Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
He took me to Dublin Castle, which didn’t look like a castle the way I would’ve thought of it, but a square of imposing brick buildings around a central courtyard.
It was massive, cobblestoned, and somehow open and enclosed all at once.
There was a green copper dome on top of one of the buildings that I recognized as something I’d been seeing from a distance all day at various points along our walks.
“I thought you said no government buildings,” I said.
“Well, we can look at ’em,” Eamonn said. “We just won’t try to go inside. I don’t even know what’s all here—the Treasury and other departments, some state rooms, the Chester Beatty library.”
I turned in a circle, taking it all in. I wondered how he was choosing the places to take me—so far, they’d seemed to be the kind of thing that would go on a tourist’s map of top sites in Dublin to see.
It was oddly touching to me, that he seemed determined to give me the experience he thought I must’ve wanted from coming to this city.
“Have you read every one of those books back at your shop?” I asked.
It seemed like it took him a second to catch up, like we were so far removed from our first meeting back at his garage only a handful of hours ago that he didn’t know what I could be referring to. But then his face cleared and he gave a rueful smile.
“Not even close,” he said. “Those are books I’ve come across, some that I’ve read, most that I haven’t. I like the idea that they could have a new life, like someone could pick one up when bringing their car in and have something to read. They’re free for the taking.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s a really cool idea.”
“My personal books are upstairs, in my flat,” he said. “I keep those separate, and there are a lot fewer of them.”
I didn’t know why even the mention of his apartment felt unbearably intimate to me. That I now knew where it was, above his shop, that I could picture a shelf of books in there, him taking one down to read.
“When I was in prison,” Eamonn said, “I started reading all the time. I’d always liked books, but suddenly they became everything to me.
Head down, work wherever they had me, walk the yard, read a lot.
It’s hard to explain the worst parts of prison.
It’s like every day is the same, and you have very little to do with any of it, you just go where they tell you to when they tell you to.
Most of the rooms don’t have clocks, and the ones that do are often wrong, and it starts to fuck with you just not knowing what time it is.
It’s so boring it makes you tired, but then you’re also always vigilant, and that makes you bone-tired.
Books were a way out of that, a way into something new and different every time I opened one up. ”
“A way to escape into other worlds,” I said. “That makes a lot of sense.”
“Other worlds,” he said, “but also back into the actual world, the one out there. I thought about the people who wrote those books a lot, I liked to imagine them sitting at their typewriter or scratching a word out in pen, that kind of thing. That there were all those people out there who had something to say and now here I was readin’ it, sometimes long after they were dead. ”
We passed by a poster with an illustration of what Dublin Castle had looked like in medieval times, the turrets and fortifications. Eamonn stared at it for a beat but didn’t seem to really see it.
“So books got you through it,” I said, thinking back to what he’d said earlier, about the rain. Something you know you can get through. I had the feeling prison was a little more than a cold rain.
“There were other things,” he said, still looking at the poster.
“Some I took advantage of, some I didn’t.
I got my Leaving Cert—I’d dropped out of school after getting my Junior.
I’d write letters for some of the fellas, ’cause they knew I was always at the library and so they’d ask me, but otherwise I tried to keep myself to myself.
There were some decent people in there, and I think they could’ve helped me more, if I’d let them. ”
I wasn’t exactly sure what Eamonn was referring to, if there was something specific he would’ve needed help with, or if it was incarceration in general.
I wondered if, on some level, this was his way of testing me, too.
If he was purposely dropping all this about his past, wanting to see what I’d do with it.
“How long were you in for?”
“Three years.” He’d stepped up onto a low stair in front of an arched doorway to one of the buildings, making him even taller than usual, until he hopped back down again. “I was also nineteen. My own life-cleaving-in-two moment, I suppose.”
Those seemed like a hard three years to spend in prison.
Not that there were any easy ones, but to be right on the cusp of adulthood like that, to have just become a man but still have such a recent memory of the boy in you.
Eamonn seemed to sense the direction of my thoughts, because he stopped, turning to face me.
“I deserved it,” he said. “The time, the slop food, sleeping on the floor when it was overcrowded, the nonstop noise, the fucking smells. Anything I got. I did it, every single thing I was charged with. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to play at being some innocent, reading my little books in my prison bunk.
It was tough inside, and I thought I was tough outside, getting into scraps and out late with the lads, skipping school, giving my mam a hard time.
I was out of control then. A weekend was for drinking and partying, loud music and a bit of ecstasy, and a Monday morning was for fuck all.
I’d managed to land a good apprenticeship at a local garage when I left school, and I didn’t even do right by that. ”
But look at what you’ve made for yourself, I wanted to say.
He’d obviously built a life since then, with the shop and the apartment upstairs with all his books.
He seemed like a success story to me, albeit one that came out of some less-than-ideal circumstances.
But ultimately I didn’t know anything about his life and had no right to comment on it, good or bad.
“You definitely met the better brother first,” Eamonn said. “Niall’s always had his shit together, since we were kids. Went to college, got a good job in America, did our mam proud. With my record, they wouldn’t let me so much as look at the Statue of fucking Liberty.”
Eamonn’s a waste. That was what Niall had said back on our date, about his own brother.
Meanwhile his brother was over here trying to sell me on him.
It was on the tip of my tongue to point out that while Eamonn might’ve been the one busted for shoplifting as a seven-year-old, it was his thirteen-year-old brother who’d put him up to it in the first place, so maybe it didn’t say much that Niall had kept his nose clean all these years.
