The old men twirled the spaghetti on their forks. “I’ve no use for it meself,” Leo said merrily, “but sure, I’d be buyin’ all me own pints without it.”
Paudie rolled his eyes. “When you pass from this earth, Leo Canavan, we’ll discover every last pence of your pension money stuffed in the wall behind the stove.”
It felt good to laugh. I took another sip of cheap wine.
“These days I post books all over the world, that’s true,” Paudie went on. “America, mostly, though last week I did send The Demi-Gods all the way to New Zealand. You’d think no one would care about first editions anymore when they’ve everything at their fingertips online, but some still do.” Paudie sipped at his wine with an earnestly satisfied look on his face. “Enough still do.”
“I’d love to own a bookstore,” I said. I have no idea what brought me to say it. I’d never once considered it before, having met enough people working in independent bookshops to know how difficult it was to stay in the black.
“Ah,” Paudie said. “You’re better off writing books than sellin’ ’em.”
Leo leaned in. “I’ll tell you what you can write about, lad. They’ll want to hear all about it when you go back to America.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
Leo grinned as he drew a glass bottle out of his jacket pocket. “I brought ye something you’ll never find at the pub.”
“Now, that’s something else I haven’t seen in ten years,” Paudie said. “Poteen.”
“Moonshine, that’s what you Yanks call it,” Leo said. “Made by me da’s da, in a still hidden up in the Irons, in the year of our Lord nineteen-oh-three.”
“Jesus,” I said. “It’s still drinkable after more than a hundred years?”
“Sure, ’twasn’t drinkable to begin with,” said Paudie, and the two men doubled over with laughter.
“That old drum’s still up there, so far as we know,” Leo said. “Tucked among the rocks and stones up by the bluff overlooking Lough Allen, and my grandda would ride up there on his old mule in the middle of the night to tend the fires. My father, God rest his unhappy soul, told me once where I could find it, but ’twasn’t where he’d said; and when I came down again and told him the way I’d gone, he said I’d got it wrong, ’twas somewhere else entirely. I’d gone up in the car, you see, and where it’s hidden, there isn’t any road.”
“Couldn’t he draw you a map?” I asked.
“’Twas too late, by that point,” Leo replied. “He’d the Parkinson’s. And then he passed, and the secret died with him.”
“You’ll never find it now, sure you won’t,” Paudie said.
“Ah, the poteen he made was mighty,” Leo sighed. “And here’s the very last of it.”
“Are you sure you want to waste it on me?” I asked, and they chuckled.
“We won’t finish it tonight, lad,” Paudie replied. “You’ll only take a little. Powerful stuff, that poteen.”
Leo rose heavily and toddled to the kitchen counter, found a little glass pitcher in the cabinet above the sink, and filled it from the faucet. “We’ll cut it with water, so.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll drink it straight.” Leo and Paudie traded a look.
“We’ll give you only a little, to start,” Leo said, and poured a mouthful of hooch into the shot glass.
“It’s clear as water, but don’t let it fool you,” Paudie said.
“Aye, that’s why they call it ‘the water of life,’” Leo interjected. “Ish-ka bah-ha.”
“Don’t let it fool you,” Paudie said again. “It’s mad powerful stuff. The poteen will kill ya if you’re not careful.”
“I can take it,” I said. On Leo’s count of three, we tipped our glasses, and the drink tore through me like a chainsaw.
The men dropped their shot glasses and slumped in their seats to recover. “Ah,” Leo sighed. “I can taste the air up on Slievebawn, and the breath of them lonely pines up along the ridge there. You remember the place I mean?”
“Aye,” Paudie said, still shuddering a little. “Aye, I remember the place.”
All I could taste was battery acid, but I wasn’t about to say so. The old men lined up their shot glasses for a second round, and Leo began to pour. “There’ll be no shame in switchin’ to Jameson’s,” Paudie told me, but I waved him off. I wasn’t about to be outdrunk by a pair of octogenarians.
