To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > Travel Nov. 5, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/travel/wlust/1999/11/05/irish Fairy tale He played the Irish prince, I played the fool. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Gretchen Scherer I heard the wind rioting the trees, their branches scraping against the window and sensed, before opening my eyes, that it was almost dawn. No rain hitting the windowpane -- yet. There was always a possibility of rain in Ireland. Morning in Maynooth was another word for gray. Until living there, I never knew it came in so many shades: the bark on the trees the color of granite, the streets like wet ash, the sky a leaden blanket. During my year studying at the liberal arts college there, I spent much of my time in a two-story row house, the first house on Convent Lane. I sometimes contemplated the irony of that name as John snored softly next to me. Even though I had been raised Catholic, the excitement and intensity I felt being with him left no room for guilt. Our affair had begun unexpectedly, and sometimes I still felt a slight thrill of surprise at seeing him in the bed. Now, a four-lane highway passes through Maynooth, but when I studied there in 1988 it was a village, with one main street that was just another stretch on the "Dublin-Galway Road." At one point, Maynooth had been one of the spiritual centers of Europe, with its large seminary. But in the late 1970s a secular "arts block" was added to the college, and the town was inundated with less religiously minded students. Every morning, the train deposited a swarm of them, wearing black Doc Martins and toting sage-colored canvas backpacks. Just as many more, like John, lived in accommodations in town. If not for the college, Maynooth might well have withered. Instead, there was an appealing bustle to Main Street and a great deal of activity at the Quinnsworth supermarket, around the corner from Convent Lane -- especially on auction day, when we occasionally heard cattle lowing from the market behind it. My last morning in Ireland, I was up early and restless in the single bed. Rather than wake John, I slid out the end, threw on a T-shirt and socks and went down to the kitchen. Because I was leaving, everything around me was weighted with significance. A bluish light filtered in the window, and I paused on the stairs, imagining John and his friends sitting in the chairs, cans of Foster's in their hands, a halo of smoke wreathing their heads. They were singing "Where Do You Go to My Lovely?" and taking turns making up verses. I sat in a scratchy green chair, remembering the late-night after-bar gatherings that would now go on without me. I didn't feel ready to go. I was afraid of losing this person I'd become, this person singing songs and drinking lager in the living room. But I had to go, had to return to my small, Catholic college in the Midwest. Many years would pass before I realized that a part of me was saved by leaving. It's a fairy tale every girl knows: The prince sweeps you off your feet, and you want to be with him so badly you would -- and sometimes have to -- sacrifice too much. The wind was blowing the day I met John, which in itself was nothing special. Wind fills my memories from the year I spent studying in Ireland, whipping my hair around my face, shaking windows. The sound of it in my ears, deafening me, is as real and constant as the vivid, green grass. Now, I struggle to write anything about that first meeting that is not clichéd. I would like to say that his eyes were the same gray as the sky. That he stood like James Dean and looked up with a sidelong glance. I can say that the day I met him I still thought I was in love with someone else. Someone kind. Someone whom parents always hope their daughters will fall in love with -- a law student who had never taken my breath away. Not like John did. Ireland went straight to my head and I wanted desperately to make myself belong. With John, I thought I did. The student union was hung with a thick web of smoke, and the windows were fogged over from body heat. We sat at the bar, both clutching a Guinness, our bodies turned toward the large screen at the front of the room. Packy Bonner and "the lads" were playing Spain to qualify for the World Cup. I was wedged between Irish college students, my lectures completely forgotten. Ireland scored with three minutes remaining and the place erupted. Everyone jumped up with a roar, sloshing beer as they hugged the body, any body, next to them. John downed his pint, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, kissed me hard and nodded toward the door. His mother had gotten us tickets to the Gate Theatre in Dublin and we had plans to hitchhike in. As we hurried across campus, another roar spilled from the union. I was flushed and excited and I wanted us to return to the crowded pub. I had become one of them, if only temporarily, and leaving was like breaking a spell. But then we were at the Gate Theatre watching "Twelfth Night," a Joe Dowling interpretation set in the 1930s. Although the setting had changed, the ending did not. As with all of Shakespeare's romantic comedies, everyone ended up with his or her true love. It was just that simple -- love prevailed and everyone was happy. It was just that simple. Coming home that night, John and I sat on the top of a green double-decker bus, the 67a, which took the long way home through Leixlip. As the bus careered through the darkness, large old trees suddenly loomed and scraped their branches against the bus windows as if trying to claw their way in. In the top of the bus we swayed and rocked as it barreled through the twists of that narrow road. It felt like a carnival ride, exhilarating and terrifying, but without the promise of a simple ending. It was a feeling I became accustomed to that year with John. In Ireland it seemed as if I never slept. I nearly gave up attending lectures, but still felt full with the things I was learning. In the middle of the night, side by side in the bed, John read Yeats to me and explained the Celtic references, the myths I did not know. "The Song of the Wandering Angus" was my favorite because of this line: "I went into the wood/because a fire was in my head." This was how I felt those days, as if I had a fire in my head. When he read "Adam's Rib" I imagined myself as Maude Gonne sitting