Immaculate Heart (20 page)

Tess's mam drew a shaky breath as I cupped the water in my hands, and let it trickle over her knee. I laid my hands over the bruised and swollen part and I felt the warmth welling up under the skin. Her rosary beads trembled in her hands and I heard her begin with—Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee …

When she finished the prayer I took my hands away, and we were gobsmacked. She walked back to the car on her own.

 

It's as if the wee folk came in the night and took the old Mrs. McGowan away, leaving a whole new person, spry and smiling, in her place. She's been to the doctor and it's true, it's real, they won't be taking her leg after all.

The McGowans had us over for dinner along with Declan and his mother and Father Dowd. Tess took me into her arms and held me there for ages, and it was the loveliest feeling apart from needing Orla to see it.

—Soon they'll be coming, Father Dowd said, and there was a proud look on his face as he lifted his wineglass.—They'll come to be healed, and we must be ready to serve them just as Our Lord served the poor and downtrodden in His own day.

Funny how you can avoid dealing with something—or get
away
with something—just by saying you can't remember. Even if you take the time to think back over what little you can piece together, you probably can't trust whatever other pieces come up. They do say memory is faulty that way, don't they? That day at the beach my sister threw a pebble at me, it pinged me in the chest and stung for a second, and I know she only did it to impress her new friend; I may have heard her say, “He'll make me pay for that but I don't care,” or maybe she never said it and it was just my guilt filling in the gaps. Sometimes I felt like I'd give anything to have her back again, to have the chance to be good to her.

It was some other Mallory in Mrs. Keaveney's notebook. It had to be. I may not have retained a whole lot from my Sunday school days, but I did know this much: not even the God of the Old Testament would stick a child in some gray and comfortless place between life and death, leaving her to repent for somebody else's sins.

 

8

NOVEMBER 12

I was all but dead before the brisk knock on the bedroom door. “Will you be wanting breakfast this morning?” I opened my eyes, glanced at my phone, and sighed. I'd slept through the alarm.

I could picture Mrs. Halloran hovering at the far side of the door, wide-eyed and anxious to please. “I'll just leave something on the table for you, so.” I thanked her and fell back onto the pillow as her footsteps receded. Thirty-six hours after the poteen, and I was still recovering.

Midway through a bowl of Weetabix, I thought of calling Tess, but it didn't feel right. We didn't know each other, not really, and it wasn't like I'd know what to say to her anyhow.

There are people beginning to come from far away. Father Dowd said yesterday he met a man who brought his sick daughter all the way down from Waterford. Every day over the past fortnight they've been driving out to the well, they form a queue and Father Dowd dips his fingers in the spring and he anoints them. He says they asked for me, they said wasn't it my hands did the healing, but Father Dowd told them Our Lady blessed the water itself, and anyway I shouldn't be taken out of school. I'm not special, remember.

Yesterday the pilgrims came up to the hill and watched us as we prayed before the grotto, but Our Lady never came. I know the others hate the attention and I would rather we were alone, too. There was one woman who had to be carried out of a van, with everyone round her making a big fuss, and once they'd got her settled she just sat in her wheelchair and stared at us like she was waiting on the show to start. Some of them are ill, truly ill, but the others are only expecting somebody else to fix what's wrong with them, what they've only done to themselves.

On Sundays Father Dowd doesn't want to mention us in his homilies, he says it does no one any good to speak of us as if we're holier than the rest of them. But it doesn't matter. People I've known all my life look at me now like they've never seen me before.

When Mass is over I watch Father Dowd in the church doorway, chatting and laughing with the most ancient ladies of the parish. They're delighted with him, and to me this is a greater mystery than all the Lord's miracles rolled in together. Sometimes when we're in his office speaking of the Visitation I have to hold on tight to the chair to keep from twitching, for it's hard having to trust someone you know is judging you all the while. Those ladies can't see he's a hard man, sharp as glass underneath, and I can say it now that the Blessed Mother has told me I should never let him read this.

