“Once everything was decided, the three of them, who had been walking most of the night, casting shadows in the vestibule, all fell into a heavy sleep. And I don’t know if I dreamt this part or not, but I remember seeing the three of them all asleep side by side in the matrimonial bed, and they were whistling in their sleep, ‘Intercessor! Intercessor!’ ”
He grew quiet. Two pages of Bairbre’s letter were on the floor and he was stepping on them with one foot. I took the last two pages from his hand and read:
Our mother and I had kept up a steady correspondence. I lived for her letters. In mine to her, I kept a kind of diary, charting my prayers and indulgences, drawing for her a picture of my life as a nun. We had maintained a kind of heightened expectation in our letters, as if we were reaching together toward some shared goal.
I had been waiting for her to come here. I had been looking forward to it for a long time. She’d been sending her usual checks to the nuns here as she always had at Enfant de Marie, and they wanted to meet her.
I had placed so much hope in seeing her. For so long I had cut myself off from everyone but her. When she came I was exultant, but I did not find the satisfaction I’d hoped to find being with her. I don’t know how to describe what I had built up in my hopes about her. She was here. We went for long walks. We prayed together. We sat in the nuns’ reception room and talked. The days passed and I knew she would leave again. I didn’t want her to. I was afraid of what it would be like when she was gone. I didn’t understand why I was not fulfilled being with her. Every day that passed, I grew more nervous at the idea of her leaving. My neediness set her on edge, but I couldn’t curb it. I begged her to stay. I wept and held her, and this wore on her. I felt her pulling away from me. She told me then that she was dissatisfied with the way things had turned out; that you and Deirdre still had no sons; that perhaps my having become a nun had not redeemed her in God’s eyes and because of that the sin of her leaving the sisterhood had not been forgiven. I felt as if she were saying that there was something missing in me, some flaw, some way in which God had not accepted me in exchange for her. Like Tiernan, I had turned out to be a terrible disappointment to her.
Since that day that she left me here, I have not stopped thinking of our brother, Tiernan. I have been revisiting the last days of his life.
You were small, Manus, but do you remember the end of Tiernan’s last school year when he had been sent home for throwing a rock through the chapel window? Our mother had met with the priests and had settled things with them by offering them money until they agreed to let Tiernan return in the fall. Anyhow, that summer at home, he was prone to fevers, a frailty that had stayed with him since recovering from the typhus. The fever had come on him one night that summer and our mother dispatched a servant to get the doctor, and she and I were with Tiernan in his room, cooling his brow with a cloth, helping him to sip water. She was adjusting the sheet on his bed when a letter fell out from under the mattress. It was a letter from the seminary, addressed to our mother. It was dated weeks before.
I went with her into the front drawing room where she opened it, finding the check she had written to the seminary returned to her. The head of the school wrote that after much consideration the priests had decided that Tiernan’s presence was too disruptive for the other boys, who were struggling to come to terms with the sacrifices that a religious life demanded of them. And he said that it was clear to them all that Tiernan did not belong there; that he had no vocation and was desperately unhappy.
Our mother was stunned. She began to drink. After a long silence she said with a terrible finality in her voice, “He’s dead to me now, Bairbre. He’s dead. You no longer have an older brother.”
I had never heard her say such a thing.
There was a storm that night, which must have been the reason that it took so long for the doctor to arrive. Our mother continued to drink, and eventually fell asleep in her chair. I waited calmly in the vestibule when the servant arrived with the doctor. I told them that Tiernan was fine now; that he was sleeping peacefully and that my mother had asked that they not wake him. And so they left. The following afternoon, Tiernan was dead.
What have I told myself about this over the years? I hated him because he made her unhappy. And she had decreed that he was dead. She had already decreed it. All these years, Manus, I have been thinking about this in the same childlike way: My mother had told me that my brother was dead, so I sent the doctor away.
I’ve lived in a dream all these years. Tiernan had not redeemed her, but I would. The dream is over.
You may not remember this, Manus, but when we were small, after Aunt Ethna told us the myth of the Three Fates, you asked me if our mother was Atropos, the third fate. She who cuts the thread of life.
I said no, that our mother was Clotho, the Giver of Life. Ethna was harsher, so I decided that she was Atropos, even though I knew Moyna had the least say in decisions that were made between the three of them, and could not have been Lachesis, the Decider of Fates. It bothered me that you had asked that, and one day, not long after, I asked you about it. You said that Atropos was the strongest one, so that’s why you had thought it. It was you who actually put that thought into my head long ago.
That day, here at the convent, before our mother left me, I told her that when you were only six, you had asked me if she was Atropos. I told her to hurt her. Her beloved boy, the one she would not demand the terrible sacrifice of, had said this of her. I told her because I knew she was leaving me for good.
We’ve been afraid of Ethna and Moyna. We’ve hated them, but the truth is they have always been only her shadows. Our mother is all three fates. She is the giver of life, the decider of destinies, and the one who cuts the thread. She cut the thread of Tiernan’s life, but in reality it was me who killed him. And I cannot live with that.
Here the letter ended abruptly and without a signature.
