Fiona

by Gemma Whelan

  The Very Reverend Mother Mary Assumpta, in full headdress and regalia, unfolded from the chair as she extended herself to her impressive height of six feet, and towered over the thirteen-year-old me. She was a large woman with rosy cheeks—her face and hands being the only parts of her body visible in the habit. To me, and every other girl in St. Catherine’s, she was the epitome of the dragon. We were all terrified of her, more because of her physical size, commanding presence and fierce reputation than any first-hand knowledge. The Reverend Mother’s legend was probably the greatest deterrent to wrongdoing in the whole school, and it was every girl’s hope to never have to set foot in this office. And here was I, shivering from fright, getting a private audience, and me not even at the end of my first year yet.

  “Now, Sheila,” Mother Assumpta began, and she raised her head. “Now, Sheila,” she repeated, and I was mesmerized by the chin that came wiggling out of its hiding place beneath the wimple and passed over the stiff white collar as if trying to set itself free. For all the world, it reminded me of a swan extending its neck, and I had to stifle that thought immediately, or I knew I would giggle for sure. Then I’d really land myself in hot water!

  “You are a very intelligent girl,” I heard the voice say and went into shock. “You are a very intelligent girl, but you need to apply yourself.”

  I was stunned as the neck settled back down on its stiff rest. I stared at it, but it had lost its entertainment value. I felt numb.

  “Did you hear me?” Mother Assumpta was asking, and I managed an almost inaudible, “Yes, Mother.”

  “And what did I say?” she inquired, as if not at all convinced that I had.

  “That I need to apply myself.” I all but whispered.

  Mother was clearly not satisfied with that answer. “And what else, before that?” she prompted, and it was gentle, not pushy.

  I was rooted to the spot, and my tongue felt thick as if it were stuck to the roof of my mouth. I couldn’t possibly answer that question. It would imply some acknowledgment of something about myself that I wasn’t able to own. I turned bright pink with embarrassment. I felt my lunch turning into a round hard ball and wanted to clutch my stomach to push back the ache.

  Mother Assumpta persisted. “What else did I say? Can you tell me what I said?”

  “I don’t know, Mother,” was the best I could manage. A kind of lie, but then again, I didn’t really know.

  “I said you were a very intelligent girl.”

  Simple words, but earth-shattering for me. I had no concept of my own abilities or capabilities, no way of consciously assessing my intelligence.

  “Yes, Sister . . . I mean Mother,” I stammered. But it was not an affirmation, merely a rote reply.

  “Well?” the Reverend Mother persisted. “Can you say it back to me? Have you lost your tongue, child?”

  Now I had to grasp my stomach. The little ball had developed spiky edges, like a medieval ball and chain.

  “Do you have a stomach ache, Sheila?” the nun asked, and I shook my head first “no” then “yes.”

  “Do you want me to call the nurse for you?”

  This time I just shook my head “no.”

  Mother Mary Assumpta let out a little sigh and then motioned to a chair. “Sit down, Sheila.”

  I sat on the edge of the wooden chair, and Reverend Mother sat on her throne behind the desk. The interview was clearly not yet over.

  “Do you believe you are a good student, child?” she began. “Do you believe you are intelligent?”

  I thought for a moment before answering. “No, Mother.”

  “Even if I tell you so,” Mother Assumpta continued, “and have reports from all of your other teachers, too?”

  I looked down at the floor. I was absolutely mortified and couldn’t possibly talk about this.

  The Reverend Mother tried another approach. “Sheila,” she began yet again. “Do you have any idea yet what you might want to do? You’re very young, but do you think of what you might want to be?”

  I had no hesitancy this time and blurted out. “I want to be a writer.”

  She seemed pleased with this—probably because it proved that I hadn’t lost my tongue entirely. “Oh? A journalist? Playwright?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure yet,” I ventured. “Maybe a journalist. I’d like to travel.”

  “Good, good. That’s good.” Mother Assumpta assured me. “Now you know,” she went on, “that you’re going to have to work hard to be good.”

