The Marriage Bed

by Regina McBride

  Manus dreamt dreams of immensity, I thought, and for a moment I experienced the exhilaration of such an idea: to create at the scale of nature.

  I heard footsteps from a distant corridor and my heart beat with anticipation, knowing somehow it was Manus who was coming. I closed the notebook, and while the footsteps got closer, my attention was drawn by two illustrations that hung framed on the wall to the left of his bed. The first depicted two crowned figures, regally dressed, one male and one female, the man standing on the sun, the woman on the moon, each reaching to the other, fingers about to touch, a carnal tension between them.

  I continued to study the image as the door creaked open. Without turning I felt him come into the room. In a moment he was standing close behind me.

  “I found these etchings at an open-air market in Dublin. They reminded me of things my father had.”

  I read the words below the image: “The first meeting of Sol and Luna.”

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “The moon and the sun; female and male. Two opposing principles that are attracted to each other.” A warmth issued forth from his presence.

  I moved to the other picture and studied it: a woman in a long gown standing on her toes on the earth and reaching her arms up, caught in an embrace with a winged god who was leaning down to her mid-flight. The caption read: “Mercury links the infernal world of Hades with the upper Olympian world.”

  “Is the woman supposed to be the infernal world?” I asked.

  “Yes. Woman is the earth.”

  “I thought she was the moon.”

  “She is both, just as a man is the sun and is also air.” Manus stood so close that I could feel his breath through my veil. “He is creative and she is receptive.”

  He touched my back near my waist, a tremendous energetic heat moving from his fingers into my skin, infusing me so I shivered.

  “Mercury is the god of the alchemists,” he said. “The bearer of great transformative power.”

  He drew my veil aside. I closed my eyes and took in my breath at the pressure of his lips on my neck.

  When we heard the clatter of horses outside, he broke from me and went to the window.

  “Damn it!” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “My aunts. My mother’s sisters.”

  “You don’t want to see them?”

  “I never want to see them,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Damn them,” he muttered without answering me, then led me back to the door of my room. Unnerved and distracted, he went from me down to greet them.

  An hour later, in a green drawing room hung with tapestries, Mrs. O’Breen introduced her sisters to me. Both looked older than she did, the taller one wrinkling her chin into a smile and nodding at me. The iris of one of her eyes was a duller blue than the other, clouded and gazing off to the right and above my shoulder.

  “This is Moyna Furey, my oldest sister. And this,” Mrs. O’Breen said, extending her hand toward a plumper, shorter woman with a scrutinizing gaze, “is Ethna Furey O’Dowd.”

  “Good to meet you, Deirdre,” they both said, almost in unison.

  A door was open onto a veranda and the sea air wafted into the room, causing the unlit crystal chandelier to sway and chime above us. Both aunts wore dark clothes roughly cut and no jewelry. Moyna Furey had a long, gray braid, which she kept draped over one shoulder and constantly toyed with. Ethna Furey O’Dowd kept hers bound in a knot at the back of her neck.

  I nodded to each and smiled, settling myself into the chair Ethna directed me to take. There was a radiance about Mrs. O’Breen, her eyes brilliant with some excitement she seemed hardly able to contain. She wore a blue satin dress, low cut, and an opulent necklace with icy diamonds and loops of delicate silver chain, which set off the whiteness of her flesh.

  “Manus, why don’t you tell everyone,” she said breathily.

  Manus looked hesitantly at his two aunts, then at his sister.

  “Go on!” she cried, rising slightly in her chair.

  Manus colored faintly and shook his head.

  “He was chosen the most promising young architect of his class and has been offered an apprenticeship with Duncan Brady, the most influential master builder in Dublin.”

  Both aunts uttered congratulations, Moyna, the tall nervous one, nodding and smiling as she looked at him.

  Manus did not respond to them. His eyes flashed to mine and then away. Bairbre gazed with diminished energy toward the open door.

