Immaculate Heart

by Camille DeAngelis

  “Jesus!” I thought first of the boy at the grotto yesterday. Chances were it was somebody else, though—Tess did work with a lot of kids. “I’m so sorry. She must be devastated.”

  “She is,” he replied darkly. “She’s gone home to her parents’ for the night, the poor lamb.”

  The front door swung open, and Leo came in. I hadn’t touched my pint yet, so I gave it to him and got up to buy another. “Terrible day,” I heard him say as I approached the bar. “They say poor Aileen Gerrity found him in the closet.”

  I came back with my pint and sat down again, but tonight there could be no settling in for an easy evening. I thought of Mrs. Keaveney and that list of names in her little notebook, and my run-in with Orla at the coffee shop, and of what she’d said about Síle and Declan. It was just as well the conversation would go nowhere near any of that tonight. I turned to Paudie. “Is there…” Suddenly I felt very foolish. “Is there anything I can … do for Tess, do you think?”

  “There’ll be a vigil for Owen tomorrow night in the park,” he replied. “It would do her good to see you there.”

  “Sure, we’ll all go,” Leo said, as if we were headed to a ball game.

  “They say it’s becoming an epidemic in this country,” Paudie sighed.

  “Suicide, you mean?”

  “Aye, particularly among the young people.” Paudie took a long drink of Guinness before he went on. “For as long as I’ve been alive, there’s been a hopelessness to living here, and all the days of your life you’d need to be vigilant about keeping clear of it. Day after day, not feeding yourself to it.” He looked at me, to see if I understood, and I nodded before he went on. “The feeling may change tenor from one generation to the next, but it’s always there. These lads have everything given to them now, but they’re no happier than we were.”

  “We were happier, all right,” Leo chimed in. “What you hadn’t got didn’t matter so much as it does now.”

  I didn’t know what to say when old people started to talk like this—as they invariably did, once you spent enough time with them. I would have bet that back in the day, Leo would’ve cared quite a bit if he hadn’t owned a single pair of shoes, but it did nobody any good to say so. Especially tonight.

  “This is the first one she’s lost, in her eight years at the center,” Paudie said. “And, please God, may he be the last.”

  We only managed two rounds before calling it a night. I walked back to the B and B in the rain, left my jeans on the radiator and got into bed with the diary.

  Last night the Blessed Mother came to me whilst I was sleeping, and we went for a walk along the Rathgar road and through the bluebell wood up to the holy well. She said there was such peace and loveliness to be found in the Irish countryside and that we must go down from the hill we know so well and see more of it together. The Blessed Mother wore Her blue mantle and even when we went up the hill She never got out of breath. Her feet were bare but there was never a spot of mud on them. I knew I was dreaming but still I’d put on my boots and I remember thinking I should wake up before it came time to wipe them off the way Mam’s always making us do. Time stretched itself thin, so I couldn’t tell if we’d been walking for minutes or hours.

  When we came to the end of the bluebells Our Lady took my hand and looked at me, and Her eyes were dark like the deepest part of the ocean. I looked at Her and I felt the truest peace I’d ever known settling around my heart, soft as a kitten. For once I forgot all about Orla. I wanted to stay there with Her like that forever, but She said there was something She must show me at the holy well, so we went on.

  As we walked side by side I asked Our Lady if She’d come to the others too but She said no, and it wasn’t because She loved the others any less only She hadn’t as much to say to them. I asked Her what did She want to say to me that wouldn’t also benefit the others, and She said I was a good girl for not wanting anyone else to be left out. And I said,—Father Dowd says I’m not to go making myself into somebody special. He says I hold myself above everyone else, them who haven’t seen You.

  —When we criticise others, Our Lady said to me,—it’s ourselves we should be looking at.

  We came to the well and it looked different to the last time I’d seen it. The trees were decorated with all sorts of things, rosaries and Christmas ornaments and bright scraps of fabric and even a baby’s tiny white leather shoe, and there was a wrought-iron votive stand under an awning to keep the rain off. The air grew brighter around us, little birds sang their sweet little songs, a gentle breeze blew through the ash trees, and the water came gushing out of the rock like I’d never seen it do in real life.

