Somewhere I Belong Read online

  On the way home, Pat Jr. said, “Ol’ Dunphy’s hard to figure out, ain’t he? One minute he’s right peevish, the next he pretends he’s your best friend.”

  “You can’t never figure that fella out,” Thomas said.

  “The trick is to keep your head down and look busy,” Pat Jr. said. “That’s what Percy says, anyhow. Ol’ Dunphy catches you sloughing off, and you’re in for it.”

  “How am I supposed to know about Confederation? We never learned that stuff back home.” I scooped up a handful of snow, slapped it into a ball, and hurled it at a lopsided fence. “‘You Americans don’t know a thing.’ Right!”

  “Leave it, P.J.,” Larry said. “We’ll get the homework done, then he’ll see.”

  The smell of oatmeal and molasses cookies, cooling on the counter at Granny’s, was a small consolation for the day. Ma, Granny, and Aunt Gert were sitting around the kitchen table, smiling like Mr. Dunphy after a third tumbler of cider.

  “How’d it go?” Ma asked, before we even had a chance to take off our jackets. “How was your new school?”

  Helen dropped her satchel onto the kitchen floor and grabbed a cookie. “I made a new friend already.” She hadn’t, really, but she could think so.

  If I’d bothered to answer Ma, I would have said “not good” to her first stupid question, and “terrible” to her second. Instead, I slung my jacket over a hook in the mudroom, and kicked off my boots. “Just swell, Ma.” I passed through the kitchen, without even looking at her, and headed upstairs. Larry followed me.

  Ma called up to us from the hallway. “Pius James, Larry, is anything the matter?”

  “Nothing,” I hollered, stomping up the stairs.

  When we reached the top, Larry raised his hands up and signalled for me to calm down. Then he leaned over the stairwell. “It was fine, Ma, really. We just have a ton of homework.” At least Larry’s day went better than mine. And he was right about the homework.

  Ma took him at his word and returned to the kitchen. Helen kept going on about her “wonderful day,” like nothing else mattered.

  Larry put a hand on my shoulder. “Perhaps we shouldn’t bother her with it just now, P.J. I mean, the thing with Mr. Dunphy.”

  I tossed him a look of disgust and retreated to my bedroom. Helen’s constant chatter rose through the vent in the hall floor. I closed my door to it and wondered if she would ever shut up.

  Larry knocked lightly and entered. “I know you got off to a bad start today, P.J. But tomorrow’s a new day, right?”

  I sat on the edge of my bed and shrugged my shoulders.

  “You were only helping Thomas,” Larry said. “Perhaps if you didn’t try so hard. Perhaps if you just did what Mr. Dunphy says.”

  “Right,” I said. “Keep my head down, like Pat Jr. says. Maybe I should just pretend I’m dead too.” I felt as if my whole life had simply dropped away, along with my dead dad. I felt suspended somewhere, like I couldn’t find a footing. Back home, I had my whole life mapped out before me. Now, it seemed as if Mr. Dunphy and Northbridge Road School were charting out pure misery.

  Larry looked a little peevish. “That’s not what I mean, P.J.” Even my brother had his limits. He thought for a moment, then smiled. “Anyhow, we’ll likely have to watch out for Mr. Dunphy.”

  I got the feeling Larry was right. As unpredictable as Mr. Dunphy was, I knew I was already in his bad books. And I was soon to find out that, no matter how hard I tried, I was there to stay.

  “I just wish Dad were here,” I said. “He’d show Old Dunphy.”

  No amount of consolation from Larry or Ma over Mr. Dunphy seemed to help. I went to bed that night thinking the only person I wanted to talk to was my dad. I was sure I had seen him once before our move. But I know that if I told Larry how it had happened, he would say it had just been a dream.

  I started offering prayers up to the Blessed Virgin for Dad every evening after he died. I thought the harder I prayed, the closer he would get to heaven. At least, that’s what Father Flynn had told us soon after the accident. About a week after the funeral, I was kneeling by my bed, shivering in the cold room. My head was bowed and my hands were tightly clasped. Alfred lay snug in the bed, wrapped in a heap of blankets and Ma’s handmade quilt. I thought it would be okay if I climbed in and finished my Hail Marys under the warm covers. Then a question popped into my head. It was about what had happened between Ma and Uncle George that day. Something about her telling him she was packing us up and moving us to Prince Edward Island. Uncle George pleaded with her, trying to get her to change her mind. But Ma had already decided, and no amount of arguing could make her stay.

  I’m not entirely clear on it now, but I do remember shaking a little, feeling a bit afraid. It was not so much from the cold as it was from wondering if Ma was really going to make us move away. We had only just finished cleaning up the mess from the explosion. We had only just buried Dad.

  I got up from the floor and climbed under the covers. I put my head on the pillow and snugged up against Alfred. Normally I hated sharing the same bed with my little brother. But this time I was genuinely glad he was there because I didn’t want to be alone. Then the light in the hallway dimmed and the whole room grew dark and still. Alfred closed his mouth and steadied his breathing like he was trying to be quiet. The temperature dropped. Then a bright, misty glow appeared in the far corner of the room.

