by Gemma Whelan
“Excuse me, Ma’am,” Moira interposed with the slightest of bows. “Tea is served on the veranda.” Her accent had the strong country flavor of the region. A Catholic accent.
Mrs. Rawlings nodded. “Very good Moira.” And Moira did another little bow and left.
Mrs. Rawlings turned to her son. “Peter, my dear, would you take Sheila out? We’ll follow directly.”
On the sunny veranda, which overlooked what seemed like acres of rose gardens, a very elegant afternoon tea had been laid out on crisp white linen. There was a warmer for the pot of tea, scones and jam, cucumber sandwiches, strawberries and clotted cream. Peter offered me a seat on a white wrought iron chair with a pale pink cushion. Ashes of roses to complement the garden.
“I’m glad Moira came in, in the middle of that discussion.” He plunked down beside me. “They can never remember where they met!”
“But it’s a safe bet that it wasn’t at an Irish country dance!”
“I very much doubt it! I think their dancing was confined exclusively to the yacht and golf clubs.” He glanced around to see if anyone was coming and then stole a quick kiss.
“Peter!” I was terrified. “They’ll come out!”
Peter just laughed. “I’m glad I went to that Irish country dance.” He kissed me again quickly. “Of course, I could have met you at Trinity—but I would have had to wait a whole year.”
“I haven’t been accepted yet.” I reminded him. “I mightn’t get in.”
“Of course you’ll get in.” Peter declared confidently. “This time next year you’ll receive your offer, and you’ll set off for Dublin, and a few months later you’ll be a prominent member of the Literary Society. By the time you graduate and we get married . . . ”
“Shh! Peter—for God’s sake, they’ll hear you!”
Peter consented to lower his voice to a whisper. “All right. We don’t want to give them a heart attack yet!”
“We’ll wait ‘til you’re a prominent physician and can handle such medical emergencies!” I said sotto voce, and we both laughed.
Peter plucked two red ripe strawberries from the table spread, plopped one in my mouth and another in his own.
“This would be a nice place for you to write, wouldn’t it?”
I looked around at the grounds, the rambling roses, the labyrinthine pathways.
“Perfect! Absolute heaven!” We kissed. Long and slow and sweet like honey. Heaven.
CHAPTER SIX
WOUNDEDNESS
“I learn by going where I have to go.”
THEODORE ROETHKE
By late afternoon the following day, Fiona was still enfolded in her Kelly green velour bathrobe. Her breakfast and lunch dishes were stacked up in the sink—the cereal bowl with its traces of Cheerios and milk, plates with crumbs from bread and scones, the coffee pot which had been put into service several times since morning, several rows of mismatched mugs. An empty Chinese takeout carton with a happy Buddha face sat across from her on the kitchen counter, and the smiling face made her even more despondent. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the answering machine blink. Blink, blink, blink, blink, blink. Her computer screen radiated blankness in blinding white, and the thrum was deafening in the silence of her defeat.
She was hardly aware of her movement along the street and vaguely registered the muggy day. Her book bag was empty. Her bloodshot eyes were shielded by the dark shades and wide-brimmed straw hat as she ducked down into the subway on her way to Pam. She registered only shapes and colors—large and small, gray and black and some bright splashes of red and blue and yellow. She caught glimpses of the edges of newspapers and books and fingers and heard voices and grunts and the whirring sound of the train, the whish when the doors opened and the sucking in when they closed. She blindly found her way to Pam and mounted the stairs.
Pam looked brisk and fresh as ever in a crisp, red, sleeveless summer dress, and this only served to further Fiona’s feeling of wretchedness.
“Nothing—not even a glimmer?” Pam busied herself watering the plants as she glanced over at the defeated Fiona.
“I might as well be paralyzed—I’m frozen up.” Fiona slumped even further into her chair. The effort to keep her body erect felt super-human. “I’m sorry.”
“I can explain about your father and Ireland—I’m sure they’ll understand.”
“God! First decent chance, and I ruin it—for both of us.” Her self recrimination stirred her.
