Eggshells

by Caitriona Lally

  When I reach the church, I turn left onto Ferryman’s Crossing. The houses have pale tops like pebbledash shirts and orange bottoms like brick skirts. I need to find Charon, the ferryman in the Greek myth, who brought dead people across the River Styx to Hades, the Otherworld. I’m not dead, but if I stay very still, I could pass for a corpse. The Liffey is not the Styx, but I don’t want to travel to ancient Greece—crossing so many time zones would make for unbearable travel sickness. I walk to the end of the street, looking into the porches of the houses for oars, but the street ends in a wall topped by a railing, the river on the other side. I put the drachma in my mouth: it tastes thinly metallic, like blood when I bite my tongue. I look out over the railings at the tall grey office buildings and wonder if they are in Hades. A man walks by with a dog.

  “Are you looking for something, love?”

  “I’m looking for Charon.”

  My words come out thick and spitty with the coin in my mouth.

  “Sharon Larkin or Sharon Eliot?”

  “A different Charon,” I say.

  The dog is sticking its nose between my legs quite strenuously, and I push it back.

  “He likes you,” the man says.

  “I’d prefer if he didn’t like me so much,” I say.

  I cover my legs with my hands and the dog starts licking them. I say goodbye to the man, and walk back down Ferrymans Crossing. A taxi is parked outside one of the houses, and a man comes out and walks over to it. Maybe this is a motorised, land-based version of Charon.

  “Are you a taxi driver?”

  The coin clogs my palate and my tongue stumbles over the “X.”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Could you drive me over the river?”

  “Alright, where to?”

  “Just over to the other side. Or maybe over and back a few times.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Different bridges?”

  “Yes, there’s more chance of it happening then.”

  The coin clacks against my teeth. I have to clench my jaw to form words, but they come out tight and distorted.

  “Of what happening?”

  “Of me finding my way back.”

  “Are you Dorothy or what?”

  “Not today,” I say. “I tried looking for the Yellow Brick Road, and also Emerald Street and the Emerald Palace, but I had no luck.”

  The man looks at me as if I’m an interesting disease and shakes his head slowly.

  “Right,” he says, “hop in.”

  He sticks his fingers into his belt loops, yanks up his jeans, walks around to the driver’s side and opens the door. I stand on one leg and hop the few steps to the car because, if this is Charon, it’s important that I follow his instructions exactly.

  “Is your leg hurt?”

  “No, you said to hop in.”

  “Jaysus,” he says, “I’ve a right genius here.”

  I look at the name on his identity card on the dashboard: it’s Charlie Larkin. I’m glad he’s Charlie and not Charles, because a middle “I” is more friendly than a final “S.”

  “Do you know Charon?” I ask.

  “The missus is called Sharon,” he says. “Why?”

  He starts the car.

  “Wait!” I say. “Does Sharon want to come too?”

  Spit wells up in my mouth every time I say Sharon. Charlie turns around in his seat.

  “Are you for real?”

  “Yes, Sharon can sit with you in the passenger seat and I’ll sit back here, and we can all drive over the bridges together.”

  He looks at me like there’s something behind my eyes that I don’t know about.

  “I’ll pay you double fare, for two drivers.”

  He turns back to the steering wheel and stops the engine. “Wait here.”

  He gets out of the car and walks back into the house. I’m so excited I could burst out of my face. A woman is standing by the window looking out at me. I wave, but she looks cross and doesn’t wave back. I know from watching television with the sound turned down that they’re arguing, because her mouth is opening wide and her lips are moving quickly and her face is jutting forward. She disappears from the window, Charlie comes out of the house, and she follows, slamming the front door behind her. Charlie walks around to the driver’s seat and she gets in the passenger side. I lean forward between the seats.

  “Hello, Sharon, thank you for coming on the journey.”

  My jaw is not moving as fast as I need it to and the coin goes clack clack clack against my teeth. Sharon stares at me with an expression that contains a menace of question marks, and lets out a sigh the length of a caterpillar. Charlie starts the car.

  “Alright to start with the Eastlink?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  Sharon stares out the side window even though the view is better from the front. She’s wasting the front seat but I don’t want to make her angrier by asking to swap. I take out the pouch of chocolate buttons, open it, and hold it through the gap in the seats.

