by William Wall
And that evening I started on my thighs.
Because you can shut things out.
You can drown noise.
You can bury anything under your skin. Drown things under the skin.
A scar becomes a scab and fades away.
So I stayed a night with Serena in her house. Her mother thought it might help because Serena talks to me. And I would do anything not to be at home. We had a tidy little dinner with her parents. They didn’t talk. I had the impression they were against talking during eating. Maybe there is a medical theory about that, the digestion idk. And Serena did the pollock smile all the way through. Miss Goody Two Shoes. I wanted to gut her with the breadknife and saw her into manageable parts and distribute them evenly over the entire county. For the fucking crows. And they had DVDs for us to watch afterwards. Her father was on call and about ten he was called out to an emergency at the hospital. They have eye emergencies apparently. Maybe accidents idk. Her mother said goodnight and to turn out the lights, Daddy could be all night. And we turned out the lights. And we undressed together. And we saw each others’ cuts. And we talked it over. For me it was the noise. For her it was the silence. Same difference. Nobody tells us anything. She touched my cuts and I touched hers. Like Doubting Thomas in the Bible. I put my hand into her wound. Except I never doubted. We didn’t talk much idk. By midnight it was over. It was the first good sleep I had in weeks. We decided we needed to run away.
40
So Serena is religious. Her whole family is. Her father goes to meetings and he serves Communion at Mass on the Sundays when he’s not on duty. He’s a member of some secret religious group, like Opus Dei or something idk a tight little male group of pious wankers. Even Serena didn’t know the name. Her father’s hands were blessed by the Pope. I wouldn’t care who blessed his hands if he was operating on me, I’d rather have someone else. He is like totally creepy, you have no idea. He wears these silent shoes. When he comes into a room if you’re not looking you don’t know. Like when my dad comes upstairs you can hear him starting in the hall before he even puts one foot on a step, but Serena’s dad could be opening the bedroom door and you wouldn’t hear. Serena says she never heard her dad and mam fight, not once, not even raised voices. Her mam never disagreed with her father while she was there. In fact, she said, they never discussed anything. I told her about the terrible rows my parents had. I said someday someone is going to kill my mam. She said she’d do it for me and for a bit we used to pretend that we were planning it and we’d keep coming up with brilliant ideas. Like one idea was that we’d electrocute her in the shower. And another time we thought what if we fed her to the pigs. It was something we saw in a film. But we didn’t know anybody with pigs. Well, Holly’s dad kept pigs but only two and we didn’t think two would be enough to eat a whole human being. Serena said she could get one of the boys to fix the brakes on her car, but that would involve a boy and we couldn’t trust them. And I didn’t want to ask what Serena would do to the boy to get him to do it. I thought it was a bad plan. Our whole problem was that we couldn’t work out how to get away with it and we decided in the end that people who really kill other people aren’t worried about getting away because being in prison isn’t as bad as living with them. And I wasn’t there yet.
Holly’s mam and dad go on marches. Sometimes Holly goes too. Once she WhatsApped me a pic of herself with some famous political guy. Her dad makes jokes like: Why do socialists drink herbal tea? Because proper tea is theft. I don’t get it. Even when Holly explains it to me I don’t get it. It is not like me to miss a joke. I say Mam and Holly says Mammy. But she wouldn’t kill either of her parents. It’s like the model of a normal family only weird. Like keeping pigs. Growing potatoes. Keeping bees. Sometimes her mam picks her up from school on the first day of her period. It’s weird idk maybe it’s what you do if you’re an anarchist. They are leftover hippies. But tbh I like them. Her dad lives in a ratty cardigan and a parka jacket. He smells nice. My dad smells of Brut and Right Guard, so many ways to fill your armpits with great-smelling, odour-fighting, high-fiving, rim-hanging, trash-talking, ball-spiking, pointing-to-the-crowd confidence and protection.
I googled it.
