Immaculate Heart Read online

  “All right, I guess.” I paused. “She told me she never visits you.”

  “I did speak to her on the phone there the other week. But she never comes; she tells our mam and dad she’s too busy with the wee ones. It’s easier for both of us that she doesn’t, although I do wish I could meet the babbies. But she’ll never let me—not before they’re grown, at any rate.”

  I knew then, somehow knew for certain, that Orla had blocked everything she’d seen and heard and felt. I didn’t see why one sister should be free and “normal” and the other in a mental home when they’d had the very same experience. It was bad enough to live like a bird in a cage, but it was an even bigger shame for a bird so lovely.

  “A lot of things have happened to me in the meantime,” Síle said gently. “Orla was afraid. She’s always been afraid. Better not to see it, she thinks. Better not to feel it. In some ways, I’m much freer in here than she’ll ever be.”

  There was such truth in what she’d said that I could practically feel it humming in the walls. “Síle?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Because they say I’ll never be cured. Cured of what, though, nobody seems to know—or at least they won’t tell me. There used to be a name for it, but they’ve since taken it out of the book.”

  I looked at her. I had to put one hand on top of the other to keep from reaching out to run my thumb along her lower lip.

  “I could leave,” she said softly. “I could behave exactly as they’re asking me to, and after a time, they’d let me leave. Whatever the doctor’s told you, we’re none of us a danger to ourselves or each other. But if I were to go out—find a flat, find a job—and then things got too confusing again, I’d only end up back where I started.”

  Now I reached out and touched her lightly on the knee. “You’re the sanest person I’ve met since I got here.”

  She flashed me a sad little smile. “That’s kind of you to say.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Do you want to know what it’s like? To be mad, I mean.” I nodded, and she said, “You have people round you who profess to love you, but then they go and twist every word you say to make you look like you don’t know which way is up.” Síle sighed. “No—that isn’t fair of me. They don’t do it purposefully. They’ve no idea they’re doing it.”

  “Everybody does that,” I said.

  “Don’t they, though?” She leaned forward and moved the tea tray to the floor. “I want to do something for you,” she said as she reached for my hand. “I’m going to read your palm.” She pressed my fingers open and gently squeezed the base of my thumb. “Tell me something.”

  “Anything.”

  “D’you have a girlfriend?”

  I’d known this would come up somehow, but I still couldn’t answer without hesitation. “No,” I said.

  She traced her forefinger along my life line, and considered it. “Did you love her?”

  What kind of man would I be, if I said no? “I think so.”

  “Then you did the right thing.”

  “Are you reading that off my hand?”

  We looked up from my palm at the same time. “I don’t have to,” she said, and we kept looking. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d wanted someone like this.

  “Next time you come,” she went on, “you can tell me everything Tess and Orla told you. Then I’ll tell you my part.”

  “We don’t have to,” I said. “Not unless you want to.”

  “It’s the reason you came, isn’t it?”

  I’d all but forgotten why I was here, and she knew it. I gave in to the urge to paper it over. “They said you saw her first,” I said.

  “They do say that.”

  “Do you remember it? The first time it happened?”

  “I do,” she said. “I remember it well.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  Síle looked beyond me now, as if the past were reconfiguring itself just over my right shoulder. “They wanted people to think that I was the one who saw Her the clearest and that maybe I’d even convinced them of things that weren’t there. But I wasn’t the only one to see Her,” she said softly. “I wasn’t, and I’ll tell you how I know. After a certain point, Tess started going up to the hill by herself. She thought none of us knew, and I don’t know, maybe Orla never guessed. They were drifting, by that point.”

  “She didn’t tell me she went up by herself,” I said. I liked Tess—had always liked her. I didn’t want to think of her misleading me.

  When Síle refocused her eyes, it was like she could read my thoughts scrolling across my forehead. “I wouldn’t think any less of her. Haven’t you ever forgotten anything on purpose?”

  We just looked at each other. “Maybe I have,” I said.

  She rose to her feet. “You don’t have much time.”

  “Is that on my palm, too?”

  She laughed. “I meant time left in your visit. He’ll be knocking in a minute.”

  “Will they let me come again?”

  “Oh, Martin and I have an understanding,” she replied airily. “Dr. Kiely never lets on, but she lets him do as he thinks best.” Síle smiled then, a luminous smile, as if she’d swallowed the moon for breakfast. She’d flashed me that smile many times before.

  “I’m sorry about your sister,” she said softly. “I’ve been wanting to say it since you first walked in, but I just couldn’t bring myself to it.” Síle reached out a pale hand as if to touch my chest, but she didn’t. “Sometimes I pretend she’s alive as ever, and I can’t see her only because we’ve gone our separate ways.”

  I looked at the floorboards. “Thanks,” I said. “That’s … very kind of you. To think of her.”

  “I remember that day so clearly. I’ve always remembered her. How we laughed and laughed together. How I wished she lived here, so I could have her for a real friend.” Brona’s words came back to me: no one ever knew what to make of her.

  “That might have been the happiest day of her life,” I said, and the truth of it set my skin to prickling. “The happiest day, thanks to you.” Another smile shone out of that lovely face, and I let it eclipse the memory of Mallory in the little white casket, Mallory in the dark.

