The Dazzling Truth

by Helen Cullen

  IN THE BASEMENT of Fibber Macs, Gavin Murphy crouched on his knees as he wrestled an overloaded adaptor plug into the socket. The bleached tips of his Mohawk stabbed a red-brick wall with every thrust, before a micro-pyrotechnic display of blue sparks exploded, plunging the venue into darkness and silencing the speakers that blasted David Bowie into the shadowy venue. The audience enthusiastically groaned, barely drowning out Gavin’s cursing as he shouted for the barman, Barry, to trip the switch. Again. The first karaoke night to hit Dublin City wasn’t launching with the aplomb that had been advertised, but the false starts only contributed to the giddy anticipation in the room.

  Maeve flicked open a fluorescent yellow lighter and held the flame above the list of songs. “Careful.” Murtagh nudged her elbow. “Your fringe is about to get singed.” She brushed it back, calling out songs to their group of friends, who sat on white pleather beanbags in a tight circle, knees and elbows touching, as if they were huddled for warmth around a campfire: Isaac, a sculptor from Murtagh’s class, wore blue denim dungarees and stared at Murtagh all evening, for he was a little bit in love with him; Evelyn from Maeve’s theater company, perspiring with nerves in pink Lycra leggings, was terrified that everyone would be forced to sing and kept insisting that they couldn’t make her, while hoping that they would. Finola wore her dad’s ivory argyle jumper stretched over the red miniskirt that Maeve had insisted she borrow. She tugged at it incessantly in a hopeless effort to make it reach her knees. Maeve was always so persuasive and, ultimately, Finola always so remorseful for how susceptible she was to her influence.

  They were in high spirits, corralled as they had been by Maeve, though she was the only one who intended to sing. The names of the songs rolled off her tongue like a teacher checking attendance: “Upside Down” by Diana Ross. Not a chance... “Call Me” by Blondie. Yes, definite potential... “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” by Queen. Don’t think I could pull that off... “The Rose” by Bette Midler. Hardly... “Dearg Doom” by Horslips. Oh, Murt, you have to do it... “Mull of Kintyre” by Wings. Seriously, are they trying to kill the mood altogether? “Wuthering Heights” by Kate Bush. Oh, Kate, I love her too much to murder that song at karaoke... “Bette Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes. Yes! Yes! That’s the one. I feel like my whole life has been building up to this very moment.

  The lights burst back on and David Bowie picked up exactly where he’d left off in “Five Years.” Gavin, glowing a hot pink inside his three-piece white polyester suit, scrambled up onto the ramshackle stage constructed of black-painted wooden pallets. The microphone squealed as he blew dust from it, and the speakers crackled but, undeterred, he persevered. Red, blue and green disco lights danced across the canvas of his suit as he welcomed everyone to the inaugural Karnage-aoke, a “working title,” and encouraged everyone to sign up on his gold glitter clipboard. To get things started, however, he turned to the karaoke machine balanced precariously on some beer crates in front of the stage and cued “Bridge over Troubled Water” as his own backing track.

  Finola squeezed Maeve’s hand under the table to stop herself laughing out loud. “That is the last song I would have expected him to choose,” she whispered.

  “And probably the last one he should have gone for, too,” Maeve answered, hiding her face in her friend’s shoulder to stifle her laughter. Gavin had tears in his eyes, so moved was he by his own performance; a song that seemed considerably longer than when Simon and Garfunkel sang it.

  While Gavin worked toward his big finish, Murtagh handed their friends a powder-blue postcard each—an invitation to an open evening at NCAD: Murtagh was displaying a collection of bowls he had created for his final-year project that were inspired by the clouds he loved so much. Maeve had named each one: Nimbus, Pileus, Fractus and, her favorite, Altostratus. They all promised they would come, and Murtagh beamed, smoothing his curls as he talked of the exhibition, and how he still had not found a permanent job. Most of his classmates had started scattering across the globe in search of employment. He and Maeve knew he would probably have to follow suit, but for now he paid his half of the rent by working as a teaching assistant in NCAD on the course he’d completed himself. In exchange for his time and labor, he received a minimal wage but could still access the studio and kiln to continue his work, which he would never have been able to afford to do otherwise. He had written dozens of letters to potters across the world, seeking a position, or an apprenticeship, but had received nothing in reply. “Chin up,” said Finola. “It’s only a matter of time, and we’re not ready to lose you both yet.”

