Eggshells. Caitriona Lally
read: “Here lies Vivian Lawlor: She wasn’t Quite the Thing, but She was Decorated with Escutcheons.”
In the Irish furniture section, shelves of chairs face me expectantly, waiting for me to perform; I disappoint. The museum has not half so large a collection of chairs as my great-aunt has, but these ones have names and written histories: “Súgán, Carpenter’s Chair, High Comb-Back Chair, Spindle-Back Chair, Comb-Back Hedge Chair.”
I can’t match my great-aunt’s chairs exactly to any of these, she seems to have discovered some odd shapes and sizes that fit under no labels.
I walk back to the quays, turn up Queen Street, and approach Thundercut Alley from the back, not from the Smithfield side, because I want to take it by surprise. It’s a curve of an alley, all draught and shade, lined by new buildings that don’t speak of magic. I stand in the middle with my eyes shut and wait for thunder. I open my eyes: nothing has changed. I need to rouse a thunderstorm, so I shout “Boom!” and flash the light on my phone: “boom”—flash—“boom”—flash—“boom.” I open my eyes but I’m still standing in the alley, un-thundered and un-spirited away. This is clearly not the right opening, so I start walking home through Stoneybatter. Some of the white letters on the street signs have been coloured blue to match the blue background: Manor Street reads “MAI_O_ STR_ _T.” “Maiostrt” sounds like a combination of mustard and mayonnaise that would taste good on ham sandwiches. I pass boarded-up houses with small trees growing out of their chimneys, and a supermarket that sells used cars. At “Prussia Street,” the “P” on the street sign has been blue-ed out to read “_RUSSIA STREET.” I picture a band of Smurfs combing the city in the black of night with tins of blue paint, daubing over the street letters that offend them. For the higher-up signs they step on each other’s shoulders to form a pyramid, placing the most agile Smurf with the best blue head for heights at the top.
When I walk by the greengrocer, my eyes are pulled to a pile of lemons on display outside the shop. I bundle them all into my arms—I need this exact quantity to replicate this intensity of colour—and go into the shop to pay. I walk back to my great-aunt’s house, which I have to start calling home. When I enter the house I catch the beginning of my smell, an earthy tang that I plan to grow into. There won’t be many visitors to dilute my smell. My sister called over in January but she didn’t stay long—I think I was her New Year’s resolution. She bothers me to clean the house and get rid of chairs and find a job. Her world is full of children and doings and action verbs, but I’m uncomfortable with verbs; they expect too much. Since our great-aunt’s death, we have nothing to talk about, and our conversation is jerky with silences the size of golf balls. I check the answering machine for messages, the numbers on the screen are “00.” They are accusatory; I wish they would act more like their round cuddly shape. I put the lemons in a glass bowl, then I take one out and pull the nubs at either end, imagining that my hands are the hands of two different people playing a peculiarly zesty kind of tug of war. I unfurl the Dublin map onto the kitchen table, and draw black blobs with a marker along the route that I walked today. Then I take out a roll of greaseproof paper, tear off a piece, place it over the map and trace my route with a pencil. I hold the paper up to the world map on the wall: today I covered the shape of an upside-down and back-to-front Chad.
I put the greaseproof map in the top-left corner of the kitchen table and sit in the rocking chair, hurling to and fro, to and fro. The chair clacks against the wall on the “fro” movement, and this is good: I am causing effect, I am cause and effect.
I WANT A friend called Penelope. When I know her well enough, I’ll ask her why she doesn’t rhyme with antelope. I would also like a friend called Amber, but only if she was riddled with jaundice. I take down the phone directory from the shelf and look through it, but there’s no easy way to hunt for a first name. After too many Phylises, Patricias and Paulas, I concede paper defeat and go to my laptop. I type “Penelope Dublin” into the search box and an image of a girl appears, but she’s wearing only her underwear and she wants to be my date. I close the lid of the laptop. I need to turn the search farther afield—or farther astreet, seeing as I’m in a city. I will search for a Penelope-friend the old-fashioned way. I take a black marker and a sheet of paper from the desk, and write:
WANTED: Friend Called Penelope.
Must Enjoy Talking Because I Don’t Have Much to Say.
Good Sense of Humour Not Required
Because My Laugh Is a Work in Progress.
Must Answer to Penelope: Pennies Need Not Apply.
Phone Vivian.
I choose the plural “Pennies” instead of “Pennys,” because the “nys” looks like a misspelt boy band, and “ies” is like a lipsmack of strawberries and cream. I put the poster in a see-through plastic pouch, then I stick pieces of Sellotape around the edges. I leave the house but I forget to check for the neighbours, and Bernie sticks her head around the front door as I pass her house.
“What’s that you’ve got there?”
“Just a poster.”
“Show me.”
She grabs it out of my hands.
“Mind the Sellotape,” I say.
She holds it an arm’s length away from herself and squints, muttering the words aloud. They sound different in her voice, different like I never wrote them, different like they came from another language. I snatch the poster from her hands.
“Why do you want a friend called Penelope?”
She stares at me, her face contorted. Even her nose frowns at me. I don’t know how to respond. I never know how to respond to people who want small complete sentences with one tidy meaning, I can’t explain myself to people who peer out windows and think they know the world.
“I just do,” I say.
I turn onto the North Circular Road holding my head high because that sounds dignified, but I trip on a bump in the footpath, so I lower my head. The first tree I pass looks unfriendly so I walk to the next one, which has kinder branches. I mash the poster hard against the bark and stand back. It looks a bit bare without a photo of a missing pet, but I can’t add a photo of Penelope until I know what she looks like. Two men walk by speaking in a foreign tongue. Their consonants come from the backs of their throats, and their words run headlong into one another like boisterous children. I try repeating their words aloud, and think how I would like to learn a language that almost no one else speaks, especially if the few who do speak it are old or almost dead. I start walking home, but home feels empty without Penelope and I’m distracted by the neon sign of my local fish bar. I’m not sure that I can call it my local anything if I’ve never gone into it, so I press my middle fingers alternately against the heels of my hands and whisper “safe safe safe” and walk inside. It smells bright, it smells hot, it smells good. A man with a shiny forehead looks up.
“What can I get you?”
I look at the menu on the wall behind the man, but there are too many choices and the words blur into one.
“Do you have chips?”
“Just put on a fresh batch—five minutes.”
I would like to drop pronouns and verbs as readily as this man, he seems so comfortable with his language.
“I’d like two bags please. Himself is hungry.”
I throw my eyes up to heaven and give a little snort,