  “But I write all the time.” My words were coming out in an excited jumble now. “I have notebooks full of things—stories and poems.”

  “That’s very good child, very good. But I also want you to apply yourself to your lessons. You’ll need good marks in your exams to get on. All right?”

  I nodded happily. “Yes, Mother. Thank you,” I wasn’t exactly sure what had happened yet, but I felt a lot better.

  Mother Assumpta looked at me for a moment then nodded her dismissal, and I got up to leave. As I headed for the door, I glanced at the wall plaque, and, just then, I heard her calling my name.

  “Sheila,” the Reverend Mother asked as the neck began to float up and out again. “Sheila child,” I saw her glancing in the direction of the plaque, “what do you know about Pride?”

  She’s examining me on the Catechism, I thought, and answered right away.

  “That it’s a sin, Mother.”

  “Ah!” Mother Assumpta proclaimed, triumphant at last. “So thinking you’re good is a sin? Having pride in yourself is a sin?”

  I knew this was an obvious question but answered truthfully anyway. “Yes, Mother.”

  “Well, I would like you to try and have a little bit of pride in yourself. I promise it won’t be a sin.”

  As I gratefully made my escape, I heard Mother Mary Assumpta deliver an audible sigh, caught a glimpse of her shaking her head in frustration and, out of the corner of my eye, saw her pick up a strip of black cloth and drape it ceremoniously over the plaque.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  GHOSTS

  “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

  NIETZSCHE

  The Fiona Child raced from the room and away from the burning stares.

  “I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  She headed for her tree, her safety, her cocoon. She wanted to feel the safeness of her things around her. Wrapped around. The wood, the warmth. She wanted to go inside. Go in.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The cry ripped from Fiona’s throat, and she woke with a jolt to find herself in her loft bed in her own apartment in New York. She lay still and tried to compose herself as the memories receded to the back of her consciousness. They didn’t disappear like ordinary dreams. These memory-dreams floated away from the surface of her thoughts but rested on the background canvas of her mind. They were becoming more and more corporeal in her present life in the here and now. She fought back the panic and tried to shift her awareness by staring at the cracked plaster on the ceiling, in particular one tiny triangular piece that dangled precariously above her eye. She remembered her writing deadline, threw back her summer sheets, dragged herself out of bed and climbed down the wooden ladder. Pam had gotten an extension on the short story review, but Fiona still needed to focus in order to meet the new deadline. She had the same ritual every day. Strong black coffee. Ease in.

  She was almost out of coffee but made three-quarters of a mug anyway, and, still wearing her long white cotton T-shirt, she carried the brew over to her work-station. She already had worked her outline and notes before she got the call about her father, before Ireland. So, she had gotten a good start on these stories and expected it to be painless. She read her notes and then turned to the screen, her fingers poised, at the ready. Nothing. She re-read her notes, started again. She hit the keys, but instead of words images danced before her—the treehouse of her childhood, the storm, the flight from the storm with Orla, the shadowy fig
ures gathered round the sick-bed. Was this from her novel or her life? From the screen of her mind these pictures burned onto the computer screen, the very concrete surface that she used to write. They had followed her here to New York, one thousand leagues across the sea. They had ridden on the crest of the waves and slipped into her private domain.

  Fiona’s heart pounded as she banged on the keys—letters, figures, symbols, anything in any shape or form or order. An incantation. An exorcism. A banishing. She pounded with all her might until her fingers started to give way under pressure and she slowed down and finally stopped. She sat and stared at the crazy quilt of nonsense.

  Later Fiona escaped to buy coffee beans and muffins in the hope that a disruption in her schedule might get her back on track. As she reached the ground floor, her neighbor Saul emerged from his apartment, stuffing papers into his briefcase. He beamed when he saw her and held the door open as they stepped outside. Fiona smiled to herself as she caught sight of his rumpled curly hair.

  “The near or the far office?” Fiona asked mischievously.

