by Helen Cullen
I hope you haven’t run the business into the ground while I’ve been away. Please don’t ignore your inbox—there are orders there!!!
I’ll sign off now before I lose the light. Please give Fionn a hug from me and tell him he’s taking care of precious cargo for me now.
All my love,
Noll Xx
Dublin: May 24, 2015
DILLON SAT IN the grounds of Dublin Castle, drinking cava from the bottle with a rainbow-striped straw while Molly took pictures on her phone of the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, hugging Panti, Ireland’s new undisputed Queen of Ireland and the public face of the country’s LGBTQ community. The exit polls for the marriage referendum had all but guaranteed a Yes vote, but when the official result was announced, revealing that 62 percent of the country had voted in favor of same-sex marriage, the city exploded. Rainbow flags dangled from apartment blocks, flew from lampposts and were waved in the air by the thousands of people who spilled out into the streets in celebration. Strangers hugged, recognizing a friend from the YES badge they wore. It felt as if the whole country had woken up to a new Ireland.
The only person in the crowd who looked dispirited was Dillon, despite the YES badge on the lapel of his denim jacket. Molly put her arm around his shoulders. “You should call him,” she said. “Imagine how he must be feeling now.”
Dillon shrugged her off. “I can’t. I haven’t spoken to him since the party, and he’s probably with him.”
She sighed, sipped from his straw and took his face in her hand. “Dillon, my love. Look around you. See what love can do? Your father is so brave, and you want to be on the right side of this.”
He stretched his neck away from her. “This isn’t about the marriage referendum,” he said. “I voted yes—it’s not that he’s suddenly supposedly gay that has upset me. I can’t believe he lied to us all these years. He’s a fraud.”
She stood up and swung her handbag over her shoulder.
“You tell yourself whatever you want,” she said, “but you know it’s not that simple. This vote means nothing if men like your father can’t get even a bit of empathy from their own children. Look at you sitting there, with your YES badge. You’re the only fraud I see.”
She turned on her heel and vanished into the mob before he could stop her. He felt his phone vibrating and slid his finger across the screen to answer the call from Sive. “Don’t you start,” he said.
“Dillon?” she said. “Hang on, I’m here with Mossy.”
“What are you doing in Galway?” he asked.
The line was bad, muffling Sive’s voice. He pressed the phone hard against his ear while ducking into a derelict telephone booth to try to hear better.
His father’s voice came down the line. “Hello, son.”
Dillon could hear his voice cracking, feel the others listening. He rested his forehead against the dirty glass of the booth and disconnected the call. A better part of himself knew he should call back, but he couldn’t force himself to do it. He pushed through the crowds to get back to his flat, where he closed the curtains, turned off the lights and slid a video cassette into the VHS player he still kept connected to the television. He sat on the floor in front of the couch, Molly’s coat draped over his knees, and watched the old tape of his mother playing Desdemona. He knew she would want him to make peace with his father, but she hadn’t stuck around long enough to show him how. Molly found him there later that night, asleep at an awkward angle, the television set crackling with black-and-white fuzz. He woke up and saw her standing there, flushed and tipsy from too much alcohol.
“I’m sorry,” he said, reaching out for her.
“It’s not me you should be apologizing to,” she said, ruffling his hair. “But tomorrow is another day. In the morning we wake up in a new Ireland. Don’t start it on the wrong foot, love.”
“I don’t believe it can be this easy for the others to accept it.”
“It’s not,” she said, smiling at him. “But they’re trying to. Because you’ve all suffered enough, and they want to at least try to be happy for him. Can’t you do the same?”
He turned off the television and followed her into bed, disappointed to find no more missed calls on his phone.
Were the others all celebrating with his father now?
Lying in the dark, Molly softly snoring beside him, he couldn’t sleep.
Who was all this punishing, really?
He crept back to the sitting room, rewound the tape and sat on the floor in front of the television. But this time he didn’t press Play.
Instead, he quietly lifted a battered briefcase down from the top shelf of the closet and spilled a pile of unopened letters across the carpet.
Dozens of letters that had been arriving since Christmas and that he had never read.
With his name and address written by the hand of someone who loved him.
His father.
He started to read.
Date: June 9, 2015
To: Nollaig, Tomás, Dillon, Sive
Cc: Kalindi, Fionn
From: Makes of Moone
Subject: From your father
My dear children,
For the second time in less than a year I want to tell you all something at the same time but, unfortunately, on this occasion it’s not possible to gather you all together, for many reasons.
I have started and deleted this email a dozen times and you all know how slow I am at typing, so my two forefingers are almost blunt from banging on the keys. As a result, in this final attempt, I am going to try and say simply what feels so complicated.
On the eve of the marriage referendum, Fionn asked me to marry him. He said he wanted to propose before the result so, no matter which way the vote went, I knew how he felt regardless.
I said yes.
