Table For Nine At Kebabalicious: A Short Story
The Irish Lottery Series, Volume 7
Gerald Hansen
Published by Mint Books, 2017.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places or events are entirely coincidental.
TABLE FOR NINE AT KEBABALICIOUS: A Short Story
First Edition. September 10, 2017.
Copyright © 2017 Gerald Hansen
Written by Gerald Hansen
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table For Nine at Kebabalicious
The Irish Lottery Series
Further Reading: An Embarrassment of Riches
About the Author
To Dad and Mom, with love
Table For Nine at Kebabalicious
Suds dripping down the pink rubber glove to her elbow, brow wrinkled in perplexity, Fionnuala Flood stared down at the little holes on the receiver of the phone, the part you spoke into, and then she stared at the other bit, where your ear went. Then she rattled the receiver a bit, as if that would suddenly make the call she had received from her husband comprehensible. The call that had disturbed her in the middle of her weekly washing up.
Washing the dishes and pots and pans and tea mugs was an uncharacteristic activity for Fionnuala, but ever since the family had grudgingly allowed her back into the home three weeks before, she had amped up the wifely chores expected of a woman from the Moorside—household chores being their birthright, as her mother Maureen had explained—and, with lips stretched into a false and very odd grin across her horsey teeth, she muttered expletives in her mind as she dragged the hoover over the threadbare carpeting. “Jesus Christ our Lord, what a misery me feckin bleedin life is,” is but one example.
As bad as her life had been before, and as bad as it had been languishing in the caravan, it seemed even worse now. Perhaps because each day she was getting older. She was wearing those pink gloves now less to protect her hands from the diseases that might be on the plates or the toxins in the dishwashing liquid, and more to hide her hands from her sight. She couldn't bear to look at them any more lately. They were craggy and careworn, bloated, the veins sticking out like cables, knuckles like walnuts. And she hated mirrors, too. Long gone were the days she spent primping and preening before one. Now, like her hands, mirrors were something to avoid looking at at all costs. Even after a fresh bleaching, her ponytails hung as if in dismay at the worn face they framed. But perhaps life would get better.
The phone call with Paddy had gone something like this:
Fionnuala: (accusatory bark down the line) Aye?!
Paddy: Are ye right, Fionnuala, love?
Fionnuala: (suspicious) Who the feck is this?
Paddy: (surprised) Paddy! Yer husband, if ye recall.
Fionnuala: (remembering she was meant to be the new, delightful Fake Fionnuala with a voice of sugar) Och, I didn't recognize yer voice there, pet. Lovely of ye to ring. (Though it was anything but!) What's the craic?
Paddy: Any bars, hi? Any news?
Fionnuala: ...I'm not being funny, love, but does there be a reason for ye ringing? Are ye not at work, like?
Paddy: Aye, I'm are. Sure, phone calls to me loved ones doesn't be forbidden. Yer woman Zoe doesn't be a slave driver, as I'm sure ye know.
Fionnuala: Ye're not banged up down the cop shop, are ye, love? In the drunk tank, perchance?
Paddy: Och, naw. I'm down the lockups doing me security duties, as I've said. I'm just wondering, but, what ye might be planning for tea this evening. Tea—dinner.
Fionnuala: (to bide time, as she rooted through her brain wondering if new special rules had been given which now required her to supply a menu in advance of each evening's meal) Did ye get them crisp sandwiches I packed ye for yer dinner? Dinner—lunch. Pickled onion and chicken tikka masala, yer faves. And I threw in tomato and sausage and cheese and onion for good measure, and all.
Paddy: Aye, lovely, so they were. Filled me to bursting. Next time three might suffice, but.
Fionnuala: (an edge of the old Fionnuala in her voice) Just because I've packed four doesn't mean ye've to scoff down the lot, ye know. Love.
Paddy: Aye, that I know. So, there's nothing special on for tea the night?
Fionnuala: Not that I've thought of. There does be that aul leg of lamb from Easter we never got through as the wanes all went to Belfast for that disgraceful hip-hop concert instead of celebrating the Lord's rise from the dead.
