Fiona

  “Hi. Made it.” Fiona greeted her.

  Pam gave her a mischievous smile. “Barely!” She teased. “You look shattered. Up all night?”

  “As usual. Well, worse than usual.” Fiona admitted.

  Pam gave her a quick, strong hug as she whispered in her ear, “I’m so sorry, Fiona, about your Dad.” Fiona nodded thanks and swallowed the lump in her throat.

  “Coffee?”

  “Sure, I’ll get it.”

  While Pam resumed her search, Fiona headed over to the coffee area where a fresh pot was percolating.

  “The sooner you become a full time writer, the better.” Pam had put down her pen and looked over at her. “You’ll get some sleep, and we’ll both be rich!”

  Fiona laughed as she poured the two mugs, putting cream and one sugar in Pam’s. “Don’t hold your breath.” She handed Pam her mug and plunked into a chair opposite her desk. Pam searched through her papers as she imbibed a mouthful of creamy coffee.

  “Ah. Here we are.” She pulled out a sheet with handwritten notes. “This won’t make you rich, exactly . . . but . . . it’s a start.”

  “What?” Fiona asked, searching for a clue in her face. “What, Pam?”

  Pam pulled herself up to her full height of five feet nine and a half inches and expanded her chest. She breathed in deeply and spoke on the exhale. “I just got a New Yorker assignment,” she announced, “and it’s tailor-made for you. They want an Irish story.”

  “The New Yorker. Oh, Pam!”

  Pam laughed, a sparkling, joyous laugh. “Isn’t it great?”

  Fiona had a moment of panic. “Oh, my God. Pam. What’ll I do?”

  Pam laughed. “What do you mean? You’ll write it of course.”

  “But, I . . . ”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to do it if I didn’t . . . ”

  “I don’t want to let you down.” Fiona finished.

  “ . . . if I didn’t know you could.”

  “And Irish,” Fiona went on. “I don’t know.”

  Pam laughed again. “You’re too much, girl! You are Irish. You’ve already written an Irish novel.”

  “That sold all of a few thousand copies.” Fiona reminded her.

  “It’s a start; it was decent enough for a first novel.” And, you’ve got yourself a movie deal . . . that gives you a certain cachet, baby!”

  Fiona laughed. “Isn’t that amazing, too? Do you think it will actually happen? Maybe that guy is some relation using an assumed name who thinks he’s been maligned in the novel and is trying to get back at me! Sean Collins—Irish name. Why not pick something successful or big or something?”

  “I’m sure he sees the potential. And of course he’d be even happier if you’d work with him on the script.”

  Fiona got up abruptly and started to pace. “You’ve talked to him?

  “Yesterday. He said he called you but hadn’t heard back.”

  “You know me and the telephone. I probably wouldn’t even own one if it weren’t for your endless nagging!”

  Pam laughed. This was a teasing game between them. Pam as the Wicked Witch of the West—or East, forcing the little Irish girl to face up to the big bad technology, to remember that she was living in the nineteen nineties, the last decade of the twentieth century.

  “But you did have a phone as a child?” Pam queried.

  “No . . . well, not as a young child because we lived in the country, and you waited for years for a line. Then, we got one when I was . . . ” Fiona tried to remember but couldn’t pinpoint it. “I forget. About eight or nine, maybe? But anyway, to get back to the subject at hand, I’ve had no time to make calls since getting back from Ireland. I’ve been working away furiously on these reviews.”

  Pam looked surprised. “But I thought it was almost finished when you left. You said you were nearly done.”

  Fiona plunked her coffee cup onto the desk, collapsed back down into her chair and leaned towards Pam.

  “That’s the trouble—I was. It was. But when I got back, I don’t know, I just couldn’t settle, couldn’t . . . ” She struggled with how she could possibly explain to Pam. Would she sound crazy? Maybe Declan was right and she was a bit odd and would end up in the proverbial garret.

  “Fiona.” She heard Pam as if she were at one end of a long tunnel, her voice rich and soothing. “Your Dad just passed away; it’s been very traumatic. Hmm—maybe this film assignment really would be good for you right now. A complete break.”

