The Dazzling Truth

by Helen Cullen

  * * *

  Within days of her mother’s funeral, Nollaig had withdrawn from her midwifery studies in Galway and moved all her belongings from the nurses’ hall back to her old bedroom.

  It was never supposed to be a permanent arrangement.

  In the beginning, she planned to stay until the twins were settled back into college and Sive had returned to secondary school on the mainland, but then she waited until the Month’s Mind Mass had passed. DÓnal had insisted on the ceremony. It wasn’t just about the religious aspect, he’d said, but a moment for the community to come together in Maeve’s name, to see the family and show their support. In the end, they were glad of it when the well-oiled grieving machinery of the island held them upright once again. Then suddenly, it was February, with Easter looming, so she thought it best to see them through that holiday. By then she had missed too many classes to fulfill her course requirements, so she deferred until the following September. Committed to booking dental appointments, force-feeding the family vitamins and drawing up household chores lists that the others ignored, Nollaig was determined to offer stability where none was desired. And so, Nollaig’s grief was harder to recognize; in her sense of duty she had found a purpose through which she could channel her mourning. When Sive failed most of her fifth-year exams, they decided she should finish her schooling at the small local school on the island, Coláiste Padraigín, instead of continuing on the mainland, and thus Nollaig’s fate to serve as her unofficial chaperone was cemented. It had surprised Murtagh when Sive agreed to the transfer from the city-center school, where there were a hundred and eleven girls in her year, to the tiny island class of six, but she had grown to hate the ferry crossing and found changing schools to be the lesser of two evils.

  Nollaig. Mossy. Dillon. Sive. His thoughts rotated between them in an endless cycle.

  Murtagh stood up from the wheel and stamped his feet to eradicate the pins and needles that plagued him.

  He turned off the light in the studio and sat for a moment in the darkness before facing the walk home.

  His hands were numb, and he couldn’t ever seem to warm them up.

  No bread was baked.

  No pots were thrown.

  All Maeve’s clothes still hung in the wardrobe.

  The currach lay abandoned in the boatshed.

  Murtagh was alone, lonely in the middle of what remained of his family.

  Without courage to listen to the quiet bell of truth that sounded within him as he lay alone in the dark.

  With no understanding, yet, of what other plans Maeve had for him.

  Brooklyn: December 2006

  THE FIRST CHRISTMAS after Queen Maeve abdicated her throne, the Moone family suffered through the anniversary of her death in Brooklyn with Grandpa Hank and Grandma June.

  When they arrived on the twenty-first of December, disheveled and bad-tempered as a bankrupt circus, Murtagh noticed immediately how much weight June had lost.

  “Only a hundred and two pounds now,” Hank had whispered as he hugged him on arrival.

  The first thing he said.

  A necklace of chunky pearls looked too heavy for her kitten-like frame as she fussed around them. There was a faint stain of blue-black hair dye at the nape of her neck, exposed by the severe bun she had scraped her hair into with a white bow-tie clip.

  In stark contrast, Hank was almost twice his former size, with half as many of his once-lustrous chestnut locks. “Eating his feelings,” June in turn had whispered as Hank struggled up the stairs with Nollaig’s suitcase, breathing heavily as he bumped it stubbornly from step to step, refusing help. Murtagh smiled when June leaned close; she still smelled like lemons.

  It had been easy to rationalize not putting up a Christmas tree in Inis Óg when they would be away for most of the holiday.

  No one sent them any cards, as was the custom in the year following a bereavement. In the sheltered environs of the cottage, it was almost possible to pretend that nothing special should be happening. As for presents, well, no one wanted anything at all, it seemed. Murtagh put twenty-euro notes in red envelopes that Nollaig left on each child’s dressing table.

  To buy something they liked when they saw it.

  Maybe in America.

  He knew he should have done better but could not.

  “If you don’t try to have Christmas this year, I worry you’ll never face it again,” Father Dónal warned as he handed Murtagh a Clarks shoebox filled with mince pies from the parish office. Murtagh nodded.

  “Maybe next year,” he said, peering beneath the lid. “Are these from Mrs. Maguire?”

  “Haven’t you suffered enough, sir?” Dónal winked. “They’re Mrs. Doyle’s. I wouldn’t part with them for anyone else.”

  Murtagh shook his hand, and Dónal held on for a moment. “Your children, Murt. They can’t lose both of you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  June and Hank did their best to fill their cramped brownstone in Williamsburg with as much generic Christmas jolliness as they could muster but, despite the intensity of the living conditions, the house felt vacant. No one wanted to sit in Maeve’s traditional seat at the table; her empty chair dominated the room. Nollaig perched on the edge once, but one look from Sive uprooted her.

  The twins set up camp on the landing on the second floor in two reclining leather chairs that were earmarked for Goodwill; they plugged in Hank’s mini-fridge from his man-cave and filled it with Kool-Aid at the front and bottles of Bud Light at the rear. A bowl of exotic American candy, Twizzlers, Reese’s Pieces and Milk Duds sat on top and appeared to be self-replenishing. “You can’t beat Cadbury’s, though, can you?” Dillon asked as he stuffed a handful of Milk Duds in his mouth. “I’d murder a Golden Crisp.”