  —You are made of water, the Blessed Mother said to me as She dipped Her fingers into the stream and gently pressed a wet thumb to my forehead in benediction.—You learned that in school, didn’t you, Síle?

  A tiny trickle went down the side of my nose. I knew I was dreaming but I felt the water on my face, real as waking.—Aye, Mother. We learned it in science class.

  —And does it not follow that the water which has given you life will also heal what ails you?

  —I don’t know, Mother.

  —Ah, but you will. Tomorrow afternoon I want you to bring Mrs. McGowan to this well. Have Mr. McGowan drive you in the car along with Tess and the others. When you come to the end of the road Mr. McGowan can carry her the rest of the way. Bring a stool and let her sit beside the spring, and then you must kneel before her. Carry the water in your hands and let it pour down over the knee and leg they’ve said she must lose.

  I started to ask if Tess should do it, it seemed only right since we were talking about giving life, but the Blessed Mother shook Her head and smiled. Then I asked,—Will the water heal her, Mother?

  Our Lady smiled.—Do as I have asked, and see. Whilst you are anointing Mrs. McGowan’s knee with the water from the well, ask the others to pray for her.

  —Will You be with us?

  —My dear child, She said.—Whether or not you see Me, know that I am always with you.

  She blessed me once more, the air around us began to shimmer, and then there I was back in my bed with the morning light streaming through the window.

  —You were talking in your sleep, Orla said at breakfast.

  —I went for a walk with Our Lady. She says we have to take Mrs. McGowan up to the holy well after school today. That the water there will heal her leg.

  Orla just rolled her eyes and took my plate to wash it before I’d finished my toast. I wish the Blessed Mother would come to her that way too, maybe then she’ll believe me.

  This afternoon we did as She asked. Mrs. McGowan was afraid but tried not to show it, dear lady, and I knew Tess and her dad were willing to try anything if it might spare the leg. Orla and Declan kept themselves apart, sitting on the bench by the gate and praying quietly together whilst Mr. McGowan brought his wife over to the lip of the well and laid her down on the stool we’d brought. The air and the light and the smells weren’t like how it was in the dream, the rag tree was gone, it was all very cold and ordinary and the water gurgled like a leaking faucet.

  Tess’s mam drew a shaky breath as I cupped the water in my hands, and let it trickle over her knee. I laid my hands over the bruised and swollen part and I felt the warmth welling up under the skin. Her rosary beads trembled in her hands and I heard her begin with—Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee …

  When she finished the prayer I took my hands away, and we were gobsmacked. She walked back to the car on her own.

  It’s as if the wee folk came in the night and took the old Mrs. McGowan away, leaving a whole new person, spry and smiling, in her place. She’s been to the doctor and it’s true, it’s real, they won’t be taking her leg after all.

  The McGowans had us over for dinner along with Declan and his mother and Father Dowd. Tess took me into her arms and held me there for ages, and it was the loveliest feeling apart from needing Orla to see it.

  —Soon they
’ll be coming, Father Dowd said, and there was a proud look on his face as he lifted his wineglass.—They’ll come to be healed, and we must be ready to serve them just as Our Lord served the poor and downtrodden in His own day.

  Funny how you can avoid dealing with something—or get away with something—just by saying you can’t remember. Even if you take the time to think back over what little you can piece together, you probably can’t trust whatever other pieces come up. They do say memory is faulty that way, don’t they? That day at the beach my sister threw a pebble at me, it pinged me in the chest and stung for a second, and I know she only did it to impress her new friend; I may have heard her say, “He’ll make me pay for that but I don’t care,” or maybe she never said it and it was just my guilt filling in the gaps. Sometimes I felt like I’d give anything to have her back again, to have the chance to be good to her.

