Eggshells

by Caitriona Lally

  “It’s my whirling dervish dance,” I say, “it connects me to different worlds.”

  “Walling dawvis,” Lucy says and she slides out of her chair and starts twirling around. I show her how to point her arms, but before she can learn the dance properly my sister is out of her chair and scooping Lucy up. I sit down again. My head has been emptied of thoughts and filled with air pockets. I lean for another bun and sneak a squint at the list. When Pat takes a breath from his politics, I shout, “Penelope!”

  Pat and Vivian turn sharply to me.

  “What?”

  “I have a friend called Penelope and she isn’t pronounced Peeny-Lope.”

  Vivian’s face shoots up.

  “A friend? Where did you meet her?”

  “I advertised,” I say proudly; my sister always tells me to be more proactive.

  She and her husband exchange a cautious little glance.

  “Where did you advertise?”

  “On a tree, I didn’t need to use an agency.”

  “Oh, Vivian,” she says, and there’s more sigh than voice in her words.

  Pat sits forward. “What’s she like, this Penelope?”

  “She’s an artist,” I say, “and she likes cats and cake and biscuits. She paints cats, but she doesn’t paint cake or biscuits.”

  “I see,” he says, and he turns to my sister and gives a small shrug.

  “I like her a lot, except for her breath.”

  My sister looks at me with a grave expression like she’s deciding what to wear to my funeral.

  “I’m sorry about the burnt dinner,” I say, because my sister likes to be apologised to.

  “You should really use a cookbook,” she says, and she tinkles some names that sound like church bells: Delia, Nigella, Lily.

  “I would like to learn to cook something in a big pot,” I say, “A whole meal in one pot that I could watch and know when things were starting to go wrong.”

  There is no response, so I start the next topic.

  “Are you going on holidays this summer?”

  Vivian sits forward.

  “Yes, we’re going to our villa in France. It feels more like a home from home by now, doesn’t it, Patrick?”

  She calls him Patrick when she’s showing off, as if she thinks an extra syllable adds importance. Pat’s cheeks turn pink, and he shifts in his chair.

  “Yes, we’ll go over for a couple of weeks in July.”

  He leans backwards while my sister leans forwards.

  “I didn’t know you had a house in France,” I say.

  “We’ve had it for a few years,” she says. “The children love it, they just run around barefoot like little savages.”

  I look at the children. Lucy is wearing a stiff dress with frilly ankle socks and pointy-toed shoes, Oisin is wearing slacks and a shirt and tie: they look less like savages and more like a Victorian princess and midget businessman.

  “Oh, did I mention there’s a pool? We have the neighbours in for wine and cheese by the pool—such a civilised way of life.”

  “I have wine!” I shout. “And cheese!”

  I run to the cupboard and pull out the bottle of white wine, then I take a butt of orange cheddar and a tub of cream cheese from the fridge. I set them on the table and skim the blue fur from the top of the cream cheese. There is a rush of murmurs from my sister and her husband.

  “No, no, I’m driving, I’m not drinking, thank you.”

  “But it’ll be like France,” I say, “we’ll drink wine and eat cheese and I’ll turn up the heating and we can pretend we’re in France.”

  My sister stands up and scrapes her chair back.

  “I’ll just bring Oisin to the toilet, then we should go.”

  Oisin’s face is in his cake and he screams when she picks him out of it, covered in white cream like an albino minstrel. She brings him upstairs, and Pat leans forward to Lucy.

  “Are you ready to go soon, Lu?”

  Lucy doesn’t answer. I don’t know how he can subtract a syllable from his daughter’s name, especially after he has been given an extra syllable by his wife. The room falls into a hush; the only thing breaking the silence is Pat’s foot jiggling against the table leg. He flattens his hands on the table, arranging them symmetrically with the tips of his thumbnails touching.

  “Are you making a ‘W’ for yourself or an ‘M’ for Lucy?”

  He turns slowly to me.

  “I’m sorry…?”

  “The point where your thumbs join is either the centre peak of the ‘W’ or the centre trough of the ‘M,’ which is it?”