I know. I’m the superbitch googler. I’m OCD tbh. I’m like addicted to Google. I’ve even contributed to Google Translate. For Irish. I have Google set to Gaeilge. The ten things we know to be true. #1 Focus on the user and all else will follow. Google is my past, my wider resource community, my answer to everything. Except you never get actual answers. Should I have lesbian sex with my best friend? Answers: Should I have called in sick to have lesbian sex with my best friend? Me and my friend had the most amazing sex ever. It happened to me: I’m a lesbian pillow princess. The thirty-four signs you are actually dating your best friend. I have nine of them. FFS. Great just isn’t good enough.
Serena’s father’s name is William and Holly told us that he came round their house one time to hand out leaflets with pictures of dead foetuses and her father christened him Willy The Right To Life. Her father said he was an asshole and a bullshit surgeon and he spent more time on his knees than he did operating. I don’t know if any of that is true. But I knew that if ever Serena’s father found out about her fucking boys, with or without condoms, and so far it was all without, or so she said, he would either kill her or throw her out whichever came first. My mother isn’t religious but she voted against abortion. She subscribed to The Floodgates Theory, which is basically if we do anything about anything the arse would fall out of everything else including shit we hold dear. My dad didn’t vote. I don’t think my brother was old enough to vote at the time but he would have voted the same way as my mam because that’s what he’s like. People know how you’ve voted, even though it’s a secret ballot. They can say, Oh that house votes for so and so. I don’t know how that gets out, it’s like some secret system. When Serena’s father met my mam after the referendum he said, We won. My mother just looked at him. She thinks doctors are gods but she doesn’t like him. You don’t have to like gods.
I asked Serena once about the sex thing and her father and what he would say if he found out. She said he would kill her. She said he never did anything wrong. She didn’t even know how she was conceived. She couldn’t possibly imagine her father Having Actual Sex, knowing what she knew about it. It must have been the fucking Immaculate Conception then, I said. Like, I said, everybody knows enough to know that. She just laughed like there was a big secret. There are not as many secrets as people think and the ones that are real are important. You can see sex on the net any day. It’s just what does it feel like? No way all the ooohing and aaahhhing that goes on is for real. Like they’re not even good actors. They’re crap actors as a matter of fact. It’s well known. Otherwise famous people like Brad Pitt or Cillian Murphy would be doing porn on their days off. Everybody loves Cillian Murphy’s eyes. He would be the superbitch pornstar of all pornstars.
So my theory is Serena wants to get pregnant. It’s not something she knows about, it’s like a Deep and Secret Desire that even she hasn’t been allowed to know. Somewhere deep down she wants to be found out by her father. That’s why she keeps doing it without any protection. This will be some kind of revenge on Willy The Right To Life. On the other side, there’s Sigmund Freud the world-famous psychologist who would probably say that she wants to get pregnant by her father idk. He had some weird theories. But you can buy condoms in all sorts of places, which was not an option available to Freud, and Serena has plenty of money. Like neither of us needs to ask for it. We have actual bank accounts. Holly has a Post Office account with her savings in it. Serena says savings are so last century. She can’t wait to get a credit card. She keeps asking her father for one. And she has this like slight American twangy thingy idk it’s like the way her voice rises a bit into the nose. It’s hard to describe, and when you listen for it it’s not there, but you feel it. And sometimes she can do that American kitty thing, being all pouty and cutie pie. I’ve seen
her playing that game with her father and he loves it. The pet daughter. I googled alpha male and it turns out the alpha males respond to that kind of thing. I don’t know about beta males or the others. History does not record. But Serena knew it from the start. She was born to it. And it makes me sick. Like Projectile Vomiting Sick.
And I look at them, her pouting at him, and I wonder what the scene will be when she says, Dad, I have some good news, there will be a new little Willy The Right in nine months time. Or seven or whatever.
It will not be pretty.
