Viva the George Bernard Shaw Suite at the Westin, which I got for free with my Starwood points, and to which the receptionist upgraded me for no reason I can think of except the Universe has changed its mind about me.
Later
The band flew in from Bristol last night and I know better than to wake my brother before noon. Rock-and-roll hours and all. Went in search of an umbrella. Took me a good hour to find one without a leprechaun, a four-leaf clover, a harp, or a glass of Guinness on it. Walked south through sheets of rain and black clouds. Walked down winding, rain-slick cobblestones with tinsel Christmas decorations swinging overhead and buildings of orange Victorian brick on either side. Walked under a massive stone archway and through a park of tidy flower beds, crisscrossing pathways, a lake with swans floating in it, and a small waterfall cascading down a slope of slippery silver stones. Down a long block of Georgian town houses right out of a Jane Austen adaptation. Across a canal lined with weeping willows. Through an Indian neighborhood with saris and bangles in bright pinks and blues in the windows—who knew there were Indians in Dublin?
Rambled in no particular direction but just following a green brass dome that rose and disappeared, and rose and disappeared, over the rooftops. Found the dome belonged to a church with a high robin-egg-blue ceiling, rows of wooden pews, and linoleum floors. The smell of Lysol permeated everything. Knelt and closed my eyes and thought, yes, yes, yes.
Went into a department store and flirted with a tube of red lipstick.
You know that feeling I told you about, of not being tethered to anything, not even my own body? It’s so strong today that I feel as if the outlines of my physical form have disappeared and I could expand to be as big as the city itself. I keep bursting into laughter for no reason at all. “My cup runneth over!” I shout to the Dublin sky.
Later
Seth needs a new pair of shoes. We head out together into the pissing rain. We don’t say a word about the fact that I’ve just left my husband. Josh’s name never even comes up. Seth tells me that traveling with the Rock Star is really boring because usually you spend your free time on tour complaining, but the Rock Star is so nice and treats them so well that nobody has anything negative to say.
This is Seth saying the tour has been fantastic.
Then Seth says he’s glad I finally got off my ass to come to meet him. I don’t even know how to respond to this, because it never occurred to me for a second that my brother cared whether I came or not. When he says this, I feel tears spring up in my eyes.
We go back to the department store I was in earlier.
In the men’s section, I pull out a navy-blue velvet blazer and hold it toward my brother. This is a bold move on my part. I half expect him to pull away or make a snarky comment. But instead he looks down at it and sort of pets one of the sleeves. “That is nice,” he says.
A salesman comes over, helps Seth into the jacket, and asks what he’s doing in Dublin. My brother responds in perfect Seth fashion, which is to say he gives a tiny, slightly embarrassed laugh and says quietly, “I’m with a band.” When the salesman asks where they’re playing, and Seth says The Royal Hall, the salesman says, “But . . .” Then there’s a long pause. And then the salesman stands up taller and his eyes change entirely and he says, “Ohhh.” Then Seth looks really embarrassed, and I refrain from doing a backflip, because (a) I probably would have broken something, and (b) Seth would have killed me. One thing about my brother is that he’s the most modest person you’ll ever meet in your life. In fact, his modesty borders on secrecy. He could be elected president of the United States and not tell you. As Josh used to say, if Seth played his cards any closer to his chest they’d melt into his skin.
Instead I smooth down the back of the velvet jacket, examine the arms, the shoulder seams, the cuffs. Really it’s just an excuse to touch my brother. I want to hurl myself into his arms and hug him until he pries me off. I’m thinking that in the navy blazer, with his dark hair, deep-set hazel eyes, movie-star-white teeth—just like my mother’s—and long Virginia Woolf nose, he looks incredibly handsome. I’m amazed that he’s not swatting me away but instead seems shyly pleased. I’m trying not to cry tears of pride. An image of my father comes into my mind, and I shove it away as if with my fist. I think, check us out, Dad, on top of the world despite you.
Seth looks at the jacket’s price tag.
