Reckless Years

by Heather Chaplin

Billy Santiago is looking at me through his glasses with eyes that are like X-ray machines. I feel like he’s going to know my hydration levels and chances of getting cancer at the end of this stare.

  “I think maybe I’m hungry,” I say.

  Billy walks away. I think, wow, he is as big an asshole as everyone says. Then I see him walking back, but now he’s got three Granny Smith apples in his hand, plucked from a silver bowl on the reception counter. He gives them to me. I bite into one. My hands are shaking.

  “Do you want to get dinner?” he says.

  “No,” I say. “Not really. I mean, it has to be clean. You know, a clean meal.”

  Peter is looking at me, very concerned. But Billy is nodding.

  “I know exactly,” he says.

  I think, you do? Then I think I might fall on the floor. The next thing I know, Billy Santiago is walking me to a taxi while I lean on his arm, and getting me in the taxi and to a Chinese restaurant where he orders us both plates of steamed vegetables.

  Then we have an amazingly fascinating conversation about the nonlinear nature of time.

  Also, Billy Santiago says he’s been studying subparticle physics in his spare time and that at that level, particles exist only in relation to one another. Literally. There is no such thing as parts, only relations between parts. Then he says that if you brought a microscope down close enough on your finger, the boundaries separating your hand and everything else would begin to blur.

  “You as a person are only a social construct,” he says.

  Wednesday, November 7, 2007

  I lost the hat Kieran gave me. I don’t know why I brought it to Montreal in the first place. The truth is I couldn’t bear to be parted from it. Okay, sometimes I sleep in it. But, I’ve always been like that, picking up little odds and ends belonging to the people I care about, feathering my nest with flannel shirts and sweatshirts belonging to boyfriends, old maternity dresses of my mother’s. Am I really to be punished for such a harmless comfort? I can’t stop crying.

  It gets dark so early in Montreal.

  Thursday, November 8, 2007

  I don’t know what to think anymore. Today, Kieran wrote me a note full of anguish about his daughter, the autistic one. It was like I could feel his pain across the ocean. Apparently after several months of progress, the girl has regressed badly. I almost had tears in my eyes just reading about it. Then the note got really stiff, and he said he needed me to know his children would be his priority even if I were to come visit, which, okay, I have been leaning toward. In my mind, I was like, no shit, Sherlock. I wrote back right away, saying of course, of course, if now’s not a good time for a visit, just say so. And I meant it. But then he wrote even more stiffly saying I wasn’t understanding him, that of course he wanted me to come, he just wanted me to know what the deal was.

  In order to ease his mind, I sent a picture of Sakura leaping in the air and wrote, “Fret not. This is a representation of how excited I am for the prospect of a trip! All will work out.”

  And then he wrote back an even stiffer note. This one started, “Dear Heather,” and my heart almost sank to my knees. He told me how he’d been seeing someone on and off over the summer and that she wanted to be serious and this “had him running,” that with his daughter regressing and his ex-wife screaming at him all the time he “couldn’t take anything else on.” He needed to know I didn’t have any “expectations” of him.

  I was so confused and hurt I didn’t write back. Wasn’t he the one who’d invited me?

  Oh God, it wasn’t a real invitation, was it. Was it?

  Summer said, “Oh, men are the new girls. Why do they think they need to share every passing thought?”

  My neighbor said, “He’s probably so in love with you that he feels vulnerable, which is making him act weird.” But then, she’s obsessed with a guy in Bali who’s clearly been trying to give her the heave-ho for months. Why do women give each other such bad advice?

  Eleanor said, “Just drop the whole thing. Just drop it.”

  Then Kieran wrote again before I could even think how to respond: “I’m sorry if I pissed you off, girl,” He wrote. “I know you’re cool, strong, and independent. Come to Dublin. We’ll have great craec.”

  BOOK FIVE

  DUBLIN REDUX

  Thursday, December 6, 2007

  Dublin

  When I get off the plane at ten to seven, I go to the same airport café and order an Americano. This time when I ask for cream, the guy behind the counter scowls at me and slides a container of skim milk across the counter.

