The Perfect Love Song (15 page)

But tonight, with Jack in Ireland, Jimmy felt the old and ancient need to have his dad know and be proud. What Jimmy didn’t understand was that there is this need in a man—always present—for a dad’s approval. Yet this need is unnecessary because the One that made the man already approves of the man. And, yes, even loves him. Oh, so much loves him.

Jimmy lay back on the cot and closed his eyes. What was he doing this for? This trip to New York City, this distance from the woman he loved, from his brother’s wedding?

Approval.

He shook his head against the pillow. No way. It couldn’t be. He was doing this for the band, for all of them. Not for his dad. That was ridiculous. He closed his eyes against the stupid thought and fell into the darkest sleep he’d ever had, a sleep that wasn’t really a sleep but a deadness that threatened to overtake his heart.

T
heir baggage came out in sporadic shifts, and the laughing group of Kara, Jack, Charlotte, Porter and Rosie, and Isabelle and Hank counted the bags until they were sure they had everything. Squinting into the morning, they emerged from the airport and into a sun that seemed filtered and washed in green light.

“Ireland,” Charlotte said.

Kara lifted her face to the biting wind. “Wow, huh?”

“I thought it was supposed to be all gloomy and dark here in the winter,” Charlotte said.

The group raised their eyes to the clearest sky. “It is freezing, though.” Jack pulled his scarf tighter. “Okay, let’s go find the rental car place. I rented a van for all of us.”

After deciphering the signs and tumbling aboard a bus, they emerged at the rental car booth and then followed Jack to the van. When they saw the vehicle, the laughter was simultaneous and free. The van was squat, square, and small enough to fit in the back of Porter’s pickup truck at home in South Carolina. There was just no way they were all going to fit into that one car with all the luggage.

“This,” Jack said, “is what they call a van? We’re going to need another car.”

Isabelle sat on her suitcase. “No way I’m driving. I can barely drive down the right side of the road, much less the
left side. Plus, I heard these are the skinniest, windiest roads in the world. I’ll kill someone.”

Jack laughed. “I wouldn’t let you drive. But someone is going to have to besides me. This is the largest car they have, and there is no way we’re going to fit.”

Mr. Larson coughed. “I know it should be me, but I’ve never driven on the wrong side of the road.”

“Dad?” Kara poked at him. “Except that time in Charles-ton when you went down a one-way street and almost killed all of us.”

“Exactly,” Mr. Larson said. “But I guess I can try.”

“It’ll be an adventure,” Charlotte said.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Mr. Larson dropped his briefcase and exhaled. “I’ll be right back.”

T
he streets wound through the stone-dotted landscape an hour and a half north of the Shannon Airport and into Galway. Charlotte rode with Kara and Jack, her feet crammed underneath the seat to catch the meager heat coming from the floor vents. Together they tried to pronounce every sign they passed: Cappafean and Garheeny More, Ardrahan and Kilcolgan. The ground appeared as if green lumps of earth
had pushed their way through dirt and stone, proving their resilience against a ragged landscape like none Charlotte had ever seen. The stones and rocks echoing permanence born in another time, a time so ancient that the person who had set these stones into walls could not have imagined cars or the people in them. A time long gone. Yes, Charlotte thought, it all passes: love, joy, sadness. It is there, and then it is gone, leaving behind only the echo.

She wiped at her eyes, forced her thoughts to happier things. “Pictures didn’t catch this,” she said from the backseat.

Jack slammed on the brakes. “Hold on!” he hollered, suitcases flying forward, the car skidding sideways. In front of them two stray sheep stood in the middle of the road, staring at them as if the car were the thing that didn’t belong, as if the car drove onto their field.

Charlotte burst out laughing. “This is crazy. They just stand in the middle of the road and expect to not get hit.”

“Yeah.” Kara rolled down her window. “They’re looking at us like we’re the crazy ones.” She waved her hand out the window. “Shoo!” she hollered.

“‘Shoo’?” Jack’s words were wrapped in laughter. “Did you just yell ‘shoo’ at the sheep?”

“I did,” Kara said and stuck her head back in the window. “You got a better plan?”

Jack pressed his hand on the steering wheel, and a tinny, small noise erupted from the car, a honk that really wasn’t a honk at all, but an irritating noise. Charlotte and Kara looked at one another in that way that friends do and then burst into laughter that could not have been stopped by God himself.

Jack stared at them and shook his head. “You think this is funny?”

Kara wiped at tears. “That is the absolute most pitiful honk I have ever heard. My ‘shoo’ scared them more than that.”

A squeal of tire came from behind them, and they all swiveled to see Mr. Larson slam on his brakes and just miss hitting them. Everyone piled out of the cars, laughing.

Kara walked toward the side of the road, waving at the sheep to follow her, which of course they didn’t. “Oh . . . ,” she said and turned to the group. “Come here.” Her voice held reverence as if she’d seen an angel or apparition. And in a way she had.

Then they all saw it; they finally saw it. Galway Bay. The place and view Kara’s heart had seen only in imagination, the place she believed brought Jack back to her, the bay where she believed Maeve Mahoney now lived in spirit.

