Finton Moon (43 page)

Week's end summoned a surprise hurricane. Morning afforded rain, but the wind arose in the early afternoon with a violent shout that must have rattled every house in Darwin. When the lights went out in the lower part of town, the school closed early, and Finton walked home. His parents had offered to give him a respite from school, considering Miss Bridie's funeral a couple of days earlier, but he'd gone anyway, sombre and silent, as though something terrible were brewing in his brain. These days he didn't much care what they wanted him to do.

The hurricane had toppled trees that were older than Nanny Moon, and across the doorstep lay a sprawling spruce. The simple act of wrapping his arms around the lifeless tree and dragging it away to a place where it could do no harm was, in itself, deadening. He couldn't stop thinking about what Miss Bridie had said and wondering what he should do. Eventually, he would have to confront his parents, but he dreaded the moment, hated the necessity of it. Gradually, he had retreated into his own mind, detached himself from family, and distanced himself from life. More and more, he felt like an alien who'd been dropped on a doorstep with a note that said, “Please feed my baby,” and the Moons had followed the request to its letter. They fed his body, but not his soul. And now here he was, nearly fifteen years old, bereft of connections.

Inside the house, things never changed. Nanny Moon was in the kitchen, reading or knitting while the wind howled outside like a wounded demon and threatened to separate the house from its foundation. He felt every gust that slammed against the bungalow, and he shuddered in the armchair where he was sprawled, pretending to read
The Scarlet Letter
. The family had scattered—Homer watched television; Clancy went down the road to his girlfriend's house; their mother paced the floor and wrung her hands as she gazed out the window. When a particularly bad blow made the windows buckle, she took out her rosary beads. Finton bolted for the bedroom. He wasn't speaking to God these days and, in fair turnabout, the Lord wasn't exactly communicating with him. They'd taken a timeout from each other, but, for Finton, it was more than that. There was a black cavern in his heart that tunneled right to his soul. God had taken more from him than he could ever replace, and, furthermore, didn't seem concerned with making amends; quite the contrary: the Lord seemed intent on absolute, irreparable destruction.

Around five o'clock, Elsie knocked on the bedroom door and opened it a crack.

“Finton, supper's almost ready.”

Silence.

“Are you coming?”

More silence.

“Battered chicken is your favourite.”

“I'm not hungry.”

Insensible to his hope that she would just give up, she slipped inside, closed the door and sat on the bed. Despite the gloomy darkness and the rain that lashed the window pane, she didn't turn on a light.

“Are you all right?” she asked. With her right hand only inches from his leg, she could have offered a consoling touch, but didn't. He was glad. He didn't want her comforting—not now, not ever. His mother had never been good at mothering. Food and shelter, sure. Check those off. Clothes? Always second-hand, nothing fashionable. As for love and affection, well, motherly hugs were hard to come by. She'd never said she loved him, but probably her own mother hadn't said it to her. Finton once craved those things, but now he yearned only for solitude—a goal he approached with every moment that passed. More than a goal, it seemed his fate.

“Are you happy?” he asked.

“Why?” She eyed him closely, trying to read his thoughts. “What's wrong?”

Finton shrugged.

She seemed about to snap at him, but, instead, closed her eyes, opened them and reset. “I'm not
miserable
.” She looked away, into the shadows of the farthest corner. Her pupils dilated as if she'd found something solid on which to focus. “Some things will never change as much as we want them to. Even if we think we deserve better.”

“Do you deserve better than Dad?”

She looked at him sharply, then softened her expression as if suddenly remembering. “Sometimes, I s'pose. Maybe I do.”

“Do you love him?”

She opened her eyes wide. “Why would you even ask such a thing?”

“You never say it to each other. And you're always arguing.” It was probably asking for too much, but he hoped she would confide in him, wanted to be someone she would trust.

“Look around you, b'y. We don't argue no more than any other married couple,” she said. “And I s'pose I do love him, in spite of his ways.” She laid a hand on his wrist. Her fingers were cold. “How are you doing?”