And now it’s all about an abortion referendum. Willy The Right To Life is all psyched up about it. They’re going to close the floodgates. Willy and his gang don’t give a Flying Fuck what happens once the baby pops as long as he’s baptised and Saved For God. I baptise you in the Name of the F and the S and the HG, Right, Fuck Off. This time the referendum seems to be about overturning the last one idk or maybe it’s about not having a referendum. You mostly only hear Willy’s side and for them it’s always the last battle. Holy people willying all over the TV or the radio. Or maybe it’s about gays idk. Or maybe that WAS the last one. In this country we keep doing referendums until they turn out right. Ireland is the superbitch referendum location. Is this the way it always is? History does not.
And thus Serena’s father is doing his willying thing on the radio, this time it’s about some poor woman who died. They got him into the studio to talk about foetal abnormality, which I know all about from my baby phase. They got him on so he could say that abortion was the wrong way to treat foetal abnormality and that even abnormal babies have a right to life, better one minute of life than none at all, mothers are selfish if they want to terminate a viable baby and all that crap. Like I want to say what about the babies that don’t have a brain? What about the one that lived twelve years and never had a thought in all that time? What about that baby’s parents? I never want to have a baby. It’s just too much idk it’s not fair.
So this is what’s happening: Serena and me and Holly are on the bus and the driver has the radio playing and it’s Wednesday half day so we’re listening to the news and there’s Serena’s father saying all this shit. And I say, To listen to him you’d think he loves children. And Serena starts to cry. And then I’m crying and that starts Holly off. The three of us, just sitting in the bus, waiting for our stop, crying our eyes out because Serena’s father is Willy The Right To Life and he doesn’t love Serena. And I try to say I’m sorry but I can’t.
41
So it turns out my dad is in trouble with the Revenue. They went through his books and they Invited Him In For A Conversation ^—^, and the subject of the conversation was how he owed them a couple of million euros. It turned out his business plan was really brilliant: Don’t Pay Tax. He should get Entrepreneur Of The Year.
And my mam had to go too because she was a director in the company. And she couldn’t believe what was happening because he didn’t tell her beforehand. At least that’s what she kept saying when they got home. I can’t believe this is happening. And my dad was just like, Whatever. He kept saying they weren’t going to get him and my mother kept saying you can’t beat the Revenue and he said, If you owe them two euro you can’t beat them, but if you owe them two million you hold all the cards. My mam just went like LOL. Like I think that was something he read somewhere. No way would my dad come up with something as stupid as that on his own. The Revenue is like The Great Satan to my mam, resistance is futile, so she was saying they should sell the houses and pay the debt. But my dad was saying no way, they bought most of them during The Boom and they were in negative equity since The Crash, they wouldn’t even clear their mortgages, did she want them to end up owing the tax to the banks instead of the government? The Crash didn’t hurt my dad very bad because when people can’t afford to buy houses they have to rent them, and people sell their houses cheap and my dad buys them. It was a win-win situation for him, or so he said. But now it turns out he wasn’t paying any tax. Maybe that wasn’t such a big win. And my mother was talking about leaving him unless he sorted it out and he was saying, Take it easy, there’s always a way.
I swear I would die if they split up. Never mind the murder business. I know there is something wrong with me ffs.
And then my dad says, like out of the blue, totally unconnected: That fucker Bowles up at Ballyshane, he joined the fucking golf club.
Like it was the end of the world.
As far as my dad was concerned this represented a massive betrayal on the part of the committee who tbh didn’t even know my dad hated him and wouldn’t give a shit anyway, money is money and golf clubs are all about money. Like I would have thought Bowles was too short for a golf club, but maybe they have mini ones. Like toy-size sticks. And my dad wouldn’t be able to play up there any more. Even though he only plays there when he is Doing A Deal. My dad is the most unfit man I ever met. He gets heavy breathing on the stairs. And it’s not because Mam is upstairs waiting for him. Holly says he is a Cartoon Capitalist Fatcat. Less like a cat there is no one in Ireland. My dad is more of a Cartoon Capitalist Slug frankly.
