Immaculate Heart

by Camille DeAngelis

  She laughed. “That isn’t my religion. It never was. Even when I was small, I knew I had to find my own way to God.”

  “And have you found it?”

  “Sometimes I know I have,” she said softly. “And then it goes away again. But at least I know it’ll come back, and maybe someday I’ll get to keep it.”

  I turned and found Martin standing maybe fifty yards behind us, his hands thrust in his jacket pockets, staring out at the sea. Maybe he felt my eyes on him, because he turned to look at me. He didn’t return my smile, and I thought maybe I hadn’t imagined that glance between them after all.

  “Tell me what she looked like,” I said.

  “You want to know what she was like—even if she wasn’t real?”

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “She was lovely,” Síle said softly. “The loveliest woman I’d ever seen.” It gave me an eerie feeling, hearing her say the words I would have used for her. “I wanted to go to Her and hide my face in Her robes, to drink Her in,” she was saying, “only I couldn’t. I was on my knees, rooted to the spot.”

  “I read in one of the newspaper articles that you did eventually feel her touch you,” I said. “You said it felt like when your mother used to come in to kiss you good night.”

  Síle smiled into the distance. “I remember that like it happened only last night. She was so lovely. Lovelier than any of the Harry Clarke windows. Lovelier than the Díseart Madonna, or the Inishmaan Madonna, though I do love the Inishmaan Madonna for the babbies peeking out from under her cloak. He came closest with the Terenure Madonna, but it’s still the difference between a real woman and a model in a magazine.” She smiled again. “In a manner of speaking.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about, but I was eating it up. “I don’t know Harry Clarke,” I said.

  Síle’s eyes lit up. “Ah, he was brilliant. Harry Clarke painted with light.”

  “That’s very poetic, but who was he?” I asked.

  “He was Ireland’s greatest stained-glass artist. One of those who died young, leaving you wonderin’ forever what else he might have done, had he lived.”

  “I’ll have to look him up,” I said.

  “Silly,” she retorted. “You can see his windows all over the place. Will you spend any time in Dublin whilst you’re here?”

  “Probably not,” I said. “I’m flying out of Dublin, but I only have until the sixteenth.”

  “That’s plenty of time.”

  I smiled slyly. “Maybe I prefer Sligo.”

  She punched me playfully on the arm. “You should go to Dublin and see the Eve of Saint Agnes.”

  “I’ll go when you can come with me.”

  “Then I’ll have to paint it for you with words,” she said. “Do you want me to tell you about the eve of Saint Agnes?”

  I felt that faintly familiar thrill, the anticipation of a bedtime story I’d never heard before.

  “On the eve of Saint Agnes—that’s the twentieth of January,” she began, “all the starry-eyed maidens of the Middle Ages would perform certain bedtime rituals so they might see their future husbands. Not just in their dreams,” she went on in a hush. “In their bedchambers. In the flesh.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “Certain bedtime rituals?”

  Síle laughed. “She goes to bed without dinner.”

  “Saints and witchcraft,” I said. I wanted to taste the salt on her lips.

  “Not witchcraft,” she said softly. “Not the way you think of it, anyway.”

  “Conjuring up a person who isn’t really there—that isn’t witchcraft?” Too late, I caught myself. I looked at her, afraid of her reaction, but she just gave me half a smile.

  “Who said he isn’t really there?” Her hair was whipping in the wind, and I watched her smile broaden as I reached to brush a lock out of her eyes. “The legend says he’ll come to her,” she said. “Not a vision. Not an apparition. Just that he comes.” She arched an eyebrow. “Will I go on?”

  “Please do.”

  She turned and kept walking as she spoke. “We begin our tale in the house of Madeline, whose family has mounted a lavish banquet. Madeline cannot partake of it, however. She will go to bed early, for it’s the eve of Saint Agnes. The bedesman’s in the chapel praying for his master, and you can see his breath in the frosty gloom—”

  “What’s a bedesman?”

