Immaculate Heart

by Camille DeAngelis

  —No one? I asked. I couldn’t believe it.

  —They have forgotten the message and the mission of My only Son. There is so little compassion and love left in this world, Síle! Do you not see it?

  —I see it, Mother. How can I help You? How will I know what to say?

  —You need only open your mouth, my dear child. The Holy Spirit will take care of the rest.

  Then I asked Our Lady if the Devil was real.—When you were small, She said,—and you went down in the night for a drink of water, did you ever fear something was behind you as you went up the stairs again in the dark?

  I told her I had.

  —And do you believe there was anyone there?

  I said no, I didn’t really think so.

  —When you’ve done wrong, She said,—isn’t it easier to say that someone else put the idea in your head? That you were tempted to it?

  —Then where do the bad thoughts come from, Mother?

  —They need not belong to you. Do you see?

  I told her I was trying to.

  —Always you must live by the Word. Not as men have written it, for not everything they have written was put down rightly, but as it is written on your heart.

  And I said,—How can I trust what’s written on my heart, when Yours is the only heart that’s pure?

  She didn’t answer me, and I can’t remember how She took Her leave; only that I was sitting alone on the bench overlooking the town as if She’d never been there at all.

  I showered and called Leo to make plans for the evening, and he asked if I’d been to the local chipper yet. “Ya can’t go home to America without having a meal at McGrory’s takeaway,” he said. “It’s a … whaddaya call it … an institution. Get us some fried cod with chips, and we’ll have a nice quiet night, maybe find something good on the telly. Paudie’s right, y’know—we’ve been spending too much time at the pub. If I’m not careful, I’ll be drinkin’ away me pension.” I hadn’t seen him pay for a single round in the week we’d been meeting at Napper Tandy’s, but I humored him.

  I passed the grocery store on my way to McGrory’s, eyes on the sidewalk, replaying the best parts of my afternoon with Síle. I shook myself out of it when I heard someone call my name, and again, and then a third time. I turned and found a middle-aged woman hurrying up the sidewalk in the twilight. “It is you, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “And you’re Mrs. Gallagher?”

  She blinked. “How did you know?”

  “You look like Síle,” I replied. You could see that Mrs. Gallagher had been very pretty once. I wondered if Síle would let her hair go silver someday, instead of dyeing it. “Or, rather, Síle looks like you.”

  She wore a brown duffel coat and a pink knit hat. “Aye, well,” she replied, clasping her chapped and chubby hands in front of her as if she didn’t know what else to do with them. “That’s very kind of you to say.” She hesitated. “We’ve met before, of course. You were only a lad.”

  I cleared my throat. “I take it you’ve been talking to Orla?”

  “Oh? Oh, yes, right, well.” I saw now where Orla got her nervous energy. “I was wondering if I might ask you a favor,” she said, “only it isn’t easy for me to come right out and say these things sometimes…”

  No need to make this conversation any more awkward than it already was. “You don’t want me to speak to Síle again, is that it?”

  She nodded, relieved I’d made it easier for her. “Oh, I hope you won’t take offense. You seem like a very nice young man, and Orla has spoken highly of you, but you do see that it isn’t good for Síle to be having visitors like you.”

  “What do you mean by ‘visitors like me’?”

  “Ardmeen is the best place for her,” Mrs. Gallagher went on. “Perhaps someday she’ll be well enough, but for now, it’s the only place for her. You do see that, don’t you?”

  “I’m not sure I do,” I replied, as gently as I could. “You go to visit her, and you see your sick daughter. I go there, and I see a woman who is capable of moving through the world on her own.”

  She shook her head sadly. “That’s only how it seems to someone who doesn’t know her. But, oh, how I wish that were true. Oh, how I wish you were right.”

  I was tired and longing for dinner, and the sooner I got to McGrory’s, the quicker Leo and I could sit down to eat. There wasn’t any sense arguing with the woman. “I’m running out of time in my vacation,” I said. “I don’t know that I would’ve been able to see Síle again at any rate.”

