Reckless Years

by Heather Chaplin

  “No, the Westin!” I say. “The Westin!”

  Kieran looks totally mortified and puts his hand over his forehead.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I don’t understand a word you’re saying either.” There’s a pause, and then Kieran starts laughing too.

  “Right,” he says, and he takes my arm and turns me around in the opposite direction.

  I tap him on the shoulder. “By the way,” I say. “I’m just a person. You don’t have to do anything to impress me. Honestly, I’m just so happy to be here, you have no idea.”

  Something passes across his face. I don’t know what it is exactly, but it’s like his gaze refocuses to see me more closely. I smile at him, because I just can’t stop smiling since I got to Dublin. “Really,” I say. “You have no idea.”

  We walk back to the Westin, and when we get there, I figure, what the fuck, and say, “So, do you want to kiss a little?” And Kieran says, “Yes,” in this breathy voice and kind of swoops down on me. The next thing I know, I’m up against the front of the Westin, my arms wrapped around this guy’s neck, his arms around my waist, and we’re making out like a couple of complete maniacs.

  Now, there are kisses, and then there are kisses. Remember that scene in Lord of the Rings where Frodo throws the ring into the pit of molten gold or whatever that substance was? Have you ever seen steel brought to the boiling point? Silver melted down? Perhaps you’ve watched an egg fry on Southern asphalt in the summertime? This Irishman, this Kieran, kisses me and the world bursts into flames. I am engulfed in liquefying, molecule-scrambling heat.

  If I could have come down to earth long enough to think, I probably would have thought something along the lines of, what the hell is going on here? But I don’t come back down to earth. I just think, oh. Oh. OH.

  Kieran reaches under my bulky sweater, under the two long-sleeved shirts, under the tank top, pulls aside the white spandex sports bra, and grazes my breast with his fingertips. We both catch our breaths so hard we nearly topple over onto the sidewalk.

  He kisses my lips, my neck, and the top of my head. He strokes the hair off my face as if we’ve been lovers for years. He lifts me up so my feet are not even touching the ground.

  “Beautiful girl,” he’s saying over and over. “Beautiful, beautiful girl.”

  I am too stunned, too liquefied, to speak.

  Finally we pull apart. Kieran brings his face down so it’s level with mine. He’s looking at me so searchingly that I can’t meet his gaze.

  “My God, girl,” he says. “Do you make out like this with everyone?”

  “No,” I breathe. “Do you?”

  “No.” He’s looking right at me, as if he can see into me. “No. No.”

  Half an hour goes by. An hour? Two hours? I have no idea. I’ve lost track of time. Finally Kieran pulls away, rubs his face with his hands. “Jaysus Christ, girl,” he says. “It’s nearly five in the morning.”

  Kieran is holding my hands in his. He says, “I have to go now. But I’m going to be back here tomorrow to take you to lunch. What do you say to that, chick?”

  I’m overcome by such a feeling of happiness that I can’t speak. Really, I think? You want to see me again? Really? I nod.

  Kieran tosses his hair back and holds his index finger up in the air as he starts to back away from me. “One o’clock,” he says. “I’ll be here for you then, Heather Chaplin. Will I find you?”

  I’m smiling so hard, it’s like my face is going to split in two. This Heather Chaplin? I’m thinking. The one standing right in front of the Westin? “Yes, I’ll be here,” I say.

  “One o’clock,” he says.

  I put my index finger up too. “One o’clock,” I say.

  We’re both cracking up as if this were the funniest thing in the world.

  To say I’m giddy as I go back inside the Westin would be an understatement. It might be more accurate to say I am carbonated from the inside out.

  Later

  The dim Dublin light is splattering across the pavement, endlessly shifting shapes as the clouds form and reform and drift apart above my head. I’m hanging out in north Dublin and thinking about God. Not God in the sense of a man with a bushy white beard, but more God in the sense of what some people would call “the Universe.” Although, really, I’m not exactly sure what that means either.