  “A poor old man under the lord’s protection, whose only task is to pray for his benefactor. Anyway. You see the candles flickering on his solemn face as he counts the beads on his rosary with his pale, cold fingers”—she mimed this as she spoke—“his lantern restin’ on the floor at his knee.

  “The bedesman prays for the sinners at the banquet, at the dance; he prays so that his master may go on feasting and continue with his merriment—so that someday, when his flesh turns to dust, the rich man will pass his penance in Purgatory instead of Hell.”

  “Is that how it works?”

  “They liked to think so,” she said. “I’ll go on, will I?” I nodded, and she smiled as she drew her next breath. “The lord wears a suit of brilliant orange, intricately beaded, and his face is fine and cruel. He dances with ladies richly dressed in pink and crimson, with glittering baubles at their throats, as the minstrels play their instruments in the gallery above. As he leaves the chapel, the bedesman hears the sounds of the revelry, and it weighs like a stone on his heart.” Síle lifted her arms and did a dainty two-step along the wet sand, and I thought of her unmade bed.

  “The noble Porphyro begins a long, cold journey by the light of the waning moon, and an elfin lantern glinting off the sword at his side.” She leaned forward, taking her next few steps as if she were bracing herself against even rougher weather, and I wondered why she’d never taken to the stage. “The wind blows the plume in his hat and the cloak on his back, but the chill can hardly touch him, so alight is he with ardor for his beloved. So in love, in fact, that it does not matter that he is the only son of her father’s sworn enemy.”

  “Very Romeo and Juliet,” I said.

  “Now you know where the Bard got it. Meanwhile, fair Madeline prepares herself for bed with the help of her elderly servant, Angela, who looks more like a queen in a blue-and-silver gown with a brilliant red petticoat. Porphyro arrives at the castle gate, finds Angela, and begs her to lead him to Madeline’s chamber, and the old woman says, ‘Come away from the revelry, lad, lest these stones become thy bier.’” Síle held up a finger, storyteller fashion. “Remember, Madeline’s father will kill Porphyro if he sees him. He’s the one in the dandy orange suit, with the cruel glint in his eye. Angela leads the noble youth up the stairs to Madeline’s room, and conceals him there just as Madeline is falling softly to sleep, the light of the moon shining down through stained-glass windows upon her pale breast.”

  I pictured Síle asleep in a room full of stained glass—saw myself climbing a secret staircase in the dark, coming inside, finding her naked body awash in tinted moonlight.

  “Porphyro comes out of the darkness and, as three fairies above their heads dance inside the fair maiden’s dreams, he lays out a feast for her, takes out his lute, and begins to play. She awakes to him, does fair Madeline, but believes she’s still dreaming. He’s come to make her his bride, says Porphyro, but they must flee the house of her father this night.” Síle stole a glance and found me looking back. “Far o’er the southern moors I have a home for thee,” she said softly.

  I swallowed. “That’s what he says to her?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  An ordinary girl looks at you, and you look good—you can see it in her face—but when Síle looked at me, even if she seemed to be teasing or flirting, I couldn’t see what she was thinking underneath. I couldn’t tell who I was.

  She’d stopped, as if she were waiting for me to finish thinking my thought before resuming the story. “For the last time, Madeline rises from the bed of her childhood and dresses herself by moonlight. Next we see the lover
s tiptoeing down the turret stairs, dressed in blue robes studded with stars, the anxiety and the ecstasy plain to see upon their comely faces. Down in the hall, praise God, the watchman and his dog have fallen asleep. The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans, and away they flee into the winter storm.”

  “Happily ever after?” I asked.

  She smiled as she turned to face me and walked backward for a few steps, moving as gracefully as if she had eyes in the back of her head. “You know, when my mam used to read us the fairy tales, that ending never made sense to me. Madeline and Porphyro could freeze to death, and would it still be a happy end?”

  “You can’t be too literal about these things, or else you ruin the whole story,” I pointed out.

  “But I’m askin’ ya. Is it a happy ending even if they die in the snow?”

  I shrugged. “They’re going to die eventually anyway.”