  First it hovered there like a single star lighting up the night sky. Then it got larger, and a white, translucent orb appeared inside it. When the orb stretched into a large oblong shape, I got scared and tried to nudge Alfred awake. The mist cleared and the shape got longer and narrower and drifted across the room. I closed my eyes and ducked under the covers, hoping it was a dream. When I edged the covers down, I saw Dad floating beside the bed as if he were standing on an invisible cloud. I stared in disbelief.

  Dad smiled down at me and asked a question that made me think about both sides of the issue. It was the same kind of question he would ask me during our talks, after supper, when he was still alive.

  He would be sitting with Larry, Helen, and me at the kitchen table. He liked to read the newspaper, there, while we did our homework. A question would pop into my head and I’d blurt it out. Usually it was about an incident at school that day or something I might have heard that I didn’t quite understand, something completely unrelated to the homework. Dad would sit back in his chair and ask questions that made me think about both sides of the matter.

  One time it was about an incident in the schoolyard where this big knucklehead opened my lunch tin and stole my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Dad asked me what his name was and I told him.

  “Why do you think Eugene would do a thing like that, Pius James?” he asked.

  Naturally, I came out with an answer that supported my side. “Because he’s bigger than I am and a bully.”

  Dad went silent for a moment, then asked, “Do you think it’s really that simple?”

  I looked at him, confused.

  “What if I told you Eugene’s dad just got laid off his job?”

  “That would be different,” I said.

  “Okay, so let’s say it’s true. How would you look at it now?”

  “I’d say Eugene maybe took my sandwich because he was hungry.”

  “So how would you deal with it?”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Your mother packs you a good lunch, right? So you had some left?”

  I nodded.

  “And Eugene got a little bite to eat too.”

  Now I was beginning to understand.

  “So what would have happened if he hadn’t taken your lunch?”

  “He’d be hungry.”

  “So did he take you sandwich because he was a bully?”

  “No.”

  “So how do you think you should de
al with this, Pius James?”

  “I could give Eugene my sandwich,” I said.

  “Sure you could. Better still, you could ask your mother to make him one.”

  “Ma would do that?”

  “Sure she would; it’s just two slices of bread and some peanut butter and jelly. For Ma, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. For Eugene, it would mean he wouldn’t go hungry. And he’d know somebody cared.”

  I looked up at dad and smiled.

  “So, you know what this whole thing is about?” he asked.

  I waited.

  “It’s about figuring out whether a person is doing something because they’re nasty and or because they need to.”

  When he came to me several nights after he died, he asked me the same kinds of questions—ones that made me wonder if he had read my mind.

  “You’re worried about the move, aren’t you, Pius James?” he said. “You’re wondering why your mother’s decided to go. What are your thoughts on the matter?”

  I stared up at him, too afraid to speak.

  “Your grandmother has a fine home; Prince Edward Island is a wonderful place to live,” he continued. “You’ve had some great times there, but you probably don’t remember because you were too young.”

  “But, I don’t want to go,” I said.

  “Give me one good reason,” he replied.

  I thought for a moment and didn’t know where to start. First, there were all my friends. Then, there was Glendale Park and the winter hockey games and baseball in spring and summer. There was ice cream next door at MacCormack’s Grocer. And Aunt Mayme and Uncle George lived three blocks away.

  I looked up at him and shrugged my shoulders.

  “How do you think your mother feels, Pius James?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Scared, maybe? What do you think?”

  “Ma?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Why not? She’s got you four kids and no breadwinner. It’s not like she could go out and get a job. And who would look after you fellas, anyhow?”

  I kept looking at him. He kept talking.

  “What do you think her choices are, Pius James?” He waited, then said, “She could stick you kids in an orphanage or divide you up among the relatives. In which case, some of you would be going to Prince Edward Island anyhow. Or, she could go home to her family and keep you fellas together.

  “She needs help, Pius James. Don’t you think she’d doing what she needs to do?”

  I stared up at him, tears streaming down my face. Then I watched him and the shining orb disappear and the room go black.

  I thought if he appeared to me once, he would do it again. So I tried to conjure him up several times before we moved. Some nights, I’d go to bed thinking hard about a problem I had had that day. I would ask a question I needed an answer for, hoping he would come. I tried again on the overnight train to Prince Edward Island and during our first few nights at Granny’s. I’d drift off to sleep, disappointed each time. But when I thought about it, it made sense that he had come to me that one time because he had just died and was not so far away.

  After that first day at Northbridge Road School, I tried to conjure him up again. If there was a time I really needed to talk to Dad, it was then. And when he didn’t appear, I wondered if we had moved too far away. Or whether he had, somehow, appeared to Larry. But this wasn’t a question I could put to my older brother—he would tell me it had just been a dream.

  The next morning, Uncle Jim opened my bedroom door and popped his head in. “Time to get up, Pius James.”

  It wasn’t. I was still tired and the room was freezing. Back home, we never got up before Dad had stoked the furnace. Even after he came singing up the stairway to wake us, we waited to hear the cracking sound of hot water coursing through the cold radiators. And for the sun to peek through the window.