Paddy: (disappointed) Aye, right enough, there does be that.
Fionnuala: Would that not do for our tea? What do ye think?
Paddy: (more disappointed) Aye, that'll be grand, so it will.
Fionnuala: (stilted, and keeping the rising anger at bay as being accommodating to the wishes of others was not in her nature) If ye want me to rustle up something special, but, I'm up for it.
Paddy: (still with a tinge of disappointment) Naw, the aul leg of lamb's fine, so it is.
Fionnuala: (tendrils of fear rising through her; what wrong had Fake Fionnuala committed? Real Fionnuala didn't know the ins and outs of this Fake Fionnuala completely yet) ...
Paddy: ...
Fionnuala: Was there nothing else, love?
Paddy: Naw. I've to get back to work. No rest for the wicked, eh? (a forced chuckle)
Fionnuala: (anxious) And I've to get back to me household chores. I've been adhering to them as ye told me to, and all according to the list me mammy and our Siofra wrote out. Little checks in the boxes, I put, as I finish each chore. Ye do understand that, don't ye, Paddy?
Paddy: Aye, ye're bang on, so ye are. Even the buttons on the telly be's gleaming, so they are.
Fionnuala: (a bit desperate now) I hope ye realize I've done all in me power to make sure you and the wanes doesn't banish me to that flimmin godforsaken caravan out in the boonies ever again. Ye know that, don't ye?
Paddy: Aye, ye're a changed woman, so ye are. Ye've nothing to worry about on that account, love. Ye're with us to stay.
Fionnuala: (now that her future security had been verified, biting down the anger and forcing the sweetness of Fake Fionnuala to invade her vocal chords) If that's all, cheerio, then.
Paddy: Aye, cheerio, love.
Then Paddy had hung up.
Now Fionnuala was still reeling. Why the bloody feck would Paddy...?
And then it hit her like a lead pipe to the back of her skull.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” she moaned into her rubber gloves.
The receiver clattered to the hall stand, knocking off a stray rosary and a Game Boy which had lain there since people last played them (but which Fionnuala had dutifully dusted the day before).
Today was Paddy's birthday! He was after his special birthday meal! And a flimmin cake, no doubt! And bleedin cards! And feckin presents! From her and the wanes! Seamus was one, Siofra, two, Padraig, three, and she should throw her mother Maureen in there as well, so that was four. That meant five gifts, five wastes of money (thought Fionnuala) to secure. Before Paddy clocked off from the Pence-A-Day lockups at eight.
Panic now rising in the Fake Fionnuala, she clomped back into the scullery/kitchen, scurried across the linoleum, the mountain of dishes now unseen and forgotten, and wrenched open the fridge. She had a juke inside, then another inside the freezer to the misshapen wall of ice past the leg of lamb, then she clomped to the larder and peered inside that. Nothing of use to her. A noise halfway between a moan and a growl spilled from her jowls. She didn't know what she had thought might be sitting there: perhaps a spare cake the Lord had se
nt down. No. She realized now she'd been searching for the necessaries for Paddy's special birthday meal. She knew it by heart after 24 years of marriage. He'd walk through the door expecting fish sauce, which was flour, egg yolks, water and butter, and the fish itself, fadge (fried potato bread), boiled potatoes, turnips and chips with vinegar and HP sauce.
The words 'health' and 'food' had never left Paddy's mouth in one sentence. He was a meat and three carb man, and for his birthday meal it would be four or five carbs, when you added the chips into the equation, so he would be a very happy man indeed. Fake Fionnuala knew the way to a man's heart was through his stomach, and given the size of it lately, Paddy should be head over heels for her. The healthiness of boiling the potatoes would be offset by the frying of the chips and the potato bread, which she would serve with thick lashings of butter, just as Paddy liked it.
She had the eggs and water and butter for the fish sauce, and plenty of spuds too, and the dregs of vinegar and HP sauce in their respective bottles, but she needed flour. And the fish. And the turnips. And the fadge. She'd have to go to the Top-Yer-Trolley superstore down the town.
What the bloody hell time is it now? she wondered feverishly.
