had thought to ask, she would have vehemently denied that she knew he existed, let alone felt any attraction to him. After all, he wasn't just a Griffin, he was her cousin, even if her family did wish it otherwise. She'd only found out that they had the same grandmother because Aiden had taunted her with it after she'd beat him once too often at Crazy Eights. When she'd asked her parents about it, Lucinda had sighed an exasperated sigh and told Annie not to be digging up ancient history. Annie had let it go. After all, it made no difference to her.
Despite losing the scholarship, Annie was still determined to go to MUN.
“And how are we going to afford that now?” Lucinda wanted to know.
“I'll get a bigger student loan.”
“They only give you so much. It said in the brochure the parents got to help.”
“Mom, I'll manage. It's not your problem.”
“We don't have money like the Greens, you know.” Lucinda carried on sweeping as if she hadn't heard. “Not that Cathy needs it now she got the scholarship.”
“Jesus,” Annie muttered under her breath, then louder, “I'll be fine, Mom.”
“No you won't. I think you best go see your aunt about a loan.”
“Right, I can just hear her. âYou should have spent more time studying and less time dreaming on the beach, '” Annie mimicked. “You know what she's like. Your head's not buried in a book, you're wasting time. She's going to blame it all on me.”
Lucinda stopped sweeping and stared pointedly at Annie.
That afternoon, Annie stomped off down the wet, grey pavement. The sky was dark. The clouds were heavy. Still, she would have preferred the elements to the overbearing heat of Mercedes Hann's kitchen.
Annie hung up her coat and shook her hair from its wet ponytail, careful not to splatter any raindrops on the always-open bible on the desk. Rufus bounded over to sniff and nuzzle her until Mercedes ordered him away, at which point he immediately flopped down on the rug by the stove. The aroma of hot figgy bread, her aunt's specialty, filled the room. Mercedes' hair was loosely tied and she wore a plaid apron over her brown pants and beige twin set. She was smiling.