I slowly read and reread the final three sentences, until tears rose in my throat. I put the letter down.
“Christ, Manus!” I said softly.
He sat in silence. Finally he said, “I hardly know what to think of any of it right now.”
“I want to get our girls from your mother’s house!” I said.
He shook his head.
“They’re all right, Deirdre!” he said.
“I want them. She can be cold to them sometimes….”
“I’m certain she’s pampering them.”
That night I read and reread all the letters I’d received from them. They were riding horses and swimming, having tea in fancy shops and in the hotel on Henry St. in Kenmare, being ushered around like princesses, and feeling their independence from me for the first time in their lives.
As I lay sleepless in bed, the terrible revelations in Bairbre’s letter haunted me. In the middle of the night I got up and packed a bag. But when I went downstairs to tell Manus what I had decided, I heard him crying. I went in to him.
At dawn I penned a letter to the girls, asking them if there was anything they needed; if they wanted me to come sooner. The reply I received a few days later reassured me that all was well and that I should wait until the appointed time.
I sent back a letter, telling them that if they needed anything at all, or if they changed their minds and wanted me to come sooner than planned, to please let me know and I would be there immediately.
A few days later, an offer came in for Manus to head a restoration project of an old house in the Liberties. He accepted it immediately and threw himself headlong into the work. I saw very little of him then.
We began again to live separate lives in the house. Slowly over the weeks I realized I was with child.
Fifteen
Leaving by train for Kenmare just before August, I had Bairbre’s gift to her mother in tow.
Moving through the center of Ireland, I saw things on the roads and passing fields that startled me. A dead cow in high grass. A gorse fire out of control, a child running
from it. Another hurling sticks into it. My brain felt misty. Each time I closed my eyes, I imagined the infant inside me through a curtain of membrane, a rainbow shimmer to it.
This pregnancy had taken, almost immediately, a strong visceral hold of me. My breasts ached and my stomach was queasy. I had a powerful need for sleep. But every now and then, my heart would hesitate and, as if it were a sentient being in its own right, seemed to be listening for something, as if some signal from the womb was not forthcoming.
I did not know how to read these pulses of uncertainty in my blood and feared that the child might be delicate or malformed. I sensed a soft precariousness to the condition. But the stronger the pregnancy took hold of my body, the fiercer my desire for this child. I told myself, in an effort to reassure, that it was my tendency to worry, always to fear the worst.
Arriving at the big house I had to struggle with my demeanor, barely able to contain the wild excitement to see my girls. “I must behave as if I’d seen them yesterday. Not let them see the loss of breath in me, the vacuum in me,” I told myself. As I ran up the flight of steps all I heard was my banging heart. They watched me come in from beyond. I stopped and there was a hush as all three, the girls and Mrs. O’Breen, looked at me. For a terrible moment it was as if they did not know me.
Then Caitlin stood. “Mammy,” she said. She came and embraced me.
“Love,” I said, gratitude in my voice, moved and stunned by the feel of her, silken as a flower, a sensation from a far-off time. I was seized with guilt and incredulity that I had not fought harder to keep them with me. They looked small, girlish.
Mrs. O’Breen stood next and, walking toward me with open arms, said, “Deirdre!” She searched my demeanor, reading the hue and lights of me like a fortune-teller, and was about to speak when I said, “I’m sorry about Bairbre.”
Her pupils dilated for a moment and then grew small again. “It’s very sad,” she said.
“What happened?” Caitlin asked.
I looked at Mrs. O’Breen, surprised that she had not told them.
“Your aunt, Sister Bairbre, died.”
Maighread, who had remained in her seat across the room, met my eyes. “How?” she asked.
I paused. “An infection…not properly healed.”
“No!” Caitlan cried out softly. They had both always been fascinated with their invisible aunt when they were smaller, romanticizing the fact that she was cloistered. They had drawn pictures of her and had played games where they each had taken turns pretending they were her.
Mrs. O’Breen had been looking away from me. When silence prevailed, she seemed to be counting in her head for what she thought might be an appropriate time to pass before saying, “Your skin is like alabaster. And there’s a bit of rose in your cheeks. Do you…are you?”
A vague smile lingered at the corners of her mouth. She could see it. My hesitation seemed to answer her.
“It’s not yet confirmed,” I said.
“But you believe it,” she said. “You know, don’t you?”
I hesitated. “Yes.”
“Well then,” she said and drew a restrained breath in which I sensed the ferocity of her excitement.
Immediately I regretted not outrightly denying it.
“Really, Mammy?” Caitlin asked, softly startled at the news. “A baby?”
I nodded.
I looked at Maighread, waiting. But she did not get up. She stared off in the other direction and out the window.
“Look how choppy the sea is!” she said.
I went to her and leaned down, looking into her face. “Hello, Maighread, Love.” Her eyes were ringed in shadow, and I recognized her exhaustion. She looked away from me, proud, lonely, and angry. I understood that she’d been having a bad time but knew she would never admit to it.
I looked at Caitlin and saw by her dismayed expression that I was right. I wondered at what point things had grown difficult.
I sat down next to Maighread.
“Tea, Deirdre?” Mrs. O’Breen asked me.