  “And,” Mrs. O’Breen went on, “I’ve just received word from my solicitor that he’s been able to acquire a house for Manus on Merrion Square, on one of the loveliest blocks in Dublin. It’s very close to the National Gallery. Manus will receive a key to Merrion park, a beautiful little green oasis in the heart of the city.”

  The more she went on, the stiller Manus grew until there seemed to be no animation in him at all. It was as if he had evacuated the room, and I entertained a strange thought that there might be two of him; that he had a twin. How could the lithe, energetic boy who had kissed my neck upstairs have transformed into this cool, maudlin-looking man? I took the strange notion further, imagining that my Beloved was somewhere else, in some dark room locked away. I grieved his absence with a palpitating intensity and a helplessness.

  Mrs. O’Breen chattered about Dublin, the shops on Grafton Street and an oriental cafe on Westmoreland Street, Trinity College and the Book of Kells. I was struck that Ethna and Moyna were addressed by their first names, though they called Mrs. O’Breen “Madam.” However, they behaved with no deference to her. In fact, she exhibited a slight subservience to them, overanimated in a way I had never seen her. Both sisters watched her, and she kept shooting glances at them as if to read her effect upon them.

  Bairbre nodded as if listening attentively every time her mother looked at her.

  Mrs. O’Breen stopped to catch her breath, her chest rising and falling, and a few moments of silence held the room. She leaned suddenly forward, her necklace set ashiver by her exuberance. “My son is a man with a brilliant future ahead of him!” she said. I saw gooseflesh on her cleavage, minuscule blonde hairs standing on end. In her heightened state, she exuded heat, and I became uncomfortably aware of the sharp odor of her sweat.

  I fixed my eyes on the grand tapestry hanging on the wall behind her: a forest with faces peeking through the branches, and just to the right of her shoulder, a fountain and words embroidered in Baroque-looking script above the circulating water. The threads were askew around one of the words so it appeared to read: I am the water of life, “poisonous” and blue.

  It could not really say poisonous, I told myself. I could not have been reading it correctly.

  A serving woman came in and poured tea, then circulated through the room with a dish of sweets. Moyna Furey laughed and said, “Take some, Deirdre. We call these penny dreadfuls. When he was small, this was Manus’s favorite sweet.”

  Manus stared vacantly at the plate he held as he chewed the small cake.

  I kept looking distractedly at the tapestry. The word must be precious I told myself, but the broken threads perfectly formed the word poisonous.

  That night I crept down the stairs and, following the sound of voices, saw Manus and his mother sitting in a rose-colored light in a corner of the front parlor. From the perspective I had where I hid behind the partitioning wall, I could see only the two aunts’ shadows which, because of the position of the lamps, were elongated, moving and shifting upon the wall.

  Manus looked more present, though pensive, hanging his head.

  Mrs. O’Breen took a drink from her glass, relishing its effect as she swallowed and said, “She’s got children in her.”

  “I can see them,” one of the shadows said in agreement.

  “Lots of male children, like little lights orbiting her,” the higher-pitched, more excitable voice joined in.

  Manus remained quiet.

  “What is y
our hesitation?” Mrs. O’Breen asked. “Is it because she’s poor? That doesn’t matter.”

  When he did not answer, one of the shadow voices asked, “Don’t you like her?”

  “It’s the opposite,” Manus said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I would rather marry a woman I have no feelings for.”

  “Manus!” Mrs. O’Breen said with a soft laugh of surprise.

  “Why?” one of the aunts asked, while the other clucked her tongue.

  Manus shook his head and looked genuinely heavy with some concern.

  “Answer me, Manus!” the aunt’s voice piped again. When he didn’t, she said, “That was an absurd thing to say, Manus! Wouldn’t you rather make a family with a woman you care for?”

  He put his elbows on his knees.

  There was a general silence as they seemed to wait for an answer or an explanation. When none was forthcoming, the voice of the same argumentative aunt—which I decided now, because of its tone of authority, belonged to Ethna, the shorter, sterner one—said, “Aren’t you a lucky young man, Manus? You see how well your mother knows you. The woman she chooses for you is the woman you might have chosen yourself.”