  “Near!” Saul laughed. “I don’t have a lecture today. You heading to ‘my office?’ ”

  “Yeah, just for supplies, though.” The local bakery was Saul’s second office where he met people to discuss new research ideas.

  “Have coffee with me. My meeting is not for another thirty-five, forty minutes.”

  Fiona was tempted, out of loneliness, and frustration too. But that wouldn’t be fair to Saul.

  “I can’t, sorry. I have a deadline tomorrow, and I’m way behind.” She gestured to the stuffed briefcase. “How’s your work?”

  His laugh tinkled. Saul always reminded Fiona of a leprechaun. An extremely brilliant, Jewish leprechaun who was a physics professor at NYU.

  “Good, good. Some new ideas brewing. You know, the usual!”

  Fiona did know. Saul’s sparkle and freshness made her hover on the brink of saying ‘yes’ to his repeated invitations over the last eighteen months. But she kept her armor sealed.

  The aroma of baked bread and freshly brewed coffee met them as Saul held open the glass door to the bakery.

  “Dinner, tomorrow after your deadline?” he suggested as they entered.

  Fiona laughed and shook her head. “Thanks, though, Saul. Good luck with the next invention!”

  Resigned, Saul sprawled his briefcase and papers on a corner table to stake his claim.

  When she returned, Fiona saw the red light blinking on her answering machine before she closed the door—two messages. One would be from Pam. She put the water on to boil, ground the mixture of espresso and Colombian beans, set up the coffee pot with Melita filter and got out her favorite gold and teal pottery mug. Her rituals. Only then did she approach the beckoning signals across the room.

  “Hello, you have two messages.”

  “Hi, Fiona. Pam. Hope all went as well as possible in Ireland. As you know, I got an extension on the review, but they do want it by Thursday. Let’s talk. Hope you’re okay. Oh, you might get a call from a Sean Collins—remember the option on the novel? Surprise, surprise! Later, kiddo!”

  Fiona pounced on the rewind button to see if she had heard correctly. Her novel? Couldn’t be! She let the machine play on.

  “Ms. Clarke, this is Sean Collins. Your agent, Pamela Long, may have mentioned I was in town. I’m the director who optioned your novel for a movie about a year and a half ago. I’m in New York until Sunday and would love to meet with you, if possible. I can be reached at (212) 829-237 . . . ” Fiona’s heart missed a beat. This couldn’t be happening. She played the message again to convince herself she hadn’t imagined it. Still, she had to ring Pam, who was with a client but assured her it was true. Fiona listened to the message once more, saved it and headed back to her whistling kettle. She poured water over the ground coffee and stared as it turned to a dark brown soggy mass against the white filter, sending up deliciously aromatic vapors.

  She began to circle the room. Her head was spinning with excitement. Was it really possible that someone thought her novel was good enough to make a movie from it? She swirled back and poured some more water into the filter and started to hum with happiness. Things were starting to look up. She put on Stephane Grappelli to match her upbeat mood and hoped it might help her get back in her writing stride. Pam sounded over the moon about the news.

  When Fiona turned on her computer, the amber letters beamed back at her. They looked strange, too bright, too much. She laughed at herself. Away for a short while and the computer, practically an extension of herself, felt like an alien. She opened the file she was working on and started to read over what she had already written. She had to concentrate because the words kept jumping and running together. But she got to the end and then raised her fingers, poised, ready to continue. Nothing.

  It was way past noon when Fiona made the second pot of coffee and distracted herself by starting to unpack. Her battered brown suitcase lay in the middle of the floor where she had left it the night before. Her eyes fell on the photo album. It had been in her old bedroom at home, and something had possessed her to pick it up and put it in her case. She was entitled to take it, of course—she knew Declan had lots of the old family pictures—yet it had felt like an illicit act. Fiona ran her fingers over the textured linen cover and the imprint of four dark brown leaves on the upper left hand corner. The album was bound with a golden cord and frayed at the edges, revealing the natural off-white linen. Beside it in the case were the T.S. Eliot poetry collection, Alice in Wonderland and her Mam’s tea cozy with Dad’s diary sleeping inside. She pushed back the tears brimming at the surface for the loss of both of her parents.

