I’d told Andy about the poteen, and he wanted me to write about that instead. Secret histories of any sort of alcoholic beverage were a golden-ticket circulation booster. So the rest of November passed in a fog of late nights at the magazine, Chinese takeout, and catch-up drinks with college friends that wore on twice as long as I wanted them to. I just sat there and kept on drinking, laughing at the appropriate times, wishing I could slink quietly out of their lives. Sometimes I’d catch a glimpse of myself in a darkened mirror, my skin looking like a puddle of weather-worn cloth fallen from the rag tree, and I was afraid that if I looked any closer, I’d see that I was holding myself together with a length of blue yarn.
In early December, I got an e-mail from Tess. I’ve decided to give up my place at the youth centre and do a bit of travelling. Not to volunteer, just to see more of the world and try to figure out my true place in it. She said she hadn’t heard anything from Síle.
So Ballymorris wasn’t where you belonged after all, I wrote back. I wish you the very best, Tess. Let me know if you’re ever in New York. She didn’t reply, not that I expected her to.
* * *
After Christmas I went down to Fort Lauderdale for a few days to visit my grandmother. It was the first time I’d seen her since my trip to Ireland, and she wanted to hear all the details of John’s funeral I hadn’t already told her over the phone, and how Brona was doing, and how had I liked the little town where she’d grown up. I told her I’d spent a good bit of time with Paudie and his niece, but I didn’t mention the apparition or that I’d ever wanted to write about it. I did tell her every funny story about Leo that I could think of, but she never asked any more than I offered, not even when I told her I’d last seen him in the hospital. If there had been some great romance between them, I wondered if it had happened mostly in Leo’s head.
My grandmother lived a little under an hour from Miami Beach. One afternoon I drove down to the museum with the Harry Clarke window Síle had told me about, taking her diary with me. I bought a ticket and rode the elevator to the fifth floor, walking past Art Deco posters and furniture until I came to the stained glass.
“The Geneva Window” was an awkward title for it, seeing as it was never installed there, but the window was still impressive enough to warrant the name. It deserved better than this concrete floor, the flimsy white partitions, and metal heating ducts overhead, but on the other hand, they’d never let you get this close to anything at the Met. You could go right up to it and examine every scene, each minuscule brushstroke adding depth to the flat planes of color. You could get near enough to fog the glass with your breath, and no one would say anything to you. I read the information panel putting the window in historical context, rubbing at the letters etched on my forearm. Mallory would have loved this.
Síle was right: the panels weren’t that big, but there was a lot to look at inside each one, and even though I didn’t know the stories behind them, it was easy to imagine what was going on. There was something lewd happening in almost every one. A yellow-haired girl, fireflies pulsing under her purple dress, danced with her elfin lover, who pressed her hand against his bare crotch as tiny green goblins danced on a hill above their heads; another blonde, this one naked, danced with a purple veil like Salome for a horrible fat old man, a cigar in one hand and a brandy glass in the other. That one I remembered from Síle’s book.
Yet the erotic scenes weren’t even the most interesting ones. In a panel on the right, a trio of angels appeared to a man and his daughter, who shrank from them in fear and awe. Each of the heavenly figures wore a fiery crown, and each had splendid wings of orange and green and blue. The glances of the angels, stern and withering, fell not on the man and girl but on the viewer—as if to say you could hide nothing from them, there was no use trying. We live all our lives waiting for that one moment of supernatural intervention, the pivotal flash at which your life finally starts to mean something; but the people so transfigured are people alive only between the pages of a book.
I went a few paces into an adjoining room and sat on a bench so I could still see the window through the doorway. I took the diary out of my knapsack and turned to the last page. For weeks I’d been telling myself it wasn’t legible, that I couldn’t possibly read it without giving myself another headache. Yet another lie.
To begin with you only pinched her in places she would’ve hurt herself anyway—her elbows, her knees—but it didn’t satisfy. You told her she was ugly and she believed you. She hid herself, she wouldn’t even let your mam see her in her knickers, and then you went for her softer parts.
Your gran knew. She knew but she couldn’t let herself believe it. You saw how she looked at you, at bedtime, after the day at Streedagh. She closed the door on you and she and Mallory shared the big bed, and in the room down the hall, in the dark, you shook with a rage you could not understand.
You’d seen her, in the dunes. You saw between her legs and it didn’t matter that you’d seen her in the bath a thousand times, it was different now, after this you could only do worse. Home again, parents sleeping. It doesn’t matter, sure it doesn’t. That’s what She told you. She said you could do whatever you liked because it was already done.
So you crept in, pressed your hand on your sister’s mouth and pulled back the covers. You made the place inside her, you made the place, but no one else could ever go there.
I snapped the diary shut as a pair of chatty old women came by. One of them shot me a look, half suspicious and half I-don’t-know-what-else.
It was wrong. I wanted to hate myself. But after the first time, there could be no undoing it—not for an ordinary mortal like me, anyway—and it felt too good to stop. Some nights, when my sister and I met eyes across the dinner table, I looked back at her as if she were just some girl sitting near me at the Burger King. And on the day when that old woman plowed into the side of that station wagon, the first thing I thought was now no one will ever know.
But this is what religion is for, isn’t it? No one’s irredeemable, not even me. Síle knew everything, she’d seen “the stain on my heart,” and it made no difference. She still wanted me.