He sighed and stared at the window, wondering if she was lying because, that way, it was easier to get by. “Don't wanna talk about it.”

“Did you mind the funeral?”

“No.” But that wasn't what he wanted to discuss. He steeled his nerve, gazed at her and tried to make himself spill what was on his mind. He could keep it to himself, but that wasn't really an option.

He suspected that Miss Bridie had told him the truth about how he was taken from her, but he needed to hear it from the woman who'd been pretending all along to be his mother—the one who, all these years, had made his breakfast and supper, forced him to say rosaries and go to mass. The one who'd carried the burden of the masquerade and bore it so well. She was looking at him with expectation, as if she knew that what was coming would not be easy to escape.

Finally, the silence between them became too much. The words welled up inside until he thought his head would burst. So he blurted it out: “Miss Bridie told me something before she died.”

“What did she say?”

His tongue faltered. “She said I was took from her. She said—”

“Your father and I have always done our best—”

“Is it true?”

“Did you even for one second think we weren't really your flesh and blood?”

“No,” he said, and while the relief was still fresh on her face, he added, “For many seconds. Lots of times, I've wondered.”

The slap from her right hand stung his cheek, and yet he didn't raise a hand in self-defense. He wouldn't satisfy her.

“How dare you say that after all we done for you? How bloody dare you?”

Already, the sting had dissipated. But he could feel his soul hardening, some essential element escaping the core of his very being. “She said I was took right after she had me, and that Dad warned her not to say anything about it to anyone, especially me.”

His mother stood up, striking her head on the ladder that led to the top bunk. As she rubbed her crown, testing for blood, he could see the brightness of her eyes and the glistening on her cheeks. “I don't know what to tell you.”

“The truth. I just want the truth, for once.”

Sighing once more, she seemed to give in to the inevitability of the moment. She resumed her seat on the bed, clasped her hands on her lap, and stared at her fingers. “I knew we couldn't keep it a secret forever.”

“Who else knows?”

“Just a few,” she said with a trembling voice. Again, she rubbed her head and checked for bleeding. “Believe it or not.”

“But whose son am I?”

Tears welled in her eyes. “You're my son. I raised you.”

“But those stories about me being born—was it all just lies?”

“It was mostly true,” she said. He could see by the rise and fall of her chest that she was struggling to maintain both her breath and composure. Still, he couldn't help but admire the strength it took to sit there and have one of the hardest conversations she would ever have. “You fell on your head, but it wasn't the nurse. It was me. I felt awful. And you did cry a lot when he brought you into the house. We thought you'd never stop. Everyone tried singing to you, but your father found the perfect song. Or maybe it was the fact that he was your father.” She shook her head, obviously close to tears.

“I had a miscarriage after nearly full term,” she said. “It would have been a girl.”

He was shocked, yet relieved, to hear her say it aloud. In fact, it made him feel slightly better to know some of the details were drawn from fact and that it wasn't all lies.

“I was beside meself, b'y. I can't tell you how hard it was. And the worst part…” She spoke in a flat tone, as if already distanced from the cruel reality she was describing. “The worst was being told I couldn't have no more.” Pause. “Here I was with just two boys. Two! I was hardly even a woman, sure, if that's all I was good for. As far as I was concerned, my life was over. What was the point of a marriage? What was the point of anything? I was so young. Back in those days, Nanny Moon was always lookin' at me like it was all my fault, like she hated my guts. It was all bad enough.

“Don't you dare breathe a word of this to no one—I can't believe I'm saying this, but I guess I have to.” She swallowed hard and drew a deep breath. “Your father and I got married because I was pregnant.” She laughed bitterly as if remembering the details of that thorny decision. “Imagine the irony of that. Pregnant too young. Married too young. And now I couldn't have any more. It was like being trapped with people expecting too much from me. I've always felt that way, really—thank God you're not old enough to know that feeling.”

“Wasn't two boys enough for you?”

“For me? I s'pose so… if that's all I could have. For everyone else?

