Static Cling

by Gerald Hansen

  “I'll never forgive our Joe for putting me through this mortification,” Mrs. Ming moaned, struggling to upright herself.

  “Serendipity!” Nurse Scadden cried, and Fionnuala wondered what new language the nurse was suddenly speaking. “Are ye not Zoë Riddell? The owner of this tip?” Tip, dump. “I demand ye get me me uniforms this very moment or there'll be a tribunal!”

  Zoë looked taken aback.

  “I wouldn't have said tip. We remodeled when I bought the place.” She stepped confidently towards the counter, but faltered the closer she got to the bag on it. “I'm sure we'll be able to make right whatever wrong you think might have been done to you. It's our mission to make you happy. What, Mrs. Flood, seems to be the problem here?”

  Fionnuala opened her mouth to reply, but was cut short as Nurse Scadden barked out: “Och, sure, the entire town knows the two of youse is in cahoots! Disgraceful, so it is! A Catholic betraying the community and pairing up with an Orange Proddy bitch! The best of mates, the two of youse is! Sure, everyone's seen the two of youse together in restaurants! That marriage, that...unseemly, vulgar pairing between yer offspring...it makes me stomach churn to think of it! What is the world coming to when a Catholic girl and a Proddy bastard can make a mockery of the holy institution of matrimony? There's no way, between the two of youse, youse can ever make me hap—”

  They all yelped and heads turned as something, they each presumed a rock, clattered against the window and bounced off it. The door was wrenched open and Bridie McFee staggered in, eyes swiveling and shoulders swaying from the affects of drink.

  “You! Fionnuala Flood!” Bridie slurred, an accusing finger pointed somewhere in the general direction behind the counter. Fionnuala barely recognized her without the cold sores. They seemed to have cleared up, though a stye was now pustulating under her left eye. “Ye've some bold-faced nerve! First yer Dymphna stole Rory from me, and now ye've stole me Damien's job here! I'll have ye for that! Gone from Derry for four weeks he was, I know, aye, and without giving notice. He had to, but. The telly program, ye know. That Safari Millionaire. It wasn't Damien's fault he was picked up for the program, shipped away to that land of Amazonia. Now the filming's over and he be's back, but. And his job is gone. To you!”

  Any place Bridie McFee appeared, drunk or not, her entrance was greeted with a few hurried crosses, a bowed head or two, the occasional genuflection and a moment of silent reflection, and here in Final Spinz was no exception. Siofra curtsied, Mrs. Ming crossed herself and tried to reach for her rosary there on the floor, but it was too far away, Nurse Scadden genuflected and even Fionnuala seemed lost in silent reflection. Zoë seemed immune, just standing and staring, jaw slack, at the girl.

  A while back, Bridie claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary in the lard of a chip fryer at the Kebabalicious where she worked. Many in town thought it a scam, or perhaps mental instability, a hallucination, but there were those who wanted to give the girl the benefit of the doubt. And Bridie's cold sores had disappeared soon after the visitation; they had been ever-present before. This seemed to signify something, and gave them hope. They wanted to believe. And so they did, because one never knew what deeds on Earth God was tallying up on his scorecard way up there in Heaven.

  Siofra passed Mrs. Ming's rosary beads to her. The woman took them gratefully and clutched them tight, her arthritic fingers working over the beads as she stared in marvel at one of God's chosen.

  “What are ye playing at, wee girl?” Fionnuala said, though calling the looking-much-older-than-her-29-years Bridie a 'girl' was a bit of a stretch, and 'wee' an outright lie. A glance at the straining seams of her Bjork World Tour 2009 t-shirt and her knockoff jeans revealed there was nothing wee about the lumpen creature, and the whole town knew this included her sexual appetite. “Flinging rocks at the window and shouting the odds like some headbin! I think ye've dented the window. Do ye want me to call the Filth, Mrs. Riddell?” She reached for the company phone on the counter.

  This enraged Nurse Scadden to no end, and even Mrs. Ming gasped in shock.