“Give yourself a break girl! Your Dad just died—it’ll take a while for you to get back in your stride.”
“He always wanted to be a writer, Pam. Imagine!” Fiona was more alert now, fueled by her profound sense of failure. “And I never knew that. I don’t know much, do I?”
Pam finished her watering and poured two fresh mugs of coffee. She fixed her own cream and sugar, sat herself down and slid a mug of black coffee across the desk towards Fiona. They sat in silence for a while, the hum and occasional roar of city traffic playing in the background. Then Pam broke the silence, gently, with caution.
“Fiona, I don’t want to push—but this might be the perfect time for you to think about the film.”
Fiona slowly started to spin her mug in a circle.
“It seems pretty certain it’ll be a go.” Pam went on. “There are a few script hurdles they want to tackle, but there wouldn’t be any pressure on you to write—I get the impression he wants your expertise, a sort of cultural attaché.”
Fiona slammed down the mug with unintentional ferocity.
“Why would I want to delve back into that whole mess again?” She looked Pam straight in the eye, accusatory, and the remaining color drained from her face. “I had no idea . . . You led me to believe . . . ”
“What?”
“That it was a good source of income, the option money. That the film would never really get made.”
“What I probably said was that the odds were against it—I didn’t want you to have false hope.”
“I was sure it’d never happen—it was, I don’t know—a Hollywood thing.”
“But you must have realized that it was a possibility.”
“No. I’m telling you I didn’t. I honestly didn’t. I . . . can’t do it.” Fiona shot up again, agitated, unsure where to turn.
After a long moment, Pam’s voice cut through the silence. “Fiona, sit down, please.”
Fiona was struck by the firmness, the business edge. She turned and sat back down.
“Fiona,” Pam took a deep breath. “This is hard for me, I’m your friend as well as your agent. But I’m putting on my agent cap here.”
Fiona took a punishing mouthful of bitter coffee.
“I can deal with the New Yorker. It’s a big let-down, but they will understand your bereavement. However, we can’t let this film deal slip away. Not if you want to continue as a writer, or at least . . . working with me.”
Fiona stared at her, trying to take this in.
“It’s been over two years since Eye of the Storm was published. I’ve been placating the publisher, but they want to take the book out of print.
“Because of sales?” Fiona hardly recognized her own voice it was so shaky.
“Yes, as you know they’ve reached a plateau.”
“And they want to know where novel number two is.” Her voice was dead.
Pam nodded. “They really believe in you, Fiona, as do I. But honestly, that second novel is crucial . . . I tried to spare you this. I thought maybe the New Yorker story could get us over the proverbial hump . . . ”
Pam’s soothing voice continued.
“This film is your chance. Sean Collins really wants you working on it. The publisher would be thrilled with that, and I’m sure they’d give us a reprieve . . . ”
Fiona flashed on her last few days and the failed effort to write. She knew she was hugely stuck. And on top of that she was in danger of losing Pam, and no other agent would have the patience to take her on. She felt like a
deer caught in headlights. Frozen, panicked. All of the memories from the past week came crashing down on her, and she felt that she would go mad if she had to revisit that territory in depth with the filmmaker. She shot up and spilled her coffee. She grabbed her bag and started towards the door. Pam sprung up and bounded round the desk to face her. “Where are you going?”
Fiona turned away not wanting Pam to see that she was on the brink of tears.
Pam reached out and touched her shoulder. “Please don’t leave like this.”
Fiona brushed off her hand and swallowed before trusting herself to speak. Her voice came out low and husky. “I can’t do it, Pam.” She was out the door and gone. Pam let out a deep sigh and slumped back into her chair.
The onslaught of street sounds assaulted Fiona as she ejected herself into the bright daylight from Pam’s office. A group of bronzed Italian men holding Styrofoam cups of espresso, engaged in a heated, fast-paced, discussion in heavily accented Brooklyn-ese. An old Armenian woman with a multicolored shawl thrown round her shoulders sold vibrant scarves and shawls from her street-side stand. Two Asian business men in almost identical navy suits and striped ties were deep in discussion of a business transaction. Fiona registered the rhythms and cadences of the sounds. Sirens roared, horns honked, brakes screeched and ghetto blasters blared out pounding rhythms as they echoed her mounting terror.