  “But-tons?”

  The coin shifts in my mouth and it comes out like two separate words.

  “No, thanks,” says Charlie.

  Sharon just stares out the window. We turn onto Seville Place and head for the river. I sit back content because I’m going for a spin with two adults in charge and I have chocolate in my hand. I take out the drachma and stuff some buttons into my mouth and chew them quickly before we hit a bridge. Sharon hasn’t talked yet but I know how to get her to talk, I’ve read the covers of women’s magazines in the shops.

  “What’s your favourite hair colour, Sharon?” I ask.

  She keeps staring out the window and shakes her head and mutters something short that ends in “Christ.”

  “I like clothes,” I say. “I like jumpers best because they are warmest and cover the most area but cardigans come second.”

  “Sharon, you like clothes too, don’t you,” Charlie says, and there’s a quiet tightness in his voice. She turns her head slowly to me.

  “Yeah, I like clothes.”

  Her sentence changes the situation to an almost friendship, even though her voice sounds like jagged rocks.

  “It’s the gaps between the buttons that let in the cold,” I say. “That’s why cardigans come second to jumpers.”

  “Got it,” she says.

  Charlie starts talking about the bridges he can drive over and the ones he can’t and the ones he can drive south over but not north and the ones he can drive north over but not south: the Eastlink Toll bridge, Samuel Beckett Bridge, Talbot Memorial Bridge, Butt Bridge, O’Connell Bridge, Grattan Bridge, O’Donovan Rossa Bridge, Father Mathew Bridge, James Joyce Bridge, Rory O’More Bridge, Frank Sherwin Bridge, Islandbridge.

  His list spans the city, and I realise I don’t know many of the people the bridges are named for. A bridge is currently being built for the tram, and I have half a hope it will be named after me if I do something noble and grand, but I must do it quickly.

  When I’ve swallowed all the chocolate, I put the coin back in my mouth. It’s not so bad when it tastes of chocolate.

  “Sharon,” I say (because she likes clothes), “if I swallowed a whole bag of chocolate buttons, would it be like swallowing one-fifth of a chocolate cardigan?”

  Charlie snorts. Sharon turns fully around in her seat to look at me, and this time she is an inch from a smile.

  “Are you taking the piss?” she asks, but her voice is not like rocks any more, it’s like pebbles, pebbles that have been washed smooth on a lakeshore.

  “I don’t think so,” I say, and now the two of them laugh. We cross the first bridge and I close my eyes, because this is what you do when you make a wish.

  “Charlie?”

  “Yeah?”

  He looks at me in the mirror.

  “Which side of the river would you say is earth and which would you say is Hades?”

  “Hades?”

  “Yeah, Hades, the Underworld.”

  “Oh,
well there’s dodgy goings-on both sides of the river, I’d say there’s parts of the criminal underworld everywhere.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  I look out the window. We’re on the south quays about to cross another bridge back to the Northside. It would help if I knew in which direction I should be wishing the hardest. I close my eyes, but when we turn left onto the north quays, I open my eyes and look at my arms and my legs—they haven’t changed. We continue over and back across the Liffey, making a shape like a wide-toothed comb. I squeeze my eyes shut for each crossing, but there is no change. When we cross Islandbridge, the final bridge, I feel sad that we haven’t found the portal to the Underworld, but happy that we’ve had a nice trip. I direct Charlie back to my road off the North Circular.

  “Ah, the Norrier,” he says.

  “The what?”

  “The North Circular, it’s known as The Norrier.”

  “Oh, does that make me a Norrierer? Maybe an honorary Norrierer if I wasn’t born here. ‘Honorary Norrierer honorary Norrierer honorary Norrierer,’ ” I say, until my tongue twists on the coin and there is too much spit to continue. Sharon shakes her head. When he pulls up outside my house, Charlie names the price of the trip. I reach into my bag and pull out my purse but (oh no), there are only small coins. I empty them out onto my hand, take the coin out of my mouth, add it to the pile on my palm and push my hand between the seats.

  “Would you take this much euro and a wet drachma?”

  Charlie and Sharon look at each other. Before they can respond with some words that would ruin our nice afternoon, I say, “Only joking,” because that would be a funny joke, then I say, “Please come in and I’ll get you the money.”