  I’ll tell you right now, I’ve never been a big fan of the Universe, or whatever you want to call it. I’ve always thought life was just completely random or maybe worse. Sometimes I’ve suspected there is a larger force out there, but it’s not the kindly, gentle force people who talk about the Universe seem to mean. I would have to describe the force I’ve always imagined as malignant. Cruel. Petty. Treacherous. Those are some of the words that come to mind.

  Really, my whole life, it’s been as if I were in one of those indoor swimming pools with the built-in current, endlessly swimming as hard as I could and never budging an inch. You could say that’s what I thought the Universe was—the thing that holds you back, that keeps good things from happening, that squashes any dreams you’re foolish enough to have. There have been times in my life I’ve felt hopeful, but I’ve always kept very quiet at these moments. It used to drive Josh crazy. I just always suspected that the way to get around God—or the Universe, or whatever—was to keep secret what you wanted. In other words, sometimes good things can happen, but only when the Universe isn’t paying close attention.

  Mac and Gabriel’s grandfather used to say, “The thing about life, kid, is it doesn’t give a shit.” And I’d always nod when he said this, and think, don’t I just know it.

  But now I’m not sure. Since that day in my bathtub when I ceased to exist, everything has been different. I feel like someone has turned off the current. I’m no longer swimming as hard as I can to get nowhere—and suddenly it’s like I’m getting everywhere. The whole pool is mine. I’m just floating around, as relaxed as you please, smiling up at the sun, having a daiquiri. I keep getting this feeling almost as if I can will things to happen—but not with any effort. That’s the funny part: somehow by not making any effort, everything I want to happen keeps happening.

  Can the Universe change its mind about a person? Say, okay, you’ve suffered enough, now you get to be happy. I feel like I slipped out of the universe in which I used to reside into another, better universe.

  I have this sense that I’m surrounded by light, or that light is illuminating me from within. I feel like my feet aren’t touching the ground but rather I’m suspended by a web of infinitely stretching and ceaselessly malleable threads. What could the glory of God possibly mean except how I felt last night making out with my Irishman?

  Later

  When I walk into the lobby of the Westin at 12:55, the Irishman looks up from the newspaper and I get a horrible feeling in my chest. This is not some random, sweaty guy from a nightclub. This is perhaps the handsomest man I’ve ever seen in my life. How in the euphoria of last night did I not catch this?

  He’s up in a second, laughing this fantastic loose laugh and saying, “Hullo, hullo, did you sleep, girl? I got none at all myself,” and kissing me on the cheek.

  And I’m thinking, I definitely should have gotten back to the hotel earlier. But here’s the thing, I hadn’t thought he’d actually show up. My relationship with the Universe is still so new! And even when I did get back, I didn’t get into the shower until twelve forty-five, just to prove that I didn’t care whether he showed or not. Then, when I got out of the shower and there was a message that he was waiting in the lobby, I put on jeans, the same sweater from last night, and my puffy jacket, which Josh always said made me look like Fat Albert, just to prove I didn’t care that he’d shown up.

  But the man before me! He’s tall and moves in my direction like he’s liquid. He shakes his hair away from his face and gives me the most wonderful smile I’ve ever seen. I think, your eyes are the blue of a summer night just before the sky turns to black. I think, what have I done?
I am standing face-to-face with the handsomest man in Ireland, and I have wet hair, no makeup and am dressed like an overweight animated TV character.

  I don’t know if it shows on the outside, but on the inside, I totally lose my shit.

  In a little shop across from the stone arch leading into St Stephen’s Green, we get sandwiches wrapped in plastic and cups of hot tea. Kieran insists on paying. The store is very crowded, so he carries the sandwiches over his head on the way to the cash register. He is long and lean, like the soccer players you see on TV. I follow behind with the tea, trying to breathe normally.

  We sit on a park bench and I say, just to say something, “I saw the pub where you work this morning. Near where the show was last night. Red paint with shiny black trim?”

  Kieran looks up from unwrapping his sandwich. He wrinkles his forehead. “Temple Bar Pub?” he says. “On Temple Bar?”