  This pushed a panic button in Fiona, and she leapt up again, agitated.

  “I don’t see what I could contribute. I mean, I know nothing about that medium, that world, and . . . I need to keep writing.” The thought of not being able to write terrified her.

  “You look flushed, girl. Do you have a temperature?”

  Fiona realized that she was fiddling with the dead leaves on the climbing ivy.

  She took a deep breath, plucked off two faded leaves and let them fall into the waste-paper basket. “Don’t mind me. It’s that old fear of distraction, you know.”

  Pam leaned back in her chair, observing Fiona.

  “You know, you’re the only person I know that doesn’t jump out of her skin at the prospect of working on a film—not to mention an adaptation of your own novel—but hey, zip!” Pam glided her thumb and index finger across her closed lips in the gesture of zipping them up and continued to talk through closed mouth. “My lips are sealed.” She repeated the gesture and continued through pursed lips. “I promise I won’t bring it up again—for at least another week!”

  Fiona burst out laughing. “Thanks a lot! You’re such a clown! Anyway, maybe this New Yorker story will be it, the big breakthrough.” She started to do a little improvised dance around the room and executed a graceful pirouette. “Can you imagine Pam? Just being able to write all day? Heaven!”

  Pam reclined languorously in her chair and stretched out her arms, her intertwined hands supporting the back of her neck. “Yeah! Raking in the bucks. French Riviera, Caribbean, Ocean Cruises.”

  “You can have your ocean cruises—dinner at the Captain’s table? I just want to be solvent and to write like a dream!”

  Pam guffawed. “Fiona, you’re such an old Puritan—for a Catholic that is! What? No vacations? Nights on the town?”

  Fiona continued her swirling and twisted her body in a graceful curve in imitation of a South Seas dance. “Oh, maybe some exotic locales to stimulate the muse. Tahiti . . . my laptop (if I had one) at the beach house, a few painting lessons.” She stopped her dance abruptly and swung to face Pam.

  “Pam. What if I mess it up?”

  “Fiona, it’s right up your alley. You could write this story in your sleep, and you know it.”

  No, Fiona didn’t know it. But she did know that she had to write, so she would tackle this. She summoned a bolt of energy, flung the doubts from her mind and catapulted herself into the chair opposite Pam, straightened her shoulders, and got down to business.

  “Okay. Let’s go over it. What do they want, and how long do I have?”

  EYE OF THE STORM

  Excerpt from a novel by Fiona Clarke

  I was beginning to deeply regret having begged Mam and Dad to let me come to this stupid dance. Here I was, like a wallflower, holding up a pillar on the sidelines. I thought my dress was all right until I walked in the door and saw all the other girls had minis creeping up to their bottoms. I had already been asked to dance by a few right eejits. I couldn’t believe the first fellow actually said, “Do ya come here often?” And another one kept pulling me into him during a slow dance and I kept pushing him back—felt more like a wrestling match, for God’s sake! If no one asked me again by the next number, I had decided to ring Dad and ask him to pick me up. If I left it go too long, he’d be in bed, and I’d have to stick it out and wait for a lift from someone else. It was at this point of desperation that I saw Peter Rawlings walking in my direction.

  Peter stood out from everyone else by dint
of his confident bearing. His tailoring was several cuts above the others, too, simple, yet elegant.

  “Would you like to dance?” he asked, in his lovely precise manner.

  I had a monstrous attack of shyness. “I can’t really dance very well.” Stupid thing to say, Sheila!

  “Neither can I,” he said with a confidence that belied his words. “But we can give it a try?”

  I swear I felt a jolt of electricity when he took my hand. It was a fast dance, and in disco you could do what you felt like, really. We did as well as anybody else. I couldn’t, for the life of me, focus on the song or the words, so just tried to keep moving and, every once in a while, sneaked a look at Peter. Sure, I knew who he was, of course, and he would have known who I was, by family anyway. The Rawlings were Protestants and lived on a big estate on the opposite side of the village from our farm. One of only three Protestant families in the neighborhood.

