Reckless Years

by Heather Chaplin

  Last night

  There’s a pink strobe in the courtyard outside my apartment that goes on every night, flashing a hazy, rose-colored light through my living room windows. It’s like living next door to a fairy lighthouse. The room falls into darkness and then a minute passes, and then around comes the light, casting pink shadows on the walls, one and then the other and then the other. How many afternoons have I sat here, having woken up after it’s already dark, or come home just before it’s gotten light, and basked in this man-made rosy dawn and imagined Kieran sitting beside me. Now he is, and I think he’s more beautiful than I even remembered.

  “I’m sorry, girl,” he’s saying. “I was horrible. It was bollocks. Total bollocks. I abandoned you. I don’t blame you if you never forgive me.”

  Our heads are nearly touching. We’re sitting on the floor, our backs against the sofa. The pink light washes over us. It’s all I can do not to put my hand in his beautiful black curls and say, take me, please take me away from all this and put me somewhere safe.

  But I don’t. I am cool, strong, and independent, and I know that that is what it will take to snare Kieran O’Shea. That’s what has brought him to this point, isn’t it? I helped him pick out a suit today at Arnotts in north Dublin. And I was very sassy the whole time—this works on you, that doesn’t. Try this. Give me that. And then I was burbling about the Guinnesses and Andrew Dempsey and Colm McCullough and my new best friends from the art gallery and my story for the New Yorker. And he kept saying, “My God, girl, you have more friends in Dublin now than I do. Look at you.” And I kept thinking, that’s right, motherfucker, look at me.

  Then we came back here and I modeled my new clothes for him. When he started groaning and came up and wrapped his arms around my waist and started kissing my neck, I pulled away and said, “No, it’s not like that anymore.”

  He backed away and rubbed his hands across his face. “I’m sorry, girl,” he said. “I swear I didn’t come here meaning to do that.”

  I could have screamed at him. What is your problem, I thought. Weren’t those kisses an acknowledgment of what you’ve wanted all along? Why won’t you just admit you’re in love with me?

  Now he’s looking at me slavishly, and I try to stay firm and not melt into a little pool of butter. The look in his eyes fills me up. The admiration feels like oxygen in my lungs after having been trapped underwater.

  “You didn’t abandon me,” I say.

  “Yes, I did,” he says.

  “Okay, you did. You were a first-class asshole.”

  He closes his eyes. “I’m sorry, girl.”

  “I was so vulnerable with you and you were so rough with me.”

  “I know, girl. I’m sorry. You seemed needy and I just had a terrible reaction to it. I couldn’t handle it.”

  “Bad timing,” I say.

  “The worst.”

  He takes my hand. “But look at all you’ve done since then. None of that would have happened if I’d been here for you to lean on. Maybe it was for the best.”

  I think about that night in my tangerine room, and I think, speak for yourself, asshole.

  The hours go by in the hazy pink light. Kieran tells me how they thought his daughter was making progress in a new school but now she’s slid backward, that his other daughter isn’t getting the attention she needs, that every conversation with his ex-wife becomes a screaming battle. He says the guy his ex-wife was seeing is now her new partner, and even though he knows it shouldn’t, it’s killing him. He says he’s felt at times as if he were going out of his mind.

  “I have nothing left, girl,” he says. “Nothing left inside me to give.”

  He’s looking as if he were pleading with me.

  I squeeze his hand, let myself run my fingers through his hair. I tell him I understand. I’m thinking, why couldn’t we have just started here three weeks ago and saved all the suffering? I’m thinking, he’s not totally still in love with his ex-wife, is he?

  Somehow we start talking about Kieran’s school days. He tells me how the priests used to beat the boys silly—that once one of the priests found him where he wasn’t supposed to be and grabbed him by the collar, threw him up against the wall, and threatened to throw him out the window. He tells me how every year the upperclassmen would chase the weakest freshmen through the grounds of the school until they were cornered against the side of a building and then beat the shit out of them. Kieran says this never happened to him but that if it had, he wouldn’t have told. He says if it had happened to him and he had told, his own father would have beat the shit out of him all over again for being a tattletale.

