Immaculate Heart

by Camille DeAngelis

  I reached out and laid my hand on hers. “Don’t go yet. You haven’t had any of your coffee.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I don’t mean to be short with you, but I can’t see what else we have to talk about here. Did you want to reminisce about our day by the sea?”

  Jesus. No wonder her husband made himself scarce. “Can I just say one thing?” I asked. She nodded reluctantly, and I said, “You should talk to Tess. I think it would do you both a lot of good.”

  Orla shook her head, her eyes on the table. “It’s much too late for that.”

  “It’s never too late until you’re dead … right?”

  For an interval she looked at me—a strangely blank look, given all the unpleasant ones she’d shot my way over the past ten minutes. Finally she rose from the table and picked up the rest of her bags. “Thank you for the coffee,” Orla said, now icily polite. “Enjoy the rest of your holiday in Ballymorris, if I don’t see you.”

  Sometimes when we’re meant to be praying I glance over at the others and find Declan looking at me. One day last week Orla didn’t come up with us because she was feeling ill, and I knew I had to speak with him.

  —Why doesn’t Orla love me?

  —She loves you, he told me.—She has to, only she doesn’t know how to show it.

  And I said,—You’re telling me what I want to hear.

  I watched a sad smile come onto his face.—I’ll not deny it. I feel for you, Síle, I really do, but I’m not gettin’ involved.

  —I don’t know what you mean about ‘gettin’ involved.’

  —Orla’s the stubbornest person I’ve ever met. If you think anything I could say would change her mind … not just about you, about anything … then you don’t know either of us as well as you think.

  And I said,—I know my own sister.

  —You don’t, he said.—You think you know her. But sure, we’re all strangers in the end, aren’t we?

  It was well past lunchtime when I went out into the rain and around the corner to Marian Terrace. By the estimation of her elderly neighbor (Parish picnic? Why couldn’t I remember that?), Mrs. Keaveney ought to be home from Sunday Mass and up again after her nap.

  I rang the bell and heard footsteps shuffling toward the front of the house, and Declan’s mother opened the door. She wasn’t petite by any means, but up this close, Mrs. Keaveney looked even more fragile—she had wide, colorless eyes, and her nose was brightly patterned with rosacea. She shifted her rosary beads from her right hand to her left so I could shake her hand as I explained that I’d come to town for my uncle Johnny Donegan’s funeral. “I was wondering if I might speak to you about Declan for just a few minutes?”

  The woman warmed as soon as I spoke the name of her son. She stepped out of the doorway and ushered me in. “I’m only after puttin’ the water on for tea. I’ll fix you a cuppa, and we’ll have a wee chat about Declan.”

  Her clothing wasn’t new, but she’d taken good care of it, and her salt-and-pepper curls were neatly brushed. So far, at least, she seemed much more lucid than Brona and Father Lynch had made her out to be.

  “Thank you,” I said. “That would be great.”

  Like nearly every other house I’d been to in Ballymorris, this one was small and lit only by the gloom of another sunless day. The air in the sitting room was almost as cold and damp as it was outside, and with each breath I caught another smell: first bacon, then mildew, then a very faint whiff of cigarette smoke. I didn’t see any ashtrays on the end tables, and I wondered if someone, a smoker, had come to visit a decade ago and I was breathing the same air.

  I took a seat on a lumpy brown sofa studded with needlepoint cushions as Mrs. Keaveney disappeared into the kitchen. I noted the crucifix above the doorway and a variation of that woeful Christ with his crown of thorns in a cheap metal frame above the mantel. The room was eerily tidy—no stacks of books or newspapers or mail, not a speck of lint on the rug—and the mantel itself was bare apart from a foot-tall statue of the Blessed Virgin that had probably come from Mag O’Grady’s tchotchke truck. There was a small television set with old-fashioned dials and only a few framed photographs, Declan in various stages of childhood.

  Then I glanced again at the nubby brown chair by the unlit fireplace, and noticed a little spiral-bound notebook open on the armrest. I heard the switch pop on the electric kettle, and the sound of the hot water being poured into the teacups—I had time. I darted forward to read what she’d written and found a list of names.

