“Tea?” Marina says.
There are more Wellingtons piled in a corner and a poster of Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams with 1970s glasses and a big bushy beard on the wall. Shelves hold dainty teacups hanging from little curved hooks. I can hear the dogs whining from behind the closed door.
A swinging door on the other side of the kitchen flies open and an enormous young man comes in. I can’t tell if he’s twelve or twenty-five. He’s got a huge head of massively curly blond hair, and Bob Marley is smoking an enormous blunt on his chest, his face distended by the size of the enormous belly beneath him.
“Have you seen this?” the young man says, dropping a magazine onto the kitchen table.
“This is my son Finbar,” Marina says. “Finbar, say hi to Heather. She’s from America.”
“Hullo, dear,” Finbar says.
They both peer into the magazine. It’s Vanity Fair. One of their high-concept spreads of a million people grouped together. It’s all young people in ball gowns and crumpled tuxedos, sitting around on couches and gazing out French windows in some gorgeous hotel room styled to look as if they’ve all been having a marvelous time for at least twenty-four hours.
Marina points to one of the girls, sitting on the floor in a pink dress spread around her like a blossoming rose. “That’s my daughter, Violet,” Marina says. “Oh, God bless her, isn’t she lovely.”
“Todd’s in there too,” Finbar says. “And Dexter. All the cousins.”
“Oh yes,” Marina says. “Look at that. How funny. How gorgeous they all are.”
I peer over their shoulders and see the spread is titled “The New Aristocracy.” I think, what am I doing here?
“So, do you ever go to the cockfights in Queens?” Marina asks me.
I think, what? But before I can even cover for the fact that I don’t have an answer, Marina has launched into a story about living in New York in the early 1980s and becoming friends with a Haitian cabdriver who picked her up every Tuesday night at eleven fifteen to go see midnight cockfights in outer Queens.
“I should put you two in touch,” she says. “He’s the loveliest man. His name is Jorges.” And then the outside door slams open and an elderly man with stooped shoulders and glasses, blinking rapidly, steps into the kitchen.
“Hullo, Mick,” drawls Finbar. The more I look, the more I think he can’t be over eighteen.
“Hullo, Mick,” says Marina. “This is Heather. She’s from America. Heather, this is Mick the Sheep Farmer.”
Mick the Sheep Farmer is blinking rapidly at me and twitching his nose. “I’ve never understood the Americans,” he says. “They think they have the right to be happy. It makes no sense.”
And then the door flies open again and Colm McCullough steps into the kitchen.
“Hullo, Heather,” he says. As if it were the most natural thing in the world for me to be there.
“Oh, do you two already know each other?” Marina says. “How lovely.”
At dinner, I sit between Colm and Mick the Sheep Farmer. The dining room table could easily sit fifty people. I would say there are twenty of us there. It’s set with ancient silverware, paper-thin wineglasses, and warmed blue-and-white china. A huge vase of lilies and eucalyptus leaves sits at the table’s center. By the fireplace, which is so big I could easily go and stand in it, I see Violet, who in real life has skin that seems never to have been blemished by a pore, pale yellow hair and is as slight as a sheet of paper. The phrase English rose comes to mind, except she’s wearing a zip-up hoodie with dollar signs in primary colors and big gold bamboo earrings.
The dining room ceilings are at least twenty feet high, with windows in the front covered in chintz curtains that cascade onto the floor. There’s a grand piano that somehow fits into a corner. There’s a stuffed alligator on top of it. Paintings of greyhounds cover the walls, and the biggest Persian rug I’ve ever seen covers the floor. The carpet is threadbare and has a layer of thick dust on it. In fact, everything in the room is covered in dust. I have never seen anywhere so simultaneously magnificent and filthy.