  He asked me to stay on for the next dance. It was a slow one, and the lights were lowered in the hall. Peter held me gently but firmly in his arms. I could feel the imprint of his hand against the small of my back and the crispness of his light blue shirt when my chin brushed his shoulder. He was actually a great dancer—I knew he would be. I felt like I was floating, my feet barely skimming across the wooden boards. The nice thing about a slow dance was that you could talk, and Peter and I certainly did.

  “You’re at St. Killian’s boarding school, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, and you? You’re at boarding school, too?”

  “I went to Kilabban. Just finished up my Leaving and waiting for results.”

  Kilabban was a very good boys’ boarding school in a town fifteen miles away.

  “I’m hoping for Trinity,” he continued. “I want to study medicine. I think I have the marks.”

  He was quietly confident, not boastful. We Catholics are always apologizing for ourselves, find it impossible to think or say we’re good at something.

  “What about you?” Peter asked.

  “I’ve one more year to go—going into Sixth. But I want to go to Trinity, too. If I get the honors. I need honors in Latin and also in English, as I think that’s what I’m applying for. My Science teachers want me to go for Biology!”

  Peter laughed. “An ‘All-rounder’! You should do what you want, though. I remember now that you won several national writing competitions.”

  Well, that threw me for a loop.

  “Read it in the Nationalist. I read the paper cover to cover. You don’t see Ballyduff showing up much, so it stuck in my mind—local fame!”

  I blushed to the gills. “It’s just a bit of a shock. I’m surprised my parents didn’t mention it. Or maybe they’re afraid it will strengthen my resolve to be a writer if they draw attention to it!”

  “They don’t approve? Surely, it’s a very honorable profession in this country of ours? You might put this place on the map. The latest literary prodigy from the environs of the village of Ballyduff!”

  This made me laugh. “It’s not very practical, though. They don’t see it as a solid anything. How do you get a job as a writer? I don’t want you to think they’re ogres or anything, ‘cause they’re not. Just worried, I suppose, concerned.”

  “Most parents around here are like that, Sheila. They mean well. I know from talking to the chaps at school. Though I suppose there are different pressures on girls than on boys.”

  “There’s a double standard. But boys are expected to get a good job so they can support their families, and girls are supposed to just be able to work until they get married and have children. All expectations heaped on them from outside. They don’t think that maybe we want to do things differently from them.”

  “That’s true.” Peter mused. “I think my parents expected me to be a doctor or a lawyer. It’s lucky for me that I passionately want to be a doctor, so I didn’t have to get into any fights!”

  When it was clear that neither of us had any intention of dancing with anyone else for the rest of the night, the gossip began. Mostly, it was obvious by dint of looks and gestures, but I picked up snippets of conversations that made me wish the ground would open up and swallow me. Peter and I chatted away, never for a minute stuck for something to say. On the last dance, a very romantic piece, “Je t’aime,” I distinctly heard the unstoppable Nora Green whisper, “I wonder what it’s like to kiss a Protestant? Do you think it’s a sin?” My heart was beating to the mounting rhythm of the song, the French words adding to the charm, and I was sure he must be able to hear my heart beating. It didn’t bother me at all though, because I could hear his, too.

  Peter drove me home in his dark green Ford, not a new or fancy model, but nice. We parked outside the gate leading into our front yard. The car had one long front seat, so it was easy for Peter to slide over and put his arm around me. We talked a bit, which only prolonged the delicious anticipation. The talk got quieter. There were more pauses, and then Peter moved towards me. Our lips met and tasted and savored and grew hungrier and tasted again, and we shifted our bodies closer and I could feel the tips of my breasts brush against his chest and the pounding of his heart. Then his lips were on my neck and cheeks and the tip of my ear, and he explored the outline of my face with his fingertips as if he were blind and trying to memorize my features. I looked into his hazel eyes and circled his beautiful lips with my fingertip, outlining the place I would kiss again and again.

