Immaculate Heart Read online

  So I took refuge in an old pub back on Quay Street, realizing only after I’d ordered a pint that what I’d taken for a quiet local was mobbed with hipster tourists. Why had I bothered to come at all?

  I managed to find a stool at the bar and pulled out the diary, flipping ahead to the next real entry.

  Father Dowd’s wanting to make preparations for the May Day procession and I don’t know what to say to him. He’s talking like there’ll be the four of us there, carrying the statue with her crown of white roses from the church all the way down to Saint Brigid’s Well, and from the way he talks you know he’s expecting a great big crowd from all over will turn out to listen to him. And I hope they do come, but I can tell you the names of two people who won’t.

  Something’s happening to Orla and Tess. They used to be always together but now Tess hardly ever comes round to our house for dinner like she used to. That used to be the way of it since her mam wasn’t often well enough to be cooking, and she cooks now but that’s not the reason. Last night Dad asked what was the news with Tess and Orla got this look on her face, incredulous like, and all she said was—Tess is grand, she’s always grand.

  It isn’t only Declan coming between them. It’s more than that. I want to shake Orla and say do you know how lucky you are to have her for your best friend? But she doesn’t. They’ve been mates since they were in nappies but she’s never seen it. The only friends I’ve had have come and gone in a matter of days, weeks if I was lucky, and when they change their minds about me they join in the whispering. Once they decided I was queer, everything I said and every which way I moved had to be queer too, because people will think whatever they like so long as they don’t have to see they’re mistaken. I wish there were someone else at school like me, but there isn’t, there never has been. So many times I go back to the day with Mallory at Streedagh and I wonder if she’s the best friend I will ever have. Tess is kind to me but since she’s not in my year I hardly ever see her. Orla sees her all the time and it’s like Tess is slowly fading into the wallpaper. Oh how I long to shake her.

  Sometimes Our Lady tells me things, things I’m not supposed to know, and I write them down here but afterwards I don’t remember doing it. She says Father Dowd had a twin sister who drowned in a river when they were three years of age. She says Tom Devaney keeps filthy videotapes in a locked box at the back of his shop and all of the men in town know about it. I know Dad and Uncle Jim have lost a great deal of money in a bad investment and they’re holding off telling Mam and Aunt Fiona for as long as they can. And She says Tess will become a nun though her heart will never be in it. I asked Her why, why would she do it if she didn’t really want to, and Our Lady said she didn’t know her own heart well enough to tell the difference. I said we should talk to Tess about it, to keep her from making that mistake with her life, and the Blessed Mother seemed surprised.—Ah, but there won’t be any mistake in it, She said.—Haven’t you ever done the right thing for the wrong reason?

  When I saw Tess the next day I wanted so badly to speak to her, but I didn’t know how to bring it up. Finally I said,—What does Our Lady tell you about what we’re meant to do with our lives?

  —You mean, do we have a vocation?

  —I don’t know. Maybe.

  —You know you’ll never be a nun, Síle, she laughed, and I must have had a look on my face because she reacted as if she’d hurt my feelings.—It’s only that you’re meant to do so many other things. Things a vocation wouldn’t allow you. You want to paint, don’t you? And travel? I told her she was right, and she said,—See? You’re too full of life. Not that the convent isn’t its own kind of life, only it isn’t the life for you.

  —Or you?

  She looked down at her hands in her lap.—I don’t know yet. It’s different for me.

  —Don’t you see yourself getting married someday, Tess? Don’t you see yourself having a husband who’ll come home to you each night, and babbies of your own?

  She tried to smile.—I don’t see anything. Sometimes I lie awake at night trying to picture it, any of it, even a small thing like how I’ll wear my hair when I’m thirty-five and will there be any grey in it yet. But I can’t.

  —But you don’t see yourself in the convent either.

  —You’re right. I don’t.

  —Do you ever speak about this with Orla?

  Tess laughed.—Not about going into the convent?

  —No, what we’re all going to be someday. For a minute or two we sat in silence, and then I said,—Isn’t it strange that She’d come to the four of us, when none of us belong in the religious life?

