Beach Music: A Novel by Pat Conroy

Author:Pat Conroy [Conroy, Pat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, _rt_yes, tpl, _NB_fixed
ISBN: 0553381539
Google: hU0SWjQo2WMC
Amazon: B005C2SOQ8
Publisher: The Dial Press
Published: 1992-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-six

In early May, a month after our return, at Lucy’s insistence, I drove her up Highway 17 toward Charleston and the Trappist monastery out at Mepkin Abbey. Though she was vague about the reasons for her visit, she did mention she wanted to have Father Jude hear her confession. Ever since I had brought Father Jude to my mother’s hospital bed, where he gave her Extreme Unction, I suspected there was more to this relationship than penitent and confessor, but I no longer thought, as we had when we were younger, that they were lovers. I had questioned Lucy, but she was a master of indirection. There was no query she could not succeed at not answering. The English language on her tongue became a smokescreen without her eyes changing expression in the least. As we drove to Charleston, I looked over at her. She looked calm and pretty.

For a long time I had wanted to get her off by herself to ask her all the unanswered questions I had stored up from childhood and had thought of again with my eyes bandaged in Rome. Though I lacked a clear strategy for milking her of this concealed trove of knowledge, I wanted to initiate the inquiry without arousing suspicion.

“I’ve had some wonderful news,” she said suddenly, stretching her arms in the sunlight. Only since she developed leukemia could Lucy be talked into using her seat belt. She had always made it a point of honor not to wear one and it was odd for me to see her safely buckled up. “I want to share it with you, but I want you to promise not to tell another living soul.”

“I promise to tell only one other person,” I said. “Otherwise, I find myself untrustworthy. Secrets are too much of a burden to me.”

“The Pope just annulled my marriage to your father. I can receive the sacraments again. Dr. Pitts and I got remarried in the church yesterday.”

“Thanks for inviting your children.”

“We didn’t want to make a fuss,” she said. “I wrote the Pope a thank-you note.”

“You had five kids with Dad,” I said.

“It was all a terrible mistake. I feel like I’ve awakened from a bad dream.”

“Does that mean we’re all bastards?” I asked, adjusting the rearview mirror.

Lucy giggled and said, “It never occurred to me. Oh dear. How comical. Yes, I imagine it does. I didn’t even think to ask. Jude’ll know.”

“So the marriage never happened. All that pain and grief and suffering. None of it happened,” I said.

“Everything happened,” Lucy explained, “but the Church wiped the slate clean. There’s no record of it happening.”

“I’m a record of it happening,” I insisted.

“No,” Lucy said. “You’re annulled.”

“If I’m nothing, I can’t be driving this car,” I shouted. “I don’t exist. I’m not here. My parents were never married and I was never born. Grab the wheel, Mama, because I’m one annulled son of a bitch.”

I threw my hands up in the air and Lucy leaned over and gained control of the wheel.

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