Immaculate Heart Read online

  “What about his father? Is he still around?”

  “He left when Declan was small. It happened quite often among the men of that generation, and the one before it: they left for work in England and never returned.”

  I thought of Leo, with no one to come home for—but he’d returned just the same. “Was Declan’s father from Ballymorris?”

  The priest shook his head. “He wasn’t, no. They say he was a Dublin man. Who knows what brought him here? I don’t suppose even Mrs. Keaveney could tell us now, poor woman.”

  “You speak of Mrs. Keaveney as if she were—”

  He caught my meaning, and nodded. “Mrs. Keaveney, it pains me to say, goes about her days under the tragic misapprehension that Declan is coming home any day now. Sometimes it’s tomorrow, she tells me, and other times it’s sure to be next week. He’s a very busy man, she says. Up to something important down in Australia, something so important that he hasn’t yet found the time to come home and visit his poor old mam, not once in twenty years.

  “But then,” he sighed, “mothers can never be brought to think ill of their sons. If only they could, then perhaps the boys would behave better.”

  I felt my mother’s arms like a lead weight around my neck, murmuring words like kind and sweet as if they applied to me, and I reminded myself that the priest was speaking only of Declan. “It must surprise you, then, to hear that he and Orla were dating.”

  Father Lynch shrugged as he drained his cup. “Sure, people change.” Then something occurred to him. “It’s a strange thing, though: in all these years, I’ve never met Orla’s husband.”

  I tapped my pen on my open notebook. “What about her sister?”

  “Síle?” He looked almost startled. “Surely Tess told you about Síle.”

  “I heard she’s living in a home. Do you know what’s wrong with her?”

  “Now, that would be something you’d have to talk to the family about.”

  “Do you know her at all?”

  “I’ve never met her, no, though I do know the Gallaghers quite well.”

  “How did they react when their daughters told them about the apparition?”

  “Oh, I suppose it’s safe to say they were concerned. But they’d known Tess all her life, and as I say, Tess has always been the sort of lass you can set your faith in. If Tess saw it, then no one could’ve been telling tales.”

  “So you think the apparition was real?”

  I thought we’d geared up for this, but I’d miscalculated. The priest leaned back in his chair and eyed me coolly. “I believe Tess saw what she claimed to have seen.”

  “Ah, but Father,” I said, “that’s not the same thing. Was it real?”

  He crossed his arms and glanced at the calendar on the wall to his right. “Now, that is a question I can’t answer.”

  I reached over and switched off the recorder. “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “Won’t,” he conceded. “Surely you understand. I couldn’t have my parishioners reading in your magazine that I believe their children were seeing things, or healing an ailment that may never have been there to begin with.”

  “But you’ve just admitted that’s what you think.”

  The priest gave me a grim smile. “You can’t print it if I haven’t said it.” He sighed. “Look, I’m not trying to give you the runaround here. No one was playing tricks or telling tales. I understand your interest; I just don’t see how any good can come of encouraging it.”

  Then, all too conveniently, there came a gentle knock on the office door. “Father?” Louise called. “Mrs. Moloney is here.”

  “It seems your twenty minutes are up, young man,” the priest said dryly.

  John’s phone beeped as I was leaving the rectory. It was a text message from Tess. Louise tells me you were asking for the tapes, she wrote. I’ll leave them with Paudie at the shop, so you can listen to them before we speak next.

  * * *

  It was early afternoon by the time I finished with Father Lynch, and Brona had promised me dinner at six, so I decided to get some work done and save Sligo for the following day. I didn’t want to feel rushed when I went to visit Síle.

  I typed out everything I could recall from the unrecorded portions of that morning’s interviews, taking pride in setting the gems down pretty much verbatim. She said I found it easier to love the poor and afflicted on a distant continent than the people I professed to love in my own home. I wanted to show the town as it was and the people as I found them, and a line like that would add just the right tenor, subtly unnerving. I needed this to be the best thing I’d ever done.