And I hoped that when the results came through, I would feel that Ireland accepted our decision. Now, we know the country supports us, or at least two-thirds of it. I hope my children can, too.
Some would say it would have been easier for me to continue on as I was without causing all this drama—to them I say, what sort of man would I be if I watched all those brave folks campaign for my freedom and then pretend that I didn’t want it?
Here comes the sentimental bit. I have denied a part of myself for so many years since we lost your mother, flattened any seed of hope before it could blossom into even the idea of an idea, and now I want to give myself a chance to bloom.
I have been given a second chance of happiness that I never thought would come. I know this may not be what you imagined happiness would look like for me, but here it is. And, as much as you might struggle with it sometimes, I think I would be a poor parent if I didn’t seize a chance of happiness when it was offered to me, even if the circumstances were difficult, even if it was hard to explain.
What sort of parent would I be if I taught you to run away from love?
We have decided to get married on the island on Christmas Eve. You must believe me when I say I truly believe that this would make your mother happy—it is time that Christmas became an occasion we can celebrate again. And we will celebrate her, too, on the day, and Nollaig’s birthday, and thank her for bringing us together.
I hope that you will all be there for us, but we will understand if it is too difficult. Please remember, sometimes we have to endure the difficult parts to get to the good place again, and happy endings don’t always look like we expect them to, if there even is such a thing.
I will speak to you all soon, I hope, but wanted to give you time to absorb this news before I do.
I send it with all my love, and a heart full of hope.
Dad
Inis Óg: Morning December 19, 2015
MURTAGH WAS SURPRISED to see the blue door of Makes of Moone swaying open in the wind as he turned the bend on the pier road. Was N
ollaig working already? He was sure he’d heard her on the telephone when he left the house. Did I not close the door last night when I left? The possibility that an intruder could have broken in and left the door swinging in their wake never even occurred to him. Not until he saw the glass glittering on the windowsill and the ugly words spray-painted in red across his whitewashed wall. He rushed forward and started rubbing at the graffiti with the sleeve of his duffel coat, but only the original white paint flaked away. Is that what they call me behind my back? The islanders? Someone I know?
He crunched through the broken glass and stood in the doorway, flicked the light switch, but the bulb had been smashed, so he pulled the curtains to let the weak winter sunlight illuminate the damage. The red paint was sprawled over each wall, some of the words not even spelled correctly. He tried not to look at them.
The last shipments due to leave the shop before he moved to Dublin were no longer stacked in neat white cardboard boxes along the back wall but strewn about the floor, the boxes shredded, contents shattered.
Murtagh steadied himself and entered the back room; all of the glazes he’d stored there were spilled across the floor, puddles of terra-cotta, golden yellow and sea green mingling unhappily and smearing across the tiles.
On his desk, the midnight blue porcelain vase he had made as a wedding present for Fionn lay in seven pieces like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. He moaned, a deep, low noise, as he traced his fingers along the edges, remembering the hours he had spent molding it into the perfect shape, engraving symbols from their life together into the clay, mixing the exact shade of the sea under moonlight. Weeks of work destroyed, irreplaceable.
“Dad?” A voice made him jump, and he turned to see Dillon standing at the doorway, a suitcase in his hand, his face pale.
“Dillon—” his father held out his arms to him “—Dillon, I’m—I’m so—” But his knees gave way and he crumpled to the floor among the broken pots and started to shake.
Dillon dropped his case and came toward him. “Be careful, Dad,” he said. “Don’t cut yourself. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
He helped his father stand and steered him from the studio by his elbow. Outside, they both sat on a bench, facing the ocean in silence.
“Who would do such a thing?” Dillon asked, looking back at the studio and turning his face away in disgust. “It must be someone we know.”
Murtagh stood up. “I should try and clean it up before folks come along,” he said. “Maya and Ajay are here this afternoon. I don’t want them to see that.”
Dillon took his father’s arm again and navigated him toward home. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s go home and I’ll get some things to take care of it. You’re not going back there.” His breathing was heavy as he walked, shock now being overtaken by anger.
“I’ll find out who did this, Dad, and when I do—”
His father cut him off with a hand on his wrist.
“When you do, you’ll do nothing,” he said. “You can’t beat hate with hate. That just fuels their fire.”
Murtagh opened the front door and interrupted Fionn and Nollaig sorting through the contents of the hall cupboard.
“How long is it since we did this?” she asked. “Because I’ve found Sive’s Leaving Cert results and—Dillon! Dillon, you’re here—Oh my God, what’s happened?”
Inis Óg: Midnight, December 19, 2015
MURTAGH SLIPPED OUT of the house while everyone else was sleeping and gathered together a few things from the shed, before returning to his studio. It was comforting to find the door firmly locked and the walls freshly painted white again. Offering some silent thanks for his children, he touched the plastic that covered the window with his fingertips as he passed and let himself in. The paint fumes were potent, the white walls blinding when he turned on the light. His studio was almost completely empty now; all the shards had been swept away, the cardboard boxes removed. The floor had been mopped almost completely clean of the glazes, but there were still faint traces of color between the grout on the tiles that would never be erased.
