Reckless Years

by Heather Chaplin

  I don’t correct her. I don’t say, actually I haven’t been able to get the editor to return my calls for two weeks. Instead, I give her a patronizing smile as if I deserve and accept her admiration. I have a nervous flicker in my stomach. I am crossing over into some new territory.

  The American has her hand over her heart. She’s saying to the other two: “The New Yorker is the absolute pinnacle of writing in America.” She gestures to me. “This woman, sitting at this table with us, this woman is at the absolute pinnacle of her art. Cheers. I mean it. Cheers to you.”

  And they all raise their glasses to me.

  “Well done! Cheers!”

  “To the pinnacle!”

  We clink glasses. And I think, oh God, she’s nice. And then, oh God, what have I done? And then, what is this smugness I feel? As if I actually were the woman they think they’re toasting. I adore the woman they think they’re toasting. She is cool, strong, and independent. She didn’t just have a nervous breakdown in a youth hostel. She is successful and beloved. This woman totally knows how to hold a coffee cup. I feel a tremendous sense of expansion, as if I actually take up more room in space. This woman has a place in the world. I feel myself as if clinging with all my might to the image of the woman I see reflected back to me in their eyes.

  Friday, December 14, 2007

  “Let me just ask you one thing.”

  It’s Eleanor. I’ve told her I’m not going home but instead am taking the American woman’s apartment for the month. “I like it better than you going to Morocco but I don’t like it as much as you coming here,” was her first response.

  “Sure,” I say. “Hit me.”

  “Are you staying in Dublin to make Kieran fall in love with you?”

  “What?” I cry. “No!”

  “I know you, Heather,” she says. “I’ve known you a long time. And I have a hard time believing that’s not what you’re doing.”

  I’m outraged. “I don’t ever want to see him again as long as I live. I’m not kidding. I can’t even think about him without shuddering. The thought of him fills me with a kind of terror.”

  This is all true.

  Eleanor says, “As you know, there isn’t anyone I’d less like to meet at the end of a dark alley than Heather Chaplin.” There’s a pause. “And mostly I love you for this.” There’s another pause. “But right now I’m not sure it’s going to serve you so well.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “I feel like Kieran holds a dangerous attraction for you,” she says.

  I don’t say anything.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, “but I’ve known you since you were five and I’ve seen all of it. In high school . . . ?”

  I know what she’s talking about. My first boyfriend in high school. How he told me he loved me, and the next thing I knew I was hiding in a corner of my room, the air quivering around me, with my hands over my head because I thought there were footsteps outside the door even though I was alone.

  “At the beginning with Josh . . .”

  Those dreams. My father chasing me. Bluegrass music. Flying over that cavernous chasm in the earth. Waking up in terror.

  “And now Kieran—I mean, it’s a pattern, Heather. It’s a pattern.”

  I see the pattern too, but I don’t say anything. I’m starting to feel pissed, like she’s rubbing my nose in something I can’t help. It makes me feel defiant. And like I might scream.

  Later

  I’m flying to London tomorrow morning to see Phil and lay down my tracks at the BBC. I promised Eleanor I’d go to bed at eight every night, but when the ladies from the art gallery say they have invites to the Irish Film Board party and I should come with them, I can’t resist.

  On my way over, I keep imagining that I’m about to run into Kieran. In my mind, I’m looking superhot and in control with my new friends. When he wants to sweep me into his arms, I say, “Hi there,” and walk away. I replay this fantasy over in my head so many times that my heart is pounding with the expectation that it’s about to happen.

  The first person I see when I get to the party is Andrew Dempsey, who I interviewed last week. The director of the movie in my story. I feel so pleased with myself for being taken to a fancy party and knowing not just somebody there but actually the star of the hour that I think, you know what, Kieran O’Shea should know about this. He should know that I rule. I give Andrew a blasé wave of my hand and get out my cell. As I pull it out of my pocket, it starts to vibrate. Motherfucker, but it’s Kieran. How does he always know?

  “How’s London?” he writes. “Prague was fab.”

  “Not in London,” I write. “At film board party.”