  “Yes! That’s it,” I say. I’m thinking, Why is everything called Temple Bar? I’m thinking, I want to put my hand in your hair; I want to touch your face. I’m thinking, why am I having these thoughts? “You’re a manager there?” I say.

  Kieran smiles at me, and his eyes seem to shine and grow warm all at once.

  “Well, no, not really,” he says.

  Turns out Kieran runs a documentary film company called Temple Bar Documentary Film Co., which is in the old part of town, which is called Temple Bar but is not the same thing as Temple Bar the pub or Temple Bar the street. No, it’s in Temple Bar the neighborhood, near Temple Bar the pub, on Temple Bar the street.

  Kieran finds my confusion highly entertaining. “And you still agreed to go out with me?” he says. “I’m chuffed.”

  I don’t know what that means, but I don’t really have time to ponder, because Kieran is moving closer to me, and I barely have time to say, “I try to be an equal opportunist,” before we’re kissing again. At first we’re kissing lightly, and then, the next thing I know, we’re kissing like mad, our arms wrapped around each other’s necks, and I’m starting to get that feeling again like my molecules are being scrambled.

  We break apart, panting slightly. As if we aren’t two adults on a park bench in broad daylight.

  “What is going on here?” I say.

  Kieran’s face is just a few inches from mine, and I see that his blue eyes have dark gray starbursts shooting out from the pupils. His eyes so familiar. “I don’t know, girl,” he says. “I don’t know.”

  “So, you got big plans tonight?” I say. Just to say something. To distract myself from the sense that though he is technically a stranger, I know every single thing about him. I’m wanting to reach out and say, I know. It’ll all be okay. Even though I have no idea what wouldn’t be okay.

  “Oh, I’m in tonight,” Kieran says.

  I laugh.

  He says, “No, I’m really in. I’ve got my girls tonight.”

  Girls? I think. Girls as in children? As in married with children? Oh, fuck you, Universe.

  I slide sideways, away from him on the bench. “You’re married. How charming.”

  Kieran is chewing a bite of sandwich. He shakes his head again. “No,” he says. “But I was.” And when he turns to look at me, there is nothing devious in his eyes—just a blue so deep I think I could happily drown in it.

  I say, “I used to be married too.”

  We look at each other for a long minute.

  “I wasn’t going to tell you because I thought you might not approve,” I say.

  Kieran throws back his head and laughs. “You thought I’d be a strict Catholic?” he says. “Ha! No way, girl. I’ve known too many priests for that.”

  I slide back toward him. And then what else is there to do but resume kissing, wildly, on this public park bench in the bright sun?

  When we come up for air, I find myself telling him about Josh’s long decline. How I tried everything. How alone I felt. Then he tells me that his younger daughter is severely autistic, that when she was just two, she stopped responding entirely, that life became surreal and full of a kind of pain he can’t even describe. That the marriage fell apart.

  We kiss for what seems like hours. I feel a kind of excitement—real, genuine physical excitement, like I can’t remember feeling since my early twenties.

  He tells me his ex-wife and he still live in the same house to take care of their autistic daughter. I say, “Are you sure you’re not married anymore?”

  He says, “It would be a pretty complicated story to make up, don’t you think?”

  I say, “Are you over it?”

  Kieran is looking straight ahead of him. “It took me a while to get my head around it,” he says. And then he turns and peers at me with those eyes. “But my head’s around it now, girl. Believe me. My head’s around it.”

  I walk him back to work. Everywhere, he points things out, especially when we get to Temple Bar.

  “See that there, that’s the children’s art center. We work with the kids there.” And, “That’s the Temple Bar Music Centre, where we met last night.” And when we pass a public square: “See this here, girl? We helped the city start a farmer’s market there.”

  I think about Josh, ashen-faced and afraid to go outside. When I look at Kieran, I imagine a sunflower unfurling toward the sun.

  “Listen,” he says. “If I can get out of work early, will you meet for a drink? Will you do that, chick?”

  “Yes, Kieran, yes,” I say.

  After he’s gone, I keep walking west. I’m in a daze, but not a foggy daze. I’m in a daze of blazing stars. I am not walking. I am floating. The Universe, or whatever, is inside me.

