Just keep pretending you are listening
she said.
I nodded.
Rebecca knew that when she appeared
when we were in conversation
I “acted weird”
not exactly speaking out loud
but distracted.
After all, I was seeing someone
that no one else could see.
But just then, Mr. Frye was looking at me.
He’d seen me nod.
Do you agree then, Declan?
Frye asked.
I must have looked puzzled.
It was a look I often had.
Are we masters of our own fate?
Tell him that not everyone is.
Tell him you have to choose to be master of your own fate.
I repeated her words verbatim.
Now Mr. Frye nodded, smiled, and continued to read.
Rebecca stayed “with me”
(I knew she was still there)
but remained silent until the end of class.
I went to the library and sat way in the back
at a computer.
Why did you show me that man and his son?
I asked.
Because you needed to see them.
You needed to see the look on his face.
I didn’t just see it
I said.
I felt it.
I know you did.
I needed you to feel his loneliness.
Why?
Declan, there’s so much to explain.
Then explain, please.
I kept expecting her image to appear in my mind as before.
But I could not see her.
And her voice was faint
like someone had turned down the volume
on a television.
Declan, soon I won’t be able to visit you.
It requires too much energy.
I need you to come here.
How?
Fly, Declan.
Come soon.
Please.
Help me, Jonesy
Jonesy had been looking for me
all over the school.
Declan
he said
you look like
you’ve seen
a ghost.
Help me, Jonesy
I said
I’m in over my head.
Mental illness is like that.
How can I help?
I explained about what happened in English class.
He said
I wish my English classes
were that interesting.
She wants me to meet her.
To go to her.
Do you have to leave the planet
and leave your body behind?
Jonesy was serious, the goof.
No.
It’s not like that.
Where then?
Where do you need to go?
I’ve got images in my head
of where I’m supposed to go.
Ireland.
Ireland?
Jonesy asked
as a big smile came over his face.
She’s Irish.
You’re Irish too
deep down in your
inner self.
What should I do?
I asked.
I’m kinda scared.
And I was.
I was so far deep into something
way over my head.
Scared is good.
But not enough.
What then?
What else?
You need to be brave.
Flying to Knocknarea
No, Rebecca did not mean “fly”
like jump off roofs
or grow wings
or leave my body
or anything more far-fetched.
She meant get on a plane and fly there to meet her.
She never told me where or even exactly how to meet her.
But I’d seen those images.
Knocknarea — a mountain
and the beach
and the cove
and what did that man and his son have to do with anything?
I didn’t know what to make
of the fact I could not see her now
and that her once crystal clear voice
was fading.
But what scared me even more was this.
What if I lost her altogether?
I couldn’t bear that.
Report Card
My father was furious.
My grades which had never been good
were slipping
because I was being distracted by Rebecca
falling in love with her
and wishing I was with her.
She was on my mind constantly now.
One night my mother asked me about “the girl”
and I was evasive.
Not that she wouldn’t take me seriously.
It was just that she might share
what I said with my father.
I think I might need to leave school for a while
I told her.
Why?
I just need to.
I need to go someplace different.
I want to go stay with Uncle Seamus.
In Ireland?
Yes.
When she said the word, it was like an awakening.
I heard Rebecca loud and clear then.
Only two words.
Yes!
Please!
Parental Battleground
My mother made the case to my father
about sending me to stay with Seamus
until the school year was over.
I could make up the work in the summer
she said. In summer school.
She told him I was under too much stress.
I was alienated from the other kids.
I needed a break
for my mental health.
My father hated the idea.
He ranted and raved about how Ireland would be bad for me
how Seamus was a lunatic and a lazy bastard.
Then an argument began
unlike any I’d heard from them in my life.
My father: Jesus, Fiona, the boy needs to grow up. He needs to be responsible for his actions. He needs to think straight and get his life together. You’ve put foolish notions in his head ever since he was a boy. Now this!
My mother: Yes, Brendan. Now this. He’s unsettled, yes. He is not a great scholar like yourself. He is old enough now to find his place in the world. And that place is not here. We must help him.
My father: What? By sending him to live with Seamus, a man who can’t tie his own shoes much less hold down a job? A man who whines for the days gone by in a mythical Ireland that never existed? We left that damp, dingy rock to make a life here. A life for us and a life for our son. The answer is final. He is not going.
My mother said nothing more.
I heard her stomp off to the bedroom and slam the door.
I felt the guilt of a son
who had driven a wedge between
two loving people who
did not deserve the grief
caused by a lovestruck and bewildered son.
A Turn of Events
But then something happened.
At school.
The following week.
A kid with a gun.
A loaded gun.
He walked into a classroom
a
nd held the gun
to a teacher’s head.
The school went into lockdown.
I was in the library at the time.
The librarian, Mrs. Kendish
locked the doors and told those of us in the room
to get down on the floor.
I had been near the windows looking at books
on mythology.
Kneeling on the floor, I heard Rebecca’s voice
Declan
Don’t be scared.
I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t scared
but then I realized her brief presence had suddenly vanished
and I saw the face of that man again.
The good news is that no one got shot.
The police came, and someone talked the kid
out of hurting anyone.
I didn’t know him.
He was new.
He had that lost look
the one people said I have sometimes
the look I’d seen on Jonesy.
But I saw something else as well
some kind
of pain I couldn’t imagine.
So our school was in the national news
and I thought it would all
just go away after the incident
since no one got hurt.
But it didn’t.