  “Ah,” she said, pleased by my answer but trying not to show it. “I see. And you … you won’t write that article, will you? It’s only that it’s so far in the past now, and none of us can see what good could come of it.”

  “No,” I said tiredly. “I won’t write the article.”

  Mrs. Gallagher leaned forward and clasped my hand. “Thank you. Thank you, and God bless you.”

  I wished her good night and turned for McGrory’s takeaway. I’d told her everything she’d wanted to hear, intending none of it, but with the way things were going, I’d be keeping my word on every point.

  * * *

  When the old man came to the door, his eyes lit up at the sight of the takeout. A grease stain was already spreading across the bottom of the brown paper bag.

  “Are Brona and Paudie coming over?” I asked as Leo showed me through the darkened hallway into his sitting room, where the television was already tuned to a sitcom with a bunch of priests in it. “I can go back for more if need be.”

  Eagerly Leo drew the food cartons out of the bag, breathing in the scent of hot battered cod with eyes rolled heavenward. “Paudie might. But Brona has agreed never to set foot in this house again.”

  I sat down in the armchair beside him, laughing as I popped open a can of Coke. “That’s rather melodramatic, wouldn’t you say?”

  Leo was already tucking into his meal, the grease glistening along his lower lip. “Not a’tall,” he said through a mouthful of cod. “She used to come in here and fret about all the dust gatherin’ in the corners. She’d go round the house brandishin’ me mother’s broom instead of sittin’ down for a cuppa tea like a good guest, so one day I said to her, ‘Listen, Brona, let’s just meet at the pub from now on. ’Twill be pleasanter for the both of us.’ Some people need a tidy house, but I was never one o’ them.”

  I could see where Brona was coming from. The smell of mildew was more pronounced in this dark little house than anyplace else I’d been. It was everywhere, so they never smelled it. “You’re the quintessential Irish bachelor, Leo. You really don’t miss having a woman around? Not having to wash your own dishes is worth getting nagged sometimes. Especially after you’ve left a big pile of them sitting in the sink for a week.”

  Leo shot me a sly look as he dipped a french fry into a little plastic container of mayonnaise. “Speakin’ from experience, are ya?”

  I stared at the dirty carpet, a piece of steaming battered cod falling apart between my fingers, and nodded. “It’s like the difference between a home-cooked meal and going without dinner. When she’s there, you’re warm and full. When she’s not, it’s still your home, but it’s a lot less homelike.”

  Leo licked his lips as he bent for another bite. “Well, me lad, when you’ve gone to bed without supper all the days of your life, you can’t say you miss it.”

  I thought of the night I knew I couldn’t marry Laurel. You get a little bit smug, she’d said. When you meet men your age who are going bald. I can see it on your face, and I have to hope they can’t see it, too. She was right, of course. But the prospect of waking up next to that much honesty every morning for the next fifty years left me limp as a noodle. I wanted to spend every night from now on in front of Leo’s television in this Podunk town three thousand miles from home—anything to avoid going back to that empty apartment.

  For a while, we absorbed ourselves in the television. Three priests were playing cards at a table, and another priest, wild hai
red and decrepit, sat in the corner shouting “WHAT?” every time someone asked him a question. Leo finished his fish and chips, drew out his pouch of Drum, pushed the takeout cartons and crumpled grease paper out of the way on the TV tray, and began to roll a cigarette. He gets a kind of waxy buildup in his ears, and then we have to syringe them. It’s not very nice.

  It’s great, though, in a way, said the second priest. We’re never short of candles.

  Laurel would be gone, but everything she’d felt would linger there, as if her anger and her disappointment could gather itself inside the walls and press them closer, inch by inch. Finally I spoke, but only because I thought it might ease the feeling: “She won’t be there when I get back.”

  I watched the corner of the old man’s mouth twist into a smirk. “Ah,” he said as he licked the paper, “and this time the dishes will.”

  I shook my head. “No. She’ll do them before she leaves, knowing her.”