“It’ll be a cold day in hell when I pay nine hundred euros for a piece of clothing,” he says. Which is good, because otherwise I would have thought playing for the Rock Star had changed his personality entirely.
On the way out, I hand over fifteen euros and scoop up the red lipstick.
Monday, November 20, 2006
I just woke up from a dream so simultaneously terrifying and absurd that I don’t know what to do except record it exactly and let you judge for yourself. If you’re one of those people who find other people’s dreams intolerably boring, don’t even bother. This isn’t for you.
I dreamed that I couldn’t find where I lived. Or rather, I no longer knew where I lived. Summer was there and we were in a filthy kitchen with dirty windows and greasy bottles of spices on the countertops—like the communes my father lived on when we were little. I knew it wasn’t my house, but I couldn’t remember where my house was—or if I’d been keeping up with the mortgage payments. I had a vague image of a dark red wall—like the one in my actual living room—and I kept thinking that if I could find this wall I’d be home again. But I had no idea where it was.
Then my boyfriend from high school was there and we were going up a long mahogany staircase. He had his arm around me and I thought, did I make a terrible mistake? Would I have been safe if I’d married this man?
Then I was in my childhood house in Baltimore—that looming Victorian with the high ceilings and constantly leaking roof. But I couldn’t see clearly and nothing was where it should have been. Suddenly these ephemeral beings—I don’t know what else to call them—swept down from the ceiling and over the staircase. They whooshed over me with great gushes of air and no sound at all. The silence was so petrifying my face grew hot and little pinpricks of fear raced across my body. Then, from behind the closed door of a room down the hallway, I heard breathing. I crept closer. I knew something terrible was happening, and I knew I should find out what it was, but instead I started screaming as loud as I could and listened as no sound came out.
The next thing I knew I was in another apartment, this time with Josh. The place seemed to be made up entirely of cabinets. We were emptying them out, filling enormous trash bags with stainless steel pots of all different sizes—one for boiling lobster, another for sautéing, a third for simmering sauces. There were molds in the shape of fish and spatulas and a whole bag full of giant plastic spoons. In the dream, I closed my eyes because the waste was so painful to me. When I opened them I was alone. The place had become completely dark and my heart was pounding. My breath came out in frozen particles. I was slithering myself along the wall so that no one could sneak up and grab me. I was thinking, please don’t let this be where I live.
Then I was back on the commune with Summer, and it wasn’t so much filthy as covered with grime. Linoleum floors that would never shine again, cabinet shelves covered in peeling contact paper, years’ worth of finger marks on all surfaces. There were bean sprouts and old tea bags on the counters; the refrigerator was filled with glass dishes of leftover vegetarian food. Summer told me there was a policeman to see me. It turned out there’d been an anonymous complaint against me. Something terrible had happened to a small child and I was accused of doing it.
Josh was in front of me, swelling up to enormous proportions before my eyes like a helium balloon version of himself. He put his hands around my neck and the next thing I knew he had thrown me to the ground and was strangling me. I was hoping someone would notice but no one did. Josh’s eyes turned red. They were glowing at me like those of a demon in a bad horror movie. And I looked into his eyes and I tho
ught, it’s him.
When I woke up in my big bed in Dublin, I was covered in sweat. My first thought went something like this: thank you, Lord, thank you for letting that have just been a dream, I promise to worship you forever. My second thought was: is it really Josh? And then: if it is, and now I’ve left him, am I safe?
Later
North Dublin. No map. Just wandering. Down one cobblestone alley and then another. I stumble on an old produce-and-flower market in a beautiful Victorian structure of glass and wrought iron—every stall is O’Connor and Sons, or O’Donnell and Sons, or O’Sullivan and Sons. I can’t stop laughing at the Irishness of the Irish.
The north is not touristy. There are long blocks of squat brick row houses with doors that open onto the sidewalk and so small it seems hardly possible that grown-ups live there. A middle-aged woman with deep wrinkles in her face and a cigarette dangling out of her mouth scowls at me. There are guys in tracksuits and buzz cuts talking into their cells; young women with bad skin and lots of makeup push baby strollers. I think, I love it here.