  Donal Ward

  Thomas McElway

  Mary Louise Carroll

  Mallory

  I made my way back to the sofa by instinct alone—finely honed after thirty-eight years of covering my tracks—and a few seconds later, Mrs. Keaveney emerged from the kitchen with two mugs of tea on a scuffed plastic tray. “Did you say you were a friend of Declan’s?”

  What is my sister’s name doing in that notebook?

  I took a second to gather myself. “I’m afraid I’ve never had the chance to meet your son, Mrs. Keaveney. No, I’m a friend of Teresa McGowan’s. I was here once, a long time ago, and we met each other then.”

  “A friend of Teresa’s,” she echoed as she settled herself in the brown armchair. Recalling her occupation before my arrival, Mrs. Keaveney flipped the cover and laid the notebook and pen on the side table.

  “I’m afraid I’ve interrupted you.” The woman regarded me blankly, and I prompted, “You were writing?” How does she know?

  “Ah, yes.” Mrs. Keaveney closed her eyes. “They’ll wait. They’re always waiting.”

  The room felt even colder than it had a second before. “Who’s always waiting, Mrs. Keaveney?”

  She opened her eyes and regarded me benevolently, as if I were five years old. “The holy souls, of course.”

  “The holy … souls?” Shit, I thought. I grew up Catholic. I should know this.

  The woman nodded, and I waited for her to continue. “Teresa McGowan,” she said slowly. “Aye. She and Declan were together quite a bit, growing up.” She let out a contented sigh, and I hoped she wouldn’t notice my impatience. “My son always did have a lot of friends. He was very well liked, indeed.”

  It’s a coincidence. It has to be. There was a film on the surface of the tea, as if she’d used a greasy spoon to stir in the milk and sugar. I forced myself to take a sip, and it was simultaneously too sweet and flavored with bacon fat. “Do you remember Orla?”

  “Orla Gallagher.” Mrs. Keaveney gave me a beatific smile. “Did you know Orla was Declan’s first love?”

  Yeah, and how many Mallorys have you met in Ireland so far? I nodded. “I guess you still see her around town sometimes?”

  “Around town? No, I can’t say I do. I prefer to stay at home, when I can, apart from going to Mass.”

  “Declan didn’t have a girlfriend before Orla?”

  “How do you mean?”

  He was a good-looking kid, and he would have taken advantage of it—that’s what I meant. “Just that I imagine he was popular with the girls at school.”

  I watched the smile melt from her face. “Declan wasn’t the sort of lad to go running around,” she said. “He never was. Orla was a good girl. He brought her round for supper nearly every Saturday.”

  “You like to cook, Mrs. Keaveney?”

  “Aye, I always have. There’s no greater satisfaction in life than nourishin’ your family with a table full of good, fillin’ food.” She sat there, offering a vague little smile to the wall behind my head. In this house there was no such thing as irony.

  “Why did Declan decide to go to Australia?”

  “The promise of work,” she sighed. “Isn’t it always the reason they have to leave us?”

  “Have you ever been down to visit?” I asked. Mallory. What does she know about Mallory?

  “I haven’t, no. It’s too far. Ballymorris is my home, and I’ve never felt the need to wander as some do.”

  “Like Declan did.”

/>   “Declan is very like his father,” she said softly. “He always was.”

  “So you knew even when he was young that he’d leave home someday?”

  “Aye,” she said. “I always knew.”

  “How often does he come home?”

  “Not as often as he’d like to. Declan is a very busy man. He owns a restaurant in a place called Sydney. Gourmet seafood. Very posh.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard he owns a restaurant. It sounds like he took after you in that respect.”

  In her nubby brown chair, the woman seemed to grow taller and brighter with pride. “Aye. Aye, I suppose he did, although we don’t eat much in the way of fish here, being so far from the sea.”

  So far from the sea? She wasn’t kidding when she said she didn’t go anywhere. But I said, “That makes sense.”

