Immaculate Heart (12 page)

 

ORLA

That's not what I mean, Father. I know this isn't about me.

(pauses)

I don't know if it was real. That's the simple truth of it.

 

FATHER DOWD

If you don't think you saw Our Lady … what do you think you saw?

 

ORLA

Nothing. I … I think I made myself see something so that …

The girl draws a trembling breath. She can't look the priest in the eye.

 

ORLA (CONT'D)

I don't think I saw it. I think I only made myself see it.

 

FATHER DOWD

But why? Why would you think that?

 

ORLA

For Síle. So
she
wouldn't be seeing things, Father. That's why.

 

FATHER DOWD

Now, Orla. I have interviewed each of you on your own, and you have each described Our Lady in terms that would lead any reasonable person to conclude that you were experiencing the same phenomenon. I have asked certain questions of each of you, and both you and your friend Tess have answered them in a fashion which would satisfy any skeptic. Did Tess tell you the questions I'd asked her in strictest confidence? Did ye take the opportunity to agree upon your answers beforehand?

The girl's reaction is too shocked to be anything but the honest truth.

 

ORLA

No, Father!

 

FATHER DOWD

Was there any drink involved?

 

ORLA

No, Father! I never drink except when my dad offers it at Christmastime.

The priest shoots her a doubtful look, and a flash of contempt passes across Orla's face (“This is just what I was talking about. You see I'm with Declan, and you make assumptions.”)

 

FATHER DOWD

Then explain to me how you could be misled by your own eyes.

 

ORLA

(hesitatingly)

It seemed so clear at the time. I accepted it. It felt real. But now I don't know, and Declan doesn't know either, and I don't know what to think.

 

FATHER DOWD

It seems to me that when the two of ye speak of the visitation ye've only been confusing each other.

 

ORLA

But it's not as if I could somehow make myself sure again. I wish I could be sure of everything, one way or the other.

The priest is well and truly exasperated now, but he's making a visible attempt to suppress it.

 

FATHER DOWD

What about Tess? Do you believe she saw Our Lady?

 

ORLA

Tess is the most honest person I know.

 

FATHER DOWD

I would say so, too. Tess has a strong character. When Tess opens her mouth to speak, you can be sure the words that come out are the truth.

 

ORLA

I know, Father.

 

FATHER DOWD

And Tess knows what she saw. She has perfect conviction.

(pauses)

So if your sister were seeing things that weren't there, then Teresa would have to be seeing them, too.

 

ORLA

Aye, Father. I've thought of that.

 

FATHER DOWD

Sometimes the most extraordinary explanation also happens to be the correct one, Orla.

I guess they don't teach Occam's razor at the seminary,
I thought as the tape clicked off. If people used their own common sense, then what would they need the priests for?

A flutter of movement near the grotto drew me away from my notebook. A lanky figure in a black hooded sweatshirt stood with a hand on that ledge lined with all the pillar candles and glow-in-the-dark Virgins, and when the boy turned to look at my car, I recognized him by the size of his Adam's apple.

I rolled down the window. “Hey,” I called. “Didn't I see you down at the youth center the other day?” The boy looked at me blankly, so I added, “With Tess?”

The sound of her name seemed to soften him, just as it had everyone else. “You a friend of hers?” the boy asked.

“Yeah, I am. I'm in town for my uncle's funeral.”

“Who's your uncle?”

“Johnny Donegan?” I don't know why I said his name as if it were a question, or why I even felt the need to talk to this kid.

He nodded. “Sorry for your loss.”

“Yeah, well.” I coughed. “He was a nice man, but I hadn't seen him since I was a kid.” I flipped up my hood and got out of the car. “What are you doing up here, anyway? It's nasty out.”

The boy shrugged, and I glanced back at the tchotchke truck. The light was on, but I couldn't see the little old woman inside.

“Were you asking Tess about the apparition?”

I turned back to him, caught off guard, and he stifled a smirk. “I didn't think it was something she talked about,” I said.

The boy shot me a pointed look. “Then that makes two of us.”

We both turned to the water-stained statue of the Virgin in her cement niche. “Is she why you're up here?” I asked, burying my hands deeper into my pockets and hunching my shoulders against the wind. “I didn't think anybody really believed in this stuff anymore.” Certainly nobody young enough to know better. Then again, what was
I
doing here?

There was a gawkiness to him that some boys never grow out of, and I suspected he'd be one of them. “Tess believes,” he said.

I quirked a brow. “Do you?” She'd come up here by herself, Síle had said. Had the apparition come to her then? What had it said to her?

The boy turned to the statue with an unreadable look on his face. There was an awkwardly protracted pause, and it hit me that he was
listening
to something. I cleared my throat. “Hey. Are you okay?”

The boy turned back to me then, but he wasn't entirely there. He nodded vaguely.

“You need a ride back to town?”

“Nah,” he said, and in another beat, he'd come back to himself. “I'll be all right.”

Casting me one last wary glance, the boy turned and stalked down the hill toward town, and I looked up at the blank-faced statue with the unnerving sense that I'd been excluded.

I walked over to the tchotchke truck. Tiny old Mag O'Grady had propped herself against the back wall of her shop, snoring softly as her toothless jaw went up and down, up and down, like she was dreaming of dinner.

*   *   *

I had my laptop with me, but I got blank looks in cafés and pubs whenever I asked about the Wi-Fi. I had to go down to the library to dash off an e-mail to Andy, my editor at the magazine.
It's along the lines of weeping statues, minus the religious nuts,
I wrote.
I'm talking to the women who saw it when they were teenagers. Social and economic angle as well. Mysticism and the Celtic Tiger.
The next time I signed on, I'd find a reply from Andy, cautiously approving, and then I'd go ahead and draft the piece. Every time my thoughts wandered back to the boy on the hill, I brushed them away again. If religious visions were as common as that, Mag O'Grady would be raking it in. Síle would sketch and paint in a studio without bars.

