Donal Ryan - The Thing About December

Siobhán said when you lose a limb you end up with too much blood. That can cause awful trouble for your heart because there does be too much pressure. That makes sense if you think about it — there aren’t as many places for the blood to go. How is it though a human body knows how to make food into shite and drink into pee and a yoke you can’t even see into a baby and your brain can do forty million things a minute according to that auld science teacher inside in the Tech and still it can’t figure out it needs less blood if there’s a bit chopped off of it? Worse again, Siobhán said sometimes people feel an itch where their leg or arm used to be, a phantom itch, like a ghost back to haunt them, and that itch can drive them right around the bend, because you can’t scratch what’s not really there. He remembered the itch under his cast inside in hospital and how that used drive him demented until Siobhán brought him in a knitting needle to poke down it for sweet relief and she told him not to let Sister or any of the other fatarses see him with it on account of they weren’t meant to let people do that. He wondered had Eugene felt the phantom itch yet.

AUNTY THERESA dragged poor Nonie and Frank up to the house not long after Paddy was buried. She wanted to know was he having an auction or what in the name of God was going to happen, and did he know that the rezoning wouldn’t last forever, the farm would be only allowed to be a farm again before long and the show would be over, and that nephew of Paddy Rourke’s from England wouldn’t be too happy with him for devaluing his inheritance with his quare notions and did he know there was such a thing as compulsory purchase orders and they’d soon get sick of him inside in the council and they’d make him sell and their idea of what’s the going rate mightn’t tally with what Master Johnsey Cunliffe had inside in his head and wasn’t it a fright to God to say herself and Frank had to scrimp and scrape all their lives to get Susan and Small Frank through university and here was he sitting on several fortunes and acting like he was too good for them and Small Frank solid choked with asthma and he never lifting his nose from his books so that he may make something of his life and here was he going around making a show of them all with that waster of the Cullenses and he the talk of the whole country and poor Sarah hadn’t a penny spare her whole life she didn’t put into the Credit Union for him and now he wouldn’t even look at his own aunty and she all that was left on this earth of his mother and why in the name of Jaysus would he not answer the phone?

Nonie said Ah now, ah now, but Theresa ignored her and Johnsey wondered had Theresa forgotten how Nonie was Mother’s sister as well, and did she want him to sell the farm so he could give money to Susan and Small Frank who never once looked at him on the school bus and never once said a word when he was being tormented, only sat there smirking? Uncle Frank wanted to know was he doing a line with that little blonde nurse and he smiled and winked at Johnsey and Theresa told him shut his stupid face and she started mar dhea crying out of her with her hand on her forehead and Nonie went Ah now, again, and Frank threw his eyes towards heaven and looked fidgety and embarrassed and Johnsey remembered Daddy once saying how that poor fucker Frank made a hard bed for himself when he decided to take the free house and the big dowry and Mother said how dare he, her father paid no dowry to any man, Frank was picked from a long line of fine suitors, and Daddy looked at Johnsey and covered one side of his mouth and said you should have seen that line, Johnsey — a fairy, a blind man, a fella in his nineties, and Frank!

IT WAS GRAND having Siobhán calling up all the same. You couldn’t be giving the whole day to thinking about Paddy and Eugene and Theresa and people’s expectations of you when you had to think about her calling up.

The next time she called after the time she showed up by surprise, they weren’t even there. They’d been inside in the city, looking at hookers. Mumbly Dave had promised Johnsey he’d take him in to this street where they do be and he could have a look at his future wife ha ha ha! The hookers were quare-looking; a little fat lady who looked like a wan you’d see above at Mass only you could see half of her white belly because her top was too short and didn’t meet the top of her skirt. And there was a wan whose cheekbones looked like they could cut you. She was wearing a shiny tracksuit and her eyes looked dead. There was a skinny man with a thin moustache standing beside her who Mumbly Dave said was a woman and Johnsey couldn’t believe it until he looked for a bit longer and then he could see that it really was a woman and Mumbly Dave said she was a mad bull-dyke pimp and Johnsey didn’t know what them words meant but said nothing and Mumbly Dave said she’d cut your mickey off if you tried to get smart with her or the hookers, and while they were staring at her she clocked them and started walking towards Mumbly Dave’s car and she had the head of a wan that’d take a bite out of you and eat you without salt and Mumbly Dave stalled the car in a panic and just as she got to them he got it going and she swung her foot at the car as they drove off and the hooker with the dead eyes only barely moved her head as they passed.

When they got back to the house, there were red words written on the kitchen window. Johnsey thought of them horror films he could only ever watch half of. Mumbly Dave told him it was lipstick. Lipstick, you dipstick! Ha ha ha! But Johnsey well knew Mumbly Dave was joking away his own hurt feelings. The words said:

Hi J

I called @ 6 but you must be off with your boyfriend

Txt me l8r 087 7946509

Siobhán xxx

Mumbly Dave said Jay like he was disgusted and boyfriend like he was more disgusted again and when Johnsey chanced a sideways look at him, he was nearly sure he saw a glint of water in his eye, but Mumbly Dave just said it was unbelievable that a fella could have rides of nurses scrawling love messages on his kitchen window and he not even having a phone to text her with and he having been given her number twice now and he was starting to wonder had he even a mickey to ride her with and it was an unnatural waste! If it was him she was after, he’d have had her rode and given the road long ‘go but he had no farm of land ha ha ha and he’d want to be getting his finger out in the name of Jaysus. Johnsey couldn’t stop looking at the lipstick message. Three kisses. Mumbly Dave said they could also stand for triple x, as in porno, like. Johnsey wished he’d stop saying words like hole and porno in regards to Siobhán, but how do you tell someone something like that without them thinking you’re an awful holy Joe and an auld spoilsport and hurting them even further?

The next day they went into the phone shop and a wan who Mumbly Dave said had flaking knockers on her sold him a mobile phone and he couldn’t tell what sort of knockers she had because he couldn’t look at her, but she smelled quare nice and she sounded lovely and he dropped his money on the floor when he went to pay her and Mumbly Dave said Watch him, he’s throwing it away, ha ha ha, signs on he can do it and he a feckin millionaire, ha ha ha, and Johnsey felt himself going from red to purple and he suddenly pictured himself smashing the new phone into Mumbly Dave’s face. How’s it he couldn’t just shut up and let him pay the girl besides trying to be smart the whole time and showing off and probably now the girl who smelled lovely would cop his face from the paper and think look at this greedy prick in buying phones and why is everything you do just so embarrassing and how is it he couldn’t control them awful thoughts? Did badness now have the run of his brain?