Mask of Celibacy

Chapter 4

If you looked up the term fusspot in any English-speaking dictionary known to man, you'd find a giant-ass picture of my step-grandmother. Especially on Sunday. God's day. Or whatever.

I loved her, of course. Quite a lot. Once when I was nine, I asked her if I could call her Mom—and I meant it with all my heart. When she told me I could do so, I raced through the house calling out, Mom! Mom! Mom! Like a fledgling bird flying for the first time.

Mom was my rock. My anchor.

So I cut Mom some slack. You know the maxim? Don't bitch over the splinter in Mom's eye when you have a giant freaking two-by-four sticking out of your own.

But man, oh man! Sometimes I could kick her butt from here to China.

Mom had this incessant need to arrive at church thirty minutes too early. Otherwise, she believed she was late. That explained why we were sitting in this hard-ass pew before any other living soul.

Mom might have been eighty, but she acted fifty. No joke. The Irish-Canadian matriarch also bore that inexplicable gravitas of certain petite mothers whose very existence inspired awe and compliance. More than my biological mother ever could with her loud voice, giant fists, and bulky frame.

What was up with that?

Mom commanded obedience without violence. Shit, she didn't need it. That woman could shut any of us up with a single piercing look and refused to budge a single inch.

When Mom said go to church, we freaking went to church. And we didn't whine or moan about it.

The whole family had to wear formal attire—a skirt or smart trousers and a blouse for me as long as nothing showed too much skin—and act prim and proper during the entire service.

Mass was a time of quiet reflection. And prayer.

No socializing until afterwards.

That was fine for an introvert like me. Hell, I didn't even like the socializing that followed. But I could have done without the endless nerves before mass and acting like I had a tree up my butt.

Mom couldn't help her quirkiness, though. Born and raised in rural New Brunswick in the early nineteen-tens, she'd lived in an enclosed little Irish enclave. A time bubble. One that recreated Ireland from the early nineteenth century. Or even further back.

In a roundabout way, though, I loved her antiquated beliefs because they saved my life.

After Mom had passed on her outdated values onto her son Chuck, my stepdad, he'd rebelled against her. Big time. Basically he'd turned into a hippie and hated her guts.

Which explained why Chuck could have possibly fallen in love with my psychotic biological mother, a woman eight years his junior, eight inches taller, and eighty pounds heavier. That woman had a tenuous grasp on reality and an infant child. Out of wedlock, no less.

That kid was me.

Had Chuck toed the line of Mom's ideology, my stepdad never would have dated her. Never would have married her. And my mother would probably have killed me. Or herself.

Or both.

Because Chuck rebelled against his parents, I'm still alive.

My step-family had adopted me with little trouble. From the age of nine, I'd lived in a respectable home, the legal daughter of a retired NASA engineer and a brilliant teacher who'd specialized in English and Math.

Like many retired white-collar families, my grandparents carried all the expectations of the upper-middle class while maintaining a cash flow that kept us in the tenuous lower-middle class.