I learn that Mick the Sheep Farmer was, indeed, a sheep farmer. He lived on the farm next door to the castle—yes, castle—where Marina grew up. When his father died and left the farm to a distant cousin out of spite, he moved in with Marina. Colm is filling me in on everything. He says they call him Mick the Sheep Farmer to distinguish him from Marina’s other good friend Mick Jagger. Colm tells me he first met Marina when he was a sixteen-year-old busker. She stood there listening to him sing on Grafton Street for a while, then swooped him into her car and brought him back here to where Van Morrison was staying. He mentions that Marina has another son from back when she was with Stewart Copeland. I think, Stewart Copeland of the Police?
I’m thinking, why has she brought me into her circle? What do I have to offer? Answer: nothing. Then I think, maybe her standards are very low—because there are some travelers on the other side of Colm who live in tents at the back of the property raising chickens, and though I know it’s probably an unacceptable thing to say about people who are already marginalized, they really don’t seem too bright. I wonder which I am, a young Colm, destined for future fame, or a traveler, destined to sell chicken eggs and bear too many children?
“The Irish are disgusting,” Mick the Sheep Farmer is saying to me. “That’s what you should put in your story. Gorging themselves on newfound riches.” He snorts. “Look at Katy French, a lot of good prosperity did her. It won’t last, you know. It will all come crashing down. And then what happens to all of these people in their fancy new apartments with their big mortgages?”
I look over at Colm. He raises an eyebrow at me.
“The Irish are not meant to be rich,” Mick the Sheep Farmer says. “It’s not real. It’s a big scheme and the Irish are falling for it. It’s like a pig trying to be a horse. The pig may have wanted all its life to be a horse and think its day in the sun has come. But it hasn’t—and it won’t. If you’re a horse, you’re a horse. And if you’re a pig, you’re a pig.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “People can change. Circumstances can change. Why can’t a city, or a people, be transformed?”
Mick the Sheep Farmer squints at me. “I’ll tell you exactly why,” he says. “Because that’s not how the world works.”
After dinner, one of the travelers plays his accordion by the fireplace. It’s the loneliest sound I’ve ever heard. I find tears coming into my eyes. Every time I think I’m okay, that I must have imagined the horror of the tangerine room, I just as suddenly find myself with a sense of being so frail and skinless that I really ought not be let out of doors. I get the feeling that there is so much sadness in me, and such a desperate sadness, that I could cry for the rest of my life and it wouldn’t be enough.
Colm leans his head closer to me. “You all right there?” he says. And I see that there are tears in his eyes too. I imagine throwing myself into his arms and sobbing while he holds me. Then I think, okay, Heather, keep your shit together. You can’t just go around throwing yourself into people’s arms. And I just smile back at him and say, yes, yes, I’m fine. And when he drives me back to Dublin later, through the pouring rain, and tells me that the real reason his girlfriend didn’t want me coming backstage this summer was because she was “threatened” by how “intelligent and attractive” I am, I only fantasize for a minute about how satisfying it would be to wreck that girl’s fairy tale. Then I think, if he’s bad-mouthing her now to a reporter, he’s probably wrecked her fairy tale seventy-five times already. Fuck that, I think, I’m not sleeping with some second-tier rock star.
How’s that for sensible?
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Coffee with Andrew Dempsey at the Steps of Rome café on Chatham Street, off Grafton. I have to say, Andrew Dempsey is awesome. We drink espresso and roll cigarettes. We talk about the Marx Brothers, Deadwood, and The Wire, which on my recommendation Andrew has finally started watching. We talk about whether t
here’s a God—or a Universe or whatever. We talk about the fact that Andrew didn’t kill himself on Christmas. I say this is a great accomplishment, which Andrew thinks is funny, although I wasn’t trying to be funny. A man with an armful of lilies stops at our table and congratulates Andrew on a piece he had in the Irish Times this morning. Andrew says, “I’m glad you liked it. I thought I sounded melancholy and up my own arse.”