  Then there came the knock at the door, and Síle put her hand to my cheek in the second before it opened.

  * * *

  Brona decided not to come down with me to the pub that night, and it was just as well. “So you met Síle Gallagher,” Leo said musingly. “Fair play to ya, lad! Some led me to believe they defend that place with swords and cannon fire.” He drained his pint glass and smacked his lips. “What didja tell them?”

  “Said I was an old friend.”

  “Sure, that’s true enough,” Paudie said.

  “And when you went in to see her—what did you say?” Leo asked.

  “We talked about a lot of things. She’s very … playful,” I said lamely. “She knows how to put a person at ease.”

  Leo tittered like a nine-year-old girl. “And what sort of things did ye talk about?”

  “Her adventures in India. Her artwork. Her family. That sort of thing.”

  “You didn’t ask her about the apparition?” Paudie asked.

  “There wasn’t time.”

  I didn’t look up from my pint, but I could feel Leo smirking at me. “You got there and forgot why you’d come, isn’t that it?”

  I tried to suppress a grin, and failed. “Pretty much.”

  “She’s the sort makes you forget yer own name,” he said. “I may be an old man, but I’m young enough yet.”

  Paudie rolled his eyes. “Will you be seein’ her again?”

  The old men looked at me. Leo tossed back his head and laughed.

  * * *

  The next tape was labeled Declan Keaveney, 8 February 1988. In that room in my mind, the boy in the black-and-white newspaper photographs came to life: the surly turn of the lip and the anywhere-but-here posture, his hair i
n greasy black spikes, handsome and callow. I saw him dressed in a thermal shirt, army boots, and the leather bomber, and he tapped his foot on the hardwood floor and settled and resettled himself in the chair as if fidgeting could get him out of the interview any faster. Father Dowd asked him the same basic questions about the apparition, and his answers essentially matched Tess’s, though they were not so willingly given. When the priest asked him to interpret what he’d seen, he became even less cooperative.

  FATHER DOWD

  Do you feel blessed?

  DECLAN

  I don’t. I don’t feel any different.

  FATHER DOWD

  You saw a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and you don’t feel any different?

  DECLAN

  (irritated at having to repeat himself)

  I don’t feel any different.

  FATHER DOWD

  Don’t you see? This is a chance to do some good in the world, lad. To be somebody.

  The young man rolls his eyes as the priest is talking.

  DECLAN

  I’m already somebody.

  FATHER DOWD

  And are you already doing good in the world?

  DECLAN

  Probably not by your standards, Father.

  The priest heaves a sigh, and just then he looks at least ten years older.

  FATHER DOWD

  (sternly)

  If we’re to see this through, we need your cooperation.

  DECLAN

  How do ya mean, “see it through”?

  FATHER DOWD

  Why, bringing Our Lady’s message to the world.

  The priest pauses, for emphasis. But it’s like the boy’s bricked an invisible wall across his desk and nothing can get through it.

  FATHER DOWD (CONT’D)

  You have been called, Declan.

  DECLAN

  It was Tess who told you. Not me.

  (smiles mockingly)

  You can say it, Father: you’re surprised she appeared to me at all. That I’m the dodgy one, the one who wasn’t supposed to be there.

  FATHER DOWD

  I can say this much, Declan: I’d never presume to know what’s going on up in that mind of yours.

  DECLAN

  You’re not denying it, Father.

  FATHER DOWD

  Remember Our Lady, Declan. Remember her message. It goes beyond all our petty opinions and hopes and wishes for ourselves.

  DECLAN

  Look, Father. If you want to tell the men in Rome or whatever that I was a part of this, I don’t care. You can tell them what I saw, as long as I don’t have to tell them.

  The boy taps his boot on the floor and runs the sleeve of his thermal shirt under his nose. His eyes rove all over the room, anywhere but at the priest. When he speaks again, his tone is less resentful than matter of fact.

  DECLAN (CONT’D)

  You’re right about one thing. I may have seen her, and maybe I’ll keep on seeing her when we go up the hill sometimes, but beyond that, I’ve no part to play in all this.

  The recording ended abruptly, as if Father Dowd had finally lost his patience and brought his finger down hard on the STOP button. I saw the boy rise from his seat, nodding to his inquisitor only to keep from shaming his poor pious mother entirely; and after he’d gone, the priest sat looking out the narrow window into the yard behind the rectory, so mired in his infuriated thoughts that his secretary had to ask three times if he wanted any tea.

  5

  NOVEMBER 9

  I walked into the church expecting that Tess and I would be the only people there under the age of eighty, apart from the priest, but I was wrong. There were maybe a dozen parishioners assembled in the first few pews, and most of them were in their forties or fifties. Tess went down on her knees, clasped her hands, and bent her head. I just sat there waiting for the service to start, staring up at the half-size crucifix suspended above the altar and feeling awkward.