  —But I don’t know that the religious life is a higher calling than any other kind of life, Tess said.—After all, wasn’t Our Lady a wife and mother?

  I wanted to answer her then, I wanted to say you do think it’s a higher calling, that’s the reason you’re thinking of it, but I didn’t. I must keep Tess on my side, I don’t know what I’d do if she turned away from me as Orla has.

  —Wherever you go, whoever you become, Tess told me then,—there’ll always be the potential for temptation as well as virtue. Even in the convent.

  The rush-hour traffic was heavy coming out of Galway, and when I got back, I found Brona, Paudie, and Leo already tucked into their favorite snug.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Brona said once I’d sat down with my pint. “Did you ever manage to speak with Peggy Keaveney?”

  I gave her a recap of my conversation with Declan’s mother the previous afternoon—everything but the notebook—and Brona responded with a heavy sigh. “The poor creature, tellin’ you her husband was killed in an accident. What a terrible shame.”

  “I remember Tommy Keaveney,” Paudie said. “I remember him well, and I remember the time when he began to be missed. If there’d been an accident, even as far away as Dublin, we’d have heard of it.”

  “Surely,” Leo chimed in as he licked the paper on a new cigarette. “We’d have heard of it—there’d be no doubt about that.” He tucked his handiwork behind one of his dribbly ears.

  “Father Lynch told me people seem to think he just left town in the middle of the night and never came back,” I said.

  “And that’s as near to the truth as any of us are ever likely to know,” Paudie replied.

  “And then Declan takin’ after his father like that.” Leo drank long from his Guinness before adding, “No wonder the poor woman doesn’t see things as they are.”

  Leo spoke those words, and I knew beyond all doubt that Mrs. Keaveney hadn’t gotten those names off her TV set. Who are any of us, to say we do see things as they are?

  “Life is very cruel sometimes,” Brona was saying. “And sure, what can we do but tell her how pleased we are to hear he’s coming home at last?”

  We finished the round, and at five minutes to eight, we shrugged on our jackets and walked down the road to the town park. It was very square and symmetrical—you could tell the English had laid it out—though at the center there was a memorial to the Irish killed in the Easter Rising and the Civil War. Someone had arranged a row of pillar candles all around the memorial, so that the candlelight flickered on the bronze faces of the figures in the tableau; and for a second it felt like we were gathering here to worship a much older god, not just one but a whole company of them.

  Paudie spotted Tess in the gathering crowd, and I hung back while the rest of them clasped her by the shoulder and expressed their condolences. Then, her eyes rimmed in red, she saw me over Leo’s shoulder and I wished I hadn’t come. I didn’t belong here. Yet in the next moment I found her in my arms, and I never would be able to recall which of us had reached for the other; but at least I knew she was glad of my presence.

  It seemed like most of the people of Ballymorris had turned out, the elder residents parking themselves on benches along the walkway and the dead boy’s friends sitting or squatting on the pavement near the war memorial. I glanced around, but I didn’t see the kid from the gro
tto. “Thank the Lord it’s a dry night,” Leo said as he and Paudie took a seat.

  “For now,” Paudie replied as he buttoned his coat to the top and hunched his shoulders to try to preserve the warmth of the pub. Brona had gone off to talk to someone.

  I was still searching the faces. “Are Tess’s parents here?”

  Paudie shook his head. “Martina isn’t well, I’m afraid. I told them I’d be here, if Tess should need me.”

  A teenage boy in a hand-me-down leather jacket stood in front of the memorial, flicking his long hair out of his eyes as he tuned his guitar. A rather chubby girl of about thirteen came over and conferred with him before propping a laminated school portrait against the base of the memorial inside the circle of candles, where several people had already laid bouquets wrapped in cellophane. I took a step closer, shuddering as I recognized the face in the picture.

  Shit. Owen was the boy on the hill.

  The girl who’d brought the picture approached Tess, casting an anxious glance at us as she spoke. “Will you go first, Tess?”

