Too long a lapse, and too few good excuses. (Welcome, those just joining us!)
Here in the States, PBS re-aired "The Reckoning" tonight. Diehard revisionist that I am, I simply shut it off after Assumpta said "I know." Still, I figured it meant it was time to get this moving again. Lots here. Love to know what you think - miles to go, and you always inspire.
CILLDARGAN
No one had offered to take Donal's jacket or cap, and so the first he wore, and the second he wrung between his hands. No one had offered him a seat, either; Father Mac and Kathleen were both on the sofa, and hadn't stopped him when he gingerly sank into the opposite armchair.
"Ambrose Egan? No, no, alive and well indeed." Father Mac's words might've been more reassuring if only he could stop laughing. "I watched them close the coffin lid over those water jugs myself. Clever ruse. Quite elegant in its simplicity, wouldn't you say?" He doubled over again, shaking. "Oh, Father O'Connell was in such a state, knowing what he knew. I really do think marrying Niamh to Sean might've been what pushed him over the edge..." A pale vestige of regret washed in on his face, then washed right out again.
Kathleen, for her part, looked panicked. She had said nothing, only stared into space and compulsively reduced the population of Nice biscuits in the tin on the table.
Donal tried not to stare. "What about Assumpta, Father?"
Father Mac collapsed in another spell of giggles. Finally, he caught his breath, then lost it yet again in a teary guffaw, still slumped against the back of the sofa.
"Father!" Kathleen cautioned.
"Oh, relax, Kathleen, he'll love it!" Father Mac wiped his eyes. "You see, Donal, I had something of a backstage pass to the whole operation." Now he grabbed a biscuit from the tin. "When Father Clifford announced his decision, I questioned his sincerity."
"Father!" Kathleen repeated, eyes darting madly.
He ignored her. "I knew it was impossible to reason with a priest in the grip of limerence, so I found a quiet moment at the Food Fair to speak to Miss Fitzgerald. I asked if she really wanted the responsibility of making him happier than the priesthood had made him. If she was confident she could do it; if she had any idea what a happy marriage even looked like. Naturally she brushed me off, but I begged her to pray about it. Ask for a sign."
"Father!" Kathleen shrieked.
"You told her to play dead?" Donal murmured, unblinking.
Father Mac began laughing again. "I did nothing of the sort. I'm not that creative. A local girl would already know well enough, mind...sure she was already considering it, she'd spoken with Michael... But it was a particularly serendipitous turn of events for Father Clifford. One can't say she didn't really love him, can one?"
Kathleen was biting the back of her hand now.
Donal excused himself to the loo. Passing back through the kitchen, he saw a tray of brownies on the worktop.
Truth serum, he realised.
BALLYKISSANGEL
Oonagh had cleared away the empty plates and grudgingly replaced the wine bottle. The two vets put mirroring elbows into the newly empty space before them, and rested their chins in mirroring hands.
"You never married, so?" Siobhan heard herself say.
"Two broken engagements," Benny conceded, his spine slackening. "And you?"
The numbness in her mouth made the omission go easier: "Technically, no."
"Ach," grumbled her classmate. "So much for recouping my losses on that one."
She felt his foot bump into her own below. She didn't pull away. "Was there anything we didn't lay money on, all those years ago?"
"Few stakes we settled other ways," he smirked.
She felt her ears go hot. "Well, when your money ran out, I did take pity on you."
In the kitchen, Oonagh dropped something.
CILL NA SIDH WOODS
Peter reflected for a moment on the parallels between a Communion wafer and a fortune cookie: the doctrine of transubstantiation; his sister's superstition that the fortune wouldn't come true unless one ate its sugary capsule first. Golden pancakes promising something more. Amen versus in bed. The ritual of breaking bread, the way it bonded people. He kept breaking bread with Assumpta; was it working?
This feeling of struggling to forgive her and struggling not to love her...well it was hardly anything new, was it?
She closed her takeaway box, a few bites behind him. He waited for her to point out, infuriatingly, that they had little to say.
She didn't. She looked over her fortune and pocketed it without a word.
The owl, though, remembered its lines perfectly.
Peter turned to his left. "Don't suppose it's the same one?" he said softly.
Assumpta shrugged, as if he were speaking of the day before. "Anything's possible."
"I'm learning that now," he muttered.
Her breath sizzled on the way in, as if the air might be burning up. He recalled the wild confetti of embers from a fire, the chilly darkness they died into.
Holding her cold hand. Letting it go.
Quiet again, now. Even the owl.
He put a hand on the wheel. "Father Sheahan says I need to listen. Hound you until you tell me everything, until what you did stops hurting me."
She turned, still silent.
"Father Randall, back in Manchester, he says I need to spend all my time with you until I can be sure I'm over you. Until then I'm unwelcome at St. Luke's. He's all but planned the bachelor party."
"Peter-"
"And Father Mac says it's the greatest thing you ever did. Of course, he also said Ireland was full of you. Do you know how many times I wanted that to mean you'd magically ... regenerate somewhere?" His voice was catching now.
Assumpta's breath came out in a messy wheedle. "What do you say?"
He tilted his head to keep the tears back. "I say, who cares what a priest has to say?" A breath to steady; a swallow. Three blinks. "Maybe that means I'm no priest."
"That's fine," she whispered. "Just be Peter."
He looked back at her now.
She went on. "I'm not asking Father Clifford. I'm asking Peter."
"Asking what?"
"Well, not absolution. Not forgiveness. The first isn't your job; the second isn't my right."
He shook his head. "Don't..."
She ignored him. "Penance, now that I owe you; but then, sure that wouldn't be your job either. No number of Hail Marys and Our Fathers is going to help."