  It’s raining in a thin, misty way.

  I see the Bus Éireann with its blue upholstered seats and I can’t help but feel excitement rise up in my chest. I think, I did it! Because let me tell you, just agonizing over whether or not to come was becoming a full-time job.

  First off, my pitch about McCullough and Dublin’s newfound prosperity is with an editor at the New Yorker. Ben hooked me up. True, the editor didn’t call me back last week, but just the week before he said he loved it. And if that editor thinks stonewalling is going to put me off, he doesn’t know me.

  Then I found my own place to stay. My brother’s friend Leah was going to be out of town and she said I could use her apartment as long as I didn’t judge her for its messiness.

  Then—and this totally threw me—Kieran was offended. (Hadn’t he been the one freaking out about expectations?) I said, look, I don’t want there to be any pressure for us to be romantic if we didn’t feel like it. (Because really, does he not think I’m terrified we’ll look at each other and find there’s nothing between us anymore?) To which Kieran was all, cool, girl, we should have just told each other we were nervous before. Let’s say we start as friends—“special friends”—and take it from there. (To which I was a little hurt but simultaneously like, no duh, dude.)

  I got an assignment with the BBC, which means visiting my friend Phil in London and then hitching along on his trip to Morocco over New Year’s. (Morocco!)

  Then I found someone to rent my place, and Katy and Mac agreed to take Sakura while I’m gone.

  In addition, I’m totally off Paxil, and my size 26 jeans need to be belted.

  The point of all this? The point is here the fuck I am.

  Later

  To say Leah’s place is “messy” would be like describing Stalin as grouchy. Cockroaches scatter when I turn on the lights. In the kitchen, there are greasy pans piled high on the stove and old wrappers from packaged food overflowing the kitchen trash. Who leaves town and doesn’t take out the trash? In the bedroom there are piles of clothes up to my waist. The living room looks like a psychotic robbed a duty-free shop and then used his stolen goods to create spin art. The floor is littered with unopened boxes from Lancôme and Chanel. There are family-sized bags of chocolates as big as eggs, plugs for computers, shoe boxes, boxes of peanut brittle, an upside-down PlayStation, and multiple twenty-four packs of C batteries. Who even uses C batteries anymore?

  All I can think is, what happened to this woman? And what’s happened to me that I’ve ended up here?

  I go into the bathroom, strip off my airplane clothes, and turn on the water.

  After five minutes, the water is still cold.

  After ten minutes, the water is still cold.

  I’m shivering, my body covered in goose bumps. I can’t get the heat to work any more than I can the hot water. I’m wrapped in what I hope is a clean towel.

  After fifteen minutes, I take a deep breath and get into the tub and stand under the icy spray. I shout to bear it. I’m shivering even harder when I get out, and I race back to the bedroom still shouting. The carpet feels grimy under my feet, so I wobble to my suitcase, leapfrogging across the enormous piles of clothes that are everywhere. I’m back out of the apartment in ten minutes.

  As I’m leaving, I catch a glimpse of myself in a hallway mirror. It’s not a pretty sight. My damp hair is hanging, uncombed, around my face. I’m wearing a sweater
, a sweatshirt, my puffy jacket, and running shoes. My skin is pasty like it’s been decades since I saw the sun. Great, I think. Great.

  Later

  When I get to the River Liffey and step onto the Ha’penny Bridge with its white cast-iron railings and lampposts, it’s hard to believe I’m the same person who walked across this bridge last year with Kieran. I know if I keep going straight I’ll be in Temple Bar, and I remember having passed a health food store there last year. I’m saying to myself, don’t panic. Just get your almonds and everything will look better. There is no room in my budget for food on this trip, so I’ve decided to go without. Half of my suitcase is filled with PowerBars and sandwich bags of Puffins, which I figure I’ll carry in my pockets to use as needed. I didn’t have time to get any almonds before I left though, and almonds are central to this plan.