in my garden at Coole, calling W.B. Yeats "Willy." As John read, I would trace the sparse, black hairs on his chest, the two splotchy, brown scars: a result of a childhood fall from a slide. At dawn, I would go home, smug and full with happiness. Walking with long, sure steps, I'd hum "Rare Ol' Times" as his flat grew smaller behind me. Sparkling dew hung like a halo over the hedgerows. I knew his wounds, I would think, and felt sure there was nothing more than this, this sharing of secrets. But this is when you should be careful. When you have given into trust and love so completely you no longer own yourself entirely. This is when the other person could suddenly steal off when you least expect it, taking a piece of you with him. All the men who have ever left me have done it in the same way -- they haven't. They have hedged and hinted, undermining my confidence, until the only way I could preserve my self-respect was to leave them, something that I, for many years, didn't have the guts to do. But John was the first one, the first time, and I didn't know how to interpret the signs. I wasn't willing to see them. One night, I arrived in the pub and found John sitting next to a tall redhead named Orla. I had seen her around campus, but wasn't aware that she and John were acquainted. Despite my presence, several of John's friends nodded in their direction and wondered out loud what the "bold John" was up to. In their voices, I heard admiration, and when John left with her, everyone avoided looking at me. I was about to suffocate. Later, he came back. How long? I'm not sure. Maybe it wasn't long enough, maybe it was. He smiled at me and called me Chicken, which sounded glorious in his mouth. A long, wiry strand of black hair hung down over his right eye. There was something about him that seemed vulnerable, and despite my best instincts or any good sense, a part of me rushed in to fill it up. What is important in this story? Only this: It was with John that my journeys began. It was because of him that I started to believe that there were things to discover, that I was at risk of being a very ordinary person if I didn't start living life more deliberately. I knew almost nothing about myself then, but I did know that I didn't want to be ordinary. Of course, it never occurred to me that I could be the source of my own extraordinariness. I believed I had been too dulled by my suburban upbringing. Instead, I sought to be wonderful by extenuation, clinging foolishly, and almost desperately, to John, my "Dublin lad," my brooding poet. In Ireland, everything seemed exotic and everything exotic seemed wonderful. Now I realize I was romanticizing hardship and heartbreak. But I was also flailing against an insecurity that was the most real thing about me. And it would take many more years before I could trust my own ability to make my life. It wasn't until I could put some distance between myself and the many bleary, smoky nights in the pub, after I had shaken my addiction to the red curve of his mouth and the sudden animation of his face when he smiled, that I realized I still knew nothing about living deliberately. It was still not fully light when John shuffled into the kitchen that last morning. He fumbled for corn flakes and milk. I counted his scoops of sugar. He wanted to know why I was up. "I'm leaving," I wanted to say, as if that should be enough for both of us. But it wouldn't carry the same weight for him, so I simply shrugged instead. There was a drop of milk like a white tear on his stubbly beard. He placed his hand on the top of my head. Come back to bed. There is still time, he said. Just like Prufrock, I thought. Waking is like drowning today. John meant time to sleep before I had to catch the bus to the airport, but that was nothing now; I knew that I was almost out of time. Still, I followed him back to bed and lay awake as he slept again. I promised myself to remember that his hair smelled like ashes and rain. And I felt like Cinderella waiting for the clock to strike midnight when the fairy tale would end. How effortless this narrative had become. That morning, I thought I would like to stay there forever, stay the person that I'd become for at least a few more years. I didn't yet know her as well as I wanted to, I thought, when in actuality, she was not at all who I thought she was. This was a country of fairies and tales of mythical lands of youth. I arrived eager for a legend, whatever the cost, and didn't believe the last page had yet been written. He didn't volunteer to come to the airport, and trying to look independent, I didn't ask him to. He left me on the sidewalk and made promises about coming to Minneapolis that I foolishly believed. Persistent, the wind struggled with our hair, drew tears to my eyes. The noise of it buffeted my ears, and I felt like I was standing in the open hatch of an airplane deciding whether to jump. I watched him walk away until he reached the corner. In the air, I smelled peat smoke, mellow and earthy. During the year, I had learned to build fires with peat or coal, which burned more hotly. It took months, but I finally learned how to bank the fire at night so that there would still be smoldering coals in the morning. Before anything else in the morning, my roommates or I would huddle in front of the fire, prodding and blowing. Life seemed so much more tactile here: Milk was delivered to our doorstep; warmth was dependent on making a fire. This made living seem more real. At the corner, John stopped once and waved. He yelled something, but the words were snatched away before they reached me. I wanted to wave back to him, but wasn't able to lift my arm. This was when I still believed in fairy tales with happily-ever-after endings. And now, though years have passed, sometimes when I dream, the years are all compressed into something neither past nor present, something so real, so urgent, my heart occasionally feels seared by need. In these dreams, John and I suddenly meet again, and although neither of us has been searching, we both realize we have found what we were looking for all along. I know this is my dream, not his. In my dream, he still smells like rain and wind and he takes hold of my face. So carefully, he leans in and places his lips on the ridge just below my eye, where my smile crests, where I am most beautiful. This is my fairy tale. salon.com | Nov. 5, 1999