  Afterward I put in a couple hours on a story I had due at the end of the month, and then I powered down my laptop and went out. It wasn’t raining, but Shop Street was deserted apart from a few people coming in and out of the SuperValu. Through the bookstore window, I spotted Paudie behind the counter with a cup of tea and his nose in a hardcover. I drew out my pocket notebook, ducking into vacant entryways to jot down my thoughts as they occurred to me.

  Manorview Hotel shut since 1992. Redevelopment notice looks almost as old. Carvery menu (roast beef & turkey, baked sole in lemon & white wine sauce, banoffee pie—?) still posted in front window.

  Get numbers on towns near other main apparition sites (Bosnia, et al). Numbers for Ballymorris early 1988–c. 1993?

  Town’s economic fortunes hinged on Rome’s stamp of approval. Mysticism meets Church politics/bureaucracy (& commerce) = inevitable paradox. Play up “purity” of visionaries’ initial experience. Faith of Irish Catholics—quaint, peculiar—how they see the world & their place in it. Compare/contrast with American Catholicism.

  Web search: pilgrims (from Ireland & elsewhere) who may have written about their experiences here. Any international press?

  “Hartigan’s House of Devotions”—dust on window is an inch thick. Front door padlocked, but someone got inside to write “Owen is a wanker” backward to be read from the street. Through cleared parts, can see there is still some stock on the shelves (including 4-foot toddler Jesus with scepter, mantle & crown). Same sort of junk as Old Mag’s. Have Paudie introduce me to Hartigan & other former shopkeepers if they’re still around.

  I reached the intersection of Shop Street and Milk Lane, and thought of Tess.

  Find someone at hospital who might talk to me? Nurses/orderlies? (The more devout they are, the more they’ll be willing to talk?)

  Then I remembered the look on Tess’s face as she said, “I need to gather my thoughts.” Maybe not.

  * * *

  After dinner we met Paudie and Leo at Napper Tandy’s for the third night running. “Did you have anything for supper, Leo?” Brona was saying as I laid the first round on the table and took my seat in the snug.

  The old man shrugged as he brought the pint to his lips. “Sure, I’ve a meal in a glass.”

  Brona clucked her tongue. “He’s lucky to be alive, that one,” she said to me out of the corner of her mouth.

  “You’ve been a busy man, I hear,” Leo said blithely, ignoring what was perfectly audible to all. “Spoke to Father Jack, did you?”

  “I didn’t realize we’re allowed to call him Father Jack.”

  “Not to his face.” Leo laughed. “He’s a clever one, that Father Jack. No time for nicknames when you’ve an eye on the bishop’s chair.”

  Paudie turned to me and patted an old black shoebox on the seat beside him. “I’ve a package for you, lad.”

  “Thanks for bringing it over. And for setting it up so Tess and I could talk.”

  Paudie fiddled with his beer mat. “She rang me after you left today.”

  I braced myself. “Oh?”

  The old folks traded a three-way look. “I’m beginning to think you’ve a certain effect on people,” Paudie ventured. “She was livelier than I’ve heard her in a long while.”

  “What do you mean by ‘lively’?”

  “She isn’t the sort to open up to strangers, Tess.” Pa
udie sighed. “She never has been.”

  I’d found a fossil on the beach, and we’d pretended to examine it, but it was just an excuse to come closer. Like a ghost trapped in stone, she’d said, and that was when I’d kissed her.

  “But she spoke to you today?” Brona asked.

  “She started to. I’m hoping she’ll let me interview her again at some point before I leave.”

  “Ah, she will,” Leo replied. “Twenty years is a long time to be keepin’ your own counsel.”

  “Does she have friends?” I asked. “Maybe that’s a weird question, but I don’t know if lay nuns are supposed to refrain from, you know, ‘earthly attachments’ or whatever.”

  “I don’t know that there’s a rule about that, as such,” Paudie mused. “Tess is well loved. She’s a friend to everyone, if you know what I mean.”