  It was some other Mallory in Mrs. Keaveney’s notebook. It had to be. I may not have retained a whole lot from my Sunday school days, but I did know this much: not even the God of the Old Testament would stick a child in some gray and comfortless place between life and death, leaving her to repent for somebody else’s sins.

  8

  NOVEMBER 12

  I was all but dead before the brisk knock on the bedroom door. “Will you be wanting breakfast this morning?” I opened my eyes, glanced at my phone, and sighed. I’d slept through the alarm.

  I could picture Mrs. Halloran hovering at the far side of the door, wide-eyed and anxious to please. “I’ll just leave something on the table for you, so.” I thanked her and fell back onto the pillow as her footsteps receded. Thirty-six hours after the poteen, and I was still recovering.

  Midway through a bowl of Weetabix, I thought of calling Tess, but it didn’t feel right. We didn’t know each other, not really, and it wasn’t like I’d know what to say to her anyhow.

  There are people beginning to come from far away. Father Dowd said yesterday he met a man who brought his sick daughter all the way down from Waterford. Every day over the past fortnight they’ve been driving out to the well, they form a queue and Father Dowd dips his fingers in the spring and he anoints them. He says they asked for me, they said wasn’t it my hands did the healing, but Father Dowd told them Our Lady blessed the water itself, and anyway I shouldn’t be taken out of school. I’m not special, remember.

  Yesterday the pilgrims came up to the hill and watched us as we prayed before the grotto, but Our Lady never came. I know the others hate the attention and I would rather we were alone, too. There was one woman who had to be carried out of a van, with everyone round her making a big fuss, and once they’d got her settled she just sat in her wheelchair and stared at us like she was waiting on the show to start. Some of them are ill, truly ill, but the others are only expecting somebody else to fix what’s wrong with them, what they’ve only done to themselves.

  On Sundays Father Dowd doesn’t want to mention us in his homilies, he says it does no one any good to speak of us as if we’re holier than the rest of them. But it doesn’t matter. People I’ve known all my life look at me now like they’ve never seen me before.

  When Mass is over I watch Father Dowd in the church doorway, chatting and laughing with the most ancient ladies of the parish. They’re delighted with him, and to me this is a greater mystery than all the Lord’s miracles rolled in together. Sometimes when we’re in his office speaking of the Visitation I have to hold on tight to the chair to keep from twitching, for it’s hard having to trust someone you know is judging you all the while. Those ladies can’t see he’s a hard man, sharp as glass underneath, and I can say it now that the Blessed Mother has told me I should never let him read this.

  Orla and Tess and Declan and I still go up to the hill for a little while after Mass. Sometimes She comes and sometimes She doesn’t, but I feel Her there either way.

  I got in the Micra and drove out of town. I was itching to head for Sligo, but I had the feeling I might only be let in to see her one more time—if that—and I wanted to keep that visit ahead of me a little while longer.

  Instead I took the gravel road up the hill and parked across from Old Mag’s little white truck of marvels. “Ahh,” the old woman said, with a distinct air of satisfaction. “Didn’t I tell ya you’d be back, now? And another foul-weather day it is, too. But sure, we only leave the house to come home again for a cuppa.” She nodded vigorously. “And isn’t that what it means to be Irish?”

  I matched her grin for grin. “I was up here the other day, actually. I came over to say hi, but you were—how do you put it?—‘having a kip.’”

  “Go on wit’cha! How could a poor old woman like me take any rest with the wind roarin’ like it does, and the rain comin’ in sideways?”

  “It does feel like it rains sideways in this country.” I laughed, and paused. “The last time I was up here you mentioned something about the miracle with Tess McGowan’s mother?”

  “Oh, aye. Poor Martina McGowan with the diabetes, and they would have cut off her leg the very next day—did young Teresa tell you that?”

  I nodded. “But what did the doctors say, do you know?”

  “The family said ’twas the apparition what did it, but the doctors never would. They’ll never believe in miracles, so they won’t. They only acted as if they’d never told poor Martina she was to lose the leg in the first place.”

  “Had they ruled out all other possibilities? There’d been no change in her diet, or anything like that?”

