by Amy Harmon
Outrage bubbled in my throat. Was he laughing at me?
“I’m not talking about your intelligence, Anne. The old Anne was all sharp edges. She didn’t have your tranquility. She was . . . intense. Forceful. Passionate and, frankly, tiresome. Maybe it was because she felt she had to be. But your softness is beautiful. Soft eyes. Soft curls. A soft voice. A warm, soft smile. Don’t be ashamed of it. There’s very little softness left in Ireland anymore. It’s one of the reasons Eoin loves you so much.”
My anger deflated, and my breast swelled with a different feeling entirely.
“You’re good, you know,” he mused. “Your accent. You sound like one of us. You sound like the same Anne. But sometimes you slip. You forget . . . and then you sound like the girl you claim to be.”
“The girl I claim to be,” I muttered. I had hoped, just for a moment, that we’d moved past disbelief. But maybe not. “Whether you believe it or not doesn’t make it less true, Thomas. I need you to pretend that I am exactly who I say I am. Can you do that? Because regardless of whether you believe me or not, regardless of whether you think I’m lying or deranged or sick, I know things that haven’t happened yet, and I don’t know half of the things you think I should. I am not Anne Finnegan Gallagher. And you know it. Deep down, you do. I don’t know the names of your neighbors or the shopkeepers in town. Or how to style my hair or how to wear these infernal stockings or cook or sew or Riverdance, for God’s sake.” I yanked at the corset strap beneath my skirt and it snapped against my leg.
Thomas was silent for several long breaths, considering, his eyes on mine. Then his lips quirked all over again, and he began to laugh, his hand hovering near his mouth like he wanted to stop but couldn’t. “What the hell is Riverdance?” he wheezed.
“Irish dancing. You know.” Keeping my arms straight to my sides, I began kicking up my heels and shuffling in a very poor imitation of The Lord of the Dance.
“Riverdance, eh?” he chortled.
He began to kick up his heels too, stepping and tapping, his hands on his hips, laughing as I tried to copy him. But I couldn’t copy him. He was wonderful, exuberant, dancing down the lane toward the house as though he heard fiddles in his head. Gone was the morose doctor, the doubting Thomas, and as the thunder cracked and the rain started to fall around us, we were transported back to Dublin, to the rain and the rocking chair, and the intimacy I’d shattered with impossible truths.
We didn’t go back to the house. Brigid would be there and so would at least four O’Tooles. Thomas pulled me into the barn, to the scent of clean hay and the chuff and whinny of the mare and her new baby. He bolted the door behind us, backed me up against the wall, and tucked his mouth close to my ear.
“If you’re crazy, then so am I. I’ll be Tom the Lunatic, and you can be Crazy Jane,” he said. I smiled at his Yeats references even as my pulse pounded, and my fingers curled in his shirt.
“The truth is, I feel crazy. For the last month I’ve been slowly going insane,” he panted. His breath stirred my hair and tickled the whorl of my ear. “I don’t know the right or wrong of it. I can’t see beyond tomorrow or next week. Part of me is still convinced that you’re Declan’s Anne, and it seems all sorts of wrong to feel the way I do.”
“I’m not Declan’s Anne,” I said, urgently, but he continued, the words spilling from his lips, lips so close that I turned my face so they could trail across my cheek.
“I can’t fathom where you’ll go or where you’ve been. But I’m afraid for you and terrified for myself and for Eoin. So if you tell me to stop, Anne, I will. I’ll back away, and I’ll do my best to be what you need. And when . . . if . . . you go, I’ll do my damnedest to explain it all to Eoin.”
I pressed my mouth to the veiny ridge of his throat and pulled the smooth skin between my lips, wanting to mark him, to absorb the pulse that throbbed below his ear. His heart pounded beneath my hands where they pressed against his chest, and something within me crystallized, as though in that moment a choice was made, and I stepped into a past that would be my future.
