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  Mercy of St. Jude

  A Novel

  Mercy of St. Jude

  A Novel

  Wilhelmina Fitzpatrick

  St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador

  2011

  © 2011, Wilhelmina Fitzpatrick

  We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF), and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador through the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation for our publishing program.

  All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any requests for photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to the Canadian Reprography Collective, One Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.

  Cover design by Maurice Fitzgerald

  Layout by Amy Fitzpatrick

  Printed on acid-free paper

  Published by

  CREATIVE PUBLISHERS

  an imprint of CREATIVE BOOK PUBLISHING

  a Transcontinental Inc. associated company

  P.O. Box 8660, Stn. A

  St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador A1B 3T7

  Printed in Canada by:

  TRANSCONTINENTAL INC.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Fitzpatrick, Wilhelmina, 1958-

  Mercy of St. Jude / Wilhelmina Fitzpatrick.

  ISBN 978-1-897174-75-3

  I. Title.

  PS8611.I895M47 2011 C813'.6 C2011-901879-9

  Dedication

  For the men in my life - Keith, Ian and Michael.

  In memory of my Aunt Beth.

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  PART TWO: 1932-1955

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  PART THREE: 1993-1994

  17

  18

  19

  PART FOUR: 1999

  20

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PART ONE

  1

  1999

  The coffin is mirrored in the night-black window. A gust of wind batters the pane, exploding the image. Within moments it settles back into place.

  Annie Byrne looks past the reflection, shifting her focus to the houses of their neighbours, the patches of lawn struggling to survive on the rocky hillside. Several old tires filled with dirt line the side of her parents’ yard, her mother’s attempt to nurture a few flowers if the sun ever shines again.

  Down the street a car pulls up. The door opens, closes. Annie stares intently at the dark sedan. No one gets out. She gives her head a shake; of course it’s not him.

  She turns away from the window. Against the opposite wall, the open casket rests on its bier, overwhelming the small room. The faded couch and worn wingback chairs have been shoved together in the corner to make space for it. Above the coffin, a crucifix. Pictures of saints line the walls, and on the wood veneer coffee table, surrounded by holy candles, sits a statue of the Virgin Mary, baby Jesus in her arms. The television is covered with a dark throw. The usual knick-knacks and doilies are gone; Annie’s mother has put them away at this solemn time.

  Annie does not feel solemn. She feels angry. And guilty, of course. What she wouldn’t give for one last chance to confront Mercedes, to ask her what had made her so miserable that she couldn’t bear to see anyone else enjoying life, especially Annie. But it’s too late for that.

  There is a clatter of dishes from the kitchen. “I said I’ll wash up later, Mom,” she calls down the hall.

  “That’s okay,” Lucinda calls back. “Stay put and catch up with your cousins.”

  Annie still regrets having let her mother talk her into coming home. Two days earlier in Calgary, she’d been jarred awake by the phone, her heart racing with the panic of a call before dawn. The news did nothing to slow it down - Mercedes Hann was dead. Annie had held the phone tight, trying to stifle her resentment and her tears. The contradiction was not unusual where her great-aunt was concerned.

  As she’d listened to the sadness in her mother’s voice, she pictured her on the other end of the line, gently rounded with the years but still attractive at fifty.

  “Never mind what trouble there was between you,” Lucinda had insisted.

  Annie had been adamant. “I’m not coming, Mom.” And I’m not sad she’s dead.

  “Just for a couple of days. It’s the least you can do.”

  “No, the least I can do is stay here.”

  “Always with that mouth. Bad as Mercedes herself, you are.”

  “Well, thanks for that.” As a child, Annie had been flattered when her mother compared her to Mercedes, until she began to realize that it wasn’t necessarily meant as a compliment. As an adult, Annie never took it as such.

  “I don’t know when you got so hard.”

  “I am not hard,” Annie protested. She lowered her voice. “I’m just tired, Mom.”

  “Think of the family. I don’t ask you for much, Annie, the Lord knows I don’t.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Look, it’s five-thirty in the morning here. Let me wake up, will you?” Annie took a slow breath and lied. “I don’t think I can get away from work.” As a junior geologist in a large oil company she’d hardly be missed.

  “Annie, the woman is dead—”

  “See? She won’t even notice.”

  “And before she died,” Lucinda continued as if she hadn’t heard, “she said you had to be here.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “I don’t know but your grandfather promised her you would be. So if you won’t do it for her, do it for him. She was his sister and he’s right torn up about it.” She paused for effect. “Did you know the doctor’s worried about his prostate again?”

  Good one, Mom - Annie almost said it out loud. If anything happened to Callum Hann, Annie would be heartbroken, which Lucinda well knew. From her earliest memories of drifting off to sleep in his overstuffed rocker, to the winter evenings curled up by the fire, listening to the stories her sisters never cared for, her grandfather had given Annie a sense of her history and herself that she could not have gotten elsewhere, especially from her mother, and certainly not from Mercedes who, when it came to family history, was a closed book.

  “Fine, all right, enough with the frigging guilt trip.” The words were no sooner out than Annie regretted them. Why did their conversations so often end in argument, with her mother indignant and Annie remorseful? “I’ll do it, okay?”

  Now here she is, staring at the crucifix on the wall. Below it, nestled in a bed of white satin, a set of rosary beads winding through her interwoven fingers, rests Herself, the Great Mercedes Hann, whose dying wish had been to spend her final days being waked in Lucinda and Dermot’s living room.

  Across from the coffin Annie’s father smiles in his sleep. Annie sits beside him and smoothes back his grey hair. It’s thinner than she remembers. He’s aged the last few years; his cheeks are more hollow, his forehead more lined. He yawns, his false teeth clacking as they ease out of position. Realigning them with his tongue, he smacks his lips together and opens his eyes. He smiles at her and gestures toward her cousins, Pat and Aiden Hann. “Just like the old days, you three sitting here.”

  Annie smiles back. A
t the end of the day, maybe her mother was right. It is good to be here with them all. She and Pat and Aiden were born within a thirteen-month span of each other. They’d gone through school together too, as a result of Pat being held back in Grade One. Growing up, they were always up to something, from hopping the spring ice pans when they were little and forbidden to go near the water, to skipping Saturday night Mass so they could smoke cigarettes and drink beer with their friends in high school. Thanks to “the boys” as Lucinda calls them, Annie had gotten into trouble far more often than her sisters.

  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 a
nd 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.