  “I don’t know,” he says in a voice like threadbare socks.

  A silence follows that rips at my ears with its intensity, it feels as if pots and kettles and other metal objects are being hurled across the room in a clanging free-for-all. Eventually my sister descends the stairs with a thud and a creak, and she storms into the kitchen carrying the boy.

  “What in Christ’s name is the meaning of this, Vivian?”

  She points at Oisin’s trouser leg with the potential squirrel tail stuck onto it.

  “You have a tail, Oisin,” I say, “like a bunny rabbit.”

  He grins.

  “What are you doing, what is this?”

  My sister’s voice contorts to match her face. She is all atwist.

  “I was trying to make a squirrel out of a mouse,” I say, “but I’ve made a rabbit out of a child instead: a wonky rabbit with a tail on his leg.”

  I stroke Oisin’s tail and he giggles. My sister sticks her face in mine.

  “Do you know how much these trousers cost? He was supposed to wear these trousers in France.”

  “But barefoot savages don’t need trousers,” I say.

  Pat snorts.

  “Patrick,” she barks, “we’re leaving.”

  He picks up Lucy, who screams, which sets Oisin off again.

  The noise crumples my sister’s mouth into a purse, like she has drunk orange squash without adding water, but I’m happy because the children want to stay here with cake and the chance of rabbit tails. Pat and Vivian leave in a rummage of children and bags and coats, and I wave goodbye at the door. It would have been nice if they’d left with smiles on their faces and thanks on their tongues, but I consider the visit a success because only 50 percent of the guests left in tears. I go into the living room, fold myself onto the blue velvet armchair and breathe in the silence. My lone silence has the quality of marshmallows, padded with sugary dough, but other people’s silence is punctured with pointy, jagged blades. I feel like I have filled a pocked tray with plastic buttons or built a tower of beakers without toppling them; some of my sister’s words may have been hissed or shouted at me, but they count as words nonetheless. I put my arms out on either side of me and waft the air towards me. Then I tuck my nose and chin under my collar and breathe in my great-aunt’s smell combined with my own: if the scent of lavender and beef and cobwebs was ever bottled, this would be the result. To quiet the clamour of family noise in my head I turn the radio dial to static, and listen to the surge and crackle from beyond.

  I LEFT THE country once, when I accompanied my great-aunt to Paris. The streets in that city were wide, and the buildings looked like paintings of themselves. I had learnt French in school, but I don’t like saying the French “R”—it’s a gag of phlegm in my throat—so I used only words with no “R”s, and avoided red wine and oranges and crêpes. I thought that the next time I went abroad I would visit all the countries in the world with stars on their national flags. The number of days that I would spend in each country would be in proportion to the number of stars on its flag. Visiting my sister’s holiday home in a country with a starless flag would not be ideal, but it could be the making of me. Two Vivians in one house seems like a lot, two Vivians out of five people, but I could take the children for walks in the forest and we could make breadcrumb trails to find our way back. We could hunt for fairies in the woods and mermaids in the swimming
pool—mermaids with hair frizzed green by the chlorine. We could buy cakes topped with glazed fruit in the bakery and have pastry picnics in the garden. These plans make me so giddy, I pick up the phone and call my sister, even though she only left a few hours ago. She answers with a double serving of cream in her voice.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” I say, “I have an idea.”

  “Oh?”

  The voice is semi-skinned milk.

  “I’ll come to France with you and mind the children while you spend time with Pat—with Patrick.”

  There’s an intake of breath on the other end.

  “Well, Vivian,” she says, her voice thinned to water, “we usually use that time to spend just as a family…”

  “I’m family,” I say, “it’s perfect!”

  “Let’s talk about this another time, Vivian. I’m tired, the kids are tired. I need to go.”

  “Okay, bye!” I shout, and hang up before she does. It’s important I can claim some small victories.

