Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
I warmed up as we started walking again, but still it felt good to hold a hot latte, letting it heat my hands through the paper cup while I waited for it to cool down enough to drink. We’d stopped in a small café near Trinity College, where Eamonn said he would show me around next.
“You might recognize this spot,” he said, “if you’ve read anything recent by Sally Rooney or Tana French. They both also went here, along with a load of famous writers you’d know. Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Samuel Beckett, even our favorite Esther-lover Jonathan Swift.”
“Have you ever thought about going to school here?” I asked, then was embarrassed to have asked it.
It was wrong of me to assume he hadn’t already gone, I supposed, although the fact that I knew he’d spent his college-aged years in prison and that he’d made that crack about how his brother had gone to college made me pretty sure he hadn’t.
But I also had no idea about the admission requirements or cost or any other barrier to entry, much less if he’d even want to.
“Nah,” he said, a dismissive syllable that I suspected hid more behind it. “What about you, you studied…art? Art history?”
“I was an art major,” I said. “With all the stereotypes that go along with it.”
He laughed, and I was already struck by how much easier it sounded now, coming out of him. How his laughs felt there for the taking instead of doled out in some ration book in his head. “Tell me the stereotypes. I can’t go guessin’ without risking offense.”
“Hmm, let’s see. I wore a lot of black. I was very sensitive—one critique in workshop could send me flying to my journal to write about how nobody understood my art.
I took what I was doing very seriously. Meanwhile most of the actual writing I had to do for class was just artist’s statements and stuff like that, which I could tell got under my roommate’s skin because she was an English major and always writing these long essays analyzing the role of women in nineteenth-century Russian novels or whatever. ”
We’d come up to a tall bell tower in the middle of a square that I definitely felt like I’d seen before—in a movie or on TV, maybe. We walked under its arch, temporarily in the shade, before coming out on the other side. Eamonn backed up, tilting his head to look up at it.
“I like the sound of art majors,” he said.
“Think they’re edgy, overly sensitive, academically unrigorous?”
“Intense,” he said, his gaze still on the structure. “Vulnerable. Passionate.”
It was a good thing he wasn’t looking at me, because I didn’t think I could control whatever my face might be doing.
In that moment, I felt the distance between us—how different our lives had been, how much younger than me he was, how far apart our situations were now.
And at the same time, his words made my stomach flutter, made me conscious of just how close we were standing.
“I don’t mean to be that person still dwelling on college fifteen years later,” I said, suddenly self-conscious about the whole conversation.
“I asked. And you can dwell on whatever you like.”
It was fortunate he said that, because I realized I wasn’t done.
“I think it’s been on my mind because it was the last time my life felt really big, you know?
Like there were so many possibilities in front of me, and all I had to do was choose the one I wanted.
And now it feels like all those choices have been colored in, and there’s not a lot of room for much else.
Like there’s this watercolor class offered at my local library, and I think about signing up for it all the time—just to get back into practice, reconnect with that part of myself.
But then I think about the commitment, the cost of restocking all my materials, and I don’t do it. ”
He did look at me then. “Your life can still be big,” he said. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
That was a good point—a better one than he knew. In many ways, my life had never been bigger than in this moment, which existed in some pocket of extra space and time that I’d never known about until approximately six hours ago.
The to-go latte was still warming my palm as I held it, but didn’t feel quite as hot as it had a few minutes ago, so hopefully that meant it was safe to drink. When I took my first sip, it was perfect.
Eamonn, on the other hand, had gotten his tea with nothing added to it, so when he went to take a sip of his I could tell it was still a little too hot.
He touched his tongue to his upper lip, to the spot where he might’ve been scalded, and breathed out a laugh when he saw me watching him, like he was embarrassed to be caught out.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had that big life feeling,” he said, then shook his head.
“Wait, that sounds bad. I don’t mean it in a bad way necessarily.
But just, when I was young I didn’t dream of much more than what I had.
Life was good craic, running around, having fun.
I thought the goal was to get a job that didn’t take it out of ya and go home to someone who loved you. ”
He paused, like that brought him up short. Then he blew gently over the lid of his cup, trying to cool down his tea.
“I don’t want to take the small things for granted,” he said. “The small things when added up are what make a life. Is that the Claire Keegan quote? Sometimes they’re all the life you get.”
“No, you’re right. And college was also a stressful time for me, as I’ve told you, which was maybe brought on somewhat by that big life feeling, overwhelmed by too many possibilities and choices. There’s a lot to appreciate about what I have now.”
“Tell me one thing,” he said. “The smallest thing.”
“Hmm.” I took a sip of my coffee to buy myself some time to think, but it actually wasn’t that hard to conjure up some of the tiny details I missed about my life, now that I was worried I might never have them again.
“I love the feeling of using an office supply for its exact right purpose. Do you know what I mean? Like we have these small manila folders with holes punched in the top, and I always wondered what the hell they could be used for. And then I had to file a bunch of receipts in a client’s file and boom, it was the perfect way to do it. ”
His shoulders were shaking, like he’d started laughing, and I pulled back in mock offense. “What?” I said. “It’s very satisfying.”
“No, I’m sure it is,” he said. “Believe me, I love when I have just the right tool for a job. I only assumed…I don’t know, I thought you’d have a story about a butterfly you saw once or something.”
“A butterfly?” Now I was laughing, too, I couldn’t help it. “Is that how you see me, just running around, distracted by every butterfly?”
“Not in a bad way,” he said, then sobered up a bit. “I promise, not in a bad way.”
“Well, what about you? What’s your smallest thing?”
But he’d stopped walking, gesturing with his hand holding his tea toward a large stone building with a line of people snaked around it.
“That’s the Old Library,” he said. “With the Book of Kells in it. You need tickets for it, and probably booked in advance, so I’m sorry we can’t see it.
There’s the Long Room, which is basically as it sounds—an incredibly long, large room with high ceilings, lined with row after row of old books.
You’d know it, it’s been featured in loads of films.”
We came upon a sign, and Eamonn stepped back a little to read what it said. “Under renovation,” he mused. “So the books aren’t even there. The room itself is still impressive, it just wouldn’t be the full experience.”
I didn’t know why this seemed significant to me somehow.
That I would arrive to a closed garage, try to go to a closed embassy, only to stumble upon one of the biggest tourist destinations in Ireland that happened to be undergoing a once-in-a-lifetime renovation project.
Did that reinforce the idea that this was a dream, where unusual things could happen, or that it was real life, where your best-laid plans didn’t always go the way you wanted them to?
Or did it just mean that sometimes things were closed?
There was a trash can not far away, and Eamonn tossed his cup. “I can take you to one of my favorite bookshops, though,” he said. “If you want to walk across the river.”
I tossed my cup, too, even though I technically had a few sips left in there. The coffee had gone a bit cold, anyway. “Sure,” I said. “Let’s go.”