  Wednesday, November 22, 2006

  Last night

  I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced a crowd of thousands cheering for someone you love, but let me tell you, it is an awesome experience.

  When the band takes the stage, the crowd goes completely nuts. There’s wild cheering, people clapping their hands over their heads, fists pumping the air, and feet stomping. When Seth comes out right next to the Rock Star, swinging his bass and smiling from ear to ear, which I’ve never seen him do onstage before, I think I might die of joy. Cecilia and I clutch each other and shout and we both have tears pouring down our faces.

  The truth is I barely made it to the show. I’d been in this pub with Kieran called the Palace right on the edge of Temple Bar where Fleet Street’s cobblestones meet the zooming three-lane traffic of Westmoreland. The Rock Star had arranged a bus for friends and family of the band to go from the front of the Westin to the show at seven thirty. When Kieran and I stepped outside, I could see it across all those lanes of traffic, which meant there was time for a few more kisses, and then Kieran had all these gifts he’d brought me, which meant I had to kiss him more, and really I just couldn’t seem to unwind my arms from around his neck. But then, when we pulled apart, I turned around just in time to see the bus pull into traffic.

  I am not kidding, I ran across three lanes of traffic after that bus and down two city blocks, weaving in and out between cars, people staring at me and honking their horns and shouting, and all in three-inch platform shoes and carrying a gift basket’s worth of sundry goods. I’d had to pound on the side of the bus and scream and then run in front of it before the driver saw me and paused long enough to let me get in. “Well, there you are,” Cecilia had called out. “Impressive,” I heard someone mutter. I’d stood there in the bus’s stairwell, bent over and panting. My brother would not have been pleased if the bus had arrived without me on it. He is not into drama. And then there it was again—the smile that won’t leave my face. Really, I thought, everything is going my way in Dublin.

  Anyway, I did make it to the show, and I was hanging out backstage in the greenroom that’s set aside for friends and family of the band. We were all drinking beer out of goblet-like glasses and I was telling Cecilia and the keyboard player’s wife that I made out with the handsomest man in Ireland last night, and they were filled with envy because they�
�re married and never make out with anyone anymore. At first I’d felt superior and pleased they were jealous, but then I was so happy I couldn’t even maintain the snottiness, so I let it drift away and we just stood around beaming at each other.

  Then Seth came bursting into the room, such an energy in his step and openness in his eye that I almost couldn’t believe it was my brother. Where was his caginess, his reserve? Because let me tell you, as much as I love my brother, he can have a real edge to him. He can be viciously cutting, cold as ice in opposition, ruthless in argument, stiff in the face of emotion, and quietly furious. But now he was none of these things.

  “Come with me,” Seth said, handing me a laminate to wear around my neck with a picture of the album and my name on it. I followed him down a long corridor. People raced past us talking into headsets, wheeling racks of clothes, pushing huge lights with purple, pink, and blue gels over them. Seth was wearing a black shirt with embroidered red roses over each pocket. He told me the Rock Star gave it to him.

  I couldn’t stop laughing and neither could Seth.

  I had an image of him, aged seven maybe, running toward my father. We were in the hallway outside a concert my father was playing. I hadn’t wanted to go. Seth hadn’t been able to wait. We saw my father coming down the corridor and Seth’s eyes had brightened, the way they are now. But when he ran toward my father, my father ran right past him to me, taking me in a bone-crushing hug. I hadn’t looked at him because I could feel his eyes glowing, in that way his eyes glowed at me sometimes. And I’d thought, you don’t want his love anyway.

  I went for a closer examination of the embroidered roses on Seth’s shirt and said, “That’s beautiful, Seth. Unbelievable.”

  Seth introduced me to everyone we passed. I met Billy, the tour manager. Janis, the backup singer. It was all hustle and bustle and energy like electric currents running through the maze of hallways backstage. Gingerly, tentatively, I put my arm around my brother. Gingerly, tentatively, he put his arm around me. And it was like this, arm in arm, that we stepped out of the darkness of the backstage corridors into the bright lights and loud laughter of the greenroom.