Eggshells

by Caitriona Lally

  I leave the college through the Nassau Street gate and wait at the traffic lights. A clock on the green dome of the building at the corner tells the right time. A woman across the street with long grey hair eases herself into a sitting position against a bin. She’s stiff and stooped and hardly able to walk. She pulls a dirty blanket over her knees and keens a wail of a song, cupping her hands and asking for money. Maybe she’s a banshee looking to get back to her world. A garda car turns onto the street and my banshee is suddenly sprightly—she jumps up and scuttles off, clutching her blanket. I cross the road and walk up Dawson Street; it’s nice to be on a street that’s one letter away from a damson. I cut through Duke Street and onto Grafton Street, walking slowly and looking in the shop windows, which display gleaming jewels on headless necks and glamorous mannequins wearing dresses, but no hoodies. A group of earnest-looking violinists play soaring music from the parts of films in which people die in slow motion; a man manoeuvres a huge sausage-shaped bubble with two sticks as if he’s conducting a watery symphony; a group of men painted black all over stand still as statues until somebody puts money in their cup (then they doff their caps); a man puts the finishing touches to a sand dog which I have never seen the start of (how can someone always be finishing and never be starting?).

  I don’t know how to shop for clothes or where to begin. I would prefer to shop in haberdasheries, drapers, fishmongers, hatters, cobblers, coopers, chandlers, but I would need to wear hats and sew clothes and own barrels and ships. I once had a hoodie, but I threw it out during a long, hot summer that I thought would never turn to winter. The hoodie I buy today must be the zipless kind I can pull over my head, with a pouch to keep sweets in. I walk until I see a shop that I know sells affordable goods. I go inside and find a blue hoodie with white ropes, which I try on over my top. I don’t go into changing rooms because there can be mirrors on all sides, and it’s impossible to cover them all. A shop assistant walks by with an armful of hangers, she looks like she’s about to embark on an intense bout of water divining.

  “There’s a mirror over there if you need it,” she says.

  “No, thanks,” I say, “I don’t like mirrors.”

  “Ah, we all have days like that,” she laughs.

  “I have whole years like that,” I say, but she’s gone in a flurry of plastic and metal. I push out my arms to their full length and the sleeves follow my hands and coat them nicely. The hoodie is so comfortable that I keep it on and bring the hanger to the till.

  “Can I pay for this while I’m wearing it?” I ask the assistant.

  She looks long and soft at me and says, in the kind of voice that could knit a teddy bear, “Of course you can, love, turn around now.”

  I turn around so my back is to her and she pulls out the price tag and scans the price.

  “Will I take the tag off for you?”

  “Yes, please.”

  There is a pock sound like something has come unstuck.

  “It suits you,” she says. “Blue suits you.”

  “Thank you,” I say, “it’s my favourite colour. I don’t buy clothes much because I can wear my dead great-aunt’s things, but when I do, I buy blue clothes.”

  She smiles at me, a small sad smile, as if the lights on a Christmas tree have dimmed. I pay and take the receipt.

  “Bye,” I say, and I wave.

  “Bye,” she says, “take care now.”

  I don’t know if she means I’ve to take care of myself or the hoodie, but I suspect it’s the hoodie with its white ropes. I leave the shop and walk around Stephen’s Green in an outside loop, because I don’t have the energy to engage with a park. The sign for Hume Street has been partially blue-ed out; only a quarter of an “H” and the “STREET” remain, so it looks like a dotless “i STREET.” I walk up Leeson Street, because I need to see some cheery double “EE”s in a street sign. Pembroke Street has been blue-ed out to read “_ E_BROKE STREET,” which sounds like the name of a very cool band whose music I wouldn’t like. Groups of students stand outside language schools and secondary schools. I’m amazed by how much smiling is going on—what do they find to smile so hard about? I walk to the bottom of E-Broke Street to the bus stop opposite a hardware shop. The shop looks so domestic and unexpected in a city centre, surrounded by offices and high-volume cafés and efficiency, like a thatched cottage in the middle of an airport. I wait for the bus, feeling shielded in my hoodie, like nothing can hurt me, no rain can wet me or words upset me.

  FROM DUSK, THE vans start slowly circling. None of my neighbours have put out their junk, except for two rolls of carpet and a rusted bicycle leaning against Bernie’s wall. As soon as there is complete darkness, I creep out of the house and sidle slowly along the walls in the quest for the perfect chair. It must not be too hard or too soft, too big or too small, too wide or too narrow, too long or too short. It must hold the possibility of magic, as well as all of me. I head down the North Circular Road and up through Cabra. Vans pass at walking pace, their diesel-clatter soundtracking this grand streetcombing venture. Two boys dart out from the passenger seat of the van nearest me, grab a couple of children’s bicycles, fling them into the back of the van, and hop back into the seat—all in the space of an in-breath. I find a grubby, fawn-coloured armchair with cigarette holes in one arm that seems just the right proportion of dent and comfort, but it’s too big to carry home. I decide against an office chair with a broken swivel, and a child’s plastic chair that will only accept me sideways. When I come across a folded deckchair with bright flower-spatters on the fabric, I know I have found my chair. I unfold it and sit down, squinting at the yellow streetlights like so many miniature suns. My lower body hangs perilously close to the footpath; perhaps this is a chair for any lighter friends I make. I fold the chair, tuck it under my oxter like a holiday briefcase and walk quickly home.