Andrew’s movie has been nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, but he says he can’t be bothered to go to LA. Says he can’t stand all the sunshine. I say, “What is your problem? Go to LA and let everyone make a fuss over you.” He says, “We’re not all as self-sufficient as you are, Heather.” I think, what? Eleanor has been writing me every day to tell me that I’m mentally ill and have to come home and address this. But maybe I’m just self-sufficient and brave. Can you be both?
Friday, December 28, 2007
The castle Marina grew up in is from the eleventh century. I have never seen anything like it in my life. She shows me around the whole place, sauntering ahead of me in her slouchy jeans, Converses, and black puffy jacket with the electrical tape, gesturing at medieval tapestries and marble staircases and balconies. She takes me into a room to show me a picture of her grandmother, and it turns out her grandmother was Diana Mitford! The woman who ran off with England’s most famous fascist, Oswald Mosley, right before World War II. It was Marina’s grandfather she ran away from. I’m in a room full of portraits of the famous Mitford sisters! There’s Unity, who fell in love with Hitler, and Decca, who ran off to America and became a communist. And Nancy, the novelist, resplendent in a floor-length evening gown, gazing imperiously down her nose at me from her life-sized portrait on the wall. I think, how did a little scrub like me from Baltimore end up in this room? Marina is telling me some story about her grandmother and Wallis Simpson having a squabble over a dressmaker in the fifties. And when I say, “Your grandma knew Wallis Simpson?” She says, “Oh dear, yes, all those fascists were great friends after the war.” And as we’re leaving the room, “Oh, poor Granny, God bless her, she never would have approved of the Final Solution.”
In the kitchen, which is the only warm room in the house, her father, Desmond, makes us tea. He’s got pale blue eyes like Marina’s and snow-white hair. He’s the most polite man I’ve ever met in my life. He says, “Oh, how are you?” when we meet. And everything I say, he responds, “Oh, that is the most charming story.”
Man, oh man, the Guinnesses. How did I land here?
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Tonight, Marina put me in a spare bedroom on the third floor with a nineteenth-century opium-den bed in it. It’s all carved wood with blue silk paneling hanging over the side and a blue silk bedspread with golden chrysanthemums embroidered on it. The walls of the room are navy blue and covered with Victorian prints of botanical drawings. I feel I have landed where I was always meant to be—this is my childhood fantasy room. I wish I could stay here, right now, in this moment, in this bed, in this house, with this woman taking care of me, forever.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Finbar and I have taken to smoking large quantities of marijuana and listening to reggae music in his room. He’s a really nice kid. Seventeen. Just moved back to Celbridge after being at boarding school for the last ten years. I ask him why he left. He takes the joint from his mouth, blows smoke into the air. “My mum said I was becoming a fucking cunt,” he says.
Later, Marina takes me in her car to see the ruins of a hut where a famous ninth-century monk lived. There’s nothing but stone walls and ferns and bramble and gorse growing everywhere. I walk inside and around. It’s so quiet out here in this green countryside. There’s a tiny bit of a doorway left and I have to stoop to get under it. It’s like being taken back in time, or dropped onto another planet. Marina leaves and I hike across fields, past cows and horses, up steep inclines, and then running down long hills. Sheep. Sheep. Sheep. Everywhere sheep. I climb until I’m panting to the top of a hill where the whole country in its electrifying greenery is laid out before me. It’s not raining. But it’s not dry either. The air feels incredibly clean. I have that expansion in my chest like maybe life is a beautiful thing. And I think, I have to tell Kieran. I have to tell him how beautiful his country is. I am flooded with forgiveness. I must share this moment with him.
He writes back right away. “You’re in Ireland????” And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take great pleasure in writing back, “yup, been back for a week.” I haven’t responded to a single one of his texts since I erased his name from my phone, not even the one he sent on Christmas saying he was thinking about me.