  The coffee cups, the dirty plates, the cartons from last night’s take-out—they still sat on the kitchen counter when Fiona was getting ready to leave next evening. She had slept badly. She felt she had been through a war, fighting all the way. She woke up several times, terrified at the thought that she might never write again. It was what she lived for. She spent the day organizing, moving her files around, scribbling notes, drinking too much coffee. She had everything lined up and had just turned on the computer and actually written a few words when she looked up at the clock and saw that it was almost 7 pm. Damn!, she thought. Just getting started, and I have to rush off and clean a blooming office building! She closed her file, saved the little bit she had written, logged off and raced out.

  When she arrived back at 11 pm. Fiona went straight to the computer, launched an attack on the review and managed to break through the wall that had foiled her previous efforts. It had been a sheer act of force, of will, and she hadn’t enjoyed the writing at all. But she tore through the material, forced her brain to formulate a coherent response and was grateful she had done so much of the legwork before Ireland, so that she had strong, lucid notes on which to base her opinions. She had finished at 4:30 am and set her alarm for 9 before she collapsed into bed.

  The following morning, Fiona stood a long time under the shower in the hope that she could shake utter exhaustion. Her head ached and her eyes stung from lack of sleep. Her whole self was disoriented from having had to force herself to write, to wring out the words in a painful and excruciating process. She enfolded her damp body in a huge soft bath-towel. Writing was a love, a passion. Yes, it was hard work and labor intensive, but she never had to tie herself in a knot before to turn out a review. She dressed in an ankle-length, pale blue cotton skirt and a loose fitting silver-gray blouse. She placed the wide-brimmed straw hat over her pulled back hair, perched her sunglasses on the bridge of her nose and decided she felt sufficiently covered for the world. She threw the review into her book bag, loving as always the weight of her work on her shoulder, and headed out to see Pam.

  Fiona’s spirits lifted as she stepped out of the door of her brownstone. She loved everything about this building: the graceful dark bricks, the large six-paned windows with the generous ledges that emanated an air of having been looked out of for countless decad
es, the classical portal, the sense of belonging on this street with other buildings of similar age and history, and the ability to preserve an aura of peace and tranquility within a stone’s throw of bustling Manhattan. The whole street possessed an air of domesticity and a whiff of late spring into summer. Fiona passed a long row of houses, similar mostly to the one she lived in, two stories with a basement, steps leading up to the entranceway, the lawns separated by wrought iron fences. White lacy curtains wafted in the wind as a hand opened out an upstairs window to let in the early summer air. A gray-haired woman leaned out of a second-story window to water the African violets in a window-box, and as she caught Fiona’s eye, she smiled broadly. Fiona smiled back. She remembered Sean Collins’ voice on her machine. Near the end of the row, someone on the ground floor belted out a Cole Porter tune on the piano. Fiona picked up her pace and let a skip creep into her step.

  “The way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea, the mem’ry of all that . . . ” And she joined in, sotto voce, “No, no! They can’t take that away from me!” as she skipped, barely perceptibly, down the street.

  Fiona smiled to herself as she passed the small brass plaque which read “Pamela Long, Literary Agent.” She mounted the familiar stairs, passing several offices on the way up. At the top she was drawn into Pam’s small, but bright and airy space, where the light filtered in through the skylight, and various plants rambled along the walls and up to the ceiling. Filing cabinets bulged with papers and the centerpiece—the large oak desk—was piled high with papers and manuscripts.

  Pam was searching for something among the pile of rubble as, at the same time, she jotted down notes in a yellow pad. Just seeing her there, with her dynamic persona and quick assured manner, made Fiona feel right. The cool, linen-textured oatmeal pants-suit set off her dark Italian skin and her laughing green eyes. The cut of the suit complimented her trim shapely figure.