“Oh!” Kara cried out, grabbing Jack’s elbow.

Jack glanced to the left, and his breath was also taken away. Only a man with a dead heart would not lose his very breath at this sight. Together the group gathered at the cliff’s
edge, high above the rocks and waves, floating above the sway of the bay.

The late-morning sunlight scattered across the waves in a shifting pattern of the earth’s motion, an intricate ballet. Boats bobbed like toys in the powerful force, and water slammed and scattered against the cliffs, and then gently, impossibly, back into the sea that had just hurled it into the rocks, as if the water was destined to return to the bay only to be flung again. Like love, Charlotte thought. Going back for more to be tossed onto the rocks again.

Kara took Jack’s hand. “How is it possible that it is more beautiful than I imagined?”

He didn’t answer because he didn’t have an answer. He kissed Kara right there overlooking the cliffs. “God, I love you, Kara. I do so love you. If it took a legend from this place to bring you to me, I will love it also.”

Kara pushed her face into Jack’s sweater and let the tears melt into the wool of his scarf. “I love you.”

He leaned down to whisper, so as not to hurt Charlotte’s feelings, “I wish Jimmy were here.”

She lifted her face and stood on her toes to whisper in his ear, “I know. You didn’t have to say it; I know.” She kissed the edge of his ear.

Porter looked at his daughter. “Weird how the sheep stopped us right here, right at the first view of the bay.”

Kara laughed. “Yeah, you’d think Maeve Mahoney had something to do with it, wouldn’t you?”

Isabelle hollered into the wind, “Now, I have to admit this is one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen, present company included, but I’m freezing my arse off here! Can we see this view from inside a hotel with a warm drink?”

“‘Arse’?” Hank asked. “Who says ‘arse’?”

Isabelle shrugged and pulled her scarf around her head and face. “When in Ireland, speak as the Irish.”

“Okay,” Hank said as they all ran back to the cars. “The first Irish guy I meet, I’m asking him if they say ‘arse.’ Twenty dollars they do not say ‘arse.’”

Laughter, holy laughter if I do say so myself, rolled across the bay as they all climbed into their cars and drove up Dublin Street and into Claddagh Village. The village of the myth, the village of Maeve Mahoney, the village where Jack would finally wed Kara Larson.

T
hey stood in front of the Dominican church, staring up at the stone structure as if it were in a movie, or a photograph, something not real.

Kara squeezed Charlotte’s hand. “This is it.”

Charlotte nodded.

Mr. Larson spoke first. “So this is the church Maeve told you about?”

The frigid wind blew in off the bay behind the crowd, but sometimes the sight in front of your eyes can take your mind off your body. This very church had been here for more than five hundred years. It is a place we call St. Mary on the Hill, a place of the Claddagh Dominicans. Built of Galway granite, this building is, to many, the presence of God in the village, more, oh, how much more, than so many tons of granite and stone. The sacred building stands broad and proud, light gazing out from her tall windows and side doors. Her reflection shines off the water as if there is a church beneath the church, a holy place on which the holy place rests. At the top of the church there is a statue of Mary tucked into a marble enclave, a home of sorts. Mary stares out over the bay and everyone who enters the front door of her church. But there is another Mary, one we call “Our Lady,” and she is inside the church.

Kara turned to her friends, to her dad. “This is it. And it’s more beautiful, like everything else here, than I imagined. This is where they do the blessing of the bay she told me about. Every year, on a Sunday in mid-August, the entire town comes to the Claddagh pier here for the blessing of the bay and its fishermen. The priest reads and sprinkles holy water. There is this beautiful scene. I can almost see it from
the story Maeve told me. The brown sails, the priest, the hymns.”

“Can you tell us the story inside?” Isabelle asked. “I’m freezing.”

“We’re meeting a nun tomorrow afternoon for the rehearsal, but if y’all want to go in now . . . ”

Isabelle stood at the double wooden doors, opened them, and swept her hand toward the inside. “Let’s go. It’s warm in here.”

The church doors opened into a foyer, an aisle leading to ornate arched stained-glass windows, where Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Dominic looked out over the church with an adoring gaze. Arched columns and ornate mosaics lined the sides of the church, running alongside the pews like children keeping tight to their parents. But it was the wooden baroque statue that caused the group to stop, as if Mary herself had reached out and grabbed them.

“This statue,” Kara said as she pointed to a wooden statue of Mary, “was in Maeve’s story. I can’t believe I’m finally looking at it. In a way I’m stunned it’s real. That it’s here. It’s like waking up and finding part of your dream sitting in your bedroom.” Kara laughed, shook her head.

“What part of her story?” Charlotte asked, stepping forward, fascinated by this wooden statue in a way she didn’t yet understand.

“Well, she is called Our Lady of Galway. Maeve told me the Spanish priests brought her back from exile, along with the first rosaries. She was cleaned in Dublin and brought back here with this huge parade and celebration. Maeve was in the procession that brought the statue to the church; she was with the boy she loved—Richard, who her story was all about. It was the next morning that he was taken from the village. Maeve said she prayed to
this
Mary to bring him back safely. I feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland wondering what’s real and what’s not.”