Then his mouth was on mine, his hands gripping my face with a zeal that caused my head to thump against the wall and my toes to curl and flex, drawing me up onto the balls of my feet so I could more firmly align my body with his. For long moments, it was the clash and slide of mouths learning to dance again, of tongues teasing hidden corners and frenzy giving way to quiet fervor. His lips left mine to nuzzle the base of my throat; he slid his cheek along the neckline of my blouse before he dropped to his knees, his hands gripping my hips the way he’d held my face moments before, demanding my attention. He knelt there, his face to the most intimate part of me, pressing kisses over my clothes, creating a wet heat that coiled and crooned and called out to him.
I made a sound that would echo in my head long after the moment had passed, a keening that begged for permanence or completion, and he pulled me to the ground, his hands climbing my hips, wrapping around my ribcage until I was prone beneath him. He gathered my skirts in his hands as I clenched my fists in the rumpled waves of his hair and brought his tongue to mine, the heat spreading from my belly to the press of our mouths and the mingling of our breath.
Then he was moving against me, rocking into me like the waves licking at the shores of Lough Gill, persistent and smooth, rolling and retreating and coming again until I could only feel the liquid lapping and the lengthening tide. My mouth forgot how to kiss, my heart forgot when to beat, my lungs forgot why they needed breath. Thomas forgot nothing, lifting me up and into him, breathing life into my kiss, coaxing my heart to pound with his, reminding my lips to form his name. He stroked my hair, and his body stilled as the wave receded and left me breathless, all the forgotten things remembered.
1 October 1921
I’ve often wondered whether the Irish would be who we are if the English would have simply been more humane. If they would have been reasonable. If they would have allowed us to prosper. We were stripped of every right and schooled only in derision. They treated us like animals, and yet we didn’t yield. Since the days of Cromwell, we have been under England’s boot, and still we are Irish. Our language was forbidden, and yet we speak it. Our religion was stamped out at every turn, yet we still practise it. When the rest of the world experienced a reformation of sorts, abandoning Catholicism for a new school of thought and science, we dug in our heels. Why? Because that would mean the English won. We are Catholic because they told us we couldn’t be. What you try to take away from a man, he will want all the more. What you tell him he can’t have, he’ll set his heart on. The only rebellion we have is our identity.
Anne’s identity is its own kind of rebellion, and she refuses to relinquish it. For a month I found myself in constant argument with my heart, with my head—with her—although I hardly said a word. I silently cajoled, begged, pleaded, and persuaded, and she stood firm, insistent in her absurdity.
I told my heart I could not have her, and the Irish dissident in my blood rose up and said she was mine. The moment I surrendered, embracing the impossible, fate tried once more to take her away. Or maybe destiny simply pulled the veil from my eyes.
Anne was playing with Eoin by the lake, running in and out of the lazy surf, her skirts hiked up in a way that would have shocked Brigid had Brigid called them in to supper herself. I drew up, wanting only to look at her for a moment, to enjoy the flash of her pale legs against the grey-green backdrop of the lough. She made my heart ache in the best way, and I watched her dance with Eoin as they laughed in the fading light, her curls tumbling and her coltish limbs kicking up water. Then Eoin, his arms wrapped around the red ball he’d received from the O’Tooles on his birthday, tripped and fell, scraping his knees on the pebbled sand and losing his ball. Anne scooped him up as I started down the embankment, my reverie broken by his tears. But Eoin was less worried about his scrapes and more worried about the ball that was floating away. He squalled, pointing, and immediately Anne set him down and raced to retrieve it before it was beyond resc
ue.
She ran into the lough, knees high, holding her skirts from the inevitable. The ball bobbed out of reach. Anne moved out a little farther, straining for it, and the ball lured her deeper. I began to run, filled with an irrational terror, shouting for her to let the ball go. She surged forward, releasing her skirts and immersing herself from the waist down, wading towards the bobbing red sphere.
I was too far away. I yelled at her to come back as I raced across the shore, and for a moment her image wavered, a mirage on the lough. It was like looking through glass, the white of her dress becoming a tendril of mist; the darkness of her hair becoming evening shadows.