Mam: The Revenue will cancel your sub fast enough.
Dad: That was below the belt.
Mam: You haven’t a clue, have you?
Dad: We’ll all have to take a bit of pain, but everything will be all right in the end. We’ll tighten our belts a bit and tough it out. We’re the squeezed middle. They need us.
Mam: If you tighten your belt you’ll bust a gut. You’re the squeezed middle all right.
I could see my dad’s hand shaking again. And he kept pinching his left arm. I googled it. It didn’t come up but I got fifty-four point nine million hits about heart attacks. It seems if you google left arm everything that turns up involves a coronary. But what shocked me most was that he looked afraid. And a bit panicked. Even though everything he was saying was cool it, don’t lose the rag, I think he was frightened. I wanted my mam to see it too but.
But my mam doesn’t really look at my dad any more. Like maybe she never did idk but she doesn’t now. I don’t know if she doesn’t want to see him or she can’t see him or just to her he’s not there. But every time I see her not seeing him it hurts me. She looks at me all right. She hates me.
42
And there was no dinner that night. I made toast and two boiled eggs and I took them up to my room and no one said anything. Like normally it’s, No Eating In Your Room, Suzy. God is against eating in your room. The government is against it. Rules are rules. It Is A Crime Equal To Mass Murder. But I got to eat my toast and two boiled eggs sitting on my bed texting Serena and Holly on WhatsApp with my earphones in and my music on. I could hear someone diffing out at Ballyshane cross. I probably knew who it was too tbh. There would be donuts on the road. My mam gets nervous when she sees the tyre tracks. She thinks some guy is going to come round the corner spinning his wheels and crash into her sideways and Everybody Will Die. But differs never killed anybody, at least not while they were diffing. Maybe before or afterwards. They drive too fast and mostly the cars are shite. Serena and Holly were talking about the murder on our group WhatsApp convo. Serena heard that the guards were following a definite lead. It was on the news. They were trying to guess who did it. It had to be someone we knew, because on the telly it always is. In fact it should be the husband.
Only she was single.
And Serena WhatsApped me that she had a totally dreamy guy on alt.com and he had exactly the same kinks as her.
WhatsApp Me: dont tell me any more i dont want to know
WhatsApp Serena: were totally into it
She sent me a screen shot of their convo. It went:
Larrydemaster: babe you r legend thanks for the pics
Serena: r u into kinks? BDSM?
Larrydemaster: Totes babe. Bondage rape humiliation public.
Serena: I ♥ you
WhatsApp Me: You told a complete fucking stranger that you’re into BDSM? jesus wept.
W
hatsApp Serena: We sole mates
And I could still hear them shouting downstairs even through the earphones and the WhatsApp sounds and the diffing and the music. And some time around eleven I heard a bang and then there was silence for a while. I took my earphones out. Then I heard the front door closing and my dad’s car starting and driving away. And then I heard my mam crying. And then my brother came in and I heard my mother screaming. So I went downstairs and my brother had blood all over his face and maybe something wrong with his nose and he was coughing a lot.
What else is going to happen in our family?
My mam is like: Where were you until now, Tony?
Nevermind where I was.
How did this happen to you?
I had something bad to eat. I’m going to bed. I need to lie down.
My dad never came home that night. Maybe he went to Miss Morocco and she took pity on him and let him make that shitty tea crap. And maybe he spent the night changing nappies and bottle-feeding the baby idk. My dad was never into babies. Like once my mam’s sister changed a nappy in front of him and he went pale. They don’t change nappies at the Golf Club.
But he didn’t come back. And in the morning when I came downstairs my mam was like repeat dialling his mobile and she was still crying. And tbh I always thought it was my mam who would walk out because that’s the way she is. I never thought my dad would leave. But it looked like he left us and switched off his mobile phone. Which is like the decree nisi of the internet age. I read about decree nisi when I googled divorce. We don’t do decree nisi in Ireland.