  “You’re hard,” I say. “I didn’t know that about you last year. But I see it now.”

  Kieran looks at me sharply. “It’s different here,” he says.

  And he tells me about his father, and how he always told him he was too “soft,” too “feminine.”

  Then he says, “Jaysus, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I’ve never really talked about this stuff with anyone. Not my ex, not my best friends.” And I think, if I had a dollar . . .

  He wants to take me out for dinner, but I have no intention of leaving the intimacy of the apartment. I serve him a bowl of boiled potatoes and cauliflower with a dollop of curry paste on it. He says, “Are you kidding, girl? This isn’t a dinner. Why don’t you eat, Heather? Hmm, why don’t you eat?”

  I wave him away with my hands.

  Later he says, “Come out with me tonight, girl. Will you? I’m meeting some friends at a pub right around the corner from here.”

  I say, “Well, I’m supposed to go dancing with the ladies from the art gallery. And I told Andrew Dempsey I’d meet him for a drink. So I’m kind of already double booked.”

  Kieran closes his eyes and nods his head, looking solemn. “Okay,” he says. “I understand.” And I think, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

  He asks me three more times and finally I say, “Look, I’ll try to come by your thing. No promises, though.” I pause, let him nod, with his eyes closed, a little boy accepting his punishment. I think, what do you want from this situation, Heather? And I say, “But I tell you what, Kieran. Whether I do or not, let’s meet back here at the end of the night.”

  Kieran’s eyes fly open. His eyes are bright. He peers at me so intently and with such warmth that I think, you fool, you do love me even if you won’t admit it. And then he takes my hands and kisses me on the cheek and says in a near whisper, “Yes, girl. Yes. Let’s do that.”

  When he leaves, after the sweetest, gentlest kiss on the lips, I wait until I hear the elevator doors in the hallway close and then I jump into the air and let out a whoop. I skip around the apartment, my arms raised in the air, fingers in a V, Richard Nixon–style, shouting “Victoire! Victoire! Victoire!”

  Do I need to tell you that I go to Kieran’s thing? Of course. I never had any other intention. I just wanted to see him sweat. When I get there in my new size 25 jeans and the high gray boots, all five three, maybe five four, of me towering along the Dublin streets, I feel as if there are electric currents coursing through my veins instead of blood. My hands are shaking, I’m so excited. I am juiced. I can’t stop talking. Talking, laughing, smiling as if my face would split in two. And Kieran is positively glowing at me. And I think, this time it’s not ecstasy because no one has been doing any ecstasy. I have finally, by being cool, strong, and independent, finally made him love me. It is all over his face. Any jury in the world would convict him of being in love. He introduces me to all of his friends, and even when I’m somewhere else in the pub, I see him watching me and I feel like the force of his gaze is a line drawn through the room between us.

  When the ladies from the art gallery come to pick me up, I say, “Okay, bye, see you later.” All casual, even though my knees are already trembling with the thought that soon I will be in bed with him.

  And do I need to tell you what happens later, when he comes over? It’s around 3 a.m., and yeah, I’m a little
offended that it’s taken him so long to get here, but the minute I open the door, he is kissing me and has scooped me up and is pulling off my pajamas and calling me “beautiful girl” in my ear, and we’re having sex—making love, fucking, whatever you want to call it. Once. Twice. Three times. I cannot get enough of the man. And he cannot get enough of me. In the morning we have more sex. And then we lie together while I read to him from the poetry book I bought, stroking his hair, his head on my chest. He marvels at my intelligence, my beauty. I think, it has all been worth it. It has all been worth it.

  Later

  The pink light is rolling through my apartment. It’s just like last night except tonight I’m alone. Kieran waltzed off back to his real life. No, that’s not fair. He had to pick up his kids. But right before he left, we were walking together, along the river, and he said, “I’m so glad you realized this trip wasn’t about me, girl. You’re like a different person now. So strong. I can’t tell you how relieved I am. I wouldn’t have been able to stand it if you were here for me.” You are so full of shit, I thought. And then, strong? I have pulled myself back from the brink of madness and forced myself to walk along these streets, head held high, with a stamina that has nearly killed me—and that’s what you’re happy about? Fuck you, Kieran O’Shea. Fuck you.