Eoin started to scream.
The sound echoed in my head as I splashed towards her fading form, shouting for her to turn back, to stay. The red ball continued to slink away like the sun on the horizon, and I threw myself across the water, to the place where she had been, reaching for the pale suggestion of Anne that still remained. My arms came away empty. I bellowed her name and lunged again, insistent, and my fingers passed through a whisper of cloth. I closed my fist around the folds, drawing them to me like salvation, end over end, until my hands were filled with Anne’s dress.
I couldn’t see the shore or tell the water from the sky. I was caught between now and then, my feet on shifting sand, and I was enveloped totally in white. I could feel her, the line of her back and the length of her legs, but I could not see her. I wrapped my arms around the shape of her, refusing to relinquish my claim, and began to walk towards Eoin’s cries—a siren in the fog—drawing her back with me. Then I heard her say my name, a murmur in the mist, and as the white began to dissipate, the shore began to show herself, and Anne became whole in my arms. I held her body high against my chest, keeping her from the grasping water and the hands of time. When we fell to the pebbled sand, arms locked around each other, Eoin tumbled into the cradle of our bodies, clinging to Anne as she clung to me.
“Where did you go, Mother?” he cried. “You left me! Doc left me too!”
“Shh, Eoin,” Anne soothed. “We’re all right. We’re here.” But she did not deny what the boy had witnessed. We lay in a panting pile—limbs and clothes and reassurances—until our hearts began to quiet and a sense of reality returned. Eoin sat up, his fear already forgotten, and pointed happily at the innocent red ball that had found its way back to shore.
He untangled himself, freeing us from his clinging arms and unanswered questions. Then he was off, scooping up his ball and heading towards the embankment. Brigid had grown tired of waiting for supper and was calling to us from the trees that separated the house from the shore. But she would have to wait a bit longer.
“You were there, walking into the water,” I whispered. “And then you grew faint . . . like a reflection in thick glass, and I knew you were going to disappear. You were going to leave, and I would never see you again.” I had come to terms with the impossible. I had joined Anne’s rebellion.
Anne lifted her face, pale and solemn, and found my eyes in the twilight. She searched my expression for the baptismal glow of the new believer, and I proceeded to bear testimony.
“You really aren’t Anne Finnegan, are you?”
“No, Thomas.” Anne shook her head, her gaze locked on mine. “No. I’m not. Anne Finnegan Gallagher was my great-grandmother, and I’m a long, long way from home.”
“Jaysus, lass. I’m so sorry.” I brushed my mouth over her forehead and down her cheeks, following the rivulets that still clung to her skin and trickled towards her mouth. Then I was kissing her softly, chastely, afraid I would break her, the paper doll in the lough in danger of disintegrating.
T. S.
17
A TERRIBLE BEAUTY IS BORN
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
—W. B. Yeats
Like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, everything changed the moment I was believed. The storm receded, the darkness lifted, and I shrugged off the heavy layers I’d been cowering behind, warmed by sudden acceptance.
Thomas had been freed as well, liberated by his own eyes, and he began to shoulder my secrets with me, taking their weight onto his back without complaint. He had a million questions but no doubts. Most nights, when the house was quiet, he would slip into my room, crawl into my bed, and with hushed voices and clasped hands, we would talk of impossible things.
“You said you were born in 1970. What month? What day?”
“October twentieth. I will be thirty-one. Although . . . technically I can’t age if I don’t even exist yet.” I smiled and waggled my eyebrows.
“That’s the day after tomorrow, Anne,” he scolded. “Were you going to tell me it was your birthday?”
I shrugged. It wasn’t something I was going to announce. For all I knew, Brigid had known the “real” Anne’s birthday, and I doubted they were the same.
“You’re older than me,” he said, smirking, as though my advanced age was my punishment for withholding information from him.
“I am?”
“Yes. I turn thirty-one on Christmas Day.”
