The Eden Tree (29 page)

Linn dismissed her inquiry with a silent shake of her head and the uniformed woman went away.

Linn lectured herself sternly as she walked through the airport reception building. “I have to stop crying all the time; I have to start eating; I have to call a halt to this walking nervous breakdown.” She repeated this line as she moved along but it didn’t help. The double loss, of Con and of Ireland, was just too much. She couldn’t think of going back there; the country was tied up with the man. Never again to see the green fields or the cloudy, opalescent sky. Never again to feel the cool, salty breeze, or hear a soft voice saying, “I will,” or “I am.” The Irish disliked the use of “yes” and “no”; there were no words for them in Gaelic and they carried their custom over into English. The vaguely Celtic “aye” was the only concession they would make.

And the people themselves—generous, impetuous, witty. Gone, all of it, never to be recaptured. Linn mourned the passing of her emerald summer with Con.

Karen was waiting for Linn at the gate. She took one of Linn’s bags from her hand silently and then said, “I don’t have to tell you that you look awful.”

“Please, Karen, no more. I appreciate your coming for me but skip the lectures, all right?”

“Aren’t you even going to tell me what happened?”

“I can’t talk about it right now; it’s too painful. I’m exerting all my energy to deal with it. Don’t press me for details, okay?”

“You’re not pregnant, are you?”

Linn shook her head. Before her visit to Father Daly she hadn’t been concerned about getting pregnant; in fact, she had been half hoping…But after she knew about Con’s true parentage it had become a possibility too horrible to contemplate. She’d found out on the plane that she was safe, one small spark of relief in a dark cloud of misery.

“I don’t like the way you look,” Karen insisted. “I think you should see a doctor. I can make an appointment with Dr. Cross if you like.”

“All I need is rest. I’d like to go home and get to bed, if you don’t mind.”

Karen eyed her warily all through the drive back to Jersey but maintained a tactful reserve. She dropped Linn off in front of her apartment complex and said, “Are you sure you don’t want me to come up for a little while? I could fix you something to eat; you can’t tell me you couldn’t use a decent meal.”

“No thanks. I’ll call you tomorrow. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

“Where is the rest of your luggage?”

“I’m having it sent.”

“You left in a hurry, I see.”

“Karen, I’ll call you tomorrow. Goodbye.” Linn slammed the door of Karen’s station wagon and walked wearily up the path to her apartment.

She unlocked the door to find everything as she’d left it. It was odd; she felt so different, and yet the furniture, the pictures on the walls, the potted plants all stared back at her with customary indifference. It was the same old place but she wasn’t the same old Aislinn. She tossed her bags on a chair and collapsed on the sofa.

Well, Linn thought, what happens now? I go back to my job, back to the loneliness, back to my empty former life. And as for the future, who could know? Would she wind up batty and desperate like Amanda Wingfield, patient in chiffon, waiting for a gentleman caller who never came? Would she become one of those crazy old ladies who bore people endlessly with stories of a lost youthful lover? She sure as hell wasn’t going to fall headlong into happiness. There was only one Connor Clay, and he was finally, irretrievably, gone.

Linn got up slowly and went to the bedroom, putting her copy of
A Terrible Beauty
on the shelf above the bed. It was the hardcover edition, which she’d purchased at the airport on her return trip. She already owned a paperback edition but the hardback had Con’s picture on the dust cover. Above the caption “Trevor Drennan” and the brief biography, his beloved eyes looked into hers. He was standing on a Dublin street corner, a corduroy jacket hooked over his shoulder, his hair stirred by the wind. The photographer had captured that faintly quizzical look she loved: Con’s head tilted to one side, his chin lifted, his mouth firm and serious. She looked at the image for a long moment and then flung the book across the room.

She crawled onto the bed and stared at the ceiling until she finally fell asleep.

* * * *

Several days passed, during which Linn was determined to keep busy. She went in to her office and began organizing things for the fall term, drawing up book lists, compiling course outlines. Work helped during the day but the nights were endless. She took long walks; she went to the movies alone; she went shopping with Karen—anything to occupy her time. Unoccupied hours left her free to think, and thinking was a mistake.

She was having a cup of coffee in the faculty lounge one afternoon when the secretary opened the door and said, “Linn, there’s somebody here looking for you—tall guy with curly dark hair, sounds sort of British or something...”

Linn dashed past her and went running down the hall.

Con was waiting in front of her office, his hand on the nameplate that read Dr. Aislinn Pierce. He looked around at her approach and dropped his hand.

Linn stopped a few feet away from him. “Hello, Con.”

He smiled his slight, all-eyes-and-very-little-mouth smile. “Hello, Aislinn.”

Just the sound of her name on his lips was enough to make her knees weak. She unlocked the office door and they entered her small, paneled cubbyhole. Linn locked the door behind them.

Con stood until she indicated that he should sit. They were both very formal and restrained, as if one misplaced word would send the earth spinning out of orbit.

Linn perched on the edge of her desk and looked at him. He was wearing a beige turtleneck and tan chino pants, which was dressed up for him. He looked thinner, preoccupied, but as attractive as ever. Linn wanted to feel his arms around her so badly that it was a moment before she could trust herself to speak.

“How did you find out where I worked?” she asked him finally, after a silence.

“By the same method I discovered that I’ll shortly be coming into a piece of real estate,” he answered, watching her face.

Linn sighed in defeat. “I asked Larry not to tell you. He promised me he wouldn’t.”

“He didn’t. His secretary is Kate Costello’s aunt.”

Linn nodded slowly. She should have known better than to think that such a thing could be kept quiet in Bally.

“I’ll not take it, Aislinn,” he said quietly. “That’s no prize to substitute for you.”