  She laid a hand on the girl’s arm. “If you like. Are ye ready to begin?”

  The girl nodded, and as Tess followed her back to the memorial, a hush settled over the crowd. “Welcome, everyone,” Tess said, and her voice carried to the far reaches of the park. “I’m so grateful to see everyone here tonight to celebrate the life of Owen Gerrity.” She paused to collect herself, her hands clasped at her heart. She’d never looked more like a saint. “He was a kind boy, bright and caring, and compassionate to those around him, and in time he would have grown into a bright and caring and compassionate man.” Tess cleared her throat. “We will none of us have the chance to meet that man, but tonight we’ll remember the boy—the dear, sweet boy who was Owen Gerrity—as his spirit reunites with God our ever-loving Father.”

  I’d talked to this kid only two days before—we’d been drawn to the same place, breathed the same air—yet in another day or two, he’d be lying under six feet of earth. The horrible creeping-crawling came back to me then, the panicked get it off me get it away from me feeling that had kept me wide awake, frightened, and guilty every night for months after Mallory’s accident. I wondered if Mrs. Keaveney were here, if she’d already written Owen’s name in her book.

  Tess closed her eyes, and in the candlelight we could see the tears spilling down her cheeks. She wiped them away with trembling fingers before she continued. “As many of you know, music was an important part of Owen’s life, and so we have his closest friends here, Rory Farrell and Jim Murray, to play a few of the songs Owen liked best. Then we’ll have Owen’s sister, Ciara, read a poem she’s written for her brother.” Tess stepped back into the crowd, and I watched a middle-aged woman rest a hand on her elbow and murmur in her ear as Rory and Jim took their places inside the circle of candles.

  “None of this is real to me yet,” Rory or Jim began. “I keep thinkin’ we’re here for some other reason, and Owen’s just a little late joinin’ us.”

  “We always talked about gettin’ a band together,” Jim or Rory went on. “Someday we’d have done it. I feel like we have to do it now—for Owen—y’know?”

  The crowd responded with what seemed like compassionate silence. “Anyway, this was Owen’s favorite song. He was still workin’ on learnin’ how to play it.”

  The boy strummed tunelessly on his guitar; a few chords later the other joined in, and I couldn’t help thinking, Good Lord, this will be tedious. After the first thirty seconds, I figured out it was Johnny Cash, but I still couldn’t make out most of the words. I looked over and saw Paudie with his chin on his palm, wearing a too-intent expression that indicated (to anyone who knew him well enough) that he was zoned out entirely. Leo, of course, made no pretense of listening; the night wasn’t warm by any means, but it wasn’t too cold to prevent him dozing off on the park bench once he’d finished his cigarette.

  But the old men perked up once the boys stopped playing and Ciara began to speak. “My mam and dad decided not to be here tonight,” she said, her voice surprisingly clear and steady, “but they asked me to tell ye all how much it means to them that ye’ve come.”

  She looked around at the better part of Ballymorris assembled before her, and I was amazed at her air of calm, her self-possession. I couldn’t believe a young girl could stand up in front of her neighbors like this only the day after her brother killed himself. “I wrote a poem for Owen,” she said. “I only wrote it this morning, so it isn’t any good.”

  “Ah, now,” someone said, gently reproving, and Ciara replied with a bashful half smile as she began to read.

  You showed me how to move through the world,

  and once or twice, when we couldn’t sleep,

  we talked about what might lie beyond it.

  You didn’t know any more than I did,

  But at least you didn’t pretend to.

  Other times it felt like there was all of the Atlantic between us

  Instead of the kitchen table,

  with me always waiting on you to speak.

  I can write that you’re gone, but I can’t believe it.

  I will save my memories of you, like the coins we can’t use anymore,

  And try not to think that only one of us is growing up,

  That only one of us will leave the home we’ve known.

  But you know what lies beyond us now,

  And someday

  I expect you will tell me everything.

  The crowd responded to the girl’s reading with a different kind of silence. No one clapped, but you knew they would have given her a warm ovation under happier circumstances. I’d never felt so apart from anyone, anywhere, as I did then. Was it that pure and simple between them, really? Had he always been that good to her? Or has she already forgotten all the times when he wasn’t?