  “So there’s no one she’d confide in,” I said.

  “Not really, no.”

  “And did you get up to see Síle?” Leo asked teasingly.

  “I didn’t think I’d have time,” I said. “I’ll go tomorrow. I’d like to talk to Orla, too.”

  “She’s only up the road,” Brona said.

  “Good luck gettin’ Orla to speak wit’cha,” Leo retorted.

  “Why don’t you think she’d talk to me?”

  “If Tess wants to forget, Orla’s already forgotten,” Paudie replied. “She’s changed.”

  “Sure, we’re none of us the people we used to be,” Brona said sagely.

  Leo lifted his fingers to what little remained of his hair. “And more’s the pity.” The others smiled ruefully into their drinking glasses. “They say Madden is a shadow man,” Leo went on under his breath. “That Orla made him up. Would lead you to wonder where the babbies came from, if it were true!” Leo threw back his head and laughed uproariously.

  “Anyhow,” Brona continued, “that’s how seldom anyone sees him. Must be quite an important job he’s got up in Dublin, to be gone so much of the week.”

  I’d see about Orla in the morning, but in the meantime, I wanted to talk about her sister. “I put in a call to Ardmeen House after I talked to Father Lynch,” I said. “I’m waiting for the director to call me back.”

  “And you’ll go on waiting,” Leo replied. “It’s up to yourself, but if I were you, I’d go on and make the drive up there.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, though I’d be taking his advice no matter what happened tomorrow. “I don’t want to presume they’ll let me in and not be able to see her because they think I’m too pushy. I don’t even know how I’ll explain myself.”

  “It’ll take you an hour and a quarter to get there,” said Brona. “An hour and a half at most.”

  “Don’t tell them why you want to see her,” Paudie put in, “or they’ll never let you. The apparition is part of the reason she’s in there.”

  I paused with my pint glass halfway to my lips. “How can that be, when she isn’t the only one who saw it?”

  “I said part of the reason,” Paudie replied. “You’ll find out the rest for yourself.”

  “Sure, you couldn’t make it up.” Leo clucked his tongue. “C’mere, now. Did ya ever think of writin’ a book?”

  My grandmother was always asking me the same question, and it never got any easier to answer. Nobody likes to be reminded of all he hasn’t accomplished, and likely never will. “Maybe someday,” I replied. “I guess I’m still looking for the right subject.”

  “You could write a book about anythin’, anythin’ a’tall,” Leo said, “and if the story’s good, they’ll all be wanting to read it.”

  “Listen to him,” Paudie sniffed. “This one hasn’t cracked a book since 1955!”

  “I read that book you gave to me that time!” Leo protested. “The mystery. Yer man from Galway.”

  “That was a Christmas gift nearly ten years back!” Paudie laughed.

  “What about a screenplay?” Leo asked. “Didja ever think of writin’ a script? They say there’s piles of money to be made in scripts, if you’ve any luck a’tall.”

  I hid my face in my pint to conceal my irritation. I’d tried to write a screenplay once.

  “Sure, if it were that easy, we’d all be makin’ fillums,” Paudie said.

  We had two more rounds, but my heart wasn’t in it after that. I kept thinking about those tapes, looking forward to the time when I could lock myself in Brona’s spare room and listen to them undisturbed.

  * * *

  They were labeled by date. It seemed Father Dowd had interviewed Tess first, then Declan, then Orla, and finally Síle over a two-month period from January into early March of 1988.

  Brona scrounged up her husband’s old Walkman and left me in peace. I put on the headphones and pressed the PLAY button, and when the dead man began to speak, I couldn’t help writing the screenplay version in my head.

  FADE IN:

  INT. - SIMPLY FURNISHED RECTORY OFFICE—DAY.

  FATHER DOWD, a priest on the late side of middle age, clears his throat and taps his pencil softly on the ink blotter. A crucifix hangs on the wall above his head. The girl, TERESA, sits across the desk from him, wide-eyed and eager to cooperate.