  “Bringing in the coppers?!” Nurse Scadden shrieked. “The Proddy Filth? Aye, ye see you, Fionnuala Flood,” her finger pointed accusingly as Bridie's had moments before, “ye've definitely gone over to the dark side. No Catholic in good standing, no Catholic who would hold their head up proudly as they stepped into St. Moulag's on a Sunday, would ever consider ringing the Proddy coppers! And windows kyanny dent.”

  Bridie groaned and collapsed across the three yellow plastic chairs under the window. Mrs. Ming crossed herself again, the rosary dangling from her fist. Nurse Scadden whipped around to Zoë. “Can I not just get me uniforms back from this...this...this den of heathenism? I'll snatch them out of the machines meself. Let me back there, just. Let me back there now!”

  Zoë grabbed her shoulder as Nurse Scadden flew past Fionnuala and made to shove her way beyond the partition.

  “The secret!” Fionnuala wailed. The last thing she wanted was for Derry to learn dry cleaning was wet.

  Siofra stuck out her foot, and Nurse Scadden fell against the partition.

  “Right!” Zoë said, her lips thin. “Call the police, Mrs. Flood. That's trespassing.”

  Just as Fionnuala picked up the phone, the door burst open for the final time that fateful afternoon. They all gasped, except Bridie, who had passed out, dead to the world. Three men propelled themselves inside. Three men in ski masks, balaclavas. One with a rusty pitchfork, one with what looked like a garden trowel, and one who had drawn the short stick and brandished a set of gold plated coal tongs from a fireplace set.

  “Hands up, youse!” Pitchfork bellowed. “This is a stick up!”

  Pitchfork raced to the counter, and Coal Tongs towards Zoë, waving their weapons. Mrs. Ming shrieked as Pitchfork kicked her walker to the floor. Trowel guarded the door with his body and sliced his mud-caked tool through the air as if he had been watching a kung fu movie marathon, or maybe jiujitsu?

  As Fionnuala lunged for her flip-top pay-as-you-go phone and Pitchfork knocked it from her hand, Mrs. Ming clutched at her heart. She toppled against her overturned walker, banged against the counter and slid down it. The rosary fell from her fingers. The beads clinked and the cross clunked as the rosary hit the tiles. A sputtering and a moan escaped her withered, undulating lips. Her talons clawed the air. Then her frail limbs collapsed in a lifeless heap on the floor.

  But unlike Bridie, Mrs. Ming wasn't dead to the world. She was just dead.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWO

  Three months before, college degree in his hands, 24-year-old Rory Riddell, gangly limbs and over-gelled black hair, had been given an entry level position in the IT department of Riddell Enterprises. Even though his mother had conjured up a fake last name, Penry-Jones, for Rory to use with Human Resources and around the office, his co-workers knew only too well who he was: the boss' son. He was sure to be fast-tracked. They feared for their jobs, and those that had been eying promotion despaired. Mr. 'Penry-Jones' was sure to get any promotion over them.

  Zoë had told the IT head, Eamonn O'Cheek, she first wanted Rory to update the company's website. Rory did his best to focus on the assignment, huddling over his computer and working with the codes and Easter eggs and whatnot he had to deal with. But behind his hunched shoulders, he could feel the resentment, the hot anger, the icy looks directed towards him as he tapped away on the keys. No amount of computer nous, friendliness, self-deprecation, charm, arriving early and leaving late or even teas, coffees and sticky buns bought for the entire office could stem the hatred into which he stepped every day.

  His mother had bought him a work-week's worth of new Ben Sherman suits for the job, but Rory had seen the looks of disdain his colleagues cast the labels—flash git!—and so, a few weeks ago, he had experimented with a more laid back outfit of slightly distressed jeans and an Arctic Monkeys t-shirt—he knew they were Tommy's favorite band. But Eamonn had forced him to go home and change into some
thing more appropriate. “We are not a disco. We are a business.”

  The day before, towards the end of the workday, a desperate Rory had invented a birthday and invited Tommy at the next desk, Birgitta two desks over, Mannix beside the photocopier and Susan the receptionist to join him for a drink at the pub next door. There had been no takers. He would pay, he had said, almost pleaded. “Of course you would. But no, I've something else on,” was the general response. Not one of them had wished him a happy birthday.