  “Still in Dublin, so,” he writes.

  I almost can’t believe what’s happening in my mind. I’m thinking, you totally overreacted. Nothing bad happened. He didn’t use you and throw you off. Now maybe I can fucking sleep? You misunderstood. Not looking at you the next day—he was just down from the ecstasy. He didn’t mean it. He wants you. In a minute he’s going to invite you over to his house. Will you go? Should I play hard to get or just hop in a taxi?

  I write: “Met some amazing artists who brought me to this party! What an incredible time I’m having! London in morning.”

  Cool, strong, and independent. Never let them see your pain.

  I feel excitement like something being inflated in my chest. I start to craft my reply. When he invites me over, how do I both make him suffer and still get to go?

  My phone vibrates. Here it comes.

  “cool,” Kieran writes. “njoy.”

  I stand there staring at my cell, waiting for the next message. Waiting for the invite to come over. I wait. I wait. I keep waiting. All around me people rush and music blares. I stare at my cell. I wait. But it’s just my screen with the animated fish floating around.

  It’s like being dropped onto the ground from somewhere up high. No, it’s like falling off a mountain ledge where you had no business being in the first place and where you certainly shouldn’t have been standing on one leg and waving your arms around with your eyes closed.

  I make a beeline for Andrew Dempsey.

  Thank God for Andrew Dempsey. We end up huddling together in the back of a banquette talking for the next hour. I see people looking our way and I think, that’s right, I rule, whether or not Kieran O’Shea will admit it. Somewhat to my surprise, though, it goes from being purely an ego trip to a real conversation. Andrew just broke up with his girlfriend and this is his first Christmas alone. I tell him about Josh and how I imagined walking into traffic last December. I tell him it sucks and there’s nothing you can do about it, but that it beats being in a bad relationship. I say, “The most important thing is to have friends. You’re going to need them. Do you have people you can really talk to?”

  Andrew moves his head from side to side, like, well, maybe, no, not really. And I think, oh right, he’s a man who’s just lost his girlfriend, of course he doesn’t have anyone he can actually talk to.

  “Look, take my number,” I say. “Text or call me every day, and I’ll text or call you back. And that way you won’t feel so alone. Half the battle is just having someone to check in with.”

  Andrew says, “What are you doing for Christmas? Come stay with me at my sister’s. It would be brilliant to have you.”

  The ladies from the art gallery text. They have moved on. They’re at a club called Spy across the street and want me to join them.

  I say good-bye to Andrew with a big hug. I say, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, right?” Andrew holds on to my arm for a second. “Thank you,” he says. And I think, the world isn’t so bad. Connection is possible at any time in any place.

  And then, as I run across the street, you are good.

  Spy is packed and dark except for a strobe light going around illuminating the faux-wallpapered walls and everyone’s faces in startling white light. The ladies are already hammered. They each insist on buying me a pint so soon I am too. It’
s a competition to say who’s more awesome, me or them. I’m making eyes at every half-cute guy that crosses my path. At two, I stumble out and back to Avalon House, where I get into my tiny bed. I have to be at the airport in five hours. I close my eyes to go to sleep but then I open them again. I get out of bed. I pull my cell out of my coat pocket. I erase Kieran O’Shea’s number. I don’t ever want to feel the way I feel at the sight of his name again. Ever.

  Saturday, December 15, 2007

  London

  Phil takes one look at me, tucks me up on his couch, covers me with three plaid wool blankets, and orders me Thai food. I find myself telling him about Kieran. Not the most humiliating bits, but the general story. He says the best thing in the world. He says that one thing almost every adult on the planet has in common is having been brought to their knees by heartbreak. He says it makes you feel like you’re losing your mind. That it’s happened to him and to the people I see walking down the street. I think, see, I’m not mentally ill. I was undone by passion. I find this so comforting that I immediately close my eyes and go to sleep until the next afternoon.