  FATHER DOWD

  Today is the eleventh of January, 1988. This recording is an interview with Teresa McGowan, who is sixteen years of age and a sixth-year student at St. Brigid’s College, Ballymorris. Let it also be noted that I have known Teresa from the time of her birth. I baptized her myself.

  I pictured the priest with a red nose and a full head of white hair. I wanted him to look like one of the jovial old gents I’d met in the pub. He had to seem kind and dependable, because Tess would’ve trusted him; it was, after all, the most important secret of her life, and he would have to know the wisest way to reveal it.

  FATHER DOWD (CONT’D)

  Now, Teresa. You came to me today to make an extraordinary statement. Do you agree that we must record your experiences for the benefit of all the faithful?

  TERESA

  I do, Father.

  A glance passes between the priest and the young girl; he leans forward, silently urging her to continue.

  TERESA (CONT’D)

  I believe that myself and my friends have seen an apparition of the Blessed Virgin.

  FATHER DOWD

  And do you recall the occasion of the first apparition?

  TERESA

  It was at the beginning of November, Father.

  FATHER DOWD

  And why did you not come to me immediately after the first visitation?

  TERESA

  We weren’t sure of what we were seeing. We … we wanted too badly for it to be real, for her to be real, so we prayed first for clarity.

  FATHER DOWD

  (more gently)

  You must tell us everything you remember, Tess. As clearly as you can. Begin by stating the names of your friends.

  TERESA

  Orla Gallagher, her sister Síle, and Declan Keaveney. Sometimes on a clear day we go up to the grotto on the Sligo road after school.

  FATHER DOWD

  And how do you generally pass the time you’re at the grotto?

  TERESA

  Just talking, Father.

  With a wheeling hand motion, the priest urges her to elaborate.

  TERESA (CONT’D)

  We talk about school, our classmates and teachers. What we intend to do when we’re grown.

  FATHER DOWD

  You don’t go up to the grotto to pray?

  The girl fidgets in her seat, her eyes on the desk between them.

  TERESA

  Not really, Father, no.

  FATHER DOWD

  Not to worry, Teresa. I appreciate your candor. Now tell us what happened on the afternoon of the first of November.

  TERESA

  We were sitting on the bench, just talking, and suddenly everything felt strange.

  (draws an audible breath)

  Everyone else seemed very far away. Decl
an was telling a story, but it was like he was a thousand miles away and I could only hear the echo of an echo of what he’d been saying.

  FATHER DOWD

  Go on.

  TERESA

  Everything went very silent, and when I saw someone moving out of the corner of my eye, it felt like it took forever just to move my head to see what was happening.

  FATHER DOWD

  And what was happening? What did you see?

  TERESA

  I saw Síle. She was kneeling on the pavement, looking up towards the statue in the grotto. At first I couldn’t see her face, but I knew something was happening. I came closer, and she had a queer look in her eyes.

  FATHER DOWD

  And did you see the statue of the Blessed Virgin?

  TERESA

  It wasn’t there, Father. There was only a bright light. It was so bright it felt like the daylight was fading into night behind me. Darkness behind me, and the bright light ahead.

  FATHER DOWD

  As if … you’d been given a choice?

  TERESA

  (after a pause)

  Aye, Father. So I looked into the light, and she was there.

  FATHER DOWD

  Tell us what she looked like.

  TERESA

  She was smiling. Beaming down at me. That was the first thing I noticed about her. And she wore the blue mantle.

  FATHER DOWD

  Did she carry the Christ child?

  TERESA

  No, Father.

  FATHER DOWD

  And did she speak to you?

  TERESA

  Not at first. To begin with, she only smiled, and I felt nothing but her love for me.

  (pauses)

  I might have been kneeling there for hours, I’ve no idea. It was like everything else in the world fell away, and there was no such thing as time. It fell from us, all of it: the sky above and the ground below. Even my own name.