As Fiona approached her apartment, the sky darkened, and she looked up quizzically at the gathering storm clouds. Once inside, she turned on the radio to get the weather report, and the somber and mysterious opening of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” with bassoons, horns and clarinet swelled to fill the space. The fragmentary music suggested dark gropings and crawling life, and Fiona stealthily began to circle, like a cat when a storm is impending. She could not be still. She was afraid to stay in one spot. Her entire career was in jeopardy, and she felt as if she were losing her mind. She turned up the volume on the radio, but she knew what it would say. Unseasonable storm; barometric pressure rapidly dropping. She continued to circle as the horns intruded on the repeated string cords and the wood-wind shrieked. A lightning flash blazed by her window and she counted the seconds, a haon, a dó, a trí, a ceathair . . . until a violent thunderclap rent the air. Powerful beats from the drums, then from the whole orchestra, a break in the pattern of the music as if some mighty convulsion of nature was taking place. The rain burst through the storm clouds in blinding sheets and smashed the city pavements. Fiona caught a glimpse of Orla’s doll out of the corner of her eye—the same doll of their mother that Fiona had made for her little sister, and that seemed to taunt her in that bygone storm. She picked up speed. Thunder continued to roll, and a volley of hailstones pelted the tiled roof as the symphony gained in intensity. She pumped the volume up even higher as she tried to drown out nature’s sounds and the mounting explosion inside her head. She grew more and more agitated. She circled with increasing speed like an animal trapped in a cage, her terror magnifying as the storm raged and the music waxed. She worked herself into a mad craze and then set to attacking the shelves as she swept all the books and papers to the floor. The music became increasingly frenzied, with rushing scale passages from the strings, but even Stravinsky, with all his passionate potency could not obliterate the sounds of the mounting storm. Fiona pushed and pulled and flung ferociously, the music pulsated with its bizarre forcefulness, she slashed out in every direction, and the drums and orchestra pounded out their threatening arrhythmic beat. Fiona thought she must be going mad, she experienced the storm inside, outside and all around her. She felt that both the symphony and the storm were playing themselves out in her head. She had lost any sense of boundaries, of safety, of protection. She disgorged a terrifying scream as she launched a final violent attack on all the papers and notes on her desk—her failed inspiration—as nature outside and the symphony inside responded with spasmodic fervor. The combination of sights, sounds and shapes, both internal and external, finally threw her into overload, and she wrenched the radio plug from its socket, grabbed a blanket, slung it over her and collapsed in a crouch into a dark corner. Folded up. Spent.
Her sleep was black. She did not dream.
Awakened by the dawn light, Fiona found herself wrapped in the blanket, her books strewn all over, her apartment a shambles. It looked, for all the world, like the aftermath of a bomb blast. She lay there for a time without moving and stared in horror at the destruction she had wrought. Then slowly, painstakingly, she extricated herself from her blanket and cautiously stretched her aching limbs. She dragged herself into the little kitchen, located her kettle and filled it with water. She lit the gas stove and watched the flame lick the bottom of the kettle and heard the hiss as it found a globule of water. She tore her eyes away from the mesmeric flame and found her tea caddy and her mug and her mother’s embroidered tea cozy. Then she returned her gaze to the flame until the water screamed to be let out, and she made herself a good strong pot of Earl Grey. She left it to brew in its warm jacket as she traversed the living room, climbed into her favorite old armchair and curled up in a ball.