  I have to pause for a minute as I cross over into Temple Bar, because I’m having the strange sensation both that I know exactly where I am and also that I am completely lost. I know that I’ve been at this spot before, but it seems like maybe it was in some other lifetime. I turn my head to the left, and then to the right, trying to get my bearings. There’s a woman with a stroller looking in a store window to my right, and, to my left, a man in a gray scarf is striding toward me. I’m beginning to think I feel lost in perhaps more than just the geographical sense. Then I find myself becoming intensely aware of every detail around me—the precise way the air feels against my skin, the way the light shines through the grimy windows of a fishing supply store. I notice the woman with the stroller to my right is hugely pregnant. I see the man to my left is wearing a pin-striped blue suit with an open-collared shirt and that his hair is black. The thought runs through my mind that he’s very handsome. I turn again to the woman and see that she’s sucking on a lollipop. Then I turn back to the man—and it’s as if the pace of time stops moving by any law of nature I’ve ever known, grinding me down into sickening slow motion. The handsome man with the gray scarf and black hair striding toward me is Kieran.

  I think, No. Universe! My hair. My face in that mirror. I’m in running shoes.

  And then I see his whole face light up. He starts to run. From a block away, I see those dazzling blue eyes widen and shine. I see his mouth open and transform into a smile of amazement. I see him running toward me, and I feel for a minute as if all the muscles in my body might give out. It’s all going to be okay, I think. It’s all, finally, going to be okay. This man is going to sweep me into his arms and hold me and I will, at last, finally, finally be safe.

  And then he stops running. Just as I was picking up my feet to start running toward him, he stops running toward me. As if he’d hit a barrier. It’s like I’m watching him assert control over himself as if control were the most important thing in the world. His face goes cold. His eyes go flat. He is no longer running. He is sauntering. He is sauntering toward me as if I barely ranked as a casual acquaintance.

  “So you’re here, are you?” he’s says when he reaches me. I have frozen entirely. “When did you get in?” He’s looking all around. Anywhere but at me. I cannot find any rational words in my mind to answer him. All that comes to me is, your eyes are so blue.

  How can the very first person I see in Dublin be Kieran?

  The word no is running through my mind. And then inane mumblings begin pouring out of my mouth. I have no idea what I’m saying or why I’m giggling like the village idiot.

  “Well, I’m on my way to a meeting,” Kieran says. “Fancy a drink tonight?”

  “No!” Inside my head. Now outside in the world. All I want is to get away. This is not how this scene is supposed to be played. I must regroup. I must regain control of the situation. I must be wearing mascara for this scene to be played properly.

  “Right. Tomorrow then.” And he’s gone. And I stand there. And I have a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach—just a tiny thing, but terrible nonetheless. It came into existence in that fraction of a second between when he was running toward me and when he stopped.

  Reader. Why did he stop running?

  Friday, December 7, 2007

  Andrew Dempsey is complaining about the Irish. I’m scribbling down everything he says in my little notebook.

  Andrew is the director of the movie about the Irish landlord and the Ukrainian governess. He’s thin and tall, gangly like a not-yet-fully-developed teenager, although I think he’s about my age. His skin has clearly seen its share of acne. His nose seems to move in several different directions at once before ending in a disjointed knob not far above his top lip. For a guy with a hit movie, he seems remarkably grouchy. I like him immediately.

  Just as it was last year, Grafton Street is hung with shimmery silver Christmas decorations lamppost to lamppost.

  When I left the apartment this morning I decided I wasn’t going to get all dolled up for my drinks with Kieran. I’d said to myself, no, you are cool, strong, and independent. You will face him again in running shoes. My nod to vanity is a white aviator’s hat that I bought in Montreal. As I’m talking with Andrew Dempsey, I find myself smiling in anticipation of Kieran saying how beautiful I look in my hat.

  We’ve been talking about Dublin’s newfound prosperity; Andrew says it’s destroying the city. He points to a window display of cheap, slinky party dresses. “All this ‘wealth’ ”—he makes air quotations—“it’s bullshit. It’ll come crashing down. It’s not who the Irish are. Just read the newspapers—did you read about Katy French?”

  “Who’s Katy French?” I ask.