  “Hopefully, we can stay here,” Maeve answered, squeezing her hand. “It feels like we’re only getting started with Shake the Spear—it took us so long to get our Arts Council funding organized that we haven’t even had a chance to think about our first production yet.”

  Sheila and Aliaj jumped from behind the bar and abandoned service to duet on “You’re the One That I Want” in homage to John Travolta and Olivia Newton John. With their matching green Fibber Macs polo shirts and hairsprayed quiffs, they cut quite the idiosyncratic picture. Nonetheless, they had clearly been practicing, as they performed a synchronized dance routine to complement their number. It was a shame they hadn’t anticipated having only one microphone; Aliaj hogged it even during Sheila’s parts, which he also performed with gusto, leaving Sheila to sing inaudibly into her fist, as she had done in rehearsals.

  “I get it now,” Isaac said. “Karaoke gives a backing band to people who would never, ever be allowed to sing with a real one.”

  Murtagh snorted. “I can’t see it catching on. Wouldn’t you rather be listening to the jukebox? No one’s enjoying themselves apart from the singers.”

  Maeve stood up and shook out the legs on her black tuxedo trousers, tucked in her mother’s white silk blouse and released her hair from the knot piled on top of her head.

  “Exactly,” she pronounced. “So, I’m next.”

  She kissed the top of Murtagh’s head as she clambered past him; he nuzzled her side as she wriggled by. “Has anyone heard her sing before?” Isaac asked, his eyebrows arched in a question.

  Murtagh shook his head. “Not properly, but she seems pretty confident so...”

  Finola winked at him. “Don’t they all, Murt? Don’t they all? Look!” she pointed. “There she goes.”

  Maeve’s four friends stood up, whooping and stamping their feet on the floor. She waved at them, despite being only ten feet away, then turned her back on the audience while she waited for the backing track to play out over the tinny PA. She had somehow procured a tambourine, which she now shook in time with the music, one arm stretched over her head, her body frozen like a statue, illuminated from behind by a single spotlight that cast her in silhouette. The audience began to nudge and point as she commanded their focus. For the first verse, she kept her back turned, her breathy voice booming out with hypnotic power.

  “Is that the record playing?” Evelyn asked, her eyes wide and locked on Maeve’s figure.

  “No,” Murtagh replied, shushing her. “That’s Maeve.”

  Maeve slowly turned as she sang of New York snow, and Gavin erupted into applause from his perch beside the machine.

  While Maeve sang, the dingy pub basement took on the ambience of a downtown jazz club, electric and transformative. The light tangled in her blue-black hair, scattering prisms of color around her head like an aura. Murtagh felt everything inside him bend to her power.

  As the drunken revelers clapped along in time to the music, Maeve’s eyes moved to each face in the crowd in turn, drawing them in. When the song ended, a stunned silence filled the room for a beat before everyone was on their feet, slapping her on the back as she returned to her friends on the beanbags. It no longer seemed appropriate seating for her, down there on the floor among the mere mortals. Unfazed by the attention, she sat cross-legged and rested her hands on her knees while Evelyn and Finola threw th
eir arms around her from either side. Murtagh smiled at her, not sure of what he had witnessed, or what he had learned.

  He caught her eye, reading him, and looked away.

  * * *

  Later that night, while Finola, Isaac and Evelyn caught the bus from the quays, Murtagh carried Maeve on the crossbar of the blue Dutch bicycle that he’d spent most of his student grant on. “A great steed for a daydream,” Maeve said as she tried to find a comfortable perch. They wobbled to a stop at the traffic lights on O’Connell Bridge and Maeve rocked back and forth to regain her balance as he clutched the handlebars. She leaned against him and her hair tickled his nose, causing him to sneeze loudly thrice. Each time, Maeve shouted, “Gesundheit!”