As she inhaled the aroma of the bergamot, Fiona remembered inscriptions she had read on tea bags about the quiet precious moments spent calmly sipping magical tea. She tried to regain her composure. She could do with a magic formula right now to stop the throbbing inside her temple. She crossed to her answering machine and pressed replay. “Ms. Clarke, this is Sean Collins. Your agent, Pamela Long, may have mentioned I was in town. I’m the director who optioned your novel for a movie . . . ” She stopped the machine. As she poured the milk into the bottom of her cup and then the hot tea through the strainer, her right hand shook so violently that she had to brace it to prevent the boiling infusion from scalding her. Time slowed down. She watched the golden tea as it metamorphosed into a creamy brown as it blended with the milk in the cup below. She listened to the crunch of sugar as she slowly stirred until one by one each of the grains had dissolved. She pressed the message button again. “ . . . I’m the director who optioned your novel for a movie about eighteen months ago. I’m in New York until Sunday and would love to meet with you, if possible . . . ” The voice calmed her. She cradled her sweet, comforting drink and carried it carefully back to her chair.
Fiona reached into the wicker basket behind her and pulled out a doll. It was a doll in the making, an off-white color, fashioned from heavy cotton fabric. As of yet, this one had no identity. She had made the generic body and left it there until such time as she decided to make it into a recognizable entity. There were a few other shapes of varying dimensions in the casket along with cloth, thread, ribbons, buttons and the accoutrément of doll making. Fiona pulled these out on to the rug along with her sewing box. Unconsciously, her fingers worked as they turned the shape over and up and down and sifted through the bits and pieces of fabric on the floor and in the basket. Was she going to make a doll in the likeness of her father? She knew she had remnants of one of his old tweed suits in here—a few squares that Mam had given her for her collection. And an old tie. But she wasn’t ready yet to create a likeness.
As she sipped and sewed, Fiona could see the shambles in her peripheral vision. She had had a mad fit, no doubt about it. She had gone berserk. Had lost her head and lost control of her hands and body. She had felt propelled to destroy her safety net, her books, her work, her cocoon. She felt as if she were being visited by spirits from her past, ghosts of the memories she had tried to ignore. They were coming back to her in the present and invading her psyche and making it impossible for her to continue with her normal and creative life. It had started in Ireland, back in her family home. She felt them in the bedroom, in the portraits, in the house itself, but also outside and most especially in the hideout. Then they had followed her back to America where she thought she was at a safe remove. They began to inhabit her work, putting her entire career in jeopardy and taking away her ability to create her own stories.
Fiona luxuriated in the sho
wer to the sounds of Pam puttering about, trying to restore some semblance of order to her shambles of a studio. She had practically forced Fiona into the shower and ordered her to take a long time. As she soaped and shampooed and allowed the warm water to caress her, Fiona realized that she knew when she rang Pam she would be there for her. Looking back, Fiona wondered if she herself had put limits on the friendship. When Fiona was dating Phil, Pam once suggested that they go on a double date with her beau at the time, a six-foot six Sicilian sculptor named Umberto. It hadn’t come to pass and Fiona couldn’t remember why. Maybe she had felt private about her relationship with Phil and not ready to open it up. Pam didn’t ask again after that. For the past eighteen months, Pam had been dating Sammy, and they were now living together. Fiona had met him on a couple of occasions at the office, and the three of them had gone out for a glass of wine from time to time. He was a slim, handsome, bright-faced man who seemed like a good match for Pam—intelligent, energetic and enthusiastic. His parents were immigrants from Hong Kong and, once they had gotten over the initial disappointment that Pam wasn’t Asian, seemed to have embraced her wholeheartedly. The romance was going well.
When Fiona emerged from the bathroom, glistening from her shower, Pam had undone much of the damage. Fiona folded the caressing robe around her still fragile body and curled up in her chair as Pam poured them tea and sat down.
“You’re sure you don’t need a doctor?”
Fiona shook her head.
“What’s with the new doll? Is it you?”
Fiona stared at the doll-in-the-making and realized with a flash of horror that it did resemble her.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“I’ve never made a doll of a living person before—unless it was someone I knew was lost to me.”
“Well, you are very much alive so don’t worry about it! Maybe that’s an old you.”
“You’re so practical, Pam!” Fiona couldn’t help laughing. “Maybe you’re right.”