Immaculate Heart (26 page)

Then, slowly, She became real to me. When She took my hand I could feel it was chapped, there were faint lines around Her eyes and when She took off Her mantle I saw Her long dark hair was lightly threaded with grey.

Finally I said,—You look different, Mother, and She smiled as if She'd been expecting me to say so.

—As we've listened and shared with one another over these past months, I have become a friend to you, have I not?

—Aye, Mother. You've been a truer friend to me than anyone else ever has.

She smiled.—Someday you will have friends who will see you for all that you are. Shall I answer your question?

—Please, Mother.

—My Son did not come into this world to be worshipped as a god, She said.—That is the old way. He came to bring pure love and joy to the world, and to show the people a path to peace even if they chose at first not to follow it. This is My work here, Síle—to correct the mistakes and misapprehensions of the men who have called themselves Christians. At other times, in other places, be it near to here or on the far side of the world, I have walked among the people. I have seen their greed, watched them rage at their Creator when the consequences were made manifest. I have trod their streets, cold and hungry and alone, and I have begged for aid. I heard all of their prayers but they gave Me nothing in return.

—No one? I asked. I couldn't believe it.

—They have forgotten the message and the mission of My only Son. There is so little compassion and love left in this world, Síle! Do you not see it?

—I see it, Mother. How can I help You? How will I know what to say?

—You need only open your mouth, my dear child. The Holy Spirit will take care of the rest.

Then I asked Our Lady if the Devil was real.—When you were small, She said,—and you went down in the night for a drink of water, did you ever fear something was behind you as you went up the stairs again in the dark?

I told her I had.

—And do you believe there was anyone there?

I said no, I didn't really think so.

—When you've done wrong, She said,—isn't it easier to say that someone else put the idea in your head? That you were tempted to it?

—Then where do the bad thoughts come from, Mother?

—They need not belong to you. Do you see?

I told her I was trying to.

—Always you must live by the Word. Not as men have written it, for not everything they have written was put down rightly, but as it is written on your heart.

And I said,—How can I trust what's written on my heart, when Yours is the only heart that's pure?

She didn't answer me, and I can't remember how She took Her leave; only that I was sitting alone on the bench overlooking the town as if She'd never been there at all.

I showered and called Leo to make plans for the evening, and he asked if I'd been to the local chipper yet. “Ya can't go home to America without having a meal at McGrory's takeaway,” he said. “It's a … whaddaya call it … an
institution
. Get us some fried cod with chips, and we'll have a nice quiet night, maybe find something good on the telly. Paudie's right, y'know—we've been spending too much time at the pub. If I'm not careful, I'll be drinkin' away me pension.” I hadn't seen him pay for a single round in the week we'd been meeting at Napper Tandy's, but I humored him.

I passed the grocery store on my way to McGrory's, eyes on the sidewalk, replaying the best parts of my afternoon with Síle. I shook myself out of it when I heard someone call my name, and again, and then a third time. I turned and found a middle-aged woman hurrying up the sidewalk in the twilight. “It
is
you, isn't it?”

I nodded. “And you're Mrs. Gallagher?”

She blinked. “How did you know?”

“You look like Síle,” I replied. You could see that Mrs. Gallagher had been very pretty once. I wondered if Síle would let her hair go silver someday, instead of dyeing it. “Or, rather, Síle looks like you.”

She wore a brown duffel coat and a pink knit hat. “Aye, well,” she replied, clasping her chapped and chubby hands in front of her as if she didn't know what else to do with them. “That's very kind of you to say.” She hesitated. “We've met before, of course. You were only a lad.”

I cleared my throat. “I take it you've been talking to Orla?”

“Oh? Oh, yes, right, well.” I saw now where Orla got her nervous energy. “I was wondering if I might ask you a favor,” she said, “only it isn't easy for me to come right out and say these things sometimes…”

No need to make this conversation any more awkward than it already was. “You don't want me to speak to Síle again, is that it?”

She nodded, relieved I'd made it easier for her. “Oh, I hope you won't take offense. You seem like a very nice young man, and Orla has spoken highly of you, but you do see that it isn't good for Síle to be having visitors like you.”

“What do you mean by ‘visitors like me'?”

“Ardmeen is the best place for her,” Mrs. Gallagher went on. “Perhaps someday she'll be well enough, but for now, it's the only place for her. You
do
see that, don't you?”

“I'm not sure I do,” I replied, as gently as I could. “You go to visit her, and you see your sick daughter. I go there, and I see a woman who is capable of moving through the world on her own.”

She shook her head sadly. “That's only how it seems to someone who doesn't know her. But, oh, how I wish that were true. Oh, how I wish you were right.”

I was tired and longing for dinner, and the sooner I got to McGrory's, the quicker Leo and I could sit down to eat. There wasn't any sense arguing with the woman. “I'm running out of time in my vacation,” I said. “I don't know that I would've been able to see Síle again at any rate.”

“Ah,” she said, pleased by my answer but trying not to show it. “I see. And you … you won't write that article, will you? It's only that it's so far in the past now, and none of us can see what good could come of it.”

“No,” I said tiredly. “I won't write the article.”

Mrs. Gallagher leaned forward and clasped my hand. “Thank you. Thank you, and God bless you.”

I wished her good night and turned for McGrory's takeaway. I'd told her everything she'd wanted to hear, intending none of it, but with the way things were going, I'd be keeping my word on every point.

*   *   *

When the old man came to the door, his eyes lit up at the sight of the takeout. A grease stain was already spreading across the bottom of the brown paper bag.

“Are Brona and Paudie coming over?” I asked as Leo showed me through the darkened hallway into his sitting room, where the television was already tuned to a sitcom with a bunch of priests in it. “I can go back for more if need be.”