She looked at her wrist, but she didn't have a watch. She looked at the clock on the wall, but it had been useless since Padraig had shot off the hour hand with a BB gun at some stage in the past, so she knew it was twenty past something, but she didn't know what that something was, and then she looked at the electronic clock on the cooker, but it said 00:00 in flashing numbers as usual, and then she tried to look out the window at the sun, which was shining for once, but she couldn't find it because the windows were dirty as it was Tuesday and they were on her list for cleaning on Wednesdays. And even if she had found it she wouldn't have been able to tell from its position what time it was, because she couldn't.
Whatever time it was, Fionnuala had to get a move on. But she wanted help. Paddy was Seamus', Siofra's and Padraig's father, and although he might not be Dymphna's, she would rope the lazy article into the celebration as well. And her mother. The Fionnuala of old would have just grabbed whichever child she chanced upon in whatever grubby hallway of the home and forced them out the door with a little less money than what was required. Her children were resourceful with five fingered discounts when it came to shopping. But she was meant to be a model wife and mother now.
She searched around the kitchen, but she was alone with the pots and pans and dishes and forks and knives and tea cups, all the tea cups. Bloody typical, they had all cleared off from the house to let Fionnuala get on with the housework on her lonesome. They made the filth, muggings Fake Fionnuala cleaned it up. She didn't know how long she could keep this up for. Twelve-year-old Siofra was playing with that Proddy Victoria creature, and as for 14-year-old Padraig, Fionnaula had long ago given up wondering, fearing, where he might be and what tortures he might be inflicting on some unsuspecting pensioner, Maureen was at the bingo, and 5 year old Seamus was...where was Seamus? Yes, this year as new Stepford Fionnuala she would have to do Paddy's birthday shopping, but she was damned if she was going to do it by herself. There were limits, after all!
Fionnuala marched into the hall, grabbed the phone and began to round up the troops.
Pay-as-you-go phones had trilled out a wide array of ringtones. The generations of Floods had come from all corners of Derry and descended upon the house to which they had been summoned: Dymphna and her three infants from their fancy home in the Waterside, Maureen from the Pensioner's Center, Siofra from Victoria's, Padraig from somewhere he had gotten bloody knuckles, Seamus from under the settee. The toddler (still!) had been playing there with bits of paper torn from a newspaper, and eating them a bit, if truth be told, and Fionnuala couldn't understand where he had gotten a newspaper from, as Paddy hadn't bought one since he discovered they were all online half a year before.
“Now, Dymphna, love,” Fionnuala had said down the line, “make sure ye bring them lovely wanes of yers.”
Not to gurgle and coo and tickle under her grandchildren's chins, never. But to utilize their swanky pram as a sort of provisions wheelbarrow. There would be shopping bags aplenty, and as everyone had come into the house and Fionnuala had reeled off everything they had to buy, it became apparent the shopping list was growing longer, so there would be even more shopping bags. Siofra needed an exact barrette they didn't seem to have at the Sav-U-Mor store on the corner, Padraig some gauze for the bloodied knuckles, Maureen needed corn pads.
The Top Yer Trolley was a hop, skip and jump from the Flood's semi-detached pebble-dashed house in Derry's lone terrifying neighborhood of the Moorside. A hop over the broken beer bottles, a skip through the group of menacing hooded teens that always loitered outside the long ago boarded up betting shop beside the broken lamp post, a jump over the toothless drunks sleeping under the arch of the Mountains of Mourne Gate in the historic City Walls that marked the entrance to the city center.
But as close as it was, and even though time was of the essence (Maureen had put Fionnuala out of her misery and informed her it was only 3:45.), they wasted precious time indoors readying themselves for the journey. This time using the loo, touching up make up and, for Padraig, drinking milk to fortify himself was marked by sunbeams blazing through the filthy sitting room windows. Dymphna had even shown up in sunglasses, which (old) Fionnuala inwardly scoffed at. Where the eejit had managed to find a pair to waste money on, Fionnuala couldn't imagine, as sunglasses were about as useful and beloved in the Moorside as Charles and Diana commemorative plates. Come to think of it, though, Dymphna did use to have one of those tucked away in the back of her closet before she had moved into her palace with her husband Rory Riddell; Fionnuala had come across it while searching for painkillers one morning, spit on it, then put it back where it had lurked behind a pair of Dymphna's strappy white shoes.