  Except the fury didn’t last more than a second. It was replaced instantly by the feeling that all the energy coursing through my veins for the last twenty-four hours was flooding away.

  He texts: “Goodnight, sweetheart. What an amazing weekend. So cool to be with you, talking, learning, making love. I miss you. Sleep well darling. X”

  It doesn’t matter. I’m still sitting here alone. That is the reality. And next week I go home. And I’m seeing him Thursday because that’s the one day he doesn’t have his kids this whole week and he won’t ask his ex-wife, who, let’s face it, he’s still in love with, to take them even one extra night. And then I won’t see him again. And right now that feels like a relief. I tried. No one can say I didn’t try. I can’t make the man love me. He said it himself, only I didn’t want to hear it. He has nothing to give.

  Saturday, January 12, 2008

  Today, hiking in Glendalough. I think this might have been the highlight of the whole trip. Tenth-century monastery. Through a forest, up a mountain. Hours of trekking across fields of heather up to my knees. The sun beating down, even as a light rain fell. Rainbows on both sides of me. Deer everywhere. Then back down through the forest, under a canopy of trees where even the light seemed green. I walked all day, only stopping to eat an apple I’d brought. Everything under the trees was covered with moss. I had the most wonderful feeling in my chest the whole time as if I could have stretched out my arms and they would have been wide enough to scoop up the whole mountain. Met an elderly lesbian couple who gave me some homemade granola. They said Irish drinking was like American optimism—the national pastime and ultimately self-defeating. They recommended a good sweat lodge nearby.

  Sunday, January 13, 2008

  Out to Celbridge to say good-bye to Marina. Finbar and I sat beside Mick the Sheep Farmer and her as they played chess on an outdoor picnic table. Then I headed back into the city. No big good-byes from Marina. She said, “Oh, you’ll be back.” Finbar gave me an enormous hug against his big belly and said that of all the people his mother insisted on bringing home every minute, I was his favorite so far of 2008. I’m thinking, that’s a pretty small sample size, but I take it as a compliment.

  Colm is on the road. But I don’t care. I haven’t even been pretending to work on my “story” anymore.

  Kieran and I text all day. It’s lovely. It makes my heart sing. But it doesn’t matter. I understand this now. I can’t be who he needs me to be. I just don’t have what it takes to be that cool, strong, and independent. I feel so tired. I will see him again on Thursday and I have no doubt it will be fantastic. And that will be the last bit of juice I will ever attempt to squeeze out of him.

  It’s time to go home. I want to go home. I miss Josh. I feel as if I could wail aloud. I wonder if he will have me back. I don’t know where else to go.

  Monday, January 14, 2008

  Dreamed I was asleep. In the dream, I was lying in the bed I was actually lying in, but someone was in the room with me. I thought, is this a dream? Everything was in scratchy black and white, like an old, wrecked VCR tape. I thought, can I escape by waking up? I clawed at the bedclothes, trying to get up and run away, but it turns out I wasn’t moving at all. I was screaming but it turns out no sound was being emitted. Total terror.

  Woke up with a shout, drenched in sweat. Had to change the bedclothes because they were soaked through to the mattress.

  Spent the afternoon at a coffee shop reading the tabloids. Katy French’s funeral was yesterday. Did she really have to pay such a high price for wanting a life different from the one she’d been born into—for believing that times had changed, that this was her moment to shine? Did she have to die for it?

  Tried to go to bed early but now can’t sleep. The pink lights come in and out of the apartment. I don’t think I’ve seen more than a few hours of sunlight in a day for weeks. I stay up until three or four every morning, wake up at twelve or one, and then the sun goes down at three thirty or four. I feel like I’m getting sick. I want to go home.

  A voice in my head says, You don’t have any home.