  FOR PENELOPE’S VISIT, I will buy a cake. I would like the icing to read “Welcome Penelope” but I have no time to order such a cake, so I walk to the bakery and choose a Victoria sponge. The middle contains strawberries and whipped cream and the top is sprinkled with icing sugar. I wish Penelope’s middle name was Victoria—next time I will put up a notice for a Victoria-friend. When I turn onto my road, I draw back; Bernie and Mary are outside my house talking. It feels like an attack of words that haven’t reached me yet.

  Their voices float in my direction and I catch “have to say…something has to be done…it’s not right…bringing down the look of the place.” I walk slowly towards them. By the time I’m near they’re in a shouty loop; this must be what high dudgeon sounds like. Bernie jabs a finger at me.

  “Here, why don’t you do something about your garden? How long has it been since you cut the grass?”

  “It’s been a year, or a good many months anyway,” I say. It feels like confessing to a priest. Mary shakes her head.

  “Ah, Vivian, you’ll get mice. I’ll send Johnno in with the mower.”

  Johnno is her son who doesn’t speak unless he’s drunk, and then he shouts.

  “No, thanks, I’m doing an experiment,” I say. “I want to create a miniature forest and attract lots of wildlife.”

  Bernie snorts.

  “That’s what we’re trying to tell you, there’s mice running about in there and before you know it, they’ll be in your house.”

  “They’re already in the house,” I say. “We’re doing an inter-species house-share.”

  They stop talking as if they’ve run out of words, their mouths slackening as if the lower parts of their faces have died abruptly. I take advantage of the word-gap to run into the house. I put the cake on the kitchen table and set out cups and saucers and cake plates, and the good bone-handled cutlery my great-aunt saved for the visitors who never came. Then I bring the sugar bowl to the table and fill the jug with milk.

  The doorbell rings or, more, it sings, because it’s Penelope and not official David. I open the door and Penelope swoops in. She seems to gather up the outside and bri
ng it in with her. She drips words, pours sentences, gushes paragraphs on me, but the words have increased in cheer from the last visit and I’m glad. I bring her into the kitchen and introduce her to Lemonfish.

  “Oh!” she says. “He’s yellow.”

  “Yes, he’s golder than most goldfish,” I say, “he’s the luckiest fish in the world.”

  I look at Lemonfish and think that might not be true. He’s starting to grow a furry beard that gives him a certain fungal dignity, but he’s missing patches of scales and looks like an unfinished jigsaw. Penelope taps his bowl.

  “Yellow with a white topping,” she says. “He’s like a swimming lemon meringue pie.”

  She laughs, but I don’t: I watch her in case she tries to eat him.

  “Sit down,” I say.

  I must learn to say it so it doesn’t sound like a teacher telling a class of schoolchildren to sit down. I put on the kettle. I don’t know where to stand while the water is boiling so I turn to the kettle and watch it. I hear a rustling and a scratching and a general swoosh, and I know that Penelope must have sat down. She scrapes her throat and speaks in a thin voice.

  “I feel I must apologise for unloading my past on you, Vivian. We’ve only known each other a short time, and it’s probably too soon to inflict such secrets on you.”

  “Oh, it’s no problem,” I say, and I mean it—it’s not a problem to not know her secret.

  “It’s good to let it all out,” I add, but if she lets all her words out, her voicebox will collapse with the weight of them.

  The kettle has boiled. I pour hot water into the teapot. “Thanks, Vivian, your friendship means a lot.”

  I almost drop the kettle. I am in a friendship. I am a friend and I have a friend and this friend will come to my funeral. “How old are you, Penelope?” I ask.

  Penelope laughs.

  “Guess.”

  “Sixty.”

  Her cheeks sink and her mouth drops. “Vivian, I’m only forty-nine.”

  “Oh.”

  I don’t know what to say but I know I shouldn’t point out all her wrinkles as my explanation.

  “Are you sick at all?” I ask. “Any heart complaints? How’s your diet?”

  “What is this, Vivian, an inquisition?”

  Penelope is older than me and, if she dies before me, she can’t come to my funeral; this friendship would be pointless. She reaches for a slice of cake.

  “No!” I shout. “Wouldn’t you prefer a carrot?”

  “No, thanks, the cake looks lovely.”

  “But think of the years a carrot will add to your life.”

  “Thank you for your concern, Vivian, but I’ll just enjoy the cake if you don’t mind.”