  21

  I’M POURING A glass of water at the kitchen sink when I notice the arch of a rainbow outside the window. It’s a perfect bow, the edges of the colours barely blurring into each other. I recite “Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain” and, sure enough, the colours match the rhyme in the right order: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo violet. It’s always a surprise when these things work out right. The “In Vain” colours—indigo and violet—blend in disappointingly with the sky, so I focus my gaze on the “Richard Of York” end, which seems to meet the earth nearby. I snatch up my keys and the closest implement for digging—a bread knife—and hurry out the door. As I pass Bernie’s garden, she pops up from behind the wall.

  “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

  “I’m looking for the end of the rainbow.”

  “You’re what?”

  She stands up with a heave and a grunt.

  “I’m just looking for someone.”

  “Vivian, sometimes I think you’re away with the fairies.”

  I tear off down the street in the direction of the rainbow. It’s fading quickly, there’s barely a shade of colour left, but it ends in the ruin of the psychiatric hospital. The building is large and grey and looming; a rainbow is exactly what it needs. When I look up again, the rainbow has vanished; all I can see is a clock tower and weather vane. I walk under a stone arch into a courtyard surrounded by windows that could be rectangular eyes—many are broken or boarded up, with pigeons flying from ledge to ledge. I turn in slow circles. There’s no sign of there ever having been a rainbow in here, maybe the grey stones didn’t like the look of the colours and sent them back to the sky. I make for a corner—it feels safer here—and comb the edges, thinking about how to dig the concrete for gold when I hear whistling. It must be my leprechaun; they whistle as they mend shoes. I creep along the wall and peer around the corner. A man in a blue jumper and fluorescent vest appears. Leprechauns are supposed to wear green or red, but maybe Dublin leprechauns wear blue. I balance on my right foot like an unpink flamingo and pick at the laces of my left foot. I need to throw my left shoe at the leprechaun so that he drops whatever he’s holding. I overbalance and topple onto the ground with a whoof. I’m still on the ground, pulling at my shoe, when I hear steps and a “hello” spoken like a question, like an answer to a phone call.

  I look up to see the leprechaun-man standing over me.

  “Are you alright?”

  “I’m okay, I’m just trying to take off my shoe.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I loosen the lace, ease my foot out and fling the runner at him, hitting him in the chest.

  “Ow, what the hell did you do that for?”

  He rubs his chest and I watch his hands; nothing falls from them—no gold, no half-made shoes, no answers.

  “I’m sorry, I thought you were somebody else.”

  “Who?”

  “A smaller person. About thigh-high. Did you see the rainbow in here?”

  “Never noticed. Looking for a pot of gold, are you?”

  He smirks.

  “Yes,” I say.

  He stares hard at my eyes as if he can see something there that I can’t.

  “Are you looking for it too?” I ask.

  He laughs.

  “If you find it, love, keep me in mind.”

  His voice has softened, and he gestures to the ruin of the hospital.

  “Were you in here before?”

  “A couple of times.”

  I don’t tell him that I often peek in when I’m passing to get my dose of creep and spook, I don’t want him to think I’m odd.

  “I see, were you in for long?”

  “Not too long,” I say.

  I don’t want him to think I’m a trespasser. His face settles into a grave expression. I look at his feet. He’s wearing black boots. If he was a leprechaun, he’d be wearing buckled shoes. I look at his jacket.

  “Would you say your jacket is more yellow than green?”

  “Definitely yellow.”

  “Oh.”

  A leprechaun in blue and yellow is just no good, unless blue + yellow = green, and he’s undercover. I stand up to my full height. The man is taller than me.

  “Have you ever taken growth hormones?” I ask.

  He sputters a laugh, all spit and honk.

  “Can’t say I have.”

  I can’t think of any other way a leprechaun could grow so high. I look down his body to make sure there isn’t one leprechaun standing on another’s shoulders, but there’s no awkward bulge or join.

  “Did you eat a whole chicken for lunch?” I ask.

  “I had a chicken sandwich, why?”

  “Was there a wishbone?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Leprechauns use the wishbones to douse for gold.”

  He laughs.

  “You’re not going to dig through concrete with your bare hands are you?”

  “No,” I say, “I’ve got this.”

  I pull out the knife. He jumps back a little and raises his hands.