The second shot was even worse than the first. The third and fourth and fifth rounds they did cut with water, though, and I guess that’s the only thing that saved me.
* * *
I don’t remember how I got back to the B and B that night, but I do remember the dreams. First I was in a phone booth with Síle in the middle of the night. She was wearing a slinky black dress, and when she pressed herself against me and felt my erection, she laughed in my ear, and her breath on my neck made me even more crazy for her. We started making out, but then she pulled away from me. She lifted her fingers to the corners of her face, tugged off her skin, and turned herself inside out; I tried to get out of the phone booth, but the door was stuck.
I looked back, and it wasn’t Síle anymore. It was Mallory, and she was hanging from the roof of the phone booth by her seat belt like we were in the station wagon turned upside down on the side of the highway. My sister opened her mouth, and a trickle of blood, spit and blood, ran down her lip and dripped onto my shirt, and I rammed my shoulder against the door of the phone booth and pounded on the glass, but it wasn’t any use. The light of the full moon fell brightly on the rocky ridge outside, and I could see the pine trees bobbing in the wind. Nobody would ever come here. The still was too well hidden.
I woke up, stumbled to the bathroom, and retched until there was nothing left in my stomach, and even then I couldn’t stop heaving. I’d been stupid not to stop when they’d told me to.
7
NOVEMBER 11
I awoke to the worst hangover of my life, and that was really saying something, given all the late nights in New York City bars over the past fifteen years. I brought Síle’s diary down to the breakfast room, ferrying forkfuls of eggs to my mouth and taking no pleasure in it.
Trying to decipher the next entry in the diary only exacerbated my headache. She’d written the first one in an ordinary girlish script, but in this passage the words and lines were tightly packed, overlapping even, as if she were both writing blindfolded and worried about running out of room. I flipped a few pages ahead, finding more of the same impenetrable handwriting, so I gave up and turned to the next normal entry.
How does She speak to us? That’s the first thing Father Dowd wanted to know. He even asked if She spoke with an accent. It’s like how in a dream someone is speaking to you and you felt their urgency, but afterward you’d never be able to say what they said or which words they used to say it. They could be speaking Swahili, and yet you’d understand them.
Today I asked,—Is it true about Heaven and Hell and Purgatory?
—Very little of what they’ve told you is the truth. There IS a Heaven, Síle. That is the only essential thing for you to know.
—I’ve read in books that you’ve taken the others to all three realms. Hell and Purgatory as well as Heaven. You take them there so that they can come back and tell people about what they’ve seen, so they’ll try to live more virtuous lives.
—You mean the others to whom I have appeared in this way?
I nodded and She said,—Do you believe that if I loved you as well as they, I would bring you to those places?
—No, Mother.
—Then why do you speak of a place called Hell? Is it idle curiosity?
—I don’t want to go to those places, Mother. I want you to tell me they don’t exist.
—Ah, but what if they do? What if it’s you who build that dark and fiery place in your minds as you’re in the throes of dying, racked with regret?
—But isn’t that why the priest comes to a person when they’re dying? Doesn’t he give them th
e Last Rites, and hear their final confession?
—For some of you, confession will bring no relief.
—Is it the ones who’ve committed the most terrible sins? The murderers?
—The magnitude of the sin itself is of no consequence. The truth is, Síle, it doesn’t do any good to ask for forgiveness from an earthly ‘father’ if you believe, underneath all the Acts of Contrition, that there is a God who, when you rise to meet Him, will see you only for the stain on your heart.
She reached out to me, took my hand and squeezed it, and She was as real as my own mam.
—In life or after it, She went on,—you’ll never see beyond whatever it is you’re expecting to see. So whatever it is you’re bracing yourself for, you WILL see it. Do you understand?
—I think so, I said, and I was trying.—But there is a Heaven?
—There is.