  Once it began, though, the Mass passed with surprising briskness. Everyone spoke the prayers at a different pace, so that there was a sort of discordant murmuring going on throughout the church. A woman in the pew behind us had apparently memorized the entire Mass, even the priest’s parts, though she uttered them so mechanically that she couldn’t have put any thought into them at all. There was no music and only two readings, and Father Lynch delivered his homily as if there were someone at the back of the church holding up a stopwatch. I looked over and saw Tess mouthing the Our Father with her eyes closed and her palms open at her sides, as if she were expecting a rather sizable gift. She didn’t seem to care that I didn’t rise for Communion.

  It was over in twenty-five minutes. On our way out of the church, we approached a middle-aged woman already deep in conversation with Father Lynch. As we came near, she looked up at us with pale startled eyes, as if she’d only just realized she hadn’t been the only person at Mass.

  “That’s Mrs. Keaveney,” Tess whispered after we’d nodded to Father Lynch and passed into the vestibule. I stopped short and looked over my shoulder. “Only don’t speak to her now. ’Twould be best if you called round to her house later on.”

  I walked with Tess to the youth center, and it was still only “half eight,” as the Irish say. “It’s a bit early to be starting your workday, isn’t it?” I asked. “We could go for coffee at that place up the street?”

  “I’ve plenty of tea and coffee in the office. You’re more than welcome to join me.”

  I followed her upstairs and took the same seat beside her desk as Tess filled the electric kettle. “Have you much on the agenda today?” She spoke wryly, so I guessed she was still puzzled over why I wasn’t just sightseeing like any other tourist.

  “Not too much,” I said. “Yesterday was busier. I drove up to Sligo to see Síle—”

  “Did you!” Tess smiled as she drew two tea bags out of the Barry’s box. “How is she?”

  “She seems to be doing well to me. The doctor acted like she was seriously disturbed, but I’d say she doesn’t belong in there at all.”

  Tess gave me a pensive look as she poured the milk. “Perhaps you’re right.”

  We looked at each other, and I wondered what she was really thinking.

  “Now,” she said as she brought the mugs to her desk, “think of how good it would feel to begin every day the way we’ve started this one.”

  “Do you feel virtuous?” I asked, and suddenly she looked stricken. “Relax,” I said, trying to laugh. “I was kidding.”

  Tess looked at me doubtfully as she took her first sip of tea. “So,” she said, “in all seriousness. What did you think of the Mass?”

  I shrugged and tried to smile. “It was tolerable,” I said. “I was raised Catholic, but I guess we were always just going through the motions, you know?”

  “I know,” she said, a little sadly.

  “And I think about all the same stuff on the rare occasions when I do go to church. Like, if Jesus died for our sins, then how come the world is just as full of evil and suffering as it was before? I mean, what was the point of that stuff with the crucifixion and everything? What difference did it actually make?”

  “Just think of the state we’d be in if he hadn’t come,” Tess replied, and I had to smile.

  “Okay, here’s the most basic point,” I said. “God does terrible things in the Old Testament, right? Really terrible things. He’s angry and jealous and vengeful, like some ordinary jerk with a serious case of road rage. He’s definitely not behaving like the creator of the universe. An angry God makes even less sense to me than no God at all.”

  “I see what you’re saying,” Tess replied. “I’ve wondered about these things myself.”

  “And did you come to any conclusions?”

  “I can’t know God,” she said softly. “I can devote my whole life to reading the Scripture, to prayer and contemplation, and I still won’t understand why He does what He does.” She drew a breath. “When I think of it this way, it make
s sense to me. I’m only me, you know? My understanding is limited by my human brain, my human emotions. My human perceptions and limitations. The same is true of those who put the Bible together. God is too vast to be comprehensible to anyone, in the end. If He were, He’d be a much smaller god than any of us could give Him credit for.”

  For a minute or two, we sipped our tea in silence, and I mulled over what she’d said. There was a poignant sort of sense to it.

  “Would you like to hear what else I did yesterday?” I asked finally, and Tess nodded. “I talked to Orla.”

  I watched her face fall, as I’d known it would. She cleared her throat. “And what did she have to say?”

  “She says she doesn’t think she saw what she said she saw.”

  “Aye,” Tess said softly. “Didn’t I tell you as much?” I nodded, and she sighed. “It may have seemed to anyone else like an experience we were all of us sharing, but underneath it, we weren’t, not really. Much of the time I felt that Síle and I were the ones who wanted to see her, that Orla and Declan were being carried along despite their will. There was always a reluctance with them.” I watched a smile bloom faintly on her lips, and fade away a moment later. “Síle and I, we never spoke of it outright, but there was an affection there between us. We were accepting of the blessing and the responsibility; we were always together in that.”

  “I can hear it in your voice,” I said. “Whenever we speak of her, you still feel that fondness for her.”

  Tess gave me another sad smile. “You say you don’t think Síle belongs in there, and I want to believe you’re right.” She hesitated. “How do I put this? Síle used to have these … well, Orla called them fits, but I never wanted to think of them that way. It wasn’t fair to call them fits, because she wasn’t possessed—or if she was, I dunno, it seemed like it was the Holy Spirit filling her up, rather than something dark. That’s how it seemed to me because of how watching her made me feel. It felt good to watch her. I wasn’t afraid at all. And there was the difference. Does that make sense?” She looked to me for confirmation.