  They pushed on across the bridge, and Murtagh bellowed over the noise of the traffic, “Maeve, Maeve, can you hear me?”

  She turned her head to look at him and almost toppled them over.

  “Eyes front! Eyes front!” he called.

  She laughed and held on tighter.

  “Maeve, I think—

  “Maeve, the thing is—

  “Maeve, will you marry me?”

  “What did you say?” she called over her shoulder.

  “Will you marry me?” he whispered into her ear.

  “Stop the bike! Stop the bike!” she cried out, slapping the handlebars.

  Murtagh yanked on the brakes as they careered into the Molly Malone statue on Grafton Street. Maeve jumped off just in time and turned to grab Murtagh by the lapels of his corduroy blazer and tugged them hard as her eyes searched his face.

  “Are you serious?” she asked him. “Do you really think you can handle spending the rest of my life with me?”

  He placed a hand on either side of her face, wiped away a smudge of red wine from the corner of her lip with his thumb. “The rest of my life, you mean. And I do. Could you bear it?”

  She paused a moment before answering.

  “I couldn’t bear not to.”

  And then they kissed.

  Across from the gates of Trinity College, where it all began.

  * * *

  The following morning Maeve lay on the sofa with slices of cucumber pressed on her eyelids and a cold cloth laid across her brow. Murtagh was feeding her segments of mandarin orange while watching a VHS recording of Bracken with the volume turned down. “Let me know when Gabriel Byrne appears,” she croaked. “That man fell from Heaven.”

  “What were we thinking, dear fiancée of mine?” he whined. “I’m not sure I can feel my face.”

  They were dozing in their hungover languor when the doorbell disturbed their recovery process. Maeve swung her legs off Murtagh’s lap, and he reluctantly staggered to the door, pulling a jumper on over his pajamas.

  Dennis, their local postie, who was driven by a constant low-level resentment of his duties, shoved a heavy brown cardboard box into Murtagh’s arms more roughly than he needed to. “Another one came for ye,” he said. “From the U, S, Ah. Has she not enough stuff by now? There can’t be much left in America, at this rate.” Murtagh sighed and reversed back into the hallway with his arms full as Dennis tossed a letter on top of the box.

  “Oh, and this one is for you, too. From Galway.”

  “Thanks, Dennis,” Murtagh snapped. “We’re well able to read who it’s from ourselves, thanks all the same.”

  He nudged the door closed before Dennis could reply and tore back into the living room.

  “It’s a Ma Morelli Care Package! Your mother is a saint,” he called. “Open it for us, love.”

  Maeve jumped off the couch, rejuvenated by the thoughts of Jell-O Pudding Pops, Caramellos and maybe her ma’s baked pretzels. “It’s like she knew we’d be celebrating. Imagine if there was champagne in here! Although I don’t think my liver would take it.” While she ransacked the contents, Murtagh sat on a kitchen high stool and stared at the letter from Galway with its unfamiliar minuscule handwriting. He opened the envelope and slowly read its contents through. He stood up, sat down, and read the letter once again.

  “Maeve?”

  “Yes! Cap’n Crunch cereal. Ma, I love you.”

  “Maeve, are you listening?”

  She looked up while tearing the top off the cereal box and poured some straight into her mouth. “What is it? Who’s the letter from?”

  “I’ve been offered a position. With this amazing potter. He has no one to pass on to...doesn’t want the business to die with him... I know his work. We even have one of his bowls here—let me find it.”

  He opened the kitchen cupboard and started lifting bowls out onto the counter.

  Maeve walked over and took the letter from his hand.

  “Where’s the studio, Murt? Where would we be living?”

  He turned and watched her read, her eyes darting over the page as she searched for the information she needed most.

  “Inis Óg?” she asked, her eyes searching his face for answers now. “Where is Ines Ogg?”

  “In-ISH OH-G,” he corrected her. “It’s an island off the west coast of Ireland.”

  “How far away is that? Is it a big island?”