  Thursday, January 17, 2008

  Last night

  I go to a dinner party with the Irishwoman from the art gallery. It’s in the basement of a fancy restaurant called the Mermaid Inn. It’s Dublin trying to be New York. Polished concrete floors, exposed brick, and minimally designed tables and chairs. I’m talking to some guy about Katy French and how I never got to Krystle, where Dublin’s nouveau riche dance the night away. This guy says, “You don’t need to see that fancy-schmancy place. Fancy-schmancy places are the same all over the world.” By the end of the night, he was so drunk, I couldn’t even understand what he was saying.

  Sitting next to me is a woman about my age, an investment banker, quite tipsy herself. She says, “I hate to break it to you, but your story is too late. You watch, all these mortgage companies, they’re all going to come crashing down. The party is over.”

  The art gallery owner makes her way around the table at the end of the night, drinking any last drops of wine from all the glasses. Walking home, there are people pissing and puking in corners, wandering, drunkenly, down the middle of the street. I think, I hate it here. It’s too much. I have the sudden sense that things have spun out of control.

  Friday, January 18, 2008

  Last night

  It turned out Kieran’s sister was in town so he couldn’t even see me until 9 p.m. I said, fine, I accidentally doubled booked and had dinner plans anyway. I’ll meet you afterward. Then I sat drinking whiskey at a pub and checking my appearance in the mirror every five minutes until he called and said he was ready for me. I said, great, we’re just finishing dinner, I’ll grab a cab.

  Kieran and I had been on the phone and texting every day, all day long, since I saw him last weekend. When I arrived at his house we sat on his couch with our arms wrapped around each other. “We’ve moved to the next level, haven’t we, sweetheart,” he said. “Last weekend was so special. I missed you so much this week.” Instead of thinking, finally, finally, I thought, it’s too late, it’s too late. Why now?

  So I changed the subject. I told him about a church I visited yesterday. “It was really weird,” I said. “There was this Hebrew dude hanging on a cross. I gotta say, I didn’t like it. I feel really uncomfortable being somewhere that’s got one of my guys nailed to the wall.”

  Kieran could not stop laughing. It’s Josh’s line, but Kieran will never know. I watched him laughing, and I saw the light pouring out of his eyes, and I thought, this man does like me. Whatever happens, he likes me.

  And then I had the best sex I ever had in my life—and that includes all the good sex with Kieran I’v
e already told you about. I don’t even know what to say. I was like one of those people you see in a movie and think, no one acts like that. I was screaming. Literally screaming. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought, where are those sounds coming from? And then I realized they were coming from me. You know how I said I didn’t like the word fucking? Well, I get it now. Because I was fucking him. I mean really, I fucked him. I’ve never done that before to anyone. I was on top and moving myself all around for maximum pleasure, like I couldn’t help it, like pleasure was a magnet and I was a penny. He was dying and touching me everywhere and crying, “You beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, gorgeous woman.” And although technically it was not an orgasm I had—whatever, I’ll take it.

  We were both pouring sweat and panting for like ten minutes after we finished. Kieran looked exhausted. I wondered if I did too. He held me tight. He said, “That’s the kind of sex only people who really know each other can have.” I thought, maybe. But I didn’t say anything back. I fell asleep curled up on his chest. When we woke in the morning, he whispered in my ear, “It’s a dream to open my eyes and have you here.” It occurred to me to panic. But then I thought, what’s the point? I could pepper him with questions—What’s going to happen? Why did this take so long? Will I see you again? What happens after Saturday when I leave? But then I thought, why would I ask those questions when I know the answer? The answer is, nothing. Nothing is what’s going to happen after I leave. Kieran said, “I’m going to be seeing you in New York very soon. I promise you that, girl.” And I thought, no, you’re not. You’re lying. Not that you know you’re lying. I’m sure you mean it entirely—just like you’ve meant every other lovely thing you’ve ever said to me that was a lie.

  Saturday, January 19, 2008

  Last day in Dublin. I leave tomorrow morning.

  I take the DART out to Sandycove to see Joyce’s beach where what’s her name had her famous orgasm. When the train gets to Sandycove, though, I feel so tired, I say, oh fuck Joyce, and keep on going.