  Leo clucked his tongue and lit his cigarette. “And you’d let a woman like that go?”

  I studied one of his dribbly discolored earlobes, and found it quite impossible to imagine someone sucking on it. How could a man like Leo get by without sex? Brona had told me he’d never married. I knew he didn’t have a computer, it seemed just as unlikely there were any porn channels on Irish television, and it wasn’t as if there were any twinkly-eyed widows “calling round” to cook for him. The women in this town looked every bit as sexless as the Blessed Virgin herself.

  “Maybe I’m like you, Leo. Maybe I’m built for the solitary life.”

  He must have managed somehow. People take their comfort where they can find it, after all, and you can have no idea of the source. Sure, we’re all strangers in the end.

  “The solitary life has its consolations,” the old man replied as he sighed out a stream of smoke into the dank and drafty air. “But that being said, I’d never recommend it.”

  Today felt like an ordinary Saturday, to start with. This time no one told me otherwise, no one whispered in my ear—and how I wish She had.

  I was on my bed reading a book. Orla had been out for hours but I wasn’t thinking about her, I was reading about Padre Pio and the one time when his student was reading a letter he’d sent her, and how the wind carried it out of her hands and she ran chasing it for miles; and finally it landed flat on a rock as if someone had pinned it there. Then the next day he said to her, “Be careful of the wind, if I hadn’t put my foot on that letter you’d have lost it.”

  I wanted to sit and drink in the magic of that story. But the door banged on its hinges as my sister came into the room we shared, eyes blazing, and grabbed me off the bed by the collar. She turned me to face her and hit me clean across the face.—You fucked him, didn’t you! You laid down on the ground and let him put his prick in you!

  At first I didn’t even think to deny it, I just stared at her because it was all too mad, but she took my silence for an admission of guilt, and raised her hand to me and brought it down again and again.

  —No, I said, or tried to.—I didn’t. I didn’t, and from somewhere miles away I heard Mam calling,—Orla! Orla, please!

  —You did! You did! Orla screamed, and hit me again. Her fury had turned her into someone else, someone with a splotched red face and wild soulless eyes and a murderous voice I hope I never again hear the like of.—He fucked you, and you let him. You … miserable … little … HOOR … always … taking … what’s … mine … everything!… everything!

  —I didn’t! I said again, and it stung when she struck me, but I knew she’d have to stop soon, and I’d feel better then. All I could think was Why, why, why would he say it when it wasn’t true?

  At last Dad and Mam came into the room and they pulled her off of me, and for a time we each of us lay crumpled on the beds or the chair or the floor, spent and panting and heartbroken.—Are you hurt? Dad asked finally, and Mam fell into tears. I told him I was fine but Orla went on raging at me with her eyes. Her words hung over our heads in the silence. She’d never take them back, they’d haunt us all forever.

  The next day was May Day, the procession from the hill before Father Dowd’s special Mass at the holy well. I told Mam and Dad I didn’t want to go, and they didn’t press me. They told Father Dowd I was sick and Tess led the procession by herself.

  I laid in bed awhile trying to listen through the silence, but no one was there. Then I dressed and went up to the hill. When I looked down toward Rathgar I could see them shuffling down the boreen through Jim Boyne’s pastures, people I knew and people I didn’t, though I couldn’t tell them apart from that distance. There were two hundred at least.

  It was a beautiful day, but how could I enjoy it? I needed to be alone but Declan was there sitting on the bench where he’d carved their initials, smoking a cigarette, looking out over the town.

  I sat down beside him.—Why did you tell her … why’d you tell her we’d …

  —I didn’t tell her anything, Síle, Declan said wearily.—She got it into her head that we’d done it, and after that there was no tellin’ her otherwise.

  —What did you say to make her think it?

  —Nothing, he said.—Nothing. We had a row and she leapt to the worst.

  —It isn’t fair, I said.—She’ll never believe us.

  —I’m sorry, Síle. I wish it hadn’t happened.

  He laid his arm round my shoulders and for a minute we sat there on the bench, not saying anything.