  “Declan will have a holiday soon, though. A holiday, at last. He’ll be home from Australia in two days’ time.”

  “That’s wonderful,” I said. “You must be excited to see him.”

  “Tomorrow I’ll go to the SuperValu to pick up his favorite cereal, and to Malone’s for a leg of lamb, and we’ll have Father Lynch over for dinner. ’Twill be just as it was in the old days. Of course, this will be the first time he’s met Father Lynch. Father Dowd was here when Declan was home last.”

  “I wanted to speak to you about Father Dowd, actually—”

  “God rest him,” she said automatically.

  “Er—yes. I understand he spoke with Declan at length about the visitation that occurred back in late 1987 and early 1988, in the months before Declan left for Australia?”

  A strangeness settled over Mrs. Keaveney then—a mixture of earnestness and wistfulness, and maybe a dash of regret. “Aye,” she said cautiously.

  “Do you remember that time?” I asked.

  She closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat. “You must forgive me. It gives me a queer sort of pain to think back on that time in our lives.” I opened my mouth to apologize, but she continued. “Before it happens to you, you can’t imagine how it feels to be so blessed—to have a child who has been so blessed. I’ve since read of the ecstasies of Saint Teresa, and ’tisn’t a feeling reserved only for the holiest among us. Even I have felt it—a poor sinner like me—and after Declan, it has been the greatest blessing of my life.”

  I couldn’t see what a woman like Mrs. Keaveney could possibly have to spill inside the confession box, though I would’ve bet all the cash in my wallet she went every Saturday morning without fail. Not to mention the matter of the “holy souls.”

  “Did Declan tell you right away about what he’d seen?”

  “He didn’t say anything at first, but I knew something was happening. Something had softened in him, you might say. He didn’t take me for granted the way he had before—the way children always do, at that age.”

  “Thanking you for cooking dinner and doing his laundry, things like that?”

  “Aye,” she said. “’Twas more than that, though. He said the Blessed Mother had asked him to love his poor old mam with all that was in him.”

  This remark made me squirm. It was obvious to everyone but his mother that if the Virgin Mary had given him any such admonition, Declan had forgotten it long since. I asked, “So would you say the visitations changed your lives for the better?”

  “Oh, aye. There’s no comparin’ it to the life we lived before.”

  “It strengthened your faith? And Declan’s?”

  “Oh, aye,” she said.

  I waited for her to elaborate—Mallory?—but she just took a sip of tea and stared at the carpet between our feet.

  “Did your life improve in other ways?” I asked.

  “Other ways?” She sat up in her chair, eyeing me intently, and I felt somehow that I’d been put on the defensive. “What other ways?”

  I knew then that no matter how I prompted her, she’d say nothing more about that notebook. “In, I don’t know … more practical ways, perhaps? I imagine it must be very difficult, being a single mother.”

  “I raised Declan with no one’s help, that’s true,” she said. “You may have heard that his father was killed in an automobile accident when Declan was only a wee lad.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I replied, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t true, given what Father Lynch had told me. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “Sure, Our Lady had Her husband Joseph to support Her, hadn’t She?” Mrs. Keaveney glanced up at the statuette on her mantel and crossed herself with a sigh. “But She did say, She told Declan, that my reward in Heaven would be the greater for all the hardships I’ve borne without complaint.”

  I wondered just how many mothers made their lives more bearable by telling themselves the same thing. My mother never complained either, and look at her now: every inch of her as frozen as her low-fat TV dinners. I shook my head. “What else did the Blessed Mother say? Did she ever speak to you directly?”

  “’Twas an even greater blessing, to hear Her words on the lips of my only son. She and I have that in common, you see. She was always tellin’ Declan to remind me of that.”

  “What sort of messages did she have for Declan himself?”

  “Ah, I’ll let him tell you that now, when he comes.”

  I wouldn’t hold my breath. “Are you in touch with any of his other friends?” At first she looked at me blankly, and I went on, “From his school days?”

  “There are still a few of them in town, but sure, you don’t want to be talkin’ with the like o’ them.” She shook her head. “You’ll want to speak to Declan himself, when he comes. Didn’t you say you were writing a story about him?”