  Sunday, December 16, 2007

  London is dark and rainy and the wind whips against my skin. I’m meeting Ben Green’s old friend Colin Landau, who is a columnist here at the Guardian. When I take a seat across from him, I have that feeling again that I am very, very small—that I’m not sure how much room I take up. I almost couldn’t bring myself to leave Phil’s kitchen, but then I was very firm with myself and said, no, you will not travel all the way to London and stay in Phil’s kitchen. You will keep moving. Ben said I’d probably met Colin at Marie’s and his wedding, but I have no recollection of this.

  I meet him at a place called the Viaduct. The pub has a red tin ceiling and lots of men in dark blazers drinking pints. Colin has the most wonderful face. The word merry comes to mind when I think how to describe him. Not like ho-ho-ho, I’m a big fat Santa Claus, because actually he’s wonderfully slim and tall. Rather it’s his eyes—they seem open to the world, like they reflect a personality who is looking to be delighted. I think, these are not eyes to drown in. These are eyes that say, if you were drowning I’d help you out of the water.

  After our pints, Colin takes me on a tour. I don’t know if it’s just that he’s British and British people are polite, but Colin is, like, the most gracious person I’ve ever met. I feel completely at ease. There are construction cranes everywhere against the black sky. We walk past St Paul’s, across a bridge, and to the Tate, which seems hideous and ridiculous to me, like something an Ayn Rand character would have built. Colin laughs when I say this with his head back and his knees bent and his whole face crinkling up in pleasure. I’m struck by what a wonderful sight it is. We walk past Shakespeare’s Globe and narrow alleyways that I imagine Dickens rushing through in his nighttime walks.

  I think, how can I simultaneously be having a nervous breakdown and such a good time?

  Over Indian food on Brick Lane, Colin tells me he’s thinking about writing a book on happiness. He has this idea that positive thinking and optimism are absolutely the wrong way to go about it. He says the minute you try to be happy, you can’t be.

  “You have to embrace the abyss,” he says. But he says it in the most good-natured, cheery way possible. “My favorite saying ever,” he says. “Abandon all hope.” And he laughs delightedly. I must look confused, because he says, “You know, striving doesn’t necessarily work.”

  I have a flash to myself swimming endlessly against the current in my indoor pool. To those five fleeting days of happiness and peace after I ceased to exist in my bathroom.

  I tell him about the story I did on complexity and what Billy Santiago told me about subparticles only existing in relation to one another.

  Colin says, “It’s strange, isn’t it, to realize there’s no such thing as you.”

  But he doesn’t seem bent out of shape about this at all.

  I think, should I make out with Colin? But every time I look at him, and even as I’m thinking, this man is obviously one of the world’s greats, I think of Kieran and I have an image of myself falling off my chair onto the floor and just playing dead until the waiters shut the place down.

  I’m eating my matar paneer and thinking, well, I should still make out with Colin anyway, when suddenly I realize—I did meet Colin at Ben and Marie’s wedding. Colin is the guy I should have married. I am sitting across the table from the man I should have married, and I’m nearly dying of longing for another man, a man who, when I think about him, I have images of a beast ripping my body to shreds.

  There is no hope for you, Heather. None.

  Wednesday, December 19, 2007

  Kieran has been texting me. Or rather 011 353 86 870 9822 has been texting me. “How’s London, girl. Hope you’re njoying. XXXX”

  Why is he texting me? What does he want from me? I am not texting him back.

  Monday, December 24, 2007

  Dublin

  After much agonizing, I came back to Dublin last night. I thought about staying in London with Phil for Christmas, but I was feeling so lost I took another assignment just to help relocate myself in space. I’d seen that the Pogues were playing and pitched my editor at the New York Times on a story about Christmas in Dublin with Shane MacGowan. Colm’s fiddle player had given me the phone number of MacGowan’s girlfriend, who apparently I’d met at that poetry reading only I didn’t know it, and she and I hashed it out over text. I got a press pass to the show, and we’d been all set to go and then the girlfriend changed her mind at the very last minute. I was crushed, but I flew back to Dublin last night anyway because I figured if you have a chance to see Shane MacGowan playing a Christmas show in Dublin, you should, even if you’re not going to be allowed backstage and even if you’re sort of having a nervous breakdown. But my flight was delayed five hours and I arrived just in time for the doors of the auditorium to open and all the crowd to come pouring back out into the night. I almost started crying when I realized I’d missed the whole thing. And I was missing Kieran like a hole in my stomach even as simultaneously the thought of him was making those beads of sweat pop out—so I said to myself, you can make friends anywhere, you will make new friends now.