“It should be yours, Con. By right of primogeniture the property passes to the eldest son. That’s still the custom, if not the law, in Ireland.”

He stood abruptly, thrusting his hands through his hair. “Christ, Aislinn, don’t quote me common law. You know what I mean. Too much has happened; I’d rather see the place go to charity.”

“You can give it away if you want once you get it. Dispose of it any way you please once it’s yours.”

“You wouldn’t care?”

Linn met his eyes. “I feel the same way you do, Con. Too much has happened.” She forced a smile. “How have you been?”

He stared at her as if she were deranged. “Oh, smashing, brilliant, what do you think? I’ve been grand, just grand.”

Linn looked away.

He grabbed her arm and forced her to face him. “I’ll tell you how I’ve been. I can’t sleep again. Couldn’t sleep before I met you, can’t sleep now. I can, however, drink. I’ve been just a little drunk every day since you left.” He put his palms on either side of her face, looking into her eyes. “I love you. I wake up loving you. I drink myself to sleep loving you. All day long I love you. What am I going to do with all this love?”

Linn tried to twist free of his hands. “Don’t, Con. Please don’t.”

He held her fast. “Aislinn, listen to me. The only one who knows our story is Father Daly. We could go anywhere else in the world but Bally and live as man and wife. Who would know?”

Linn looked back at him despairingly. “We would know, Con. We would. Can you live with that?”

“I can’t live without you!” he said despairingly, letting her go. “I’m trying, but it’s like being condemned to a punishment when there’s been no crime.”

“We could never have children,” she whispered.

“I don’t care if I can have you,” he answered, his eyes pleading.

Linn wrenched herself away from his tortured gaze, emotionally ravaged by the depth of a need which would prompt such a desperate suggestion. “No, Con, no. Our lives would be haunted by the knowledge of our true relationship and in the end it would ruin us both.”

Con seized her again, pulling her into his arms. “You’re ruining me right now. Come with me, Aislinn. Don’t let me go back alone.”

Linn stood like wood in his arms, forcing herself to remain unresponsive.

“Please don’t touch me, Con,” she said quietly.

He released her immediately, stepping back and looking at her with huge, defeated eyes. “I can remember a time when you begged me to touch you,” he said in a low tone heavy with surrender.

She met his gaze, acknowledging the memory of words that could never be spoken again.

He cleared his throat. “All right, Aislinn. I can’t force you and God knows I don’t want to.” He put his hand into his pocket and produced a small jeweler’s box. “I thought you should have this. It was my mother’s and I had the inscription put on before …” He stopped, and then continued. “I don’t know what the bloody hell to do with it; I can’t bear to look at it anymore.” He picked up her hand and put the box into her palm.

Linn opened the hinged cover. It was a Celtic cross, wrought in silver and studded with marcasites. She turned it over and looked at the back.

“Ildathach,” she read aloud. “August 2.”

It was the date of the Fleadh, the first time they’d made love.

“Thank you, Con,” she whispered. “I’ll wear it always.”

“Think of me,” he said, his voice breaking. He turned away and she knew that he was choking back tears. It was terrible to see him so wretched; even his strength and force of will could be sapped by the hopeless need of something, someone, he could never have.

When he turned back to her he was composed, even attempting a smile.

“I’ll go now; I don’t want to upset you any more than I already have.” He took her chin in his hand and said, “Goodbye, my lady. You are my lady, Aislinn, and you always will be though we may never see each other again. A hundred secrets from the past could not change that.” He ran his thumb over her lips tenderly. Linn finally, despite every effort, started to cry.

“Don’t, Aislinn,” he said gently. “I want to remember a smiling face.”

“I’m sorry, Con; I was trying to be so brave. But I’m no good at it. I’m just too weak.”

“You are not; never say that. You are the bravest, strongest woman I’ve ever met. There aren’t many who could go through what you have these past few weeks with only a few tears to mark the experience. I will always think of you as that plucky little lady who took on the whole town and sang for me, showing them all how you felt.”

Linn closed her eyes. She was dangerously close to begging him to stay with her. “Please go, Con,” she said softly. “Don’t prolong this; it’s too difficult.”

His hand fell away from her face. She felt the touch of his lips on her brow and then he said, “I love you, Aislinn. I love you now; I’ll love you forever. Goodbye.”

She heard him cross the room and then the sound of the lock being released. In the next instant the door had closed behind him and his steps were fading down the hall.

Linn clutched Mary Drennan’s cross in her hand and said farewell to Mary’s son.

* * * *

In the next few weeks Linn learned what despondency was. She acquired dark circles under her eyes which no amount of makeup could cover, and she lost weight to the point where her bones were beginning to show. She started wearing bulky sweaters when it was still too warm for them in order to camouflage her appearance. She had to get in shape to face her classes; students weren’t easily fooled and already some of the early arrivals who came in for conferences were watching her curiously, the way people study someone with a debilitating illness.

She tried to go on and be cheerful; there is nothing romantic or even interesting about despair, she told herself. But she bored herself with her own apathy and couldn’t understand how Karen or Anne could bear to be in the same room with her. Linn grew to understand Hamlet’s description of her current state of mind: “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.” No one ever expressed a thought quite as accurately as Shakespeare.

The semester was about to begin when Karen stopped off at Linn’s apartment one morning on her way back from a delivery. She sat across from Linn at the kitchen table and said, stirring her coffee, “Don’t you think this funk has gone on long enough? Don’t you think we should really talk about it?”

Linn sighed wearily. “How much time do you have?”

Karen patted her frosted hair and adjusted her sweater. “For you, Lindy, I’ve got all day.”

Linn got up. “You might as well come into the living room and get comfortable. This is going to take a while.”