  Ciara’s friends surrounded her, hugging her and murmuring their admiration for what she’d written, and it looked as though the vigil might be over already. “We’ll leave you go before anyone gets wet,” called Rory or Jim, “Only Tess would like us to play ‘Amazing Grace,’ and have everyone join in, if ye are willing.”

  The boys’ rendition of the old hymn wasn’t any clearer than their Johnny Cash, but this time Tess’s voice held everyone’s attention. Hearing that voice, you knew that back in the day she’d sung every solo in the children’s choir. No one joined in. I felt goose bumps all over as she sang the last verse: Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail, and mortal life shall cease, I shall possess within the veil, a life of joy and peace.

  I looked over and saw tears in the corners of Paudie’s eyes. “She sings so beautifully. She never lets on how beautifully she can sing.”

  “The voice of an angel, the heart of a saint,” Leo confirmed, and put his arm around his old friend’s shoulder as if they’d had three times as much to drink.

  The song ended, and Tess was met with another interlude of admiring silence. She cleared her throat. “And now we’ll have some refreshments over at the youth center. I doubt ye can all fit in the house, but we’ll try our best.”

  The rain started, softly at first, and when we got to the little row house on Milk Lane, it looked like most of the people who’d been at the park weren’t coming for the “afters.” In the sitting room where Owen had passed his school days playing video games, a girl was slumped on the black vinyl sofa, openly weeping as her friends attempted to comfort her. Down the corridor another bevy of teenagers crowded the kitchen table, tearing into the packages of cookies and chocolate Tess had laid out earlier that evening.

  A young man with a receding hairline was standing by the kitchen doorway eyeing the chaos, and as Tess came in, he gave her a hug that might have lasted a beat too long. She turned back to me and introduced us. “Liam is one of our after-school literacy tutors,” she said as I shook his hand.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said, though he didn’t much look it. “Can I make you a cuppa, Tess?”

  “I�
�m all right, thanks, Liam.”

  Paudie and Leo stood in the kitchen doorway, clearly ill at ease. “I think they’d rather go back to the pub for their refreshments,” I said wryly, and when Liam glanced at me then, I felt as if I’d said the wrong thing, or at least said it the wrong way.

  The young man turned to Tess, touched her shoulder, and said, “You’re knackered. Why don’t you go home and get some rest? Your friends can walk you back, and Mairéad and I can tidy up here when everyone’s finished.”

  * * *

  Paudie and Leo each offered her an arm, and they walked that way down Shop Street: two old men escorting a handsome russet-haired girl, the one person I knew who’d offered up her life to something beyond herself. I walked a few paces behind, feeling a fondness for all three of them unwarranted by our brief acquaintance. Twenty-five years ago didn’t really count.

  “Where are we headed?” I heard her ask.

  “Where do ya think?” Leo replied.

  “Not to the pub. I won’t, thanks, Leo.”

  “C’mon, Tess,” Paudie said gently, as Leo declared, “You’ll not go home to your own four walls tonight!” I could see from behind her how Tess seemed to melt with relief at his rumbling confidence. After a day like this one, an early night was the last thing anybody needed or wanted. “Not yet,” Leo blustered as they quickened their steps. “Not yet.”

  We ducked into Napper Tandy’s and found our usual snug occupied. Paudie and I went for the first round while Leo and Tess found us a booth in the back. There was a hurling match on the television, the bar crowded with the same obnoxious men in green jerseys. Hennessey and “Yeats” were among them, but if they looked my way, they didn’t let on.

  “Do nuns drink?” I asked as Paudie waved the bartender over.

  “She does tonight,” he answered. “She’ll have a hot whiskey with lemon and sugar. Sure, we must all take our comfort where we can find it.”

  I shook my head a little, trying to remember where I’d heard that sentiment before. We carried the drinks to the booth, and I inched in beside Tess. “It was terribly good of you to come out tonight,” she said as I delivered the hot toddy.