  Rory had worked an hour longer after they had gone—at no extra pay, he wanted to tell them all—and finally, when he and the cleaner were the only two in the office, he had clicked off his computer, nodded to Edna, who pretended not to see him by suddenly 'discovering some chewing gum on a computer screen' that needed to be removed with exaggerated scrubbing strokes and much puffing and panting, and he left the office. Rory passed the pub, the Goat and Crown, and who did he see inside through the window, laughing and clinking pints, munching down on cheese and onion potato chips and having a grand old knees up, but Tommy, Birgitta, Mannix, Susan and Eamonn.

  Rory had gone home to his wife Dymphna, wanting to cry on her shoulder as they sat side by side on the peacock-colored Loaf Monty sofa Zoë had outfitted the living room of their smart house with, the brand new house two streets away from Zoë's own. Maybe after that he and sexy Dymphna would get off on the sofa and he would feel better. But he had walked into a madhouse.

  The techno music blaring at nightclub levels had the walls shuddering. A wall of feces and urine mixed with stewed apricots, ammonia and old Kebabalicious fast food blasted his face from the hallway. He screamed as he walked into the living room, though the scream was drowned out by the music and the shrieking of 'his' three children and Dymphna's booze-filled, hysterical laughter. A chill raced down Rory's spine. He was frozen, immobile with shock.

  His eyes didn't know what to focus on first: the empty cider bottles scattered across the parquet floor, the three opened diapers displaying filthy loads lined up on the sofa, the bloody swaths across the chrome and matte black of the tables and on the lower reaches of the walls. His fingers didn't know, forgot, how to dial 999, though they gripped his cell phone, knuckles white.

  Infant Greenornge (stress on the last syllable) was naked, kicking and squirming under the coffee table, bawling his little lungs out, limbs spattered red, left fist clutching a chicken bone. Three-year-old Keanu was leaping up and down and yelling like an injured nutcase in the corner next to the TV, face also streaked with blood. The rest of him was wrapped in toilet paper like a mummy. He was gnawing on the teat of a bottle that looked like it contained cider. He had a flashing tiara on his head. Rory's horrified eyes finally zeroed in on the piece de resistance of this landscape of madness: Dymphna and eighteen-month-old Beeyonsay, entangled on the red-spattered Twister board in the middle of the room, both of them bloody, his wife cackling, the toddler starkers and crying. Dymphna's head whipped up and she chortled up at Rory, and it looked as if he had caught her in the middle of trying to force one of the baby's hands over the trail of trodden french fries and bits of bun, hamburger and chicken that stuck to the plastic towards a blue circle, one of her feet to yellow.

  “Wh-what have ye done to our wanes, Dymphna?” Rory cried out, high-pitched with horror. He raced towards the coffee table, empty bottles skittering. “Are ye...ye...bladdered? Paladic? Outta yer flimmin mind with drink?”

  “It's not blood, Rory!” Dymphna roared over the music, though there was a giggle in her roar. “It's face paint. They only had it in red, sure.”

  Rory snatched the chicken bone from Greenornge, who erupted into to even louder shrieks, if that were possible.

  “Ye kyanny even feed chicken bones to dogs as they might choke to death. And ye've gone and given one to our flesh and blood! Our wane! Are ye deranged?”

  “Och, it's just a bit of craic, sure. A wee laugh.”

  Rory bent over to pick up the bawling infant and cradle it silent, but wasn't exactly sure which bits to pick up first and how to hold them.

  “Dada! Dada!” Keanu just about managed to get out of his mouth which still couldn't form words properly. He toddled towards his daddy on legs wobbly from both his young age and the effects of alcohol. Rory gently pried the bottle from the toddler's hand, sniffed the teat, yes, cider, then patted him on the tiara, which was flashing up at him like a lighthouse.

  “There, there, big man,” Rory cooed down at his son, but he couldn't hide an edge of anger at Dymphna having fed Keanu alcohol. He couldn't figure out how to turn off the blinking, so he removed the tiara, which made Keanu burst into tears. The man of the house then marched over to the speakers and flipped off the music.