—A real Heaven? Not just a Heaven inside our minds?
—Aye, She said, smiling.—A real Heaven. With twelve gates, each of them carved of a single pearl, the street beyond it made of gold and transparent as glass.
—It sounds very beautiful, Mother, but doesn’t it get boring?
She laughed.—Can you recall the last time you were bored on a bank holiday Monday?
—Never, I said.—There are always too many fun things to do, things there isn’t time for in an ordinary week. Books to be read and pictures to be painted. The day to be savoured in the sunshine, if we happen to have any.
—There, She said, and She was satisfied with my answer.—It’s only the children who haven’t any imagination who complain of boredom. Heaven is no different.
—But a bank holiday passes too quickly, I said.—If I had forever, I don’t know what I’d do with it.
—That’s not for you to worry about, pet. You’ve a long life ahead of you, with hundreds of bank holiday Mondays to enjoy.
It’s funny how I can’t remember the important things when it comes to studying for exams, but when I sit down after one of the Visits to write down everything She said to me, I find I can recall it perfectly. It’s as if there were a tape recorder always running in my brain, and never running out.
After breakfast I walked up to Shop Street to Mrs. Kettles, a place with red-and-white-check vinyl tablecloths and a lackluster cake display Paudie said had the only decent coffee in town. It also happened to be the only café open on a Sunday. Mrs. Halloran’s discount French-press brew wasn’t cutting it, and I needed a bit more time to figure out my plan for the day. I brought my mug to a table by the window and opened Síle’s diary. By now I had enough caffeine in my system that I could make out some of the strange passage I’d skipped earlier.
It was a sin not to eat it but you couldn’t eat it, how did she not see that you could barely move with all the weight on you? Someday she would see and then she could feed the poor hungry babbies in Africa like she was always harping on. You knew she’d root through the bin afterwards so you’d hide the rasher and spuds in your pocket and leave them in a box under the bed, and then the day came when the shoebox was teeming with things, crawling white things, and as soon as you looked at them you felt them under your skin too, eating away at you from the inside out.…
Was this pure fiction, or had she speculated about the private lives of her neighbors? There was more—much more—but I couldn’t read on without my brain jangling in my skull, so I flipped ahead to the next real entry.
The first time Our Lady came to us I thought for sure things would be different between Orla and me. There has been a change, but it’s for the worse. I want to speak to her about Our Lady but every time I try I feel farther away from her than ever. I say something and she takes it in a way other than how I meant it, and then I never know how to fix it.
Last night I tried to speak to my sister, and here is what passed between us.
—I look at the sisters we know at school and I want us to be like them, Orla. I want to walk together in the mornings the way the Donaher sisters do, and I want to sit together in the caf, your friends and mine together. I want to laugh with you the way Annie and Maura laugh. I want to hear your secrets, and tell you mine.
—But you already tell me everything, she said, and you never give a thought to whether or not I want or need to hear it.
I felt myself growing smaller and smaller beneath the bedclothes.—I don’t tell you everything, I said, and she didn’t answer, and then I asked,—Why do you hate me?
Orla just sighed and rolled to face the wall.—I don’t hate you.
—You act as if you do.
—You can’t help what you are, Síle. She said it wearily, as if she were twice as old as our mam.
—What do you mean by that?
—We’re too different. Why can’t you see that?
—I don’t see how we’re that different. And anyhow, Annie reads books and Maura’s the silly one, but the things they do like, they do together. I want us to be like that.
—Would you stop moaning about the Donahers already? If you want their lives so badly go and see if they’ll have you for a third.
I knew it was hopeless, I felt it cold as a stone on the floor of my stomach, but I couldn’t stop the words coming out of my mouth.—I don’t want their lives. I want you to love me, Orla.
—And I want you to shut your gob so I can get some sleep.
It is so hard to relax when she speaks to me this way. I can’t feel the peace when Orla’s near, there can be no peace so long as you’re yearning for something you know you’ll never have.