  —It’s over now, he said finally.—Orla and me, we’re finished. He kicked at pebbles in the dirt.—It’s for the best though.

  —Since you’re leaving?

  He nodded.—I leave this Thursday week.

  I wanted to ask him how he’d got the money for his ticket, but I didn’t.—Will you be in Australia for a long time?

  —I will, he said, and let out a mad laugh.—I’m never coming back.

  —What about your mam?

  —When I get settled in a good job I’ll send for her and she can come and live with me. Declan got this hard look on his face, the way he did whenever Father Dowd was there.—I’m never comin’ back here, Síle. Never.

  —You hate it that much? Living in Ballymorris?

  —Your sister was never going to leave. She’ll find a husband and have a litter of kids. She’ll live out her life in this horrible place.

  —It’s not so bad, I said.—Maybe you’ll see it differently if you come back to visit.

  Declan turned to me then, and it was like he was seeing me for the first time.—Sweet Síle, he said, and he began to stroke my hair back from my forehead.—I won’t miss much about this place, but I will miss you.

  —And I’ll miss you sharing your chocs with me, I said.

  He kept touching me.—You’re a lovely girl, you know that?

  —You make me feel as if I were, looking at me like that. I felt something strange welling up in the pit of my stomach.

  —You are, he whispered.—You are.

  That’s how we came to do the thing we were accused of, on the hill above the grotto where no one could see. He took me by the hand and led me up, laid me down, and pulled off my knickers, and it happened just as Orla said. And Our Lady’s words rang out in my mind … I’m always with you, Síle, even when you can’t see Me … and I felt sick all over as Declan found a new place inside me, dark and deep. He fell onto me and wept into my hair,—I wanted this, I wanted this, God help me, I wanted it, and all I could think was why didn’t he tell me it would hurt?

  Afterwards he said we should each go down alone, so he left me in the grass, and I lay there in a daze for a long time looking up at the blue sky and the bright clouds. I wasn’t pure anymore. Our Lady would never come to me again.

  10

  NOVEMBER 14

  In the morning I texted Tess to remind her I’d be leaving in two days, and she replied within seconds. We can go for a walk if you like. Have you been to Saint Brigid’s Well? Then maybe we can come back by the pilgri
ms’ route, up to the grotto.

  I told her I was up for it, and turned to my breakfast. I’d reached the point in Síle’s diary where I didn’t really want to read any farther, but it wasn’t as if putting it away had ever been an option. Another of those nearly impenetrable passages went on for a dozen pages—this one about a son who fantasized about suffocating his mother with a pillow, as best I could make out—and then I came to the next entry.

  I hadn’t gone up to the hill in a full week. It was over, all the wondrous mystery of it had finished forever through our own stupidity.

  I was in our room reading when She came to me. Orla had gone out with her new friends. The Blessed Mother was so bright and I was so full of shame that I couldn’t bear to look at Her.

  —Why do you turn away from Me, child?

  —I’m ashamed, I said through my hands.—Ashamed of what I’ve done.

  —I know what you’ve done, She said, but Her voice was gentle and sweet.

  —I’ve sinned, I said, and I hid my face in my hands.—I’ve sinned and she’ll never forgive me. You’ll never forgive me.

  She lifted my chin with Her finger and my hands fell away again as I rose to face Her.—Have you, now? She said softly.—Show Me. Show Me what you’d do, if you had it all to do over again.

  In a flash She was gone and I was back on the hill in the warm spring sunshine, Declan sitting beside me on the bench, and this part of me sat quietly inside of myself whilst the rest of me went on saying the words just as I’d spoken them the first time. Why did you tell her. She’ll never believe us.

  Inside I waited and listened, waited until Declan said the words you’re a lovely girl, you are, you are. It was like moving through honey to draw back when he touched me, to rise from that bench, but I did rise.—No, I said.—It isn’t right, and I turned from him and ran down the hill, and I heard the crunch of my runners on the gravel echoing in the space between then and now, done and undone.