  At Granny’s, I could see my breath in the light that streamed through the doorway. Night still lurked outside. I rolled over and pulled the covers over my head. The next thing I knew, Larry was pulling them off me and shaking my shoulder.

  “Wake up, P.J.” He spoke softly so as to not wake Alfred.

  I yanked on the covers and snuggled down in the bed.

  Larry ripped them off again, exposing me to the frigid air. Then he turned and left. “You do what you want, P.J.—I’m going out to help Uncle Jim.”

  If there was one thing Larry was good at, it was making me feel guilty for lying around in bed. I rolled over on the lumpy mattress and pulled back the covers. I found a pair of coveralls slung over a chair by the window and pulled them on over the same long johns and woollen socks I had worn all night. Then I followed Larry downstairs.

  He and Uncle Jim met me in the kitchen. Uncle Jim had lit two tin lanterns, placing one on the kitchen table and hanging the other one up in the mudroom. He pulled on his gumboots and jacket and pointed to two more pairs of boots and two plaid woollen jackets that hung above them in the mudroom.

  “Put these on, fellas. It’s cold out there.”

  He grabbed the lantern, and Larry and I followed him out the back door. The sun cracked through the horizon and swallowed the last lingering star as we crossed the snow-packed yard. It was freezing cold, and I wished I were still in bed. Except for a rooster that crowed in the distance, everything around us was quiet. Uncle Jim opened the barn door, and the putrid smell of manure washed over me. I covered my nose to stave off the stench.

  He pointed to two shovels and a wheelbarrow in a dim corner. “Start with the stalls. Muck ’em out and lay down clean straw. Then give Lu and Big Ned their hay and youse can head in for breakfast. I’ll fetch the water and do the milkin’. Your mother’ll crown me if you’re late for school.” He grabbed a crowbar and a pail and headed back out to the yard to beat ice off the cover of the old stone well. He turned and looked at me on his way out. “The faster you move, P.J., the sooner you’re done.”

  Hot water steamed in the washbasin in my bedroom when I finished chores. But despite how hard I scrubbed, the smell of sweat and manure still stuck to me when I walked down the drive with Larry and Helen to meet Thomas and Pat Jr. on the road.

  At school, I followed Pat Jr.’s advice to keep my head down and look busy while Larry fended off Patrick Daley. To my relief, the day went well. After school, we grabbed a snack, then pulled on the same manure-encrusted coveralls we had worn that morning and met Uncle Jim in the barn.

  This became our daily routine. My arms and shoulders ached. My woollen mitts stuck to hands that blistered from shovelling and taking turns with Larry carting manure out the barn door and over to the pile beside the fence. After supper, I sat under the dim light of the kerosene lantern in the kitchen and stared at my homework. I wondered what the point was in doing all that stupid stuff Mr. Dunphy insisted on if I was going home soon anyhow. Besides, it was way more than the other kids had to do. At the end of the day, I fell into bed and lay splayed flat out, too sore to move. This forced Alfred to the far edge of the mattress, where he huddled up against the cool plaster wall.

  It got harder to roll out of bed each morning. The barn chores seemed to take longer to finish. And no matter how much Uncle Jim tried to make it fun, by the end of that first week I was too tired to swing on the rope or ride Lu anyhow. I just wanted to finish up and head straight back to the house.

  On Friday morning, we met Thomas and Pat Jr. as usual. Even though it was early, it felt like I had already put in a full day. My satchel seemed to weigh more than it had all week. And it was tough trudging over the sleigh ruts and the icy clumps of snow that had packed down over the road. My only thought was on sleeping in over the weekend, I was so plug tired.

  In the distance, Nora Daley wandered out onto the road and continued on alone. She never even glanced our way. We didn’t see Patrick or Michael. As we approached the MacIntyres’, Helen picked up
her pace. Since Tuesday, she had made a habit of running up their drive and meeting Maggie halfway. Smoke streamed lazily from the chimney and disappeared into the pale-blue morning sky. Curtains were drawn over the windows of the house—upstairs and down. A single path led from the side door down the drive. Snowdrifts piled against the barn and lay in waves across the yard. Every other yard we had seen was a mess of boot prints, sleigh ruts, and the trampling of hoofs. But there were few signs of anyone having been around Maggie’s.

  Maggie hurried through the side door and slammed it shut as Helen moved up the narrow path toward her. Maggie looked swallowed up in a thick woollen coat that looked to be the same style as Ma’s, only shabbier. Her navy blue tam ballooned around her pale, thin face. She hugged her books to her chest, her lunch tin dangling awkwardly from a hand. She picked her way along the path with hand-knit woollen socks over her shoes instead of boots, like the Daleys wore.

  Helen met her halfway up the path and talked a streak as they headed toward the road. “Ma says you can come over after school. Uncle Jim can take you home.” My sister sure tried hard to make a friend.

  When Maggie said, “I don’t know—I have to ask Mom,” Helen’s face sank.

  Maggie’s books shifted in her arms as she moved down the icy path. The whole mess looked ready to tumble out of her arms and onto the road. Carrying them seemed like the decent thing to do. The problem was figuring out how to approach her when I’d hardly spoken to her all week.