Father Clifford was livid. Peter heard the tenderness of it.
"So what am I asking?" mused Assumpta. "I suppose I'm asking everything else. How it's possible life without me was harder than with me. What's in your heart."
"Well, the first question's ludicrous," he scoffed.
"Ah-"
"'Ah,'" he mocked. "I'm not Leo. I'm not your parents."
Her wide eyes spun back his way.
"Don't act astounded. I know it when I see it. I talk to undervalued daughters and wives all the time. Some would say we help create them..." He paused. "In that line of work I'm suspended from, anyway."
She shivered.
"As to your second question, my heart and I went a very long time without keeping in touch. I begged it every day to stop beating and it refused, so I tuned it out. I don't know..." He steadied himself. "When Ambrose told me you were still alive, the lights came back on inside. But I don't think I have the key anymore."
Their only illumination now was the bit of light pollution seeping into the wood from the surrounding developments. He couldn't see the spill of tears, but the rhythm of her breathing told him.
The shame of punishing her overwhelmed him now.
"I need to know. I need to know everything you did, everything you thought," he pleaded, weeping as well.
She felt like a serpent compelled to shed its skin. "Okay," she whispered.
BALLYKISSANGEL - THREE YEARS EARLIER
Assumpta followed Peter to the end of the bar, Father Mac's brutally sensible advice still straining against the walls of her mind.
"I love you," Peter said.
She felt naked.
"Oh, will you take that thing off before you say things like that?" she tried to joke, looking away, praying for the first time in years for the return of all that confidence and hope she'd known hours before.
"I can't help it," he murmured.
She had to meet his eyes now. "I know."
In that split second, she thought her certainty might be back, thought this might be proof things wouldn't all go wrong.
It wasn't.
The lights flickered.
No, she begged, as she raced to get down the stairs before anyone else. Please, no.
She patted her way to the fuse box in the darkness. Please tell me I'm wrong. Tell me Father Mac is wrong.
She cursed the superstition of it, the simple-mindedness, and tried to shake it from her mind.
She thought back to a mild zap the night before, and then remembered something Padraig had told her: keep a hand in your pocket to ground yourself. Could really make all the difference.
Reaching for that awful problem-child fuse, she felt a hum as the lights returned - and then a current just strong enough to bite, to get a scream out of her, to freeze her in place and override the instinct to pull away.
Dark now - the pub, or her eyes? As the pain wore off, an odd euphoria washed in, pushing reason out.
She realised in horror that her prayers for a sign were answered. She remembered all the trouble and disappointment she'd ever been to anyone with whom she'd ever shared a name.
She couldn't let it happen to Peter.
She then remembered her promise to hear out his grief for his mother, to be there for this newest member of the orphan club. How could she leave him now?
She turned from the fusebox as she heard footsteps approach. She drew her left hand out of her pocket and absently bit at a fingernail - something in the pocket had lodged underneath it.
The sedative. The pill. It had broken into bits, sure it couldn't be...
The darkness seemed to change now - was she greying out?
Oh, no.
She heard her head hit the floor, heard the confusion building around her, heard Peter begging her to wake up... She couldn't feel anything, couldn't move.
She had to decide what she'd tried to decide before, when her parents left the pub to her, when she married Leo. She had to decide that she meant to do this, that this was the best thing for everyone.
She heard Niamh and Father Mac pleading with Peter to do last rites.
Now she heard Peter giving them.
Now she knew: the right thing after all.
2001 - CILL NA SIDH
Exhilarating and depressing at the same time, Peter thought.
"You actually believed Father Mac?" he breathed.
"I despise that man," Assumpta said. "But I despise him most when he's right."
"He wasn't right."
"Yes, he was." She shivered. "I mean, if we had tried to run that pub as a couple...Peter," she stalled.
"They'd have run us out of town," he admitted.
She nodded. "Mind, I'd have gone anywhere else - I did that anyway, but...I couldn't live with being the death of your livelihood."
"Better than the death of you, Assumpta. It's just a job."
"We both know that isn't true. You from years of seminary, and me from coming of age in this country when I did. Unemployment, insecurity, it does things to a person. To a couple. And if they already don't agree on faith..."
He looked as if he might sink through the bucket seat and into the earth below.
"But yes, in that last minute I shrugged it off. I told myself I'd at least wait until you'd had time to recover from your mum. Then I bit my nail, and...it happened so fast. Came to in the morgue that night, and...I told myself is done right by you. I had to believe it."
He was shaking his head.
"You don't believe me now? Still?"
He couldn't answer.
Assumpta flicked on the dome light, and first Peter noticed the redness of her eyes, her face - some left from tears, some fresh from rage.
Next he noticed she was showing him a tiny smooth patch in the web of her hand. Where the current had gone in and out, not strong enough for worse harm but clear proof of the shock she'd had.
She jerked away. "Matters little. You'll never believe me unless you want to believe me."
She pulled the door lever and stepped out of the Astra. He decided in the moment he was not quite fool enough to leave it there, and he followed suit.
"Assumpta, can you blame me?!" he yelled after her. "Every time I thought we...you've always turned on me! Single, married! Publican, actress! Wicklow, Belfast! Living, dead! Will the real Assumpta Fitzgerald please take a step forward?!"
"How dare you?!" she cried back, storming towards him. "Who are you to call anyone fickle?!"
And then she broke down. She grabbed him by the wrist, laid his hand over her breast where her heart was racing.
"I'm alive. And I'm sorry. For everything."
She let go of his hand and started back for the car.
He caught her from behind in a visceral squeeze.