Everything about school was different.
Kids were nervous.
Teachers were nervous.
Some parents pulled their kids from school.
My mom asked me if I felt safe there.
I lied.
I said no.
I said I was scared.
That I couldn’t quite get back to normal.
Okay
she said
I’m going to talk this over
with your father.
A Theory for Everything
My father the physicist had a theory for everything.
Why the economy is not good.
Why atoms behave the way they do.
Why the universe came into existence.
Why we don’t get sucked into black holes.
Why starlings gather in flocks in the yard.
Why some kids take guns and walk into schools.
And he had a theory about me:
one day a light bulb
would turn on in my head
and I’d start taking charge of my life.
My true ability to reason
and make rational decisions would kick in.
I would show some effort at school
and become
really
really
engaged.
That was his word: engaged.
But the school thing scared my mom
and my mom
in turn
scared him.
He became
convinced
there was a real chance that his son
might get shot.
One crazy kid with a gun
he said
inspires a second crazy kid
with a gun
and next time
that kid is going to shoot.
It was just a theory.
But
But, it was his theory
and my mom bought into it
and I pretended that I bought into it.
I want to go somewhere safe
I said.
Somewhere where there are
not so many guns about.
Ireland
I said.
Ireland is the light bulb in my head.
But it’s more like a spotlight
I told him
shining through all the darkness.
I did not mention Rebecca
or that I was in love with her
(whoever, whatever she was).
Why Ireland?
he insisted.
Why can’t it be any place
other than Ireland?
Uncle Seamus
I said.
He invited me to stay with him.
Your Uncle Seamus
is a lunatic
a true pureblood
Irish lunatic.
I don’t care if he is
your mother’s brother.
He’s a menace.
My mom gave my dad a dirty look.
Do you have a second choice?
I thought for a few seconds.
Egypt
I said.
I’ll go to Egypt.
My dad looked at me.
He’d been watching the news.
Egypt was going through some nasty violent times.
His eyes were wide.
He looked flustered.
He had a dozen or so theories about the Middle East.
None of them were pretty.
He stared at his son
his more than slightly off-kilter son
his son who could end up brainwashed
by his lunatic brother-in-law.
There was confusion in his eyes
that I don’t believe I had ever seen
before.
And I guess Ireland ultimately
beat out Egypt
in some crazy emotional football game
going on
in his head.
My Father’s List of Things to Do and Not to Do in Ireland
I read it on the plane to Shannon.
It went like this:
1. Don’t hang out in pubs.
2. Don’t believe anything an Irishman tells you.
(They’re unbelievable liars.)
3. If anyone asks you your religion, say you are a
Buddhist.
4. Don’t tell anyone you have Irish blood.
5. Convince your Uncle Seamus to get a real job.
(Playing a fiddle is not and never will be real work.)
6. Don’t allow yourself to get beguiled by an Irish girl.
(They can trick you, fool you, and who knows what.)
Well, my dad had, I guess, become “beguiled” by my mother. Two more opposite personalities could not exist on the planet. My dad considered himself “a hard-nosed realist.” My mom kept amethyst crystals under her pillow. She also gave me a piece of “sacred” Irish jade for good luck to carry with me at all times.
33,000 Feet
It was a bumpy ride across the Atlantic at 33,000 feet
and I was pretty sure it was the jade
that kept the plane in the air
until the green green shores of Ireland
appeared in the airplane window
and beckoned the plane to land
safely in Shannon
where the immigration man
looked at the picture of me
on my passport
and then at me
and smiled in a funny way
like he knew something
I didn’t.
Like Coming Home
That’s what it felt like.
Coming home.
Like I’d been here before.
Like I was meant to be here.
Like I was (pardon the word)
destined
to be here.
I was a boy just off the plane
on my own
in Ireland.
And I felt like anything
anything
could happen.
All I needed to do
was
find
her.
The Bus
north through towns with crazy names:
Ennis, Gort, Galway, Tuam, Knock
Tobercurry, Knockbeg, Colooney
and then the city of Sligo.
The Long Way Home
Uncle Seamus met me at the bus station in Sligo.
He’d had a few pints and had been playing fiddle
in a nearby pub.
He asked me to drive us home
and reluctantly I did.
I’d only driven a few times,
and the steering wheel was on the
wrong side of the car.
As I drove
poorly and cautiously
he told tales of his youth
some true
some probably not.
I tried my best to stay on
the left-hand side of the narrow roads.
That clutch
said Seamus
is quirky as a pheasant in heat.
White knuckles on my part
turning on to
Drumcliff at the base of a mountain
Benbulben
then west to Carney
Cloghboley
and finally
Ballyconnell
Bally Bliss
I calls it
my uncle said.
And suddenly
there we were
way out at the westerly edge of Ireland
at what seemed to be
the end of the earth.
First Night in Ireland
It was a cold stone house
with wind whistling in the eaves
and a peat fire
that smelled so good
it put me to sleep
by nine o’clock.
Not a word or an image
from Rebecca
and I wondered if I had made a mistake.
Connected the dots the wrong way.
Maybe I should have gone to Egypt.
Seamus’ words were still in my head:
In the morning
we climb Knocknarea
and pay our respects
to Queen Maeve.
Warrior Queen
Queen Maeve
Seamus told me
was an ancient warrior queen
or goddess perhaps
who was very rich
and powerfully sexual
and one day she stole
an enormous and strong bull
from Ulster
for reasons that may elude us today.
She was not exactly well liked