Eagerly Leo drew the food cartons out of the bag, breathing in the scent of hot battered cod with eyes rolled heavenward. “Paudie might. But Brona has agreed never to set foot in this house again.”

I sat down in the armchair beside him, laughing as I popped open a can of Coke. “That's rather melodramatic, wouldn't you say?”

Leo was already tucking into his meal, the grease glistening along his lower lip. “Not a'tall,” he said through a mouthful of cod. “She used to come in here and fret about all the dust gatherin' in the corners. She'd go round the house brandishin' me mother's broom instead of sittin' down for a cuppa tea like a good guest, so one day I said to her, ‘Listen, Brona, let's just meet at the pub from now on. 'Twill be pleasanter for the both of us.' Some people need a tidy house, but I was never one o' them.”

I could see where Brona was coming from. The smell of mildew was more pronounced in this dark little house than anyplace else I'd been. It was everywhere, so they never smelled it. “You're the quintessential Irish bachelor, Leo. You really don't miss having a woman around? Not having to wash your own dishes is worth getting nagged sometimes. Especially after you've left a big pile of them sitting in the sink for a week.”

Leo shot me a sly look as he dipped a french fry into a little plastic container of mayonnaise. “Speakin' from experience, are ya?”

I stared at the dirty carpet, a piece of steaming battered cod falling apart between my fingers, and nodded. “It's like the difference between a home-cooked meal and going without dinner. When she's there, you're warm and full. When she's not, it's still your home, but it's a lot less homelike.”

Leo licked his lips as he bent for another bite. “Well, me lad, when you've gone to bed without supper all the days of your life, you can't say you miss it.”

I thought of the night I knew I couldn't marry Laurel.
You get a little bit smug,
she'd said.
When you meet men your age who are going bald. I can see it on your face, and I have to hope they can't see it, too.
She was right, of course. But the prospect of waking up next to that much honesty every morning for the next fifty years left me limp as a noodle. I wanted to spend every night from now on in front of Leo's television in this Podunk town three thousand miles from home—anything to avoid going back to that empty apartment.

For a while, we absorbed ourselves in the television. Three priests were playing cards at a table, and another priest, wild haired and decrepit, sat in the corner shouting “WHAT?” every time someone asked him a question. Leo finished his fish and chips, drew out his pouch of Drum, pushed the takeout cartons and crumpled grease paper out of the way on the TV tray, and began to roll a cigarette.
He gets a kind of waxy buildup in his ears, and then we have to syringe them. It's not very nice.

It's great, though, in a way,
said the second priest.
We're never short of candles.

Laurel would be gone, but everything she'd felt would linger there, as if her anger and her disappointment could gather itself inside the walls and press them closer, inch by inch. Finally I spoke, but only because I thought it might ease the feeling: “She won't be there when I get back.”

I watched the corner of the old man's mouth twist into a smirk. “Ah,” he said as he licked the paper, “and this time the dishes will.”

I shook my head. “No. She'll do them before she leaves, knowing her.”

Leo clucked his tongue and lit his cigarette. “And you'd let a woman like that go?”

I studied one of his dribbly discolored earlobes, and found it quite impossible to imagine someone sucking on it. How could a man like Leo get by without sex? Brona had told me he'd never married. I knew he didn't have a computer, it seemed just as unlikely there were any porn channels on Irish television, and it wasn't as if there were any twinkly-eyed widows “calling round” to cook for him. The women in this town looked every bit as sexless as the Blessed Virgin herself.

“Maybe I'm like you, Leo. Maybe I'm built for the solitary life.”

He must have managed somehow. People take their comfort where they can find it, after all, and you can have no idea of the source.
Sure, we're all strangers in the end.

“The solitary life has its consolations,” the old man replied as he sighed out a stream of smoke into the dank and drafty air. “But that being said, I'd never recommend it.”

Today felt like an ordinary Saturday, to start with. This time no one told me otherwise, no one whispered in my ear—and how I wish She had.

I was on my bed reading a book. Orla had been out for hours but I wasn't thinking about her, I was reading about Padre Pio and the one time when his student was reading a letter he'd sent her, and how the wind carried it out of her hands and she ran chasing it for miles; and finally it landed flat on a rock as if someone had pinned it there. Then the next day he said to her, “Be careful of the wind, if I hadn't put my foot on that letter you'd have lost it.”

I wanted to sit and drink in the magic of that story. But the door banged on its hinges as my sister came into the room we shared, eyes blazing, and grabbed me off the bed by the collar. She turned me to face her and hit me clean across the face.—You fucked him, didn't you! You laid down on the ground and let him put his prick in you!

At first I didn't even think to deny it, I just stared at her because it was all too mad, but she took my silence for an admission of guilt, and raised her hand to me and brought it down again and again.

—No, I said, or tried to.—I didn't. I didn't, and from somewhere miles away I heard Mam calling,—Orla! Orla, please!

—You did! You did! Orla screamed, and hit me again. Her fury had turned her into someone else, someone with a splotched red face and wild soulless eyes and a murderous voice I hope I never again hear the like of.—He fucked you, and you let him. You … miserable … little … HOOR … always … taking … what's … mine … everything!… everything!

—I didn't! I said again, and it stung when she struck me, but I knew she'd have to stop soon, and I'd feel better then. All I could think was Why, why, why would he say it when it wasn't true?

At last Dad and Mam came into the room and they pulled her off of me, and for a time we each of us lay crumpled on the beds or the chair or the floor, spent and panting and heartbroken.—Are you hurt? Dad asked finally, and Mam fell into tears. I told him I was fine but Orla went on raging at me with her eyes. Her words hung over our heads in the silence. She'd never take them back, they'd haunt us all forever.