  They look at each other again. Sharon bursts open her car door. “Come on, Charlie.”

  I get out of the car and they follow me into the front garden and I feel so proud that I have visitors, that I’m leading people instead of following so I say very loudly for Mary’s and Bernie’s ears, “Please follow me. I hope you enjoy your visit.”

  I open the door and stand back to let them in. They come in slow and hesitant, like they’re being pulled from behind by strings.

  “Come into the living room.”

  I sweep my arm forwards but now my arm is sticking straight out from my body and I don’t know how to lower it casually, so I keep it stuck out in front of me.

  “Do sit down,” I say, because I’ve heard this on Fawlty Towers and it sounds welcoming. Charlie and Sharon don’t look welcomed, though—they look like they’ve just found out their child has a disease.

  “Do you have any diseased children?” I ask.

  People always enquire about the health of other people’s children. Charlie makes a noise like a bark and says, “Three children, two grandchildren, no diseases. Now love, have you got the fare?”

  “Yes, yes, would you like a cup of tea first?”

  “No, thanks, I’ve got to get back to work. So that’s—”

  He repeats the amount I owe him. The neighbours won’t think it’s a proper visit unless I keep them for at least a quarter of an hour, so I say: “You can choose your favourite chair and sit in it, but you might have to squeeze through or climb over other chairs to get to the ones at the back.”

  Charlie clears his throat and yanks up his jeans again. He looks like he’s about to make a funeral speech, so I clear my throat too.

  “Could you both turn around and close your eyes?”

  “What?”

  “I need to go to my secret hiding place and I don’t want you to see where it is.”

  Sharon growls. They have both turned into dogs with their noises.

  “For fuck’s sake, are you going to get the fuckin money or what?”

  They stare at me as if they want to peel off my skin and put it in a scrapbook.

  “Alright,” Charlie says, with a sigh as long as November. “Come on, Sharon, let’s turn around.”

  “And close your eyes?”

  “And close our eyes.”

  They both turn and, when I’m sure that they’re not peeking, I tiptoe to the bookshelf and take down Grimm’s Fairytales. I open it at the Hansel and Gretel story, on the page where the woodcutter and his wife leave the children in the forest because they can’t afford to feed them. I keep money between those pages so that the woodcutter can buy food for his family and Hansel and Gretel will be safe from the witch’s oven.

  “Okay, you can say ‘ready or not’ now!”

  “What?”

  “We’re playing hide-and-seek and you’re both on,” I say. “I’m ready to be caught now.”

  “How about you just give me the fare and we’ll head on.”

  I hand Charlie the money, and they both walk quickly into the hall. I am considering the best way to say goodbye—whether handshakes would be more appropriate than a wave, whether I should take both of their phone numbers so as not to offend one of them—but Sharon has the door opened and they’re wedged together in the doorway in their rush to get out. Once he’s outside, Charlie waves and says, “Cheerio, love.” I wave and close the door behind them slowly. If they have to leave so quickly, I’m glad it’s while calling the name of a cereal. Next time I say goodbye to someone, I will end with a shout of “Cornflakes” or “Rice Krispies”—or “All-Bran”—to a sturdy aunt. I sit down on the dark green patterned armchair and take off my shoes and socks and rub my bare feet against each other; this feels like a ritual performed at the end of a journey. The tops of my feet are butter-soft, but the soles are leathery, like one of those bath sponges with a soft yellow body and a green scouring base. I peel open the map of Dublin and plot today’s route, just the part where I walked to Ferryman’s Crossing, because Charlie might want to plot the drive on his own map, and it’s really not mine to draw. Today I walked the ECG of a patient who flat-lined briefly, before rallying into a healthy peak.