  I walked back into the city center with some people I met and decided this cute guy with dark hair in a soccer zip-up would be my next Kieran. Then, just as he was buying me a Guinness at a pub on the edge of Temple Bar, he launched into series of racist jokes involving Mexicans, African-Americans, Jews, and the Polish. I didn’t even finish my beer. I just crawled on back to my apartment.

  This morning I went to Brown Thomas, the department store I was in with Seth last year, and circled a pair of high gray boots. I watched a six-foot-tall woman in a white fur hat, long ironed black hair, and a diamond ring bigger than my head buy six Yves Saint Laurent lip glosses without trying them on. I got up close and listened to her thick Russian accent and imagined she was the imported trophy wife of some newly wealthy Irish developer. I thought, man, what a life. Why wasn’t I born beautiful and alluring enough to be a kept woman?

  Now I’m sitting in that open-air market where I had breakfast with Kieran last year. Been talking with a guy whose Croatian girlfriend ran off back home with their kid and another “bloke.” He was amazingly sanguine about the whole thing. He kept saying, “What do you think, that life is here to serve you?”

  Later

  Thank God for Andrew Dempsey! Just as I was wandering around South Dublin, watching the blue sky fade to black and thinking, here you are, it’s Christmas Eve; you’re all alone in a strange city with no one to buy presents for and nowhere to go, he called to see how I was doing. I told him about the invitation I had from the woman I’d met at the poetry reading, and he said, “Heather, that’s Marina Guinness! You know, of the Guinnesses? She’s the most interesting woman in Ireland. Colm McCullough is living out there with her. Every artistic venture that’s ever happened in Ireland in the last thirty years has her fi
ngerprints on it. You’ll have the time of your life. Go!”

  It was already 5:30 p.m., but I thought, what the hell else am I going to do, and I thought, this is what I get: I get adventures. So I called her. To my amazement, she said, fantastic, I’ll pick you up at the bus stop.

  So I bought an armful of the red Christmas berries mixed together with white lilies, and now I’m on the bus to Celbridge.

  Later

  Marina picks me up in a tiny car that looks to be from 1987, with trash in the backseat and a terrible grating sound whenever she shifts gears. She’s got on the same puffy coat with electrical tape on the elbow and her gray hair stands up so that it grazes the roof of the car.

  We drive out of the village and through fields dark as pools of water in the night. Marina keeps turning to look at me.

  “You’re brave,” she says finally. “I’ve been thinking about this ever since you called. I don’t know that I could be traveling alone in a foreign country at this time of year. I don’t know that I’d have the nerve to get a bus on Christmas Eve to visit someone I didn’t know.”

  I don’t even answer her because I can’t think of anything to say. Brave? Am I brave? Is this possible?

  We drive past more fields. It’s totally dark, illuminated only by moonlight and hazily covered stars. Then Marina makes a sharp turn into a road I didn’t even see, and a gray stone house looms up in front of me. It’s enormous and seems to go off in many different directions at once. It’s got a peaked entranceway, and wings stick out on either side. There seem to be a dozen chimneys. Marina hops out of the car and waves for me to follow. We go around the side of the house and in through a mudroom. There’s a pile of dogs shivering in a corner and a big stack of Wellington boots against the far wall. Marina pushes open a door and we’re in a kitchen that is about the size of my apartment back in Brooklyn. There’s an iron stove that looks to be a hundred years old at one end, and antlers with a span of at least five feet on the wall at the other. There’s a long wooden table in front of me, heaped with magazines, piles of mail, jams, Marmite, honey, Nutella, candlesticks, a mortar and pestle, and a stack at least a foot high of blue-and-white china plates.