Someone tapped on the window glass, and I jumped. When I looked up I found Orla already walking into the coffee shop, and I closed the diary and pushed it aside, shivering at the undeniable sense that I’d conjured her out of her sister’s teenage handwriting.
She strode to my table in leggings and Ugg boots, carrying an expensive leather purse and a grocery bag weighted with a jug of milk and a block of cheddar, and she looked down at me with an expression so withering I could only respond with blank surprise. “You didn’t tell me you were planning a visit to Ardmeen House.”
“You didn’t ask.” I gestured to the empty chair. “Would you like to sit down for a bit? Coffee’s on me.”
Orla glanced over her shoulder at the counter as she hooked her bags on the back of the chair. She sat down without taking off her coat, and when the waitress looked over, I gestured for her to bring a second mug. “I can’t stay. My parents are taking the children to Mass, and I have to be getting back before they leave—for the baby.”
I nodded. “Síle mentioned you’d been in touch recently, which struck me as odd,” I said, “since you told me you hadn’t spoken to her in years.”
She rolled her eyes. “As I told you, my sister is not well. If she sees people who aren’t there, she can just as easily imagine they’re ringing her up.”
“How else would you know I’d been to see her?”
“The director rang my dad.” Orla thanked the waitress as she brought her coffee. “She’s promised to keep him ‘apprised’ of any developments,” she added, with a bitterness I didn’t fully understand.
“Do I count as a ‘development’?” I asked, and she gave me another scornful look. “Síle doesn’t get visitors all that often, then?”
Orla arched her brow as she stirred in two packets of white sugar. “If she told you she does, doesn’t that only confirm what I’ve been tellin’ you?”
“She said she has people coming in every so often to buy her paintings. That isn’t true?”
She sniffed. “And what did ye talk about, besides Síle being the next Michelangelo?”
I smiled to myself. “Anything but the apparition, basically.”
Orla frowned. “In the old days she’d speak of nothing else.”
“Maybe she’s changed.”
She brought the coffee mug to her lips, then set it down again. “They’ve an expression for people like you.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
<
br /> Orla smiled grimly. “Relentless optimist.”
I looked down at the diary. She couldn’t have recognized it. “I guess I should tell you I listened to the tapes,” I said.
She stiffened. “Which tapes?”
“The interviews you all did with Father Dowd.”
“Jesus,” she said. “You are relentless.”
“That’s considered a positive quality in a journalist, you know.”
Orla sighed. “There’s no story here. When will you see there’s no story here?”
“There’s always a story,” I said quietly.
“You know what? You’re right.” She slid her untouched coffee mug to the side and leaned so far forward that her nose was inches from mine. “I wasn’t going to tell you this,” she hissed. “It is completely inappropriate for me to be telling you this, and you’ll know in a minute why it’s none of your bloody business—”
My stomach lurched. I glanced over Orla’s shoulder, but the woman behind the counter seemed to be occupied with a bakery order. “Fine,” I said under my breath. “You don’t have to tell me, Orla. You don’t have to tell me anything.”
“The apparition,” she said. “This is why I can’t trust my own memory.”
“What do you mean?”
“She told me things. Things about my sister.” Her face grew darker and darker, and for the first time, I felt afraid of what I might have dredged up. “Things that turned out to be true.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “What did she say?”
“It was Síle,” she said. She was shimmering with rage. “She and Declan.”
“She and Declan…?”
“She and Declan, aye. Do you need me to draw you a diagram? Settin’ aside for the minute that it’s the worst thing a girl could do to her sister, I should remind you of her age at the time. She was fourteen. Fourteen.”
Orla paused for breath, and we regarded each other in silence. I didn’t doubt that she was telling me the truth; I just needed some time to figure out whether or not it mattered.
“You’re speechless, I see,” she said as she slung her handbag over her shoulder. “So was I.”
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