  13

  EARLY ON MAY Day morning, I take yesterday’s clothes off the floor (April’s clothes), turn them inside out to appease the fairies and put them on. I’m going to visit the hidden pagan well under the Nassau Street entrance to Trinity College. My heart threatens to rise up my gullet with excitement. The idea of eating a full breakfast is like trying to climb a ladder with missing rungs; instead, I sup milk from the carton and eat three chocolate biscuits. I eat things in threes and sevens because that third biscuit or seventh slice of bread could have transformative powers, even though this sometimes means eating more than I want. I let myself out of the house quietly, tiptoe past Bernie’s and sprint for the main road. A woman wearing a yellow raincoat hands out free newspapers at Phibsborough cross-roads. I take one and glance through the pictures as I walk. There are men in football jerseys, women in dark headscarves weeping and holding photos of children, a man with his head facing the ground being led away by policemen, a row of women in what seems to be a smiling competition and a crowd of people with scarves over their mouths being hosed by police. The news is either too good or too bad, so I throw the paper in the bin and walk down the North Circular Road. I pass the hospital on the right and the prison on the left and try to decide which I’d rather be: a patient or a prisoner. If I was either, I would read so many books that my eyeballs would bulge out of my head. Just before the junction with Dorset Street, I pass the cul-de-sac with a grotto of the Virgin Mary. Mary is painted white and blue like a concrete seaside. I give her a wave as I pass—it is one of her feast days after all—but she doesn’t wave back. I turn onto Dorset Street and then swing left onto North Frederick Street. People are walking quickly to work, swinging their arms. Some of them clutch coffee cups as if these cups hold their beating hearts, as if their careers depend on how tightly they hold these cups: these cups must contain the secret to the world. As I walk down Westmoreland Street, the tang of coffee seeps from a glass-walled café. I push the door and join the queue. When it’s my turn, I say, “Coffee to take away, please.”

  “Would you like…” He lists out c
offees that sound like Italian movie stars or cars but they mean nothing to me. I point at the frothy coffee the girl before me is getting.

  “Would you like…” Now he lists the sizes and I recognise “tall,” so I say, “Tall, please.” I am sweating Italian vowels now, picturing the kettle at home and the jar of instant coffee and the carton of milk and simplicity.

  “What’s your name?”

  “My name?”

  “To put on the cup,” he smiles, holding his pen expectantly.

  “Cuthbert,” I say.

  He frowns, but writes the name on the cup anyway. The noise and vibrations from the machine are primal, it feels like my belly has been sliced open and filled with ramming magnets, but other people don’t seem to notice. When the man calls, “Cuthbert,” I take my coffee and leave, watching how the girl in front of me holds her cup. I’m holding mine outstretched like it’s on fire, so I pull it closer and walk towards College Green.

  A tall man across the road leans so far into a cash machine to see the screen, he has curled himself into a candy cane. He looks like he’s trying to climb into the screen; maybe he’s looking for his way back, too. I turn onto Nassau Street and head to the side entrance of the college. I climb onto the step and flatten myself against the railings, then I look down but I can see nothing. If this is my portal, then surely I will be shrunk and given wings. I close my eyes, but when I open them, nothing has changed. I’m supposed to walk sun-wise around the well on May Day, but I can’t get down to it. I walk to the nearest clothes shop, pick out the cheapest item on a hanger and take it to the till. I ask to keep the hanger, and then bring it back to the college entrance, throwing the oversized nightie in a nearby bin. The hanger is plastic—it will not be as good at divining as metal or wood, but I will make do. I stand at the railings and hold the hanger from the two ends in front of me. I wait, but the metal question mark doesn’t tip down; either there’s no water or I don’t have the gift.

  Tourists stream by me in bright raincoats. Some are large and wide and look like they have spent their waking hours eating. They all have the same expression: a hopeful, open expression that makes me want to dupe them, or hope that someone else will dupe them. The coffee is giving me bitter thoughts, as well as a thumping heartbeat and a raring to go, so I walk up Nassau Street and turn onto Kildare Street. I head to the National Museum, because sometimes nothing will do but to walk on a mosaic floor. I sit on a bench outside the museum to finish my coffee. At Leinster House, a man with a microphone is interviewing a politician in a suit. The politician has a round belly perched on skinny leg-stalks: from this angle he looks like a capital “P.” I can’t hear what he’s saying from here so I add the words myself: “Implementing procedures…devising strategies…putting in place additional resources…going forward…facilitating job creation…” When I get bored of official language I imagine that the politician is talking about implanting puppies with duck genes so that they grow wings and develop a quack-bark, or funding research into the production of colour-changing carrots, or making it compulsory for school canteens to serve students two portions of sweets a day. I drop my empty cup in the bin and walk into the museum, heading straight for the bog bodies.