Later, I ride the bus back to Dublin with Marina’s daughter, Violet. She’s going to hear a dance hall DJ at Temple Bar Music Centre. She’s only twenty but is so lovely and confident and obviously doesn’t even wear blush although she has a pink stain on her cheeks at all times, that I feel hideous and awkward around her. I can’t think of anything to say, which is fine, because she’s on her cell phone to her boyfriend in Trinidad the whole bus ride anyway. (“Oh, Mum, you’re going to love him,” I heard her say to Marina. “He’s got two gold teeth.”) I figure, what the hell, adventure! and go with her to the club. Inside everybody is talking in thick West Indian accents and patois so thick I can’t make heads or tails of what anyone is saying. I don’t want to cramp Violet’s style, so when I see an older Rasta dude dancing by himself off to one side I go to him and ask if he minds if I dance alongside him. He’s like, ja, man. And so I dance. And dance. And dance. God, I love to dance.
I end up dancing with a guy who turns out to be a professional soccer player from Ghana. He’s been playing on professional teams around the world since he was fifteen. What interesting lives people have! Whatever you want to say about this trip, I have met some extraordinary people. When the club is closing, this Ghanaian soccer player asks if he can walk me home. I say, “Yes, sir.” I’m thinking, how ya like me now, Kieran O’Shea? I got me a rock star, a movie director, and a professional soccer player. I can find a new Kieran O’Shea every day of the week. When we get to my door, the soccer player bends down to kiss me, and I get ready to have my molecules scrambled. I’m thinking, finally, finally. But when his lips touch mine, he shoves his entire tongue in my mouth and seems to be trying to get it down my throat all the way into my large intestines. Immediately, there is saliva dribbling down my chin. I’m gagging as I pull away. I have to wipe away the slobber that’s dripping from my lips. Okay, I think, maybe we got off to a bad start. I let him kiss me again, and it’s the same thing. It’s like there’s a squid in my mouth and it’s still alive.
When I climb into my cold bed, I feel like a sheet of ice has wrapped itself around my heart. I drop into blackness. I think, you will not meet a new Kieran every day because there is only one Kieran. You will never feel about anyone else the way you feel about him, and yet he does not want to be with you. You are fucked.
Monday, December 31, 2007
“Please just come home.”
“Jesus Christ. I don’t want to come home. I’m fine. If it’s news to you that I go up and down in my life, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“I don’t think I ever realized the severity of it. I should have. I should have. But I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, now you do.”
Eleanor tries again. “You’re out there all on your own. You don’t have any money. This Ghanaian banquet you’re going to tonight—do you even know who these people are?”
“Yes! They’re friends of the guy I met last night. I’ve never been to a Ghanaian New Year’s celebration. Have you?”
“I feel like you need to come home and, like, start going to bed every night at seven. I feel like you need to come home and, like, find a good psychiatrist.”
“I’ve hit my lifetime limit on psychiatrists,” I say.
“But if you were honest with one—”
“Did it ever occur to you that
maybe I’m brave and self-sufficient?”
It’s all I can do not to hang up on her.
“You’re an interventionist,” I say. “Don’t you understand? There’s no skipping the rough parts. Whatever I’m going through, I have to go through.”
“What, like you have no free will?”
“I can’t explain,” I say. “I just know I’m at point A, and I have this sense like there’s no detour on the way to point B.”
“I just want you to be safe, Heather.”
“As if there’s any such thing,” I say.
I no longer believe we have as much control over our lives as other people seem to think. Or I don’t know. Maybe that’s just what self-destructive losers always say.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
I talked to Josh on the phone for a long time tonight. I told him I had a break. I don’t tell him about Kieran or any of the details. I just say I had “problems,” but Josh knows what that means. Josh took care of me when I had problems. He really did. I miss him. I think, maybe I will go back to him when I get home.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Topshop. Two new dresses and a pair of size 25 jeans!!! I think, there is nothing in life left for me to accomplish. I am a size 25.
Brown Thomas. Got the high gray boots to replace my platform shoes, which have broken beyond repair. The boots make me at least five three if not five four. I simply must be tall when I’m abroad.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Reckless Years Page 22