South again, and a bit to the east. It’s as if orders had been given to spruce up the place. This must be the new prosperity I’ve read about. Two corners in a row have brand-new-looking coffee shops— there’s something wistful about them, like they’re fantasies based on a picture someone saw once of San Francisco. They’re empty, both of them, but sparkling clean. I nod at a young proprietor in a crisp white apron leaning in his doorframe and he nods back at me. There’s something otherworldly about these coffee shops, as if they exist somewhere that hasn’t come into being yet, geographically trapped between the old and the new. They seem to be waiting. Waiting for a sign that the gamble will pay off—that the future can be something other than what the past would seem to have foretold.
But perhaps I’m projecting here.
Later
Topshop. I’m a size 26 jeans. Tried them on with a pair of enormous, bitterly uncomfortable high heels and my jaw nearly fell off my face. This not-eating thing is great, I don’t care what anyone says. I’m thin! Thin, thin, thin! Thin at last!
Stroll with Seth. He’s acting as if he likes me. He laughed at one of my jokes. This trip is a miracle.
Tonight I’m supposed to go out to dinner with Seth, Cecilia (who is flying over from Thailand, where she’s been organizing AIDS-infected sex workers), and some of the guys from the band. I’m so jet-lagged, I may just go to sleep. I could go home tomorrow morning and the whole trip would have been worth it.
Thursday, November 21, 2006
Last night
“What do you say to impress a girl from New York?” the Irishman shouts in my ear.
“Hello?” I shout back. And then it’s all gobbledygook—something about having been a gardener in New York, and being a manager at a place called Temple Bar. I really can’t understand him.
Then he’s shouting, “Your name, girl! What’s your name?”
And I’m shouting, “Heather,” but he doesn’t understand me, so I shout, “You know, like the purple brush that grows in Scotland!” And he says, “Ahhh, Heather!” except it sounds like Heddderrr, with the most beautiful rolling r at the end.
When we finish dancing, he gives me a half bow and makes a little flourish with his hands. It’s charming in a sort of old-fashioned, awkward way. He’s tall with a long neck, sloping shoulders, and dark hair tucked behind his ears. I think, a little dorky, but cute enough. I bow back to him and give him an extra-dazzling smile to make up for the fact that I didn’t understand a word he said.
My brother’s old friend Leah, who now lives in Dublin, is at the bar, chugging a pint of Guinness. When I reach her, she puts down her glass and rubs her hands together. “He’s a bartender or something,” I say, and shrug. Then I pull out from the front of my new size-26 jeans four slips of paper with four phone numbers on them. Leah throws back her head and guffaws. I execute a small turn. Then I take Leah by the shoulders.
“I FUCKING LOVE DUBLIN!”
Leah rubs her hands together and says, “Excellent, excellent!”
It’s about two in the morning and Seth and Cecilia and all the rest of the band have long gone back to the hotel. But something happened inside me when it was time to leave—I don’t know how to describe it exactly except to say that I was overcome with a feeling like I might die if I didn’t get to stay.
See, we’d all been at dinner when Seth said he’d seen a flyer for a Jimmy Cliff show. All the guys in the band had started talking at once because apparently the Rock Star had just been teaching them some Cliff tunes. Bob the drummer had stepped outside to call Billy the tour manager, and Billy the tour manager had arranged for us to get into the show even though it was sold-out. “Ah, life with the Rock Star,” Cecilia had said, and then we’d all headed over in a big laughing pack—gotten there just in time to hear Cliff belt out “Rivers of Babylon” with his six backup singers and dreadlocks flying. We’d all stood at the back of the crowd, mesmerized, Cecilia singing along in her beautiful voice, and me stepping out of my mesmerized state long enough to think, my, there are a lot of cute guys here—and then the show was over, because really we’d only caught the tail end, and everyone had started to say good-bye and head back to the hotel, and I’d been like, Hello? Rock-and-roll hours?
