Donal Ryan - The Thing About December

Mumbly Dave said horse her off a text there so as they drove home. Johnsey asked him what should he say? Mumbly Dave said Jaysus boy, will I have to ride her for you as well? After he said that, Johnsey wouldn’t please the prick and resolved to make his own text without any help. You had to scroll through the menu to figure out all the yokes but he didn’t ask Mumbly Dave for his advice and he didn’t make a bad fist of it all the same now and for a finish he said: Hello Siobhan this is Johnsey Cunliffe sorry I missed you please call again .

Mumbly Dave asked what was he after sending her? Had he the number in right? Johnsey wondered how Mumbly Dave was all of a sudden so browned off with him. It was he was making the smart comments and making little of Johnsey and yet here he was nearly shouting now about the blessed text and he was looking over at Johnsey and reaching to grab the phone off of him and the car was roaring for the want of a change of gear and he wasn’t being too careful about staying inside the white line the way you have to be because Daddy always said to Mother when she was driving if you put your wheels out over the line, some day you’ll go around a bend and there’ll be as big a fool as you coming against you and BANG! Two dead fools. And no knowing how many crathurs of innocent passengers taken with them, all out of foolishness. And Mother would roar at him to shut his face but still and all she’d pull back towards the ditch to quieten him.

When Johnsey called out the text he’d typed, Mumbly Dave said hoo hoo hoo, that was the gayest thing he’d ever heard! Please call again? You’re some tulip, boy! This is Johnsey Cunliffe! Mother. Of. Jaysus. You’re some stones. You’re … And the car shook as the wheels on Johnsey’s side took too much of the soft verge and Mumbly Dave cursed and his hands moved fast on the wheel and when he got it straightened he said Ha ha! That shook you, boy! As much as to say he’d been doing the jackass on purpose, his bad driving only a stunt to put the wind up Johnsey. But there was a lot of colour gone from his face for a fella that was only playing the fool.

He must have copped on then that Johnsey was like a dog with him for making a laugh of his text to Siobhán and was wishing to God he could reach in to the sky and pull it back and send something else cool and smart and funny and imagine it was out there now, bouncing off of a satellite and back down to earth and into Siobhán’s phone with the pink case around it and the blue love heart on it and wasn’t it an awful dangerous thing, a text message, because once you pressed that little send button, that was it. Like pulling a trigger of a shotgun and sending a pellet into a little rabbit’s brain as he sniffed the sweet spring air. You couldn’t undo it. You couldn’t ever take it back. Mumbly Dave said Don’t worry, boy, don’t worry, and drove straight and not too fast the rest of the road home.

IT WAS ALL THE ONE for a finish. Siobhán had no interest in big long text messages. She just said: OK no prob Ill call l8r after wrk . And that was it then, she would text that she was going to call and he would just reply ok , and she would arrive about six or half-six and one day she sent a text to say: On way starving , and he panicked and rang Mumbly Dave and asked what would he do and Mumbly Dave said he didn’t know in the hell and he asked what had he in the fridge and Johnsey said sausages and rashers and puddings and he said make her a fry so I suppose and when Siobhán arrived she wanted to know did he really think she’d want to eat a plate of burnt, dead pig? And she laughed and told him eat it himself but it was quare hard to chew and swallow when your mouth was dry and your stomach was sick with embarrassment and she ate a sandwich made out of brown bread with cheese and sliced apple ! Imagine that, a sandwich with apple in it! And after that if she said she’d be calling he’d have a bit to eat ready for her, like a sandwich made of brown bread and lettuce and low-fat cheese and a Diet Coke and an apple maybe (but not in the sandwich) because that’s the kind of stuff women love eating, apparently.

Mumbly Dave took to going away before Siobhán arrived. If she sent a text message, he’d ask Johnsey what did it say and Johnsey would say she’s calling in later and Mumbly Dave would nod his head and say nothing and then he’d say he had to go away, anyway, he was meeting a few of the lads in the village for a pint but Johnsey knew he was going to go home to watch Home and Away on his own and then probably Emmerdale and Coronation Street , maybe, with his mother because she was sometimes home by half-seven.

He was quieter these last few days since Siobhán started calling. He didn’t ask Johnsey too much about what they did when she called. Johnsey thought that was strange, but in a way he was glad: how would he have told Mumbly Dave that he just sat there like a tool trying not to leave his eyes wander down her chest or up her leg, trying not to think about what happened in the hospital, listening to her giving out yards about auld Dinny Shanley trying to feel her arse all day and his wife dribbling all over herself inside in the bed? But still, all the same, wasn’t it a fright that he couldn’t have Mumbly Dave and Siobhán without having to feel guilty about Mumbly Dave feeling left out and then feeling resentful if he included himself and being scared in case Siobhán expected him to do or say something meaningful or what have you and was it an awful bad thing if he wished sometimes he could go back to walking down the Callows with Mumbly Dave and talking comfortable auld nonsense about nothing? It was grand having Siobhán calling up alright, but did one thing you had have to be a bit ruined by getting another thing? Is that how life balanced itself out?

How was he ever going to know what Siobhán wanted, anyway? She could talk away for hours and you’d still know nothing. Was it just the way he was on the road out to the Shanleys and it was handy for her to stop in to avoid going home too early to her mother who was a right sour-faced old trout of a wan by all accounts, forever giving out yards to Siobhán about being nowhere in life and her sisters were all married and settled down with lovely fellas, and if only Mammy knew the half of it, one of them was a rampant alcoholic and another was having an affair and her smarty-hole brother Peadair whose arse the sun shone out of was after failing all his exams above in UCD and Mammy after telling every auld witch in the parish that he was going to be the Attorney Fucking General! Or was Mumbly Dave right about her being one of them wans that goes mad for fellas with farms of land? What was so wrong about that, anyway? That hardly made her like the little fat lady with the short top or the dead-eyed girl in the shiny tracksuit, did it?

HALLOWEEN OPENED the gate to All Souls and then sure the next big push after that was Christmas. November would drag and you had to try not to think about Christmas or you’d go mad waiting for the time to pass. Wasn’t Santy a great man all the same? He’d be flat out in November, so he would, making presents. They put up the decorations inside in town earlier and earlier every year. That’s to try and drive people into buying stuff, Mother used to say. Imagine, All Souls just past, and feckin auld decorations up around the place. They should be banned from mentioning Christmas until halfway through December!

Some people offered up a sacrifice for the Faithful Departed in November. Mother said that was only auld shaping — them that went around spouting about giving up drink for the month were the same ones that would fill their auld faces and drink themselves stupid non-stop all December. Letting on to be holy. All they were doing was sparing up the money they’d piss away at Christmas.