  When I closed the front door behind me that night and slipped off my shoes, I stifled the impulse to burst into song. It would have been opera, if I had been able to sing (which I can’t for the life of me.) But it was one o’clock in the morning, so I decided it wasn’t a great idea and shimmered up the stairs feeling not in the least bit constrained by gravity, imagining the whole summer spread out before me like a glorious gift.

  Our lovely romance was not to last.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  UNFORGETTABLE

  “What we play is life.”

  LOUIS ARMSTRONG

  The wind tangled her copper hair and pried it loose from its carefully constructed knot as Fiona stood on the outer deck of the Staten Island ferry and watched the Statue of Liberty draw closer. She was hoping for inspiration, trying to clear her brain and generate some ideas for her new writing assignment. She thought of the millions of Irish ancestors who must have held out hopes of freedom and a decent living as they came to these shores on rotting ships—the lucky ones who survived the crossing. They fled from famine, from corpses piled up by the roadside, from cartloads of dead trucked to the mass graves while the fields were fat with grain destined for the absentee landlords living high on the hog in London. The black potato rotted in the soil, and the Irish starved to death in their native land amidst bounty.

  Fiona didn’t leave under such bleak circumstances. She didn’t flee from poverty or political oppression, just from its legacy—the ingrained fear of failure, the smallness, the tightness, the walls closing in, the not being good enough, the birthright of the colonized. America was big and vast, a place you could lose yourself in, a place where you could become someone. A place where you could be free.

  Fiona recalled her successes. Getting her first story published, then the collection. The long wait before getting an agent. The novel. Some individual short stories and many reviews and articles. It was a dream come true—to write for a living. Even if she couldn’t fully support herself from it yet. Or did she write for her life? Fiona knew that she was most alive while writing, most comfortable packed away alone, weaving her words. It was a private existence, and she depended on it to go on.

  In the haze of the horizon, viewed from the ferry, she saw the figures floating. A bent woman in dark wool cape and long skirt. A man in tweeds and Donegal cap with a blackthorn stick. Two small children, a boy and a girl, wide-eyed, clasping hands. The wind brought a wisp of Irish air and a hint of a sweet bygone melody. As Fiona gazed, wondering who they might be, reaching back to see if they had ever lived in her memory,
she felt the salt tears biting her cheek and forming a tiny rivulet in the corners of her mouth. A sadness for something lost, or something yearned for. Then the figures faded.

  She looked around to see if anyone noticed her, but the passengers were all involved in their own worlds. Children looked over the sides at the water or begged their parents for ice-cream. People read newspapers or paperback romances. Friends chattered. Tourists pointed. She glanced back at the misty horizon, then turned to the food-vendor and ordered a hot dog with everything. She didn’t really like hot dogs and found it funny that something that tasted as strange and bitter as sauerkraut could be called relish. But maybe, just maybe, it would make her feel more American.

  Fiona spent the rest of the afternoon in a darkened movie theatre watching Fellini’s 8 ½. Almost alone in the blackened space, she followed the procession of people across the screen and entered into the dreams of the filmmaker. He, too, was examining his life, unsure of where to go next— revisiting, creating fantasy scenarios, blending the fantasy and reality so that the dividing lines between them were blurred, creating a dream world. Maybe she could hold on to the dream until she got home, and it would inspire and ease her into the flow of her own writing.

  Fiona finished the Chinese takeout and poured herself a glass of robust Burgundy in her favorite big-bowled glass. She breathed in the oak scented bouquet and took a sip, enjoying the dry tingle on her tongue and the gentle heady rush. She felt relaxed and mellow, full of impressions of the ferry and Fellini, as she moved over to her workspace. She had been building up to this moment all day, giving herself a breather, creating a space where she could write away to her heart’s content as in the past. She pulled out her chair and sat down and stood up again. She would put on some music first. Hold the spell. Billie Holiday, played softly, would help.

  Fiona sat herself down at the computer. She cradled the chalice-like glass in the palm of her hand, breathed in and savored, took a sip and laid down the glass.