  He leaned further forward, his shoulders seeming to tighten.

  “Take it,” Mrs. O’Breen said, extending to him a glass of liquor.

  He hesitated, staring at it, the amber liquid sloshing with a little movement of her hand.

  “I’m glad you like her. It’s better that you have some regard for her.”

  At last he took the drink and put it to his lips, holding it in his mouth, allowing the fumes to fill his senses. He swallowed, then sighed and, holding the glass in both hands, hung his head.

  “She’s mild of manner,” Mrs. O’Breen said. “She reminds me of the painting of Saint Agnes with her eyes to heaven.”

  I went back up to bed and fell into an uneasy dream in which I was watching them again from the same hidden perspective. They were drunk, slurring their words. Mrs. O’Breen’s sisters were visible, and they were identical to her, triplets, so I could not distinguish one from the other. Manus picked up a handful of penny dreadfuls from a table beside his chair and threw them at the three women, who looked at each other and burst into laughter, doubling over.

  I startled awake.

  The next morning Manus did not appear at the breakfast table.

  Bairbre waited for me outside in the carriage, anxious to go back to Enfant de Marie.

  I moved slowly down the stairs, my eyes raking the landings and the rooms below for Manus, when he surprised me from the stairwell. He looked as if he had not slept, his eyes bleary and red, his hair in disarray.

  He gave a nervous look around and, seeing no one else present, handed me a folded piece of paper, hot and damp I assumed from handling. He moved off unsteadily and watched me from a doorway as I read: “The sun needs the moon like the cock needs the hen,” written in wavering script.

  At the convent, seven little cells had been prepared for each of us who were to take our final vows. I went into one of the rooms and leaned on the narrow casement, staring out at a small view of the courtyard, thinking about Manus’s conversation with his mother; thinking about the words on the paper.

  For a long time, it seemed, I listened to an approaching echo of footsteps through the endless corridors, knowing them to be Bairbre’s, knowing that she would be looking for me, yet I made no move to let her know where I was.

  I did not turn when she came into the room and stood a few feet behind me. I could hear her breathing. From some distant corridor the echo of another set of footsteps sounded but soon began to fade.

  “You will stay with me, won’t you, Deirdre?” she asked. I turned and looked at her, distressed, but could not answer.

  “I wish I hadn’t brought you there.” She started to cry. “I knew we shouldn’t go there again! I knew.” She was quiet for a few moments before she said in a soft, hurt voice, “I love you.”

  I could not bear causing her such pain. I stood and went to her, touching her shoulder. “I love you, too, Bairbre,” I said.

  “Let me kiss you,” she said. I held still, but as soon as her mouth touched mine I turned my face from hers, eluding her. She squeezed my arms painfully, and when I pulled forcefully away, she slapped me.

  Reeling, I ran from her up the dim, deserted corridor, crying quietly.

  The next morning, Sister Vivian interrupted me as I washed the oatmeal pot in the nuns’ kitchen. “Manus O’Breen wants to speak to you,” she said slowly. I could hear the weight of surprise in her voice. “He’s outside in front of the convent gate.”

  I steadied myself as I dried my hands and unrolled my sleeves. Walking through the passage on my way to meet him, I saw myself now drawn irretrievably along on the currents of what I had wished for.

  He was sitting on the bench in the front garden and stood when he saw me coming. I sat down and he joined me, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, and looked at the flagstones. I knew he had been dispatched to ask me to marry him.

  When his silence went on, I worried that he had lost heart. I passed my hand softly through his hair. He jumped slightly at the touch and looked at me.

  “I’ve come,” he said, “to ask you if you will marry me.”

  “I will,” I uttered immediately without thought or reservation.

  The look he gave me then was confused and tender. But some thought plagued him. He blinked and looked again at the flagstones. I ached to press my ear to the muscle of his heart, to hear it bump and plunge.