For a long time, I sat on that bench looking at the figures dancing inside the glass, running my fingers over the embossed leather cover on the diary, checking the time on my iPhone as if I were waiting for someone.
I was waiting, wasn’t I? I waited for a dark-haired woman to round that corner, look at me and smile; I waited for a glimpse of a woman too serene, too lovely to be of this earth, a woman who couldn’t possibly be there. And when she came, I rose to greet her.
ALSO BY CAMILLE DEANGELIS
Bones & All
Mary Modern
Petty Magic
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people have encouraged my love of Ireland, and I apologize to anyone I’m about to leave out.
So much love and gratitude to my grandmother’s cousin Gene Murphy and his wonderful family for all their kindness and hospitality over the years: Betty, Sharon, Yvonne, and Justin, and to our cousin Dick Wahner (may he rest in peace) for putting us in touch to begin with. Love to my father for giving me that first map of Ireland to hang on my bedroom wall, and to my mother and grandmother for inspiring me with their commitment to their faith. (We may not agree on the particulars, but I am convinced there’s a world beyond the five senses, and I suppose my Catholic upbringing provided the foundation for a belief system that fits me.)
Go raibh míle maith agat to Pádraig Ó Cearúil, my Irish teacher at NYU, and a shout-out to mo chara Jennifer “Ní Bhlathanna.” Kristen Couse and Tom Haslow, thank you for helping me get to Ireland for the first time in the spring of 2000 to check out the sights and pubs and hostels so I could write about it all. Ditto to Grace Fujimoto and the folks at Avalon for giving me another opportunity with Moon Ireland in 2006.
Seanan McDonnell, your friendship is one of the greatest joys of my life, and this story is so much better for your insight and thoughtful
suggestions. Bán, JP, Fergal, Pádraig, Cían, Ann, Bríd Tynan, and the McCulloughs—you’ve always made me feel like a part of your family, to the point that “thanks a million” feels woefully insufficient. I’ve made many more dear friends through the MA in writing at NUI Galway: Ailbhe Slevin and Christian O’Reilly, Deirdre Sullivan and Diarmuid O’Brien, Shelley Troupe and James Mullaney, Patrick Curley (who, with his lovely sister Tara and mother Breda, kept me well and happy on a recent visit to Sligo), and Brendan O’Brien and his parents Margaret and Joe, who were always so kind to me on my visits to Carrick-on-Suir. Adrian Frazier, Mike McCormack, and Sinead Mooney: thank you for all the knowledge and insight you shared during my MA year. Emily Goldstein and Vince Murphy, you are terrific. I am also grateful to Celine Kiernan for advising me as to the finer points of Irish slang as well as which brand of cold cream an Irishwoman would use in 1987.
To my old-as-in-longstanding friends Kelly Brown, Aravinda Seshadri, and Leah Smith, and my sister Kate: thanks for your company (not to mention hijinks) on Inis Mór and elsewhere. Love and thanks to McCormick Templeman, Nova Ren Suma, Mackenzi Lee, Elizabeth Duvivier, Olivia White, Kelly Turley, and Amiee Wright.
Kate Garrick, you are the best. Sara Goodman, thank you so much for your seemingly limitless patience during the revision process. I feel so blessed to have you for my editor! Thanks to all the other wonderful folks at St. Martin’s Press: Alicia Clancy, George Witte, Joan Higgins, Brant Janeway, Angie Giammarino, Angela Craft, Lisa Pompilio, and Lauren Hougen. And thank you, as always, to Brian DeFiore and Shaye Areheart.
In addition to plumbing my mother’s shelves for prayer books, hagiographies, and (rather too enthusiastic) tracts on the nature of hell and purgatory, I learned a lot from the following books: Patrick Tracey’s Stalking Irish Madness, Nancy Scheper-Hughes’s Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics, Russell Shorto’s Saints and Madmen, Nicola Gordon Bowe’s The Life and Work of Harry Clarke, Lucy Costigan and Michael Cullen’s Strangest Genius, and Michael Walsh’s The Apparition at Knock. Síle quotes from Keats’s poem “The Eve of St. Agnes” in chapter six, and the fairy story Tess tells in chapter eight is very much inspired by Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I was reading John McGahern’s The Dark while writing Síle’s journal entries, and if they’re the best writing in the book then perhaps I can’t take any credit for it. I must also thank Dr. Brian Hatcher at Tufts University, who gave me so much to feed my imagination in his Intro to Hinduism course.
To Memory Risinger, Debka Colson, Mary Bonina, Alexander Danner, and my other friends at the Writers’ Room of Boston: I am very grateful for your warm welcome. Thanks to the WROB I was able to finish the first draft of Immaculate Heart in record time, and I have the loveliest memories of drinking coffee and watching the snow fall from my cozy little cubicle whenever I resurfaced out of the story.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Camille DeAngelis is the author of the novels Bones & All, Mary Modern, and Petty Magic, as well as a first-edition guidebook, Moon Ireland. A graduate of NYU and the National University of Ireland, Galway, Camille currently lives in Boston. Visit her online at www.cometparty.com. Or sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
December
Also by Camille DeAngelis
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
IMMACULATE HEART. Copyright © 2016 by Camille DeAngelis. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Lisa Pimpilio
Cover photograph by Alana Celii
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-04651-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-4678-4 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466846784
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First Edition: March 2016
Immaculate Heart Page 25