At lunch I told Brona I'd booked a room at Mrs. Halloran's B and B for the rest of my stay in Ballymorris. “Take it up with my grandmother,” I told her when she protested. “She's the one who says fish and houseguests stink after three days, and I've already been here five.”

“She didn't mean your own family!” Brona cried, but I wouldn't let her sway me. It felt too good to know she didn't want me to leave.

“And how did you find the Mass this morning?” she asked, once she'd resigned herself.

“It was over in less than a half hour,” I said. “There were more people there than I thought there'd be. And I saw Mrs. Keaveney. Tess pointed her out to me.”

Brona replied with that automatic click of the tongue. “The poor dear!”

I gulped down the last of my toasted cheese sandwich before I spoke again. “Can you tell me where she lives?”

Brona cast me a squinty look. “Why d'you ask?”

“I thought I might speak with her, if she's willing.”

“Oh, she'll speak to you,” she sighed. “As for whether she'll speak any sense, that's another matter altogether.”

“Father Lynch did say she's not…”

“Not quite right?” Brona took a sip of tea, and sighed again. “I'm afraid so. She's convinced Declan's coming home any day now. She's been sayin' it for years, and he never comes.”

“So you think I shouldn't try to see her, then?” I don't know why I bothered asking, when I was going regardless.

“Sure, you can speak to her. I just can't see what you'll gain by it.” Brona shook her head. “Poor Peggy Keaveney. There's some of us who're worn down by the business of life. The falseness. First the husband, then the son.”

“Are you sure they left her? You hear about people having accidents sometimes and no one ever finds out what really happened.”

As she cleared our plates, Brona gave me an eloquent look. For all their reputation for chattiness and storytelling, the Irish I knew were so skillful with words there was sometimes no need for them at all.

She gave in, though, and it turned out Mrs. Keaveney lived just around the corner. From the outside, the house seemed better kept than I'd've expected, the hedge under the front window neatly pruned. I knocked a second and third time, and only then did I notice there wasn't any smoke coming out of the chimney. Next door a very old man stuck his head out his front door and said, “She'll be havin' a kip right about now.” I opened my mouth to ask what a kip was, but he went on: “You're Johnny Donegan's nephew, aren't you?”

I nodded, and he nodded back. “Come back later this afternoon,” he said gravely, as if he'd put a considerable degree of thought into it. “'Twould be a good time to come, right about four o'clock. Will I tell herself you called?”

I thanked him but said no, that wouldn't be necessary. When I turned to leave, he said, “I remember you, lad. It's a long time since you were here, but I remember you.”

“That was twenty-five years ago,” I said, laughing a little. “You couldn't possibly!”

“Ah, but I do. Johnny brought you round to the parish picnic, and your gran told us all about you,” he replied, and then he called me by a nickname I hadn't heard since I was fourteen.

I shivered as I turned the corner for Brona's. I couldn't help feeling again as if I were being watched.

*   *   *

It was turning into a wasted sort of day, but there was no use fighting it. I walked back to Brona's in the rain and told her I was going up for a “kip” myself, but when I drew the curtains and got into bed, the Walkman—and the piece of Síle inside it—beckoned to me from the dresser.

The young girl sits demurely in the chair opposite the priest, her hands folded in her lap, a serious expression on her lovely face as she answers his questions. For his part, the priest looks more stern than we have yet seen him.

 

FATHER DOWD

Now, Síle. We'll start from the beginning, and with no embellishments.

 

SÍLE

I don't know what I've done to make everyone think I'm lyin' about what I've seen, Father.

 

FATHER DOWD

Let me put it to you this way, child: do you feel that the Blessed Virgin has singled you out? Has she given you a special mission? A calling no one else can answer?

The girl looks down at her hands.

 

SÍLE

I don't feel I'm special in any way.

 

FATHER DOWD

That's the truth, is it?

Síle looks up, her pale face suddenly alight with righteous indignation.

 

SÍLE

I don't mean to be thick wit'cha, Father, but you're askin' questions you think you already know the answers to.

 

FATHER DOWD

You're right, Síle. You
are
being thick with me.

 

SÍLE

If you think I'm no good, then why am I here? Why did you ask me here if you think I'm makin' it all up for the attention?

 

FATHER DOWD

I know you're not “makin' it up.” Tess saw her, too. And your sister. And Declan.

 

SÍLE

But you wouldn't be takin' us seriously if it weren't for Tess.

 

FATHER DOWD

(sighing)

From the beginning, Síle. From the very beginning. Why were you up on the hill that day?

 

SÍLE

We go up there to talk. There's space up there, and the air is fresh.

 

FATHER DOWD

You're younger than the others. How does your sister like you tagging along with them at the end of the school day?

 

SÍLE

I'm not taggin' along, Father.

The two exchange a look. She's a smart girl; she knows he'll only humor her, but she still has to let him.

 

FATHER DOWD

All right. Would you say you and your sister are friends?

 

SÍLE

I'd say we are.

 

FATHER DOWD

But would she have something else to say about it?

Síle replies with a defiant lift of the chin.

 

SÍLE

Someday we'll be better friends than we are now.

 

FATHER DOWD

I hope that's so. And tell me, are you friendly with Tess?

 

SÍLE

Oh, aye. Tess is a friend. She's always been kind to me.

 

FATHER DOWD

Tess is kind to everyone.

(after a pause)

And as for Declan?

 

SÍLE

What about him?

 

FATHER DOWD

They tell me he and your sister are going out.

 

SÍLE

I suppose they are. Once or twice I've seen them snoggin' behind the garage. But they don't hold hands or anythin' whilst we're all together.