  I touched his arm.

  “I’m sorry to be so grave about this,” he said and affected a smile.

  “It’s all right!” I said, struggling to defend the seriousness of his mood. “I cannot imagine that marriage is a ceremony without some sadness in it.”

  He looked curiously at me.

  “It’s a point of departure!” I ventured with lighthearted energy. “Maybe the beginning of a new journey, so you leave one life behind to come into another one.”

  He nodded slowly, taking me in.

  “A journey is filled with the unknown!”

  The heaviness of his mood seemed to be dissolving. Encouraged by the smile coming into his eyes, I continued.

  “You leave something behind, and even if you want to leave it behind, it still makes you sad.”

  He smiled, then looked down again at the stones. “My mother wants grandchildren. Many of them,” he said.

  “I’m not averse,” I said, “to the labors that might lead to that end.”

  A gentle light came into his face. He leaned in close and kissed me. His hand brushed against my thigh, and I felt the promise of what would be between us: the Sun about to know the Moon. The baroqueness of the act. The attendant fires.

  At dusk I found Bairbre alone in the nuns’ antechamber, streams of red light from the descending sun coming in the window, spilling over her.

  I wanted to open myself to her, to confess the truth. I reached into my pocket and took out the catechism I’d stolen from her two years before.

  “I want to give this to you, Bairbre,” I said.

  She looked up and gazed unmoved at the little book but would not take it.

  “I want you to know that I stole this from you.”

  She looked away from me.

  “I know that, Deirdre. I’ve always known that.”

  “Have you?”

  “What do you think made me fall in love with you?”

  I stared at her uncertainly, and she held my eyes. “Some of us can only get what we need by stealing it.”

  The words stung me in some odd, unexpected way, and tears burned in my eyes. I felt a surge of guilty love for her.

  “He’s asked you to marry him, hasn’t he?”

  I nodded.

  “It means that she’s chosen you. You told me that you saw my family as a Trinity,” she said. “You were right when you said that she is God the Mother and that I am
the Holy Ghost. But Manus is not God the Son. You are the Virgin, so he is only Joseph, an incidental. The divine component is missing from him. It’s really her you are marrying. He’s a proper servant to her. You see, Manus would be more suited to the religious life. He’s compliant and obedient by nature. But my life has been a reforging of my own will.”

  She looked at me again, and the face she could not compose appeared, her eyes watery.

  “You don’t know yet, Deirdre, that you and I are joined in isolation. Do you think that having left me alone here in the convent…do you think that you in your marriage to Manus will be any less isolated than I am here?” She turned away suddenly, overcome by grief. “I should never have introduced you to them. I should have told them terrible things about you. But I suppose that wouldn’t have mattered. She is God the Mother, and she saw into my heart about you. How could she not take you from me?”

  I stood helplessly, not knowing what else to say or do.

  When at last I began to walk away, she said my name. “Deirdre,” and the sound of it cast a shadow like a bird that followed me along the corridor, then flew suddenly past.

  An hour later, as I moved through the darkened hallway returning from the evening meal, I looked out the window into the garden and saw Mrs. O’Breen sitting on the bench. Bairbre in her nun’s robes knelt on the ground before her, her face on her mother’s lap. The light was such through the downstairs window that it lit up her face, the only bright spot in the tableau. There was devotion in her expression.

  And this voluntary submission was part of the larger mystery.

  On the morning of her Coronation Mass, two nuns led Bairbre and the other novices to the altar, removing their veils, then ceremoniously unwinding the long coils of their hair so it hung at their shoulders and down their backs. Each stepped up to the altar one by one. When Bairbre’s turn came, she trembled as Sister Vivian clipped her hair off, so it fell to the floor in dark drifts. I felt dizzy, my hands frozen as Bairbre stepped toward Sister Hildegard, who carefully dressed her head in the layered veil of a Poor Marie.