Cathleen was grateful her brother was there with her in the apartment, even if he had drunk himself to sleep by sneaking swigs from her old, dusty bottle of whiskey that he snagged while she was in the kitchen fixing them something to eat. He didn’t think she could see that he stashed the bottle between the pillows on the couch where he now lay. He didn’t think she saw him pour the whiskey into the club soda she had poured for him. Any other night she would have said something—gotten into a serious fight with him—but she was tired, and she was relieved he was there. It was the noticing, she thought. The tiny moments that she noticed that no one else did that were constantly undoing her, them. Although she wished he was awake so she wouldn’t feel so alone, she was happy to hear him breathe in the room. His presence was enough. It would have been unbearable to be there alone.
She walked by Colm’s room and stood in the doorway looking at all the evidence that her little boy resided there. A tall robot built out of Legos lorded over an assortment of precisely lined up cars, a wrecking crane, a fire truck, and a rumpled, well-hugged bear. His hooded Yankees sweatshirt hung over the chair beside his bed, and the books she had read to him the night before were stacked on the floor beside the messily made bunk bed with fire truck sheets. She bent over to straighten the pile of books, thinking about which ones she should take to the hospital for him—If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, Where the Wild Things Are, No Matter What. He had outgrown Oh My Baby, Little One, but she still kept reading it to him and could, after five and a half years, recite the words by heart. She loved the illustrations of the mother bird and her son, and Colm loved looking for the hidden hearts on each page—inside the mother’s collar, underneath the boy’s cap, curled around a coffee cup. No, it didn’t matter where the two birds—the mama and the baby bird—went, their love was everywhere. Yes, on every page, Cathleen thought, Colm was looking for a crisp, whole, beautifully shaped heart.
It was all she could do to stand up. The exhaustion and heartache seemed to settle in every joint, muscle, and bone. She was the oldest twenty-seven-year-old she knew. She moved around the room, absentmindedly straightening and picking up small toys off the floor and putting them in the appropriate sorted baskets on the shelves along the wall. When she was done, she looked back one last time at Colm’s empty bed and tried not think what if, hit the light, and headed across the hall to the bathroom.
As she closed the bathroom door behind her, she caught herself in the mirror and winced at her reflection. She thought she looked awful—her hair was a mess, and her eyes, showing signs of wear and age, stared blankly back at her. She could barely stand the sight of herself; no wonder, she thought, no man could either. Cathleen had no idea how men perceived her. She only measured her beauty by the one man who had rejected it, rejected all of her.
She had grown accustomed to her single life, and she often told herself that she could live the rest of her life without a man. It had been nearly six years since she had been touched by someone other than her son or brother, but she didn’t feel the absence of intimacy. Had she known then what she knew now, she would have tried harder to remember her whole life before, to hold on to it for all time. She only remembered how Pierce’s lips felt on her cheek; she did not remember how he had looked when he kissed her good-bye. She had pretended to be asleep, and she did not know it would be the last time. If she had known, she would have made one last plea for herself, for their unborn son. When she woke later that morning, she found a note that he’d left on her mirror. There was no apology, no good-bye—just some lyrics of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez’s “Mama, You Been on My Mind” scribbled on a piece of paper, asking her to look inside her mirror each morning, and to remember that even though he wouldn’t be there, he would be able to see her so clearly, and he wondered if she, Cathleen, could see herself as clearly as he did, when he had her on his mind.
Could he really see her? See her now? She hoped not. She hoped he would only remember her as she once was. She could barely see him now. The memory of him was fading for her every day. Something for which she was secretly grateful. He took up less mental space, less heartache with each passing moment. His absence left more room for Colm, she thought. She did not let herself waste too many moments thinking about what might have been. Instead, whenever she became nostalgic or began to miss him, she tried to think of what Monsignor had said to her when she went to him to tell him that she was seven months pregnant and that Pierce had left her.
“Sometimes we love the wrong people, Cathleen.”
Monsignor’s words struck her. Yes, she had loved Pierce. It was real. And the purpose of that love produced a child. But just because it was real, it didn’t make it right. It didn’t mean it would last forever. Her head knew that, but her heart felt an entirely different thing. She missed him. She imagined various scenarios in which he, with his guitar slung behind his back, would surprise her by arriving on the doorstep of their apartment or by meeting her at the same subway station where he first saw her all those years ago. She dreamed he would touch her cheek, smooth the hair on top of her head, and slide his hands over an escaped wisp and tuck it behind her ear as he gently kissed her. If she closed her eyes, she could feel it, almost believe he was real. He was there and he loved her. But when she opened her eyes, he was gone and it was her own hand tucking her hair. And it hurt all over again. She had to believe the pain of his leaving her, of his leaving their son, would subside someday. It just hadn’t happened yet. Yes, it hurt considerably less than it did all those years ago, but at any moment the pain asserted itself—a note to the parents of Colm Magee, a homemade Father’s Day card from the day-care center that went to no one, a Dylan song on the radio. Yes, whenever Cathleen felt the familiar sting, she reminded herself of the words the monsignor spoke often, “These things take time, dear. Let your heart heal. No reason to get back out there right away. You have Colm now to love—that’s all you need now.”
She reminded herself of his wisdom as she brushed her teeth without looking up at herself again in the mirror. Then she turned out the lights and headed off to her bedroom. If life had taught Cathleen Magee anything, it was this: No matter what, the morning always came and whatever it brought her—a note on the mirror, a trip to the hospital—she would survive as long as her brother and son were by her side.