So the sun was uncharacteristically shining, but the moment they were ready and Siofra opened the door a crack, Apocalypse-type clouds swarmed into the sky and rain exploded upon their backs before they had even gotten past the broken lamp post at the end of the block. It seemed too far to go back home, yet not close enough to the city center to avoid getting drenched.
“God bless us and save us!” Maureen kept muttering as she swiveled her cane and jumped across puddles that formed before her eyes. At one stage, she looked upwards, rain spattering across her owl-like red frames, as if on the lookout for one of the Four Horsemen to appear, and crossed herself so quickly it looked like she was swatting flies. But the Floods were hearty and rain never caused anyone to melt, so they made it to the Top-Yer-Trolley, drenched but unscathed.
They pushed through the revolving doors of the superstore. Maureen and Fionnuala set off for the grocery aisles, shoes squelching and puddles in their wake.
It had been a while since Seamus, Siofra and Padraig had last seen Dymphna. Their swanky older sister who had married up was moving up, up and further away from them, in distance and income bracket, and it made them sad, even Padraig, who usually never showed an emotion if it wasn't anger or dissatisfaction. They missed her red curls, kindness and ditzy comments. Like the time she said she had always thought the periodic table had something to do with a schedule of when to buy tampons.
Now, though, the siblings were reunited around the bargain bin of irregular undergarments, pawing through the spare socks and unraveling panties for a suitable gift they could claim was from Seamus. On the floor next to them was a shopping basket that was already filled: a handful of cards they had quickly grabbed from the twirly display (it would be when they got home they realized one was a sympathy card, another bon voyage, but there were three birthday ones), a bottle of swanky Farenheit Dymphna had already chosen and agreed she would pay separately for, a tie from Siofra Paddy might wear at his next court appearance, whether his own or as a character witness for his wife, and a pencil and 99 pence lighter from Padraig. As Siofra grabbed a handful of her black hair and squeezed the wat
er out of it, she looked with envy at the sheen of Dymphna's designer handbag hanging from her elbow and thought about the Riddell's Platinum credit card, maybe even Black, that no doubt resided there. Not with jealousy, however. Aspirational, that's what her older sister had become.
Back at home before they had set off, Dymphna had just come in and the wheels of her pram were still rolling across the threshold when Seamus and Padraig had bounded towards her, hands unconsciously outstretched, and it wasn't for a hug. Dymphna had fiddled with the wheels of the pram for a moment, locking them, then, feeling a bit like Ursula Barnett, her aunt who had won the lottery years ago and lived to rue the day, had reached into her handbag to give them what they expected. As Dymphna had dished out an iTunes gift card for Padraig, something furry for Seamus, then placed a designer pineapple lip gloss into Siofra's hand, Fionnuala had pretended to fix her lipstick with a bit of loo roll to hide her sneer of sheer disgust. It seemed Fionnuala hated her Protestant-wed daughter for showing off her money like that, but Fionnuala would've hated her more if she hadn't lavished gifts on the wanes every time she stepped through the door. Dymphna was damned if she did, damned if she didn't, what a therapist for the Floods (had there been one) would have probably termed Ursula Barnett Syndrome.
“So what's it like having Mammy back at home?” Dymphna asked.
“Mammy! Mammy!” Seamus gurgled gleefully.
Dymphna's face lit up with delight. “Och, so it's grand having her back, then?”
“Och, our Seamus is a simpleton, so he is,” said Padraig, disdain gleaming from the frames of his National Health specs.
Dymphna's face fell. “Not grand, then?”
“The pans get washed, aye,” Siofra had to admit. Dymphna smiled. “She's different, but.”
Dymphna frowned. “Different? How?”
“Living in that caravan deranged her mind,” Padraig said. “She's not the mammy she used to be, so she's not.”
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