“Yes,” I said. My hands trembled, and the cup rattled on the saucer. Maighread noticed it with irritation and I felt her bucking to strike out at me somehow, to hurt me. She held back, but the minute Mrs. O’Breen left the room, she started. First it was bragging about how important she was to her grandmother, a brash insistence to her voice. I sat nodding vigorously, but that further irritated her.
“Why do you look sad?” she screamed.
I shook my head, struggling to cast it off me.
She clucked her tongue. “You’re weak as water!”
“What’s wrong, Maighread?” I asked, confused by her fury.
“I hate the way you look at me like we’re all victims of something! I hate that look on your face. I despise it!”
Caitlin banged her spoon down onto the table and yelled, “Leave Mammy alone!”
Maighread quieted, eyes wide. She struggled to catch her breath, as if she had been running.
I sat in the stunned silence, aware of the sweat on my face. I longed for sleep, a somnolence to the house in summer. I was at a loss as to what to do for Maighread.
Caitlin followed me to my room and helped me unpack. She touched my hair and held me. “I missed your smell,” she said. “No one smells like you.”
“What do I smell like?”
“Like macaroons.”
“But I don’t eat them,” I said.
“But you smell like them.”
I left off my unpacking and sat down on the bed. “Lovely, lovely,” I said, brushing my face in her hair, drinking her in.
“What happened with Maighread?” I asked her.
“About a fortnight ago, Maighread woke up screaming for you. Nanny came into the room. Maighread asked her to write to you and tell you to come. Nanny got angry about it.”
“What did Nanny say to her?” I asked.
“She told her that you were busy in Dublin and that you couldn’t come right now and to go right to sleep. Nanny has no patience at night.”
“Nanny drinks at night,” I said half to the air.
“Yes, she drinks whiskey.”
“Why didn’t Maighread write me?”
“She did write you! The day after.”
“I didn’t get the letter!” I cried.
Caitlin and I exchanged a meaningful look. Mrs. O’Breen had likely not sent it on purpose.
“Tell Maighread to come in here to me, please, Caitlin,” I said softly to her, taking her hands.
“All right,” she said and went off to fetch her sister.
A few minutes later Maighread’s shadow appeared in the doorway. She stopped there and would come no further. “Come in here to me, Love,” I said, holding my arm out to her.
“What do you want?”
“I want to see you.”
She remained where she stood, her eyes on the wall. She put her hand over her face and looked ashamed, as if her outburst had confused her.
“Caitlin tells me that you sent a letter asking me to come. But I never got that letter!”
She blinked and shifted her posture but would not meet my eyes.
“I wish I’d gotten it! I missed you something desperate! I didn’t come sooner because this was the appointed time and I knew you wanted your independence.”
She remained silent, staring at the floor.
Since she’d come into the world, I’d had less of my own anger, as if she’d had a direct vein to the place in me where it had resided; as if she had nurtured herself on that red richness before she’d left my womb and now had almost too much of it for one soul to bear. And it was as if it was all she’d had to live on those early days of her life when I had not known what to feed her. I felt an empty spot in my body from where she’d come.
She’d been very temperamental as a baby but had evened out a bit at the age of four. Since the onset of puberty, she’d been touchy, her fury easily roused.
“It’s this age,” Sarah Dooley had said t
o me once, talking of her own daughter. “If we can get to the other side of their nineteenth birthdays, we’ll know we’ve lived through the worst.”
Maighread’s face looked softer now, and she sighed.
“Come here to me, Lovely,” I said. Her expression grew slightly petulant in response to my summons, yet she came and stood a few feet from me. “Can I not have a kiss from you?”
She allowed me to kiss her but held her forearms protectively in over her chest, bowing her head, her brow nettled.
At the meal that evening Mrs. O’Breen held court, talking about all the things the girls had been doing. Maighread sulked but seemed less prone to lash out. She did not stare, looking to find fault. By the time the pudding was brought out, she was too tired to eat it.
“I’ll take you up,” I said to her, and she threw down her napkin and stood.
“I can go by myself,” she said and was up the stairs.
I watched Mrs. O’Breen’s face. She had washed her hands of Maighread. She was tired of the demands on her; though Maighread did not lash out at her as she did me, it was not good between the two of them. I sensed Mrs. O’Breen having tired even of Caitlin. I suspected the girls knew this and must have been hurt by it.
That night when I was sleeping, Maighread crawled into bed with me. She was shaking as she clutched me. I felt her relief to be with me. She fell asleep tangled in my arms, my tears spilling quietly onto the pillow.
In the morning when I awakened, she had already slipped off.
In bright morning light Maighread forgot her nightmare. Was her night self so divided from her morning self? Or was it that way with all of us? I felt that I was, at once, the source of all her unease and the balm for it. How would she reconcile with night and aloneness at Enfant de Marie?
I thought of Sarah Dooley’s words and how right they felt. Maighread wanted me to break her out of the places where she got lost, set some limits on her terror by curbing her fury.
By midmorning I was already tired. I told myself it was the pregnancy. My breasts smarted; my eyes lost focus.
The Marriage Bed Page 19