  I hadn’t said so, in case she wouldn’t want to talk to me, but it seemed that even those who kept to themselves were up-to-date on the local gossip. “That’s right,” I said. “I’m writing a story about the apparition.”

  “For a newspaper in America?”

  “A magazine, yes.”

  The woman nodded. “I always wondered why the people stopped coming,” she said. “Why the miracles seemed only to fade away after those few wonderful months.…”

  “Miracles?” I asked. “Were there others, besides what happened with Mrs. McGowan?”

  “Martina’s was a special case, that’s true,” she admitted. “But they came away changed. Sure, there’s more than one way to be healed! Everyone who came left the better for it.” She sighed. “I thought my Declan and the others would be known throughout the world for the message they brought. The lives they touched.”

  “How did Declan react when that didn’t happen?”

  “Ah, they none of them wanted the limelight—apart from the Gallagher girl, Orla’s sister. You could see how she thirsted for it.”

  “Síle is very theatrical,” I said. “I can see how people would confuse that with attention seeking.”

  Mrs. Keaveney was staring through the carpet again. She hadn’t heard me. “Our Lady told him things,” she said softly. “Strange things, wonderful things. About how his life would go, and all that he’d do with it.”

  “He’d come home and tell you what she said to him?”

  “Aye,” she whispered. “We’d pray together, and afterwards he’d tell me all that She’d said.” The woman tilted her head, her eyes losing focus, and I thought back to the boy on the hill. Listening.

  I shivered. “Did she tell him he should go to Australia?”

  At the mention of Australia, Mrs. Keaveney’s demeanor changed abruptly. Whoever else she thought was in the room with us, she was no longer paying attention. “I hope you don’t mind, but I really must be getting on with making supper. I’m sure Declan can answer the rest of your questions, when he comes.”

  * * *

  I was letting myself back into the B and B when I remembered a book on the shelf in the breakfast room I’d only noticed in passing. The hallway smelled of cabbage and onions, and from the kitchen at the back of the house, I could hear Mrs. Halloran humming t
o herself as she prepared her husband’s dinner.

  The tables were already set for the following morning, though as far as I knew I was the only guest. I took the worn green clothbound copy of The Catholic Dictionary off the shelf and flipped to the H section.

  HOLY SOULS. These are souls who have died in a state of grace, but have not yet completed punishment for their venial sins. Their eventual place in Heaven is assured, but first they must suffer in Purgatory in proportion to the magnitude and severity of the sins they committed in life. This term of punishment may be somewhat shortened by the prayers and good works of the Faithful, if performed in the name of a soul in Purgatory.

  It was just a coincidence. The poor deluded woman believed the restless dead were whispering in her ear, writing down the names of people she’d seen interviewed on television a week or two before.

  * * *

  The next few passages in Síle’s diary were of the nearly illegible variety, but they weren’t making my head ache now that I’d had a bit of practice deciphering them.

  She was your mother’s sister but little warmth there was between you, it was expected that you would do anything that needed doing as if you hadn’t a life of your own. One day you were in the shed and you found the jar with the money in it, with her fingerprints in the dust on the lid. You took two punts and waited for her to accuse you. A week went by, you took a fiver, still she said nothing, and then you knew she wasn’t counting what she put away. So every week you took from the jar and when she died you took all of it and no one ever suspected. You think of it every time you go to Confession but you never tell and you never will—

  I thought of Mrs. Keaveney’s notebook, of my sister’s name in a stranger’s handwriting. Síle and Mallory in their pink and purple bathing suits, holding hands as they cast themselves into the surf. What was this? Why had she wanted so badly for me to read it?

  * * *

  “Terrible news,” Paudie said as I slid into the snug that night. “Terrible. One of Tess’s lads.”

  I passed a fresh pint across the table and he nodded his thanks. “Tess’s lads?” I asked.

  “One of the lads she mentors at the youth center.” He sighed and rubbed at his forehead. “The boy went and hanged himself last night.”