  “Read the papers,” Andrew says. “Girl thought she was some kind of socialite celebrity. Reality TV. Modeling in her knickers for the papers. As if Ireland has socialites or celebrities. We have Bono, that’s enough. She OD’d three days ago. I’m telling you, this ‘prosperity’ ”—again with the air quotations—“it’s not real.”

  “Well, it is real,” I say. “It may be different, but it is happening.”

  “No,” Andrew says. “It’s not. It’s people at a party thinking the morning will never come. Well, the morning is coming. It came for Katy French, didn’t it?”

  This gives me a kind of chill.

  On the way to meet Kieran, I stop in Bewley’s Café at the top of Grafton Street and put on a little mascara and some lipstick in the bathroom—because, you know, while I am cool, strong, and independent, I am also human.

  Later

  There are plush red banquettes around the bar’s edge, high ceilings, dark mahogany–paneled walls, filmy glass chandeliers, and a long marble bar—with Kieran O’Shea sitting at the end of it, head down in a newspaper.

  I’m standing there, my eyes adjusting to the light, waiting for him to sense my presence. I start walking. At any minute he will look up, and then he will turn to me, and then I will see his eyes deepen and shine, and then he will open his arms to me and yesterday will be blotted out.

  I’m all the way next to him before he looks up.

  “Kieran!” I cry. I will be the woman of my emails. Cool, strong, and independent. Did I not tell you that those are my middle names?

  Kieran is barely looking at me. “Hiya,” he says. The first thing I think is that he’s afraid, but I don’t know of what or why. And I don’t have time to contemplate because he says, “What is that on your head?” and he reaches over and takes my hat and drops it onto the bar.

  The tiny panic in the pit of my stomach from yesterday spreads up out of my stomach, into my chest and then into my brain. I have an image of curling up in a ball under the bar.

  I think, I will have to go through this night with hat hair.

  I open my mouth and just start talking.

  I’m like, “Kieran, I lost the hat you gave me! I was sooo bummed!” Blah, blah, blah, blah! I’m yammering and trying to be full of mirth.

  In my imagination, Kieran says, Come on, girl, let’s go right now and buy you another one.

  In real life, Kieran says, “I’ll tell you where I bought it,” and d
rains the last of his pint.

  “Ha-ha-ha!” I say, although I have no idea why I’m laughing.

  Silence. And then I say, “Okay! Next round on me! This trip you have to let me pay my share.”

  In my imagination, he says, No way, girl. Your money is no good here. I’m going to spoil you just like last time.

  “Okay,” Kieran says, and gestures to the bartender.

  While he’s ordering, I take a closer look. His eyes are red-rimmed and the set of his jaw is grim. He reminds me of Ray Liotta in Goodfellas, all torqued up on coke and driving around in that 1970s car, peering through the windshield at a helicopter that may or may not be following him. Now, just to be clear, I found Ray Liotta in Goodfellas, all torqued up on coke, driving around in his 1970s car, incredibly sexy. So I’m not saying he looks bad. He just looks strung out. Like he’s suffering. I say, “Kieran, are you okay? You seem kind of tense.” And he says, “I’m fab. Totally fab.”

  I get the feeling that he wants to scratch me. Or is afraid I’m going to scratch him. I think, Kieran, are your claws out? I know what that’s like. But you can’t just say that to a person.

  And then he’s drinking the last of his beer, and I think, any minute he’s going to walk out the door and this will be the state of things. You will have lost. Suddenly I find myself feeling exactly as I had in the Shannon Airport. That if I don’t hold on to this man with everything I have, I will die. So, giggling, inanely, I say, “Oh my God, Kieran, you’re not going to believe this after all our back-and-forth, but the place I’m staying at has no hot water and no heat and cockroaches everywhere. I need to come stay at your place after all!”

  Within thirty seconds I wish I could have taken it back. Kieran is like, “My ex is using my house, which has a trampoline in the back, because it’s the only thing keeping my daughter calm right now.” And I’m like, “Oh my God, forget I said anything. I’m not your responsibility.” But then it’s like some moral-principal hospitality thing has kicked in and he keeps saying, “No, I cannot have you staying somewhere like that in Dublin. You will come to my house.”