“Surely, you’re not going home,” I’d said to Leah.
Leah had work in the morning; she’d just gotten back from Amsterdam. What would her boyfriend say?
I have to be completely honest here. I did not care at that moment what was best for Leah. All I cared about was getting back into the room we’d passed on the way out with a DJ setting up and people about to dance. So I’d played my last card, arms spread wide. “Leah—when’s the last time we hung out?”
And Leah had relented. “You buying the first round?”
“Dude, I’m buying all the rounds!”
Then we’d stepped back in and I’d had the feeling that I could, and perhaps would, devour the whole club in one enormous, life-affirming gulp.
At the bar, I stripped. Off came my coat, a sweater, and two long-sleeved shirts. I had a sports bra under my tank top that I knew showed—and not in a sexy, imagine-me-naked kind of way but rather in a big-blob-of-white-spandex way—but I did not care. My armpits were unshaved and my hair was dirty, pulled off my face with a ponytail holder. All I had going for me was the red lipstick. But let me repeat: I—did—not—care.
You know how every now and then dancing can be a transcendent experience? You feel the music creep into your body and you find yourself moving without being aware that your brain is even giving instructions to your muscles. Maybe you don’t. But that’s what it felt like to me. I felt like everyone was smiling at me. I have no idea if they were, but I went ahead and smiled back. I had that feeling again, that I wasn’t so much a body as moving energy. I felt as if I were lit from within.
I noticed the Irishman before we danced together, and now, an hour or so later, I see his head bobbing above the crowd, watching me with a little half smile on his lips and curious eyes. I don’t pay him much attention, though, because I’m watching a guy in a green soccer jersey with a near-shaved head and mean-looking green eyes.
I’m waiting for the mean-eyed guy in the green soccer jersey to make his move, but then he drains his beer, kisses the girl standing next to him full on the lips, and they leave the club together.
Well, fuck me, I think, and head to the bathroom.
Just as I’m coming out of my stall, an extremely inebriated man in a suit vest over a shirt with flowing, white sleeves stumbles in the bathroom door. In the most good-natured way imaginable he says, “And what are you doing here, girl?” I say, “This is the women’s room.” And he insists on escorting me—quite gallantly though not exactly in a straight line—back to the entranceway of the dance floor. And there is the Irishman—as if waiting for me, or about to leave.
He’s wearing a blue Fred Perry zip-up now, and his hair is no longer tucked
behind his ears. I think, he’s cute.
“So, would you like to see a bit of Dublin while you’re here?” he says.
I know he doesn’t mean now and probably not with a friend in tow, but I don’t care and I say, “Yes!” and grab Leah.
Outside, it’s inky black. The cobblestones on the street are slick and gleaming from the rain. Streetlamps make little pools of light all around us. I’m stunned by the beauty of the evening. As we walk, the Irishman—who tells us his name is Kieran—points out everything we’re passing. I still can’t make out all his words, but it doesn’t matter because his voice is so beautiful it sounds like a song to me. I don’t know if you’ve ever found yourself serenaded by an Irish accent—but if you haven’t, let me warn you. It does funny things to your insides.
When we hit the River Liffey, Kieran makes us stop and look at all the bridges that run over the water. They stand out from the river beneath like gleaming arches. The sky is full of stars.
I think, How could my life have gotten so beautiful? Am I dreaming all of this?
When Leah says she lives on a street called Lotts just on the other side of the river, Kieran puts a hand over his forehead and says, “Jaysus, girl. I thought you were a visitor too—and here I am telling you all about your own neighborhood.”
I think, oh, he’s nice.
After we drop Leah off, I slip my hand through the crook of his arm. I think that surely nothing bad can happen to me if I don’t even exist. The moon comes out as we walk back across the River Liffey. It just barely breaks through the rolling clouds, more like a hazy light than any kind of solid thing. Then we’re standing in front of a hotel that says Westbury in big letters over its front awning. I can’t stop laughing.
Reckless Years Page 7