Definitely not. You can't even imagine the pressure, b'y—pregnant one minute and neither child to show for it the next. I guess, at some point, the wheels got to turnin'—that somehow it would be okay if I could just have one more. And I prayed for it. I really, really did. I prayed for a boy just like you.”

Finton felt himself go a little more dead inside. If he were hearing this story from anyone else, he would have had empathy for the young woman's plight. But this was his mother… or the mother he'd thought was his. And the child was himself. That made all the difference, and he couldn't help but disapprove of her awful choice.

“When your father told me about Bridie Battenhatch being pregnant, I nearly went mental—the likes of
that
having a baby! Not even a husband, sure, and the daughter she had showing signs of wildness, and her brother Jacob, well… I really shouldn't be telling you this.” She drew a deep breath. “To some people, the most immoral things aren't wrong, and that's all I'll say about it.” She seemed to lose her breath momentarily, but Finton was unmoved. He was afraid of disrupting the flow of honesty.

“I coulda killed someone,” she continued in a calm, even tone. “But your father had an idea. He said, ‘She's not stable, you know. Look at poor Morgan. Sure, she seems fine. But sometimes the things she does give me shivers. Miss Bridie's on her own and she's talking about doin' away with it!' I'll never forget how he leaned in, with such hope in his eyes, and whispered, ‘We could take this one, Elsie. We could love it like our own. It
would
be our own.'”

“Something in the way he said it made me wonder. I'd wondered before, but now I had to know. ‘Where is this idea coming from?' I asked him. ‘You didn't just haul that rabbit out of a hat.' I'll spare you the details. It took some doing, and a lot of yelling and crying on my part and his, I tell ya, but I finally got him to admit it.”

“Admit what?”

“That you were his. That he and Miss Bridie… had a… thing. One drunken night.”

“A thing.”

“I don't want to say it, Finton. Jesus. You're my son. And that's all that matters.”

“I can't imagine,” said Finton. “What it took for you to tell me that.” She smiled gratefully, but he wasn't finished. “But I don't understand how you could do that to her.”

“She was incompetent, Finton. You should have seen her. She wasn't fit. She would've done away with you and probably herself too.”

“She was my mother.”

“
I'm
your mother.”

“No, you're not,” he said. “You should've told me.”

“Don't act like that,” she said. “You're my boy!”

“I'm nobody's boy.”

“Finton!”

“Get out!” he shouted. He turned towards the wall and kicked it with all his might, punching a small hole in the drywall. “Just leave me alone!”

“How dare you!”

“Morgan's my…”

As she left, she pulled the door shut, leaving Finton alone in the dark.

“…half sister—isn't she?” he said, in a voice that grew smaller with each word, as if he were vanishing right along with them.

The next afternoon, the boys were gone out, Nanny Moon was in her room, and Elsie was at work. Tom was on the couch, the television muted, and Finton saw his chance.

“I know what happened between you and Miss Bridie—and I know you took me from her when I was born.”

Tom looked at Finton, shoulders slouched and a worn expression. “Your mother said you knew. But I never thought Miss Bridie would tell you.”

“Did you love her?”

“I loves your mother. What 'n hell do ya think?”

“But did you love Miss Bridie?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Because it does.”

“Yes,” Tom said, his hands clasped in front of him. “In a way, I did.”

“Why?”

“You don't want to hear this, Finton. This is adult stuff.”

“I'm old enough,” he said. “This is the only time I'll ask.”

“All right.” His father wouldn't look at him, just stared at the TV.
Another World.
“I won't say everything, but I'll tell you some. But just remember, you're my son.”

“I want to know why you went to her. Wasn't your wife enough?”

“I never went lookin'. We were playing cards and gettin' drunk. Morgan was young, but she was gone babysittin' or something. And we were talkin' about how shitty our lives were. I mean, she wasn't half bad lookin' back then. But I s'pose also… I wasn't the pickiest at times… about anything. I mean…” He laughed bitterly and shook his head. “…look at my life. Not exactly the fruit of good choices, is it?” Finton gave no reaction. “It was one time, and how was I to know what would come of it?”