  “Aye,” she said, with a sparkle in her eyes. “But they haven’t consummated the marriage, have they?”

  How long had it been since she’d been with a man? Probably not as long as I supposed. I felt Martin’s eyes on my back. “You must’ve spent hours staring at that window,” I said.

  “Maybe an hour,” she said with a shrug. “Some pictures stay with you.” She glanced over my shoulder, and when I followed her gaze, I found Martin closer than I’d expected. Síle nodded to him, and we turned to walk back. “We haven’t much time. There’s something I’ve got to give you.” She took my hand, lacing my fingers with hers, and with her other hand, she drew a small leather-bound notebook out of her pocket. “That’s it,” she said, placing it in my open palm. “That’s everything. I’ve left nothing out.”

  “You told Father Dowd you were keeping a diary,” I said, and she nodded. Again I tried to read her face, to see if this meant as much as it seemed to me, but her eyes were too serene.

  I shook my head. “I can’t take it, Síle.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too…”

  She stood in the wet sand, the bitter wind whipping her dark hair over her eyes, but this time I couldn’t reach out and touch her. “Say whatever it is you’re going to,” she said.

  “It’s too much,” I finished lamely.

  She looked up at me with no expression on her face. “It isn’t,” she said. “I wrote it for you.”

  I turned away from her, shaking my head. “That doesn’t make sense,” I said.

  “It does. You just don’t see it yet. She said you would come back someday, and that you would ask me all about Her.”

  When my skin broke into gooseflesh, it had nothing to do with the November weather: it was as if someone besides Martin were watching us. I crossed my arms tight across my chest, resisting the urge to look over my shoulder. “I don’t get it,” I said. “We spent one day together—one day, twenty-five years ago. Why do I matter?”

  Síle just looked at me, smiling as if she’d never tell me, and I felt the full force of Hennessey’s words. Maybe it was something else—something that had fooled all four of them.

  Again she nodded, and we resumed the walk back to Ardmeen House.

  “Read to the end of it.” Her manner was earnest, even plaintive—there was no trace of teasing now. “You’re there. She told me.”

  I looked at Síle and saw my picture of her slipping. Nothing was clear now. Her face shimmered in the cold air like something I’d traveled thousands of miles to find, something precious that might vanish if I blinked.

  I stopped walking and faced her again. “Can you hear yourself?” I asked. “Do you know what you’re saying?” She gave me a sad smile and didn’t answer. I took her gently by the shoulders. “All this time I thought you didn’t belong here,” I murmured.

  “Ah, but in fairness—I never agreed with you.” She averted her eyes, and I released her. “Tell me something. Up to this point, when you read about the visitation or listened to Father Dowd’s tapes, did you believe us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You do know. It’s only now you’re doubting.”

  “I was willing to entertain the possibility,” I said.

  “Why? Why would you, when it all sounds so mad?”

  I took a deep breath. “I wanted to know you,” I said. “That’s the only reason.”

  * * *

  This time Síle didn’t ask if I’d come again. Martin saw me to the front door, and I stood at the edge of the parking lot looking down at the shoreline. There were no showers or snack stands like we had at American beaches, but one of the grown-ups had set up a tent for us in the dunes so there’d be a place to change into and out of our suits. They called swimsuits “togs,” and that confused me.

  It was late in the afternoon, after Orla had pulled Tess away, and my sister’s giggling drew me to the right place between the dunes. The door was fully unzipped, and I could see Síle and my sister leaning forward as they peeled off their suits. Síle spotted me through the doorway of the tent, threw her wet bathing suit at me and laughed. So I must have seen her naked once, before she’d had much of anything to show.

  I unlocked the door, hurried inside, and opened the diary. The wind buffeted the car as I ran my hand over the Celtic design embossed into the leather, opening to the first page and shutting it again before my brain could resolve her teenage scrawl into words. I knew there might be things inside I wouldn’t want to know, things that might make me want her less, and once I’d read them, there could be no unknowing any of it.