“Niall could stand to be more humble,” I said, the closest I could come to saying what I really wanted to say. “It might not hurt him to reconnect to his roots.”
Eamonn looked like he was about to say something, then seemed to think better of it. “I’m glad you don’t regret your life choices,” he said finally. “That’s a good way to be. I regret quite a lot of mine.”
A couple was taking a selfie in front of one of the buildings, and Eamonn and I both watched them as they set it up, holding the phone out and smiling before looking down at the screen and exchanging a laugh.
I wondered what he thought of when he saw them, if that relationship with the girl from a few years ago that hadn’t worked out was one of his regrets, after all, no matter what he’d said.
“I feel like I haven’t given you enough history,” he said, turning to take in the entire square.
“There’s a lot of it here, but it’s maybe best known as the site of the British handover to the Irish Provisional Government in 1922.
The story goes that the Irish leader arrived seven minutes late for the historic meeting, and when one of the British officials scolded him for it, said, ‘Sure you people are here seven hundred years, what bloody difference does seven minutes make now?’ ”
I smiled at that. “The story goes, so does that mean it’s one of those things no one can agree he said? It’s a pretty good line.”
“Ah, I like to think he said it. Although the Irish do have a way of making it where something spectacular one weekend sounds even more spectacular by the next weekend.”
“That’ll be me telling the story of this day for the rest of my life,” I said, then immediately thought it was too revealing a thing to say.
I was having a really good time, despite whatever strange circumstances might’ve led me here in the first place, but I also didn’t want to make it seem like I thought this was more than it was.
“I mean, getting mugged alone. That doesn’t happen every day. ”
“It must’ve been traumatic.”
“Yes,” I said. “But also in a way…like I said, I didn’t really get a good look at the person who did it. I think he was young, maybe still high school–aged even. He grabbed my purse and he knocked into me so hard, it sent me flying. My wallet, my phone, everything—gone.”
My car, my life, my grasp on reality…the list of things that went missing in that split second was much longer, but I couldn’t even get into it.
“But you’re all right?” Eamonn said. “Physically, I mean.”
I hit my head pretty hard. Everything went black. I don’t know if I’ve woken up.
“I’m okay,” I said. “But I’ve been thinking a lot about that kid.
I have no idea why he stole my purse. He could be addicted to drugs, he could have been abused by his family, he could have nowhere to go, he could feel like he had no other choice.
For me, a stolen purse means maybe I’m out a bit of cash and I have to deal with the hassle of canceling my debit card, getting a new driver’s license, whatever.
But I know in many ways I have it good. It’s not lost on me that there are so many people out there serving food they can’t afford to eat, selling products they can’t afford to buy, building homes they can’t afford to live in. ”
Eamonn opened his mouth like he was about to disagree with me, but I shook my head.
“I’m not trying to say it’s right,” I said.
“Stealing or especially physical assault. Or that I’m not angry about it.
I’m not trying to justify what he did. But it also made me think about the ways people hurt each other all the time, and we don’t even call it what it is.
When a guy knocks you down and steals your purse, it’s black-and-white, that’s a bad guy.
But that guy didn’t even know me. He shouldn’t have done it, but it wasn’t personal, it wasn’t even about me. ”
“You think intention matters more than action?”
That was almost too big a philosophical question for me to grapple with—I was sure we could debate the nuances of the two for hours if we really got into it.
“Not necessarily. I know some actions are so bad that the reasoning behind them makes no difference, and we’re all flawed in our rationalizations anyway.
I guess sometimes I just think people can have such cruel intentions toward people they’re supposed to care about, people they should want to help, not hurt.
It’s hard for me not to see that as somehow worse. ”
“What’s that saying, about how we hurt the ones we love the most.”
“Right,” I said. “And it gets so much more complicated, because it’s easier to accept that a thief is a bad person than to think that about someone you’re with, someone who’s supposed to care about you.
But how else do you explain it? When you call because you’re alone and scared, bleeding and in pain because of something they helped cause in the first place, and they say they’re too busy to pick you up.
You can hear their friends laughing in the background, and you know they’re not too busy. ”
I could tell he’d been a little taken aback, when I’d mentioned my abortion before, probably because it had come out of nowhere and was the definition of an overshare. But he’d been kind about it, for all that, and it had felt cathartic to get it off my chest.
“Or imagine you get dressed up for a date,” I continued.
“You’re feeling excited about it and a little hopeful, and then the person finds any tiny opening to make you feel bad about yourself.
Why would they do that? Why are they even on the date, then?
If they don’t want to try to connect with someone.
Why would they want to make you feel foolish, just because you are trying? ”
I didn’t know if I was making any sense, even to myself. It wasn’t like Niall saying my dress looked like a bag on me was as bad as someone knocking me to the ground and taking my stuff, I knew that, but…they were both things that would stay with me for a long time.
“I’m not normally like this,” I said, blowing out a breath that ended in a little laugh.
“Like what?” Eamonn’s gaze raked over my face, and the way he asked the question, it made me feel as if whatever way I was like he really didn’t mind it.
“Full of all these random tangents and speeches, I guess,” I said. “I have a lot on my mind.”
“It’s been a weird day.”
That got a full-on laugh out of me. The understatement of the year. “Yeah,” I said. “So where are we headed next? Somewhere that I can’t turn into the most depressing conversation on the planet.”
“Hey,” Eamonn said, giving me a crooked grin. “Don’t count me out, I’ve been doin’ my part to contribute. But here, I have an idea of something else to show you.”