A PLACE APART
a novel by
MAUREEN LENNON
Copyright © Maureen Lennon, 2005
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Excerpt from “Revelation” andg “The Road Not Taken” from THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1962 by Robert Frost, copyright 1923, 1934, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Editor: Barry Jowett
Copy-Editor: Jennifer Bergeron
Design:Andrew Roberts
Printer:Transcontinental
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Lennon, Maureen
A place apart / Maureen Lennon.
ISBN-10: 1-55002-544-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-55002-544-6
I. Title.
PS8623.E56P52 2005C813’.6C2005-900171-2
123450908070605
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.
Printed on recycled paper.
Dundurn Press
8 Market Street, Suite 200
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M5E 1M6
Gazelle Book Services Limited
White Cross Mills
Hightown, Lancaster, England
LA1 4X5
Dundurn Press
2250 Military Road
Tonawanda NY
U.S.A. 14150
To David, with love, and in fond memory of Barney, with gratitude for all the life lessons so gloriously taught.
CHAPTER 1
We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone really find us out.
It could happen any time. Late on a Thursday night, after the eleven o’clock news, with the garbage pails toppled at the foot of the driveway, forgotten, abandoned to the rain and the dark; in the middle of a dead silent Sunday afternoon, the clocks ticking and the rich aroma of roasting meat and browning vegetables seeping under closed doors; at five o’clock on a weekday afternoon, just as foil-covered meatloaf leftovers were about to be lifted from the oven. Out of the blue, a voice would shrill, or glass would shatter against a hard surface. Sometimes the cutlery drawer crashed shut. More often, though, a door just suddenly, violently slammed, shaking the whole house to its foundation. If it was Sunday, and a lemon meringue pie sat cooling on the kitchen counter, you might see a shiver pass through it.
For fifteen-year-old Cathy Mugan, waiting up in her room for the night or the weekend to end, the vibrating walls and floors always meant the same thing. But there was never anything that she could do to save herself. Her room was upstairs at the end of the hall, the last door on the left. Running was out of the question. She’d never get past her mother on the stairs. And even if she could, it wouldn’t matter. Outside, the neighbours’ blinds were drawn. Inside, there were no locks left on any of the doors.
If it was still early, and she was seated at her desk doing homework, she would have to put her pen or pencil down because her trembling hand made writing impossible. If it was late, and she had already gone to bed, she would back closer to the wall, pull her knees up, and mound the covers around herself. Then she began to count, one-Angela, two-Angela, three-Angela, waiting for the door to her room to blast open.
And blast open it had, right on the count of thirty, hundreds of times. As a little girl hearing what was coming, she had taken refuge in corners, wedging herself between a piece of furniture and a wall, squatting close to the floor, her thin arms covering her bowed head, her splayed hands protecting her exposed skin. But now, at fifteen, she knew these actions were futile. She needed to be behind a wall, not crouched against one. So she counted. Ten-Angela, eleven-Angela, twelve-Angela. Through the floor, she could hear the other telltale sounds: feet pounding along the downstairs hall, the closet door in the room beneath hers sliding on its rails, slamming into the wall, the tinny jangle of unoccupied hangers, the zipping sound of a belt being pulled briskly free from a pair of trousers, feet pounding again, this time up the stairs. Twenty-eight-Angela, twenty-nine-Angela. She had absolutely no memory of a time when things were different. Even her earliest, most shadowy recollections all twitched with alarm.
Cathy Mugan’s teachers judged her to be a passive, dreamy sort of kid, not outstanding in any way, not someone likely to distinguish herself. Watching how she conducted herself, always choosing a seat in the middle of the class so that she could bury herself behind the other students, always keeping her eyes down, never volunteering to answer questions, always having to ask for the question to be repeated if she was called upon, seemingly satisfied with mediocre, passing grades, it was easy to draw the conclusion that she was uninterested, lazy, dreamy, perhaps even incapable.
The nuns at St. Joseph’s Convent School often summarized her in those terms, writing on her report cards that she lacked initiative, she seemed uninterested in her school work, she spent too much time lost in her own little world.
“She’s doesn’t show much interest in her work,” they told her mother at parent-teacher meetings. “Nothing seems to interest her. She just does enough to get by.”
“Preoccupied,” was the sternly delivered verdict of Sister Lumina. “She seems totally preoccupied with something outside of her school work.”
The English and home economics teacher, Sister Anne Rochelle, was more forgiving.
“I think she just needs lots of encouragement. I sense something going on inside that head of hers, but she is more comfortable keeping it to herself right now. She needs time to find herself.”
“Find herself, my ass,” was the seething response Adele Mugan spat out, pounding across the school parking lot on her shiny beige high heels.
Twice a year Adele patted clouds of talcum