Orla and Tess and Declan and I still go up to the hill for a little while after Mass. Sometimes She comes and sometimes She doesn't, but I feel Her there either way.

I got in the Micra and drove out of town. I was itching to head for Sligo, but I had the feeling I might only be let in to see her one more time—if that—and I wanted to keep that visit ahead of me a little while longer.

Instead I took the gravel road up the hill and parked across from Old Mag's little white truck of marvels. “Ahh,” the old woman said, with a distinct air of satisfaction. “Didn't I tell ya you'd be back, now? And another foul-weather day it is, too. But sure, we only leave the house to come home again for a cuppa.” She nodded vigorously. “And isn't that what it means to be Irish?”

I matched her grin for grin. “I was up here the other day, actually. I came over to say hi, but you were—how do you put it?—‘having a kip.'”

“Go on wit'cha! How could a poor old woman like me take any rest with the wind roarin' like it does, and the rain comin' in sideways?”

“It
does
feel like it rains sideways in this country.” I laughed, and paused. “The last time I was up here you mentioned something about the miracle with Tess McGowan's mother?”

“Oh, aye. Poor Martina McGowan with the diabetes, and they would have cut off her leg the very next day—did young Teresa tell you that?”

I nodded. “But what did the doctors say, do you know?”

“The family said 'twas the apparition what did it, but the doctors never would. They'll never believe in miracles, so they won't. They only acted as if they'd never told poor Martina she was to lose the leg in the first place.”

“Had they ruled out all other possibilities? There'd been no change in her diet, or anything like that?”

“None a'tall,” said Mag, bringing a wizened little fist down on the counter for emphasis.

“And it happened at the well?” I asked. The old woman nodded. “When they poured the well water over her knee?”

“Aye. I wasn't there meself, but there were plenty there who say her knee healed right before their eyes. T'would be easy to see the change, with the diabetes—and wouldn't I know, when both me brothers suffered with it?”

“But I hear Mrs. McGowan's health still isn't great,” I said.

“'Tis twenty years since the Blessed Mother cured her,” Mag replied indignantly. “Sure, none of us can live forever!”

“Except
you,
maybe.” I grinned. “They say you're older than you look.”

“Sure, none of us will live forever,” she said again, not so spirited this time.

“Were there any other miracles?” I asked. “A lot of pilgrims came afterward, didn't they?”

“Aye, they came for six or eight months, steady-like,” she replied. “We heard of nothing so dramatic as what happened to poor Martina McGowan, but don't you go round thinkin' there weren't any. The best miracles can't be seen with the eyes.”

If the Irish were a most articulate race, they could also go on about a whole lot of nothing. “That's very poetic,” I said, “but what sort of ‘miracle' are you referring to, exactly? Something psychological?”

The old woman eyed me shrewdly. “What is it you're lookin' for, lad? They say you came back here for a funeral, but that isn't the reason. They say you want to write of the visions, but 'tisn't that, either.” She leaned in, breathing the sweet fug of Barry's tea with milk and sugar. “Sometimes folk ask a lot of questions because there are others, other questions they may not want to know the answers to.”

I thought of Lucy in the old Peanuts cartoons, dispensing worthless advice for a nickel a pop, and stifled the impulse to laugh. She was bullshitting—I'd been right about that.

“I'm not sayin' that's you,” Mag went on. “Though maybe it is. I'm only sayin' that for an auld one who doesn't travel much, I see more than you'd think.”

*   *   *

When I logged on to a public computer at the town library later that morning, I saw Andy was online.
hey dude. you get my email?

yeah

I waited for him to elaborate. This wasn't a good sign.

listen, I looked into this thing—

it's pure delusion

the girl who saw it first is in the loony bin.

i've met her,
I typed back.
she isn't delusional.

then why is she in there?

I fell back on stereotype.
she's an artist. her family can't cope with her mood swings. off the top of my head I can name at least a dozen people in New York who belong there more than she does.
I was trying way too hard, but I couldn't help it. They were laying off at least five staff writers before the end of the year, and I didn't want to lose my job any more than the next guy.