On his workstation, the remains of Fionn’s vase lay on top of newspaper. Murtagh sighed in relief that it had not been thrown away. He spread out the contents of his bag, propped himself on his old stool, and set to work mixing lacquer with the powdered silver that Kalindi had brought him from Tokyo. When instinct told him that the mixture was the right consistency, he began to piece the porcelain vase back together again. The fragments were sewn together in silver, and slowly it became whole once again. As dawn was breaking, Murtagh lifted the repaired vase with its silvery veins and turned it toward the light flooding in from the east.
It was more beautiful than before.
Art made of precious scars.
Kintsugi.
Inis Óg: December 20, 2015
FATHER Dónal RACED through Mass, barely leaving enough time for the islanders to give their responses before slamming the Bible shut and leaving the pulpit to begin his sermon. He stepped down from the altar, his color rising, and for the first time in all his years as the island’s parish priest he paraded up and down the aisle as he spoke. He was not so much delivering a sermon as summoning all the wrath of the heavens down upon them. The congregation watched aghast, swiveling their heads to watch him striding past with his black cassock flapping about his legs.
“I have lived on this island for thirty-five years,” he began, “and always thought being appointed here was a gift from God Himself. These islanders are good people, I thought. Kind, Christian people, I thought, who support one another, live in peace, and would do each other no harm. It seems I was wrong. For an ugly thing has happened and shocked me to my core.
“A great man of this island, whose family has lived among us for over three decades, who I know has been a good friend to everyone sitting here, has been the victim of a terrible and cruel act of malice. You all know what I speak of. The rumors have been buzzing across the island all day like a swarm of angry wasps. But who, may I ask, offered a hand of help to rectify this maleficent deed? Who sought him out to express their sorrow that such a thing should happen here on our beloved island? Not one of those kind Christian people of my parish. You may not have picked up the hammer, or kicked in his door, but if you know who did and you say nothing, your sin of omission is a terrible one.
“On the twenty-second of May this year, we as a country voted to allow people of the same sex to marry each other. I know there were many priests across the land who told their congregations to vote no, but I tell you here and now, my conscience was clear when I put a big giant X in the box that said yes. And I’ll tell you why. I know I can stand in front of my God and tell him I didn’t prevent two people who loved each other from being happy, and I don’t believe any loving God would want me to. Now, we are going to sit here in silence for ten minutes. Ten minutes, and I want you all to think about what has happened on this island and decide if you are okay with that, or if you are going to stand up and support one of our own whose only mistake as far as I can see was trusting us with his truth.
“In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
For the next ten minutes, Father Dónal stood on the altar, resting his eyes on each person along every pew in turn.
When they were eventually released into the night, the freedom felt like a storm finally breaking after a heat wave.
The islanders were broken, and desperate for repair.
Four:
Kintsugi
Inis Óg: December 24, 2015
IT WAS CHRISTMAS EVE.
Murtagh wore brown brogues, shiny as chestnuts, as he paced to and fro along the well-worn floorboards in the hallway of the Moone family home.
Standing before the looking glass, he smoothed his silver curls. He wore a new suit, cut from navy blue tweed, slim fitting, with a white shirt and a dark green velvet bow tie
that kept coming undone.
Nollaig stood before him, wearing a black silk dress that trailed the ground and a crown of lilac anemone in her hair, which hung loose.
“Are you ready?” she asked him, retying his bow once again and holding him at arm’s length. “You look ready,” she said, and kissed him on the forehead.
The door to the living room was open.
Christmas waited inside.
A fir tree from Gallagher’s field was adorned in white lights and the decorations made by Nollaig, Mossy, Dillon and Sive as children. Traditions that had not been outgrown, after all.
Nollaig and her father were the last to leave the house. As they closed the front door behind them, the cuckoo from Maeve’s clock chirped four times and Murtagh exhaled a deep breath.
“Just a minute.” He hesitated, opening the door once again and turning the porch light on.
They linked arms as they walked down the lane together, reminiscent of so many walks they had taken before, but this time the air crackled around them. “I remember the first time you were allowed to walk to Siopa Sile on your own,” he said. “Your mother followed you all the way, trying to hide so you wouldn’t see her.”
Nollaig laughed. “Oh, I knew she was there but pretended not to see her. I was relieved, to be honest.”
The rain had held off all day and the evening was drawing in, clean, crisp and black. “I hope it won’t be too dark,” he said. “At the castle. We don’t want anyone stumbling.”
“It’s fine. Mossy hung the fairy lights, remember? PÓl gave us his generator,” she said. “You should worry more about folks hearing you over the noise of that thing.”
He stopped and looked at her. “Should I?”