  Grandpa Hank liked to join them sometimes and share the contraband. Mossy always offered up his chair and sat on the floor with his legs dangling between the banisters, while Dillon and Hank talked over his head about wrestling, motorcycles and baseball, though the brothers had never seen a game.

  Sometimes as Murtagh passed them en route to the bathroom he was tempted to take a seat on the top stair, but he never did. The conversation seemed to lull the closer he came, despite the friendly way Hank tilted his bottle of Bud at him, the condensation on the glass shimmering.

  Nollaig seldom moved from the chaise longue in the kitchen, where June filled seconds, minutes, hours with busywork; Nollaig wanted to learn how to cook, how to bake, all the secrets of domesticity she believed would never be revealed to her now. June pored over recipe books with her, and Nollaig diligently copied family favorites into a hard-backed, green notebook her father had given her for the purpose. “Your mother had no interest in learning any of this, you know.” June smiled. “She always said it was a waste of precious brain space as she didn’t intend to ever put any of it to use.”

  “I know. But I want to take care of them. Did I ever tell you how Mammy caused a scene at the school when they divided the class up so boys did technical drawing and girls did home economics? I was marched down to the workshop and presented to Mr. O’Malley like some sort of prize.”

  June laughed. “That sounds like your mother. Always ready for a revolution. I don’t know where she got it from.”

  Nollaig turned to look at her.

  “From you, Grandma. She always said you were a feminist but didn’t even realize, that you encouraged her to be and do whatever she wanted, that you made her believe in choices.”

  June stood up and fussed with her hair as she tidied away the books. “Did she say that?” She gave a little cough to clear her throat. “I always presumed she thought I was too old-fashioned, a bit embarrassing, maybe.”

  Nollaig took her grandmother’s hands.

  “Oh no, no, no. The opposite. She said you were her hero, and if you’d been born even five years later you prob
ably would have had an amazing career as an astrophysicist or a politician or something, but that you were just a few years too early.”

  “Well, now,” June said, pulling her shoulders back and straightening her spine. “That is something.”

  “You will still teach me how to cook, though, won’t you?”

  June laughed. “A girl’s gotta eat. But let’s get those boys down here, too. I’m adamant they’re gonna learn how to make something before the week is out.”

  While her grandparents were monopolized by the other Moones, Sive was often found sitting on the porch steps, surreptitiously smoking and peering through neighbors’ windows for glimpses of the sort of blissful domesticity she would loathe them for. One night, she crept from the house, a pink eiderdown pulled over her head as an impromptu umbrella, and kicked the life-size plastic reindeer that stood on the Andersons’ steps into pieces. Afterward she tried to piece it back together, but her fingers, rigid from the cold, struggled to coordinate the sticky tape and scissors, and it was too far gone. The next morning his remains had vanished. She jumped every time the doorbell rang, but no one came looking for her, and she was almost disappointed.

  “Why are we even bothering with this charade?” Sive eventually screeched on Christmas Eve as the family sat in silence over lunch. “It doesn’t make it easier to pretend everything’s normal!” Bing Crosby crooned “White Christmas” from the CD player on the sideboard; Sive leaned over and yanked the plug from the wall.

  Grandma June clutched at a string of rosary beads in her left hand and wiped crumbs from the tablecloth into a red paper napkin in her lap.

  Grandpa Hank removed his thick brown spectacles and polished them with the stretched sleeve of his Christmas cardigan; elongated elves danced across his heaving chest as he hunched there. His color reddened as the children’s voices rose to attack each other.

  Mossy and Dillon resorted to throwing torn-off pieces of bagel with increased aggression while Nollaig and Sive snapped at each other.

  “You’re so selfish, Si. Why can’t you make an effort like everyone else?”

  “To what, replace her? Like you, you mean?”

  Murtagh stood and slammed his palms against the Formica tabletop. The dull smack was ineffective, but the expression on his face was enough to silence the children. His arms were shaking as he looked each child in the eye in turn.

  “That’s enough! Remember who you are and where you’ve come from. Your mother would be ashamed of you.” He lowered himself back into his seat and slopped another spoon of potato salad onto his plate.

  “You make me ashamed,” he mumbled, half under his breath.

  “See?” Nollaig snarled at Sive, and the table shook from the kick she received in response.

  “Maybe you should feel ashamed,” Dillon sneered back, and Mossy jostled him in his seat.

  Grandma June scuttled out to the kitchen, where she remained, scrubbing the already gleaming countertops, while the grandchildren dispersed throughout the house. Murtagh joined her, put an arm around her shoulders and leaned his back against the counter while she buried her face in the wool of his scratchy cardigan. He could feel the grooves of her rib cage through her cotton blouse.

  “She was still my little girl,” she whispered.

  “I know, June,” he answered. “I’m so sorry I didn’t look after her better for you. I’ll never forgive myself for not saving her.”