  “None a’tall,” said Mag, bringing a wizened little fist down on the counter for emphasis.

  “And it happened at the well?” I asked. The old woman nodded. “When they poured the well water over her knee?”

  “Aye. I wasn’t there meself, but there were plenty there who say her knee healed right before their eyes. T’would be easy to see the change, with the diabetes—and wouldn’t I know, when both me brothers suffered with it?”

  “But I hear Mrs. McGowan’s health still isn’t great,” I said.

  “’Tis twenty years since the Blessed Mother cured her,” Mag replied indignantly. “Sure, none of us can live forever!”

  “Except you, maybe.” I grinned. “They say you’re older than you look.”

  “Sure, none of us will live forever,” she said again, not so spirited this time.

  “Were there any other miracles?” I asked. “A lot of pilgrims came afterward, didn’t they?”

  “Aye, they came for six or eight months, steady-like,” she replied. “We heard of nothing so dramatic as what happened to poor Martina McGowan, but don’t you go round thinkin’ there weren’t any. The best miracles can’t be seen with the eyes.”

  If the Irish were a most articulate race, they could also go on about a whole lot of nothing. “That’s very poetic,” I said, “but what sort of ‘miracle’ are you referring to, exactly? Something psychological?”

  The old woman eyed me shrewdly. “What is it you’re lookin’ for, lad? They say you came back here for a funeral, but that isn’t the reason. They say you want to write of the visions, but ’tisn’t that, either.” She leaned in, breathing the sweet fug of Barry’s tea with milk and sugar. “Sometimes folk ask a lot of questions because there are others, other questions they may not want to know the answers to.”

  I thought of Lucy in the old Peanuts cartoons, dispensing worthless advice for a nickel a pop, and stifled the impulse to laugh. She was bullshitting—I’d been right about that.

  “I’m not sayin’ that’s you,” Mag went on. “Though maybe it is. I’m only sayin’ that for an auld one who doesn’t travel much, I see more than you’d think.”

  * * *

  When I logged on to a public computer at the town library later that morning, I saw Andy was online. hey dude. you get my email?

  yeah

  I waited for him to elaborate. This wasn’t a good sign.

  listen, I looked into this thing—

  it’s pure delusion

 
the girl who saw it first is in the loony bin.

  i’ve met her, I typed back. she isn’t delusional.

  then why is she in there?

  I fell back on stereotype. she’s an artist. her family can’t cope with her mood swings. off the top of my head I can name at least a dozen people in New York who belong there more than she does. I was trying way too hard, but I couldn’t help it. They were laying off at least five staff writers before the end of the year, and I didn’t want to lose my job any more than the next guy.

  Andy hadn’t answered after five minutes, so I wrote, you’re always skeptical, Andy. then i write the story and you love it, or at least you say you do, and you run it and everyone says it’s great, and then you act like you were never skeptical.

  Finally I could see he was typing. you got a thing for this girl?

  I sighed at the screen. you would too. she’s extraordinary. trust me—this could be great. the best thing I’ve done.

  just enjoy the rest of your vacation, all right? i’ll see you next week.

  I signed off without saying good-bye. I should’ve known all along I’d never get a story out of this.

  * * *

  I got in the car and turned onto the road for Galway, tuning the radio to one of the Irish-language stations hoping the babble would clear my head a bit. I was almost there when it occurred to me that, if I wanted to make it back in time for the vigil, I’d only have an hour in Galway, two tops. Then I wasted ten minutes looking for a spot on one of the narrow streets before giving up and pulling into a garage. I passed a chalkboard sign outside a pub for a traditional Irish music session at 9 P.M., and thought to ask Paudie or Leo if any of the other pubs in Ballymorris offered something similar.

  I trudged down the Dock Road and passed the Spanish Arch, crossing the bridge toward the Salthill promenade. Brona had spoken enthusiastically about the invigorating benefits of a long walk on Galway Bay, but I had to turn back when the drizzle intensified into a proper downpour.