  Still, I began to read. I had to.

  First She says I must write about what happened those nights when I was small. Orla and I have always shared the room looking out over St. John’s Road, and it’s true the room and the house are no different to any other room or any other house anywhere in Ballymorris. Still, this room with its grey gloomy walls, black painted headboards, and plaid duvets will always be special for the world it revealed to me in the middle of the night.

  It happened maybe a dozen times across two or three years. I would be fast asleep, and I would wake to the sound of my name in the mouth of someone I’d never seen before, though there was no one else in the room but Orla, who was sleeping still. For a time I rested there, sweetly drowsy. It never occurred to me to fear, not even when I heard my name called a second and third time. Man or woman or child, I couldn’t have said who it was; when someone whispers your name it might be anybody. Who is it? I asked. Who’s there? And I never did have an answer, only it was as if the air and the stillness and the silence were smiling down at me where I lay. I knew then that there were people there in the darkness, watching me without eyes, and still I didn’t fear because I knew they loved me.

  Then came a whispering rush of air, the same as when a summer breeze blows through the bluebell wood, though it was usually winter when the people came in the night. From the front window-corner the ceiling curled up and away, like the lid on a tin of tiny salted fish, and then I could see the sky, black as pitch and crusted with stars. I forgot everything then, and looked up and wondered and my heart clutched with the joy and the thankfulness of it. I even forgot Orla sleeping away in her bed beside me.

  I never could have described the feeling, I was too young then, but I suppose it seemed that the world was mine, it would give me anything I asked of it. I still feel that way. Maybe that’s why all these marvelous things are happening to me … to us. Because I believe.

  When John’s cell phone rang late that afternoon, it was Paudie inviting me over for a spaghetti dinner. “Nothing fancy,” he said. “They’ve ready-made garlic bread at the SuperValu, you’ve only to put it in the oven. Brona has some sort of a do on at the parish hall tonight, but Leo will be here.”

  The stairs leading up to Paudie’s apartment were pretty much an extension of the shop itself, stacks of paperbacks on either side of the steps leaving a narrower space to walk. “I’m glad ye could come,” Paudie said over his shoulder as Leo and I followed him up. “After all, you can’t go to the pu
b seven nights out of the week.”

  “Some do,” Leo put in.

  “Aye,” Paudie replied crisply, “and them’s the sort who should avoid it altogether.”

  As we came into the apartment, I spotted the full bed spartanly made with a brown blanket in the back room and, on the left side as we turned toward the front of the house, a tiny kitchen making the sixties-era yellow-enamel range seem even more enormous. The scent of the lazy-man’s garlic bread baking in the oven made the whole place feel warm and cozy. Paudie ushered us into a sitting room overlooking the street, the walls lined floor to ceiling with gold-stamped cloth- and leather-bound editions. “These ones have never been for sale,” he said with a smile as I surveyed the shelves.

  Leo and I sat down on an old leather sofa as Paudie went to stir the sauce. He came back with tumblerfuls of red wine, and as I thanked him, I spotted an old studio portrait of his wife on an end table. With my free hand, I picked it up to admire her. “She was a good-looking woman,” I said, and he sighed.

  “You said you remembered her? From the last time?”

  “I wish I could remember her more clearly.” It only occurred to me then that Paudie might know about me and Tess, that one of the adults might have seen us together that day; but if he knew, he hadn’t let on.

  Paudie took the picture from my hand, kissed the glass, and pressed it to his chest. “She was the best of all women.”

  “One of the best,” Leo agreed. At first I thought Paudie might be offended, but one glance satisfied me he wasn’t. Your oldest friend should have license to say whatever he’s thinking.

  We slotted ourselves into chairs around the little kitchen table, and Paudie doled out too-generous platefuls of spaghetti. As we ate, we fell into talking about the bookshop. “It’s such a quiet town,” I said. “It can’t have been easy, staying in business all these years.”

  “I’d have lost it, surely, if they’d opened an Eason’s,” Paudie replied. “And thank heaven for the Internet!”