  “Not exactly, but this man, he’s a master craftsman, and such a wonderful potter—”

  “You said,” she interrupted. “Let’s talk about it later, okay? I have to go to rehearsal.”

  * * *

  Murtagh listened to her movements in the bathroom while he tidied up the living room, composing in his head what he would say when she re-emerged, but she darted across the living room to their bedroom without even glancing his way and the moment passed. Before he could speak again, she had fluttered past him already wearing her coat and vanished through the door with just a kiss blown over her shoulder.

  He spent the afternoon hunched over the kitchen table, sketching designs for his work, grazing from a little bowl of almonds, wiping his fingers absentmindedly on his pajama bottoms after each mouthful. All the time imagining what he would do if Maeve didn’t come home; was such a thing possible?

  Had the letter exposed to Maeve what the reality of marriage to him might mean?

  Had it all suddenly become too real?

  Should he really have proposed before he knew where his life was going?

  Work expanded to fill the time allowed for it and little progress was made on the page despite the electricity volting through his mind.

  * * *

  When Maeve eventually burst through the door that evening, Murtagh closed his eyes for a moment, offering up a silent prayer of thanks to whom he knew not. The news from that morning seemed completely gone from her mind, and Murtagh wondered if the obsession had been his alone all day. He stood up, suddenly self-conscious to still be in pajamas, kissed her on the cheek and washed his hands in the sink, cautious as he read her mood.

  “I’m probably flammable from all the setting solution and hairspray,” she said. “One of the girls wanted to practice on me. She’s giving up acting to be a hairdresser. It’s a bit grim.”

  “How was the rehearsal? Is it still Once a Catholic?” he asked, watching her primp her hairdo in the mirror.

  She sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Abysmal. It was as if Fiachra had dragged us in off the street to read the lines cold. Mary O’Malley would be mortified if she could see how we’re butchering it. Davina doesn’t even pretend to like me anymore, but it’s easier that way than enduring the false compliments and platitudes. I don’t know why she’s so touchy—she has the lead, after all, even if it is a little beyond her. She cares too much about what she looks like on stage. That’s her big mistake. She can’t act properly for fear it makes her look ugly or she might forget to suck in her stomach.”

  Murtagh nodded. “Davina’s a strange fish, all right. Comedy wouldn’t suit her. Sure, she’s entering the Rose of Tralee, for God’s sake—doesn’t that say it all?”
<
br />   Maeve snorted. “I’m happy to play the other Mary, though—there’s a few great lines to work with there.”

  “No small parts, eh?”

  She caught his eye in the mirror and smiled at him. “Exactly.” And he turned his back to fiddle with the coffee filter his fingers could never master. It slipped from his grip and skidded across the countertop as Maeve came up behind him. She covered his eyes with her hands and whispered in his ear, “I broke the news to Fiachra. Told him what was coming. That this would be my last play with them. For now, anyway.”

  Murtagh spun around to face her. “Do you mean...?”

  She nodded.

  “So, we’ll take it?” he asked, scanning her expression for confirmation. “Shouldn’t we discuss it properly first, or weigh up our options?”

  She stood back, holding him at arm’s length, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “We’ll take it.”

  Inevitable decisions are best made fast.

  Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean: April 1982

  ON THE FLIGHT home from their wedding in Brooklyn, Murtagh woke in the middle of the night to see Maeve staring out of the airplane window, tears trickling down her face, with her hands clasped in her lap as if in prayer.

  “Maeve, my darkling.” He wiped her face with the back of his hand. “What is it? Please don’t tell me you have regrets.”

  She twisted her neck away from him and rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her jumper, a new one her mother had knitted, white with a red zigzag across the front.

  “No, no regrets,” she said. “Not for things done, anyway.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I do feel we’ve made all the right decisions, like sensible people should, but—”

  “But what?” he asked, his hand on her knee.

  “But, nothing, I guess. We’re moving to the island because you have a real opportunity there—we couldn’t sacrifice that for me to stay in Shake the Spear, not when we have no real prospects. I get it. It’s fair.”