  June rubbed his back. “I feel the same—wonder if I could have saved her, and honestly I don’t know. Hank says no one knew Maeve’s mind like Maeve.”

  “But I was her husband!”

  “And I was her mother, but she was still her own person. Murtagh, who could have loved her more than us? What she did wasn’t done for lack of love, I do know that much.”

  Murtagh lowered his voice in confession. “I feel she tried to tell me so much that I just didn’t want to hear. I look back now and distrust so many of my memories of her, like they’re underwritten now by a truth I couldn’t see then.”

  June took his hands in hers. “It’s easy to rewrite history with coulda, woulda, shoulda, but you did your best. And so did Maeve. We all think there’ll be more time to do better.”

  “Until there’s not.”

  They were disturbed by Nollaig sidling in to find them. “We want to go to Midnight Mass,” she announced. “To hear the carols.”

  June walked over and held her granddaughter’s face in her hands. There was no glimpse of Maeve in her at all. “That’s a lovely idea, Nollaig, dear. We always used to take your mother.”

  Nollaig nodded; she remembered her mam describing sitting between her parents each year, her hand inside the silky pocket of her father’s winter coat. Mass was where she learned to sing. At least she got something out of it, she had liked to say.

  When Murtagh and June were alone again, she asked him if he would join them. The last time he had set foot in a chapel was at his mother’s funeral; the time before that was Maeve’s. He was in no hurry to break that fast, but he nodded reluctantly. “I worry about Nollaig, that she has no reprieve,” he said as he stood before the kitchen hutch, eyes lingering on the photos of Maeve: dressed up as the Statue of Liberty for a school concert; as a teenager on stage as Ophelia; on their wedding day.

  “She’s decided she will be the glue to hold us all together, but the harder she tries, the more the others are desperate to break free. Her siblings all have somewhere else to be, other people in their lives, but she’s stuck in the house with me. And she lost her birthday, too. Christmas Eve will always be Maeve’s anniversary now. Even her name is a constant reminder of this godforsaken time of year. What has she left at all?”

  June came and stood beside him, picked up a framed photograph of her as a young woman holding baby Maeve in her arms. “She has you, Murtagh, and in my book, that’s a lot.”

  Hank walked into the kitchen, glanced at the two of them huddled together and headed for the refrigerator. He slid a cheesecake out and found a space for it on the countertop beside a wire tray of cooling scones under a St Patrick’s Day tea towel. He sliced a generous triangle free and scraped it onto a side plate, which he grabbed from the draining board. Without a word to his wife or son-in-law, he carried it into the living room, a spoonful already in his mouth before he took his seat on the well-worn groove in his leather armchair.

  “I’ll go powder my nose,” said June, squeezing Murtagh’s left arm as she passed where he stood, drinking in the gallery of Maeve. He picked up a photo of his wife from just before he knew her, standing between her parents in the departure hall at JFK.

  It was 1978, the summer she arrived in Dublin, when their lives became so beautifully entangled.

  When the foundations were laid for a love that proved evergreen.

  When everything changed.

  Inis Óg: July 2008

  A POSTCARD FROM Sive lay on the doormat with a black-and-white photograph of Battersea’s Albert Bridge on the front. Murtagh picked it up and squinted at her chicken-scratch handwriting.

  Hi Dad,

  I cycled across this bridge on Sunday morning at dawn.

  We were on our way home, tired and hungry, but it looked so beautiful in the silvery light that I suddenly felt rejuvenated just to witness it.

  Love,

  Sive

  PS I’m still alive, obviously.

  He sighed, pinning it to the corkboard he’d hung in the hallway to display all of her postcards. Staring at the moody nightscape, he tried not to worry about where his younger daughter had been until dawn, and who the we referred to. Was she a passenger on someone’s crossbar, like her mother had been once? If so, he hoped they were happy. The thought struck him that, knowing her, she would probably be the one cycling, and it made him smile.

  Sive had fled the island straight after she received her acceptance to attend Cam
berwell College of Arts in London. On the evening she left, Murtagh gently asked Nollaig if it might be time for her to consider returning to her own studies, but she resisted the idea. “I’ve lost interest in midwifery completely,” she insisted. “I think I’ll stay a bit longer until I work out what I’d like to do instead. And besides, I can’t leave you here all by yourself.”

  She could have, of course, and there were times when Murtagh would in fact have welcomed the freedom that an empty nest may have awarded. He rearranged the postcards so that none were completely obscured and continued into the kitchen, where a pound of potatoes waited to be peeled.

  The clock chimed five. Nollaig would close the shop soon and stroll home to eat dinner with him. In times past, their roles were reversed, when he had loved spending as many hours as he could in the studio, sometimes appearing only for meals. Now Nollaig was the one who devoted most of her time working for Makes of Moone, and in particular developing their online shop and social media presence. Her internet persona was much wittier than her real-life one, and she enjoyed communicating with customers from all over the world. Murtagh knew he had his daughter to thank for the business surviving, for getting him to work again, but he often cursed his own inability to motivate her to want something more for herself. They were locked in a perpetual cycle that seemed impossible to break.