  “What've ye done to the wanes? They're not playthings! Dolls for yer pleasure! Why are they all naked? Why haven't ye cleared away them soiled nappies? It's a...a health and safety violation! Why is there food scattered all over the house? I left this morning with me wife taking care of the wanes, and I've come back to a madwoman deranged with drink! A candidate for Gransha!” The mental hospital on the hill.

  “Don't get yer knickers in a twist, Rory.” Dymphna was failing to lift herself from the Twister board no matter how many times she tried. She collapsed atop a field of squashed food and spattered face paint. Her eyes goggled in her head. She giggled into her hand. “And from what I've seen, them lads,” she nodded to the still-screaming Greenornge and Keanu, “was having a right laugh until ye walked in and spoiled their party. Listen to them now, would ye, screaming bloody murder.”

  “Aye, and I'll scream bloody murder if I walk into another scene like this again. How can ye give Keanu cider? At his age? Have ye given it to the others and all? And how can ye knock back the drink yerself when ye're meant to be looking after not one, not two, but three wanes?”

  “Hark at ye, getting all masterful now. Who do ye think ye are?” Gone was the laughter in Dymphna's voice. She was slurring with her own edge of anger as she finally propped herself up and sat beside the squirming, screaming Beeyonsay. “I know ye've got that flash new job yer mammy gave ye, and them posh business suits. And now I've—”

  “For the love of God! Not you and all! I get enough stick from—”

  “And now I've been reduced to nothing but a nappy-changer and a...a...what would ye call it? A hot milk and stewed pea depositor, or do I mean dispenser, for the gawping mouths of them creatures—”

  “Creatures! But they're our fles—”

  “Aye, I said it! Creatures!” Her voice was that mixture of despair and laughter only the exceptionally drunk can do so well. “Ye've not to put up with them babbling on in their strange language day after day, hour after hour. I've tried to teach them English, but they're having none of it. They kyanny understand a joke ye try to tell them, kyanny sing along to a song ye like on the radio as they don't know what words mean nor how to form them, nor can they even dance to it. I know, I've tried to make them often enough, like, tugging and twisting them limbs of theirs this way and that. They kyanny do things like other people can. Aye, I've been popping the wanes outta me for years, but that doesn't mean that I have to understand what their purpose is. Yammering nonsense and yelling their lungs out is all they're good for, and it's driving me mental.”

  “That I can see, aye.”

  “I thought maybe they'd get excited if I painted their faces. It just made them cry, but. Musta been the color. We went out to the Kebabalicious for something to eat, and then we got back. Then Keanu got hold of our Siofra's tiara from her first holy communion—she brought it over for to make Beeyonsay a princess the other day, like—and then I told him he could be king of Egypt. So I wrapped him up in the loo roll. And then I tried to teach them Twister, but, as ye see, Greenornge couldn't understand what I was saying, and then Keanu started crying as he couldn't move his arms to make them go in the circles because they was all wrapped up, so I gave him some cider to shut him up. It's apples, ye know. And apples is for wanes. And in
the middle of it all, all three of them decided to shite at the same time. I'm sick of changing their nappies! I've left them there for ye to dispose of as ye like. And ye can put clean ones on them and all. I'm not gonny do it. I've done me work for the day.”

  As she said all this, Dymphna took step after Bride-of-Frankenstein step towards Rory, but he kept backing away, more nimbly, until finally they were both in the kitchen. His back was now pressed against the stainless steel fridge, his shoulders pressed against the trendy ice dispenser neither of them used because they couldn't figure out how it worked and they didn't understand the need for ice cubes. Still she approached. And then there was no other place for him to go.

  Dymphna's face, usually so pale and beautiful, was puffy and blotched. Her pupils looked like raisins in a field of blood-speckled snow. Her hair, normally a cascade of shimmering red curls, the envy of most girls in town, was a matted, lifeless mess that hung like a cheap brass-colored shower curtain liner. The stench of cider from her mouth made Rory's eyes water. He shirked as she brought that puffy, blotched face with its shower-curtain-liner hair close to his own.

  “Let you take care of them all for just one day,” she hissed. “Let's see what shape the house is in when ye're through. Let's see if ye don't have our Beeyonsay, and Greenornge and all, gulping down the cider for to calm them down. I dare ye.”