  The words are polite, but they are rimmed with steel. I don’t want to risk this new friendship, so I let her have cake. I pour tea and we sit and talk about usual things, and after a while I start to resent Penelope’s presence. I feel suffocated and vexed that I can’t escape her to sit in my lone, twenty-tog silence. She is touching my things and taking up my time and diluting the house-smell with her own. The mirrors are snarling under their sheet-covers, the chairs are joining leg-forces and preparing for an almighty kicking, the bannister is silently plotting to smack her in the gut. The hands of the kitchen clock might stop time long enough to punch her in the nose. Penelope is my friend, but she holds my great-aunt’s cup the wrong way, she sprawls in the chair with no heed for its feelings, she takes up more room in the kitchen than I do. I don’t know how to end the visit; I don’t know how to say, “Please go, go now, just leave.” In films I’ve seen people yawn widely to hint at guests to go home, so I open my mouth long and wide but the yawn doesn’t come.

  “Is there something wrong with your jaw, Vivian?”

  “No, I’m just seeing how wide it will open.”

  Penelope opens her mouth as wide as she can: it’s a void of a mouth, like a voiceless scream. The teeth are chipped and muddy, and the smell from her mouth is like the smell from a month-old bin. I close my mouth and scrunch up my lips; Penelope does the same. This is better, the stench is contained. I run upstairs and come down with a tube of toothpaste, squeeze some onto my finger and put it in my mouth.

  “You want some?”

  I’m experimenting with cutting my sentence length and tossing out needless verbs. Penelope shakes her head.

  “No, thanks, I like the taste of my mouth.”

  If she tastes what I smell, how could a mouth be so wrong?

  “You have to go because I need to talk to my great-aunt in private,” I say.

  “I thought she was dead?”

  “She is. I need to check which way she went.”

  Penelope’s eyes widen.

  “Can you commune with the dead?”

  “I don’t know, but my great-aunt shouted so much in her lifetime, the echo might still be in her ashes.”

  Penelope looks like she has unwrapped a train set on Christmas morning.

  “I’d love to listen in if I could…?”

  “No, my great-aunt didn’t like other people much.”

  Also, Penelope’s breath would be enough to wake the dead, and that’s the last thing I need. I get up from the chair and rub my temples.

  “Ooh, are you starting to feel her presence?”

  “Yes, I am,” I say, “please hurry—if she senses you’re here, she won’t come.”

  Penelope gets up, grabs her coat, and rushes for the door. I follow her to the hall and say goodbye in as otherworldly a voice as I can muster. On the doorstep, she turns to me, her eyes big and curious.

  “You will tell me, if you get through to her?”

  “If the law of the spirit world permits.”

  I frown and set my mouth in a solemn grimace, then I close the door slowly. I walk into the living room, pick up the urn and give it a shake. I take a deep breath, and the house breathes out with me; it gives a judder, and shakes off the last of the intruder.

  12

  I WAKE UP in a frown. Things don’t seem right already, and I have barely opened my eyes. It was a struggle of a night, one of those nights when I felt itchy all over: itchy arms, itchy scalp, even itchy breath. I coughed up a tickle all night. I can hear the wind whistling through the gaps where the walls join: the sound that a comb makes when I put a tissue over it and blow. I can’t stay in my pyjamas today—they’re marshmallow-coloured and would get mucky on the streets—so I peel them off and pull on some clothes from the floor and go downstairs.

  “Morning, Lemonfish,” I say.

  He’s looking more ragged by the day, and a dark thread of waste hangs from his underside. Maybe he needs more roughage. I cut up an apple and throw in small pieces, which he ignores. I tap on the bowl and shout: “Drink more water!” at him, but that would be like trying to cure human constipation with gulps of air. I put a pouch of chocolate buttons in my bag, a big pouch to share, along with a Greek drachma coin from my coin collection in the hoardroom, and leave the house. People seem to be crossing my path, and I have to swerve to avoid them. I press the thumb of each hand onto the side of its first finger and whisper “safe safe safe” to get me through the streets. I turn off Berkeley Road onto Eccles Street, because I need to walk on a street that’s also a cake. At the junction with Dorset Street, I wait for the lights to turn red. The Eccles Street sign has been entirely blue-ed out, but, higher up on the same wall, the letters of an old green street sign haven’t been greened out—either the leprechauns are seriously unmotivated, or their union doesn’t allow them to climb ladders.

  I need to go to the toilet so I head for Clerys on O’Connell Street. A scrawny grey-faced man is splayed against the home furnishings window, being searched by two guards. The man looks unsurprised, as if this is as normal as window shopping. I walk up the carpeted middle staircase—I might be an elegant rich lady going to a ball or a passenger on the Titanic staircase, and I struggle with the urge to wave daintily to my subjects. I join the queue for the toilet, trying t
o ignore the big mirror to my right. An elderly lady with a fresh hairstyle smiles shyly at herself in the mirror, and cups the bottom of her hair as if she’s catching drips of water. When I’m finished, I walk back to North Earl Street and look at the carved stone face of a woman above the café on the corner. I call her Naomi because she looks like she deals mostly in vowels. Today she is calm, which is a good sign. I follow North Earl Street until it turns into Talbot Street, then I cross at Connolly Station and walk up Seville Place. On Seville Place I think of orange marmalade, and on Dawson Street I think of damson jam; maybe the streets should be twinned in a cross-river fruit-preserve initiative.