“You were born in 1890. I was born in 1970. You’ve got me by eighty years, auld wan,” I teased.
“I have been on the earth for two months less than you have, Countess. You are older.”
I laughed and shook my head, and he propped himself up on his elbow, staring down at me.
“What did you do? What did the Anne of 2001 do?” He said “2001” with carefully enunciated awe, like he couldn’t believe such a time would ever exist.
“I told stories,” I said. “I wrote books.”
“Yes. Of course. Of course you did,” he breathed, his wonder making me smile. “I should have guessed. What kind of stories did you write?”
“Stories about love. Magic. History.”
“And now you are living it.”
“The love or the magic?” I whispered.
“The history,” he murmured, but his eyes were bright and soft on my face, and he leaned in and kissed me lightly before pulling back. We had discovered that kissing halted conversation, and we were both as hungry for the exchange of words as we were for each other. The words made the kisses mean more when we finally circled back to them.
“What do you miss?” he asked, his breath tickling my mouth, making my stomach shiver and my breasts ache.
“Music. I miss music. I write while listening to classical music. It is the only thing that sounds like stories feel. And it never gets in the way. Writing is about emotion. There is no magic without it.”
“How did you write to music? Do you know many musicians?” he asked, confused.
“No,” I giggled. “I don’t know any. Music is easily recorded and reproduced, and you can play it anytime you want.”
“Like a gramophone?”
“Yes. Like a gramophone. But much, much better.”
“Which composers?”
“Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, and Maurice Ravel are my favorites.”
“Ah, you like the French men,” he teased.
“No. I like the piano. The period. Their music was beautiful and deceptively uncomplicated.”
“What else?” he asked.
“I miss the clothing. It’s much more comfortable. Especially the underwear.”
He grew quiet in the darkness, and I wondered if I’d embarrassed him. He surprised me every once in a while. He was passionate but private, ardent but reserved. I wasn’t sure if it was just Thomas or if he was simply a man of the times, where a certain dignity and decorum were still de rigueur.
“It’s a great deal smaller too,” he murmured, clearing his throat.
“You noticed.” The sweet ache began again.
“I tried not to. Your clothes and the holes in your ears and a million other little things were easy to rationalize and ignore when your very p
resence was so unbelievable.”
“We believe what makes the most sense. Who I am doesn’t make sense,” I said.
“Tell me more. What is the world like in eighty years?” he asked.
“The world is full of convenience. Fast food, fast music, fast travel. And because of it, the world is a much smaller place. Information is easily shared. Science and innovation grow by leaps and bounds in the next century. Medical advances are staggering; you would be in heaven, Thomas. Discoveries are made with inoculations and antibiotics that are almost as miraculous as time travel. Almost.”
“But people still read,” he murmured.
“Yes. Thankfully. They still read books.” I laughed. “‘There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away,’” I quoted.
“Emily Dickinson,” he supplied.
“She’s one of my favorites.”
“You love Yeats too.”
“I love Yeats most of all. Do you think I might meet him sometime?” I was half kidding, half serious. The thought that I might meet William Butler Yeats had only just occurred to me. If I could meet Michael Collins, surely I could meet Yeats, the man whose words had made me want to be a writer.
“It might be arranged,” Thomas murmured. The shadows in my room were mellow and moonlit, softening but not obscuring his expression. His brows were furrowed, and I smoothed the small groove between his eyes, encouraging him to release the worrisome thought that perched there.
“Is there someone waiting for you, Anne? Someone in America who loves you most of all? A man?” he whispered.
Ah. So that was the fear. I began shaking my head before the words even left my lips.
“No. There is no one. Maybe it was ambition. Maybe self-absorption. But I was never able to give anyone the kind of energy and focus I gave to my work. The person who loved me most in the world no longer exists in 2001. He is here.”
“Eoin,” Thomas said.
“Yes.”
“That might be the hardest thing to imagine . . . my little lad, grown and gone.” He sighed. “I don’t like to think of it.”