Some weeks follow, and even though the two of them only think of each other, they never meet. Their days are filled with anxiety. One day, Liliana will walk by Malarkey’s bungalow, look quickly at his house, but doesn’t stop. On another day, Malarkey will stand outside Liliana’s bungalow staring at it in the rain as if waiting for a sign, an omen, anything that will move him to knock on her door, plead for forgiveness, beg for another chance. Thunder is heard in the distance, but no omen appears.
On some Saturday afternoon, Liliana will stand outside a baby store called Jacadi, and look longingly into the window before entering the store and purchasing a scalloped collar body suit for a girl and a cotton piqué body suit for a boy. On a Sunday afternoon, Malarkey will return for a bike ride and sort through old photos of a young Andrea before putting them back in a box and walking out of the garage. As the Reader knows, this isn’t the first time he’s done that. At some point, this novel needs to end, but one asks the question, How?
Aristotle has written in his “Poetics” the end of a work is linked to the beginning with inevitable certainty and in the end, we understand the meaning of the whole. With that in mind, the Reader can return to the beginning of this novel. Imagine that you see Malarkey from behind as he stares out to sea. The shot looks almost like a postcard with Malarkey standing as a lone figure on the deserted white sands as the sun slowly sets on the horizon. The only sound you can hear is that of the sea breaking onto the shore. Now imagine your eyes as a camera that slowly approaches Malarkey and begins to circle him 180 degrees until you see him from the front: his white hair cut closely to the scalp, his white eyebrows, a shaggy white beard; he’s dressed somewhat shabbily, carelessly, a faded-green corduroy sport coat with patched elbows, a fading-blue work shirt, faded jeans. He’s pondering whatever needs to be pondered. Now imagine a moment later when Liliana walks next to him carrying their infant son in her arms. She holds the baby in her right arm, puts her other arm in Malarkey’s, and kisses him as they both stare out to sea and as they do Malarkey recites Yeats to the Reader:
Dance there upon the shore;
What need have you to care
For wind or water’s roar?
And tumble out your hair
That the salt drops have wet;
Being young you have not known
The fool’s triumph, nor yet
Love lost as soon as won,
Nor the best labourer dead
And all the sheaves to bind.
What need have you to dread
The monstrous crying of wind?
Malarkey imagines that the Reader isn’t satisfied with this ending since it’s Malarkey imagining. But beginnings and endings are the hardest things to write so, being incapable of writing an ending that might satisfy all Readers, Malarkey relies on one of his mentors and merely closes with this:
No symbols where none intended.