Andy hadn't answered after five minutes, so I wrote,
you're always skeptical, Andy. then i write the story and you love it, or at least you say you do, and you run it and everyone says it's great, and then you act like you were never skeptical.

Finally I could see he was typing.
you got a thing for this girl?

I sighed at the screen.
you would too. she's extraordinary. trust me—this could be great. the best thing I've done.

just enjoy the rest of your vacation, all right? i'll see you next week.

I signed off without saying good-bye. I should've known all along I'd never get a story out of this.

*   *   *

I got in the car and turned onto the road for Galway, tuning the radio to one of the Irish-language stations hoping the babble would clear my head a bit. I was almost there when it occurred to me that, if I wanted to make it back in time for the vigil, I'd only have an hour in Galway, two tops. Then I wasted ten minutes looking for a spot on one of the narrow streets before giving up and pulling into a garage. I passed a chalkboard sign outside a pub for a traditional Irish music session at 9
P.M.
, and thought to ask Paudie or Leo if any of the other pubs in Ballymorris offered something similar.

I trudged down the Dock Road and passed the Spanish Arch, crossing the bridge toward the Salthill promenade. Brona had spoken enthusiastically about the invigorating benefits of a long walk on Galway Bay, but I had to turn back when the drizzle intensified into a proper downpour.

So I took refuge in an old pub back on Quay Street, realizing only after I'd ordered a pint that what I'd taken for a quiet local was mobbed with hipster tourists. Why had I bothered to come at all?

I managed to find a stool at the bar and pulled out the diary, flipping ahead to the next real entry.

Father Dowd's wanting to make preparations for the May Day procession and I don't know what to say to him. He's talking like there'll be the four of us there, carrying the statue with her crown of white roses from the church all the way down to Saint Brigid's Well, and from the way he talks you know he's expecting a great big crowd from all over will turn out to listen to him. And I hope they do come, but I can tell you the names of two people who won't.

Something's happening to Orla and Tess. They used to be always together but now Tess hardly ever comes round to our house for dinner like she used to. That used to be the way of it since her mam wasn't often well enough to be cooking, and she cooks now but that's not the reason. Last night Dad asked what was the news with Tess and Orla got this look on her face, incredulous like, and all she said was—Tess is grand, she's always grand.

It isn't only Declan coming between them. It's more than that. I want to shake Orla and say do you know how lucky you are to have her for your best friend? But she doesn't. They've been mates since they were in nappies but she's never seen it. The only friends I've had have come and gone in a matter of days, weeks if I was lucky, and when they change their minds about me they join in the whispering. Once they decided I was queer, everything I said and every which way I moved had to be queer too, because people will think whatever they like so long as they don't have to see they're mistaken. I wish there were someone else at school like me, but there isn't, there never has been. So many times I go back to the day with Mallory at Streedagh and I wonder if she's the best friend I will ever have. Tess is kind to me but since she's not in my year I hardly ever see her. Orla sees her all the time and it's like Tess is slowly fading into the wallpaper. Oh how I long to shake her.

Sometimes Our Lady tells me things, things I'm not supposed to know, and I write them down here but afterwards I don't remember doing it. She says Father Dowd had a twin sister who drowned in a river when they were three years of age. She says Tom Devaney keeps filthy videotapes in a locked box at the back of his shop and all of the men in town know about it. I know Dad and Uncle Jim have lost a great deal of money in a bad investment and they're holding off telling Mam and Aunt Fiona for as long as they can. And She says Tess will become a nun though her heart will never be in it. I asked Her why, why would she do it if she didn't really want to, and Our Lady said she didn't know her own heart well enough to tell the difference. I said we should talk to Tess about it, to keep her from making that mistake with her life, and the Blessed Mother seemed surprised.—Ah, but there won't be any mistake in it, She said.—Haven't you ever done the right thing for the wrong reason?