  “Whoa now, love.”

  “I hadn’t time to get the shovel,” I say, “this will have to do.”

  “Why don’t you give me the knife,” he says, his voice containing tremors and quivers and shakes and shivers—a whole range of notes in each word.

  “Are you looking for the portal too?” I ask.

  I hand him the knife and he takes it with quaking hands. “Have you told anyone you were coming here?”

  “No,” I say. “Penelope would have come but I hadn’t time to ask—I was in a hurry to catch the rainbow.”

  “Okay.”

  He says it like it’s the only word in the dictionary.

  “Can I have my knife back?” I ask. “I’m going to look elsewhere for the rainbow.”

  “How about I mind it for a while.”

  “Okay.”

  I suspect he’s going to dig for gold and is too embarrassed to admit it.

  “Is there anyone else at home?” he asks.

  “There used to be Lemonfish, but he died of fungus and drought.”

  “I see. No one else?”

  “My sister came over with her family, and Charlie and Sharon called in the other day. And Peter might take me to a fancy-dress party, I’m just waiting for him to call back.”

  “Good, good.”

  His face looks more settled now, it has evened out like a thick spread of soft cheese.

  “Bye for now,” I say, because I need to return to get my knife back.

  “Bye, love,” he says, “I’ll say a prayer for you.”

  I’m not sure a prayer will open rainbow portals, but he probably wouldn’t agree to chant a spell or incantation for me. I walk back home. A girl passes by on a bicycle, raising one leg over the crossbar and slowing to a halt. She balances so elegantly she glides: if it was yesterday she did it, I’d say she “glode” because “glided” is a wor
thless past tense. Every other step I take with each foot, I kick the ground with my sole. It makes a satisfying scratch-scrape, like a tch in a strop.

  When I get home, I map my short route. I walked half a teacup. I turn on the television.

  A newsreader announces that a man has been shot in a case of mistaken identity. I fear that if a criminal has the same house number as me, the hitmen could mistake street for road and shoot me. I should write to the government and suggest that hitmen be issued with GPS so they get the right houses. I change channels to a documentary presented by a giddy young man jumping around a cliff and waving his arms. He says things like “First time ever this has been done…biggest…greatest…never seen before.” So many superlatives uttered with such enthusiasm become boring, so I change the channel to an interview with a sweating man in a T-shirt. He has just won a tennis match, by the looks. He is asked how he feels about winning and what this means for him and what happens next. Interviewers never ask the questions I want to know the answers to, such as: if a cup of tea was put in his hand right now, what would his ideal biscuit be? If he could invent a new type of bed, what would it do? If water had a colour, what should it be? If he could have nine toes and eight fingers or eight toes and nine fingers, which would he choose? The tennis player is giving all the right answers to all the wrong questions. I change the channel to a large woman singing a soaring tune in another language before an orchestra. I close my eyes and try to imagine living a life that demanded such climaxes, but my life soundtrack is more of a nursery rhyme with three repeated notes. I change channels to a man sculpting something out of stone. His hands move deftly, but deftly doesn’t convey how skilled he is; I’m going to say deftfully.

  I turn off the television because there are too many people doing things they are excellent at and I feel like a mediocre still life hung next to a Caravaggio. I go to make myself a ham sandwich. Sometimes I don’t know if I like a food, or if I just know it so well that I assume I like it. I eat a piece of ham, its texture sweaty and thin. Next time I will buy ham from a butcher, a clump of thick slices in a brown paper bag, instead of misery sealed in plastic. I should vary my lunches more, but I don’t know what else to eat. I used to have soup, but I didn’t know what to do with my jaws, and I didn’t know which verb to use: was I eating or drinking? I could call it “dreating,” but that sounds like a weary farmer giving a dose of medicine to a sick sheep. I avoid jelly for the same reason—it’s a semi-solid frustration of verblessness. I outwit candyfloss by twisting a hank of it into a knot of solid, chewy sugar. Vivian: one; candyfloss: nil. Today seems like a day to eat in bed, so I bring my lunch upstairs on a tray wordlessly, crumblessly.