Read by Gloria Sanders
They woke in each other’s arms to begin the Sunday — naked, estranged — a pair of ducks waking from dreams in which they were swans.
He grabbed his underpants from the floor and struggled them on as he ran for the en suite — fast.
He had stopped breathing and was making a low, choking moan over the toilet bowl that ended in a dry retch until up came the Sambuca, the viscous whiskey, the dark rum soup, the lager and the alcopops with the fizz still in them. He looked at himself in the mirror. Someone stared back, someone older than he remembered, someone who was fucking old.
When he finally opened the bathroom door there was a half-naked little girl standing in front of him with a disgusted expression. She had chubby cheeks and shiny ringlets—Goldilocks in her underwear.
‘Were you gettin’ sick were ya?’ she asked.
‘I was, yeah. Yeah, I was. Must’ve been bad food.’
‘Me bollocks,’ the little girl said.
‘Vanessa, watch your language or you’ll get a slap,’ said her mother, still sitting on the bed, not quite sure what to do or what to say or how to act.
‘But the smell of beer off’m,’ Vanessa said then lost interest in the conversation and attempted to balance on her tippy toes. She tumbled and used his arm as support.
‘Wow,’ he said, feeling dirty and perverse in his Giorgio Armani underpants, a little girl holding him.
‘It’s called en pointe. Ballet. It’s hard as fuck.’
‘Vanessa, I’m warning you,’ she said, head in her hands and looking down at the carpet.
Vanessa began showing him demi-pliés. He put both his hands over his groin and then slid one down to try cover his hairy thighs. He brushed past Vanessa to sit on the bed and pull a sheet over his waist.
‘Come on, Vanessa, let ...’ she said and stalled, ‘the man get dressed.’
‘Me dress is in your wardrobe,’ Vanessa said.
‘Jesus, what time is it?’ she asked. This was serious. The game had changed. She looked at the alarm clock on the locker then leaned in to make sure it really said the time it said. ‘Jesus fucking Christ. It’s half ten. Where’s your Granny?”
‘She went to hers to get ready. We thought you were up.’
‘Ah Jesus, get ready now, Vanessa—we’ll be late,’ she said, grabbing an outfit in dry cleaners' plastic from her wardrobe, stood at the bathroom door for a split second, took a look towards the toilet to make sure it was safe then shut the door. The electric shower powered on.
‘So, are you my Daddy now?’
‘Daddy? There, eh, see like …’
‘Relax, I’m only messin’ with ya. Do ya swim?’
‘Swim? I do yeah, eh yeah, not very well though.’
‘I have to use armbands. Paula Dunne doesn’t. She can swim without armbands and won’t shut up about it,’ Vanessa said, outstretching her arms over her head in two wide arcs, attempting a pirouette. ‘Wanna see me dress? It’s gorgeous.’ Vanessa walked over to the wardrobe, opened the bottom drawer and used it as a step-up. She unhooked a white fluffy ball and threw it onto the bed then tried a grand jete down off the drawer, landing badly.
‘Mind yourself,’ he said.
‘I’m grand. Relax,’ Vanessa said, picking herself up off the ground.
‘You getting married?’ he asked, nodding at the big, white, fluffy dress.
‘It’s me first Holy Communion today. I’ve to eat Jesus and all that.’
He put his head in his hands and pressed all ten fingers into it hard.
‘You look like trampled shite. Don’t get sick on my dress or I’ll burst ya.’
Vanessa got her dress out of his vomiting radius and laid it on the ground, a chiffon, satin and lace embroidered ball of white floral pattern that materialized in his broken head as some sort of hole in the universe. She stepped inside it, left foot first then the right and pulled it up and around her, vanishing inside the white except for her head.
‘Do me zip up will ya?’
She walked over to him, presenting him with her back.
‘Eh, well, do you want to wait for your Mammy to do that?’
‘Ah would ya stop and go on.’
He took the zip and pulled it up quickly, catching the material in the rung.
‘Careful.’
He took it again and poked out the material from the rung, proceeding to pull it up gently, looking away as he did so, ready to leap up and declare his innocence should authorities burst through the door.
‘I’ve a tiara as well. It’s gorgeous. Dad has it outside the door. Bring in the tiara, Dad!’ Vanessa shouted out to the hallway.
The films were all wrong—life did not flash before your eyes in the final moments. Death did. And it was a violent one where nobody could hear him scream, at the hands of Dad and all of his North Dublin inner-city cronies armed with wrenches and vices and blowtorches and when he begged them to just finish him off they all laughed and singed his eyeballs with cigarettes.
‘Relax,’ Vanessa said. ‘I’m only messin. Where you from, the country?’
‘Yes. I’m from Mayo.’
‘You have any brothers and sisters?’
‘A sister.’
‘I have two half-brothers. They’re a pair of little cunts.’ She affixed her bag over her shoulder and took beaded white gloves out it.
The shower switched off.
‘She never takes showers when she’s the only one in the house. Isn’t that weird? What do you think of veils?’
‘Veils?’
‘The ones over your face you muppet, that you wear for weddings and maybe Holy Communions. Veils—white veils,’ said Vanessa attempting another demi-plié in the dress.
‘What do you think of them?’
‘Hate them,’ she said and palmed down the bodice, reached her head back as far as she could manage so as to make sure everything was in order. ‘Rotten things they are. It’s a Communion. What do you need a veil for?’
‘Does Paula Dunne have a veil?’
‘She won’t shut up about it.’
‘Tiaras are the way forward I think,’ he said. ‘In my opinion. To hell with veils.’
Vanessa took her eyes off him for a split second and he pulled up his trousers underneath the sheet. She heard the movement and turned back around, staring unashamedly, trying to catch one last glimpse of his zigzagged underpants. He pulled out the bit of sheet that had been tucked inside his trousers with the maneuver, stood up and swayed a tad from the blood rush to the head. He found his t-shirt and put it on, his shoes then put them on. The socks were abandoned.
‘What’s your job?’
‘I’m a sparky. I wire houses and factories for electricity, make sure it all has power and lights and all that sort of thing. Yeah—electrician.’
‘You make much dosh?’
‘Not these days. Work’s a bit scarce actually,’ he said and waited for her to ask another question but she did not. Instead she tucked her bottom lip beneath the top one, folded her arms at the same time, her heel the only part of her right foot that touched the carpet.
‘Right, right, Communion,’ he said and reached for his wallet in his back pocket. He found a twenty and a fiver. It was the last bit of money he had until Thursday’s dole. He pinched the fiver inside the wallet and looked at her looking at the notes. He took out the twenty and gave it over.
‘Cheers,’ she said, slipping it inside her bag. ‘What about the five?’
‘You want the five, too?’
‘What do you need it for?’
He handed over the five, too. She slipped it inside her bag with the twenty.
‘You want the wallet and all?’ he asked.
‘No. I’ve a purse.’
The bathroom door opened and she came out dressed in a coral pants suit and white blouse, her hair cleaned, her face scrubbed, teeth brushed and rinsed twice with mouthwash. She looked rejuvenated and put a spring in her step to show it, to show she was rushed, to show he had to skedaddle. She plugged in the hairdryer and began shaking it, running it through wet strands of her hair.
‘Vanessa, are you ready?’
‘I’ve to put my socks and shoes on.’
‘Well go do it will you, or we’ll be late.’
Vanessa went to her room. He stood up and shifted weight from one foot to the other. She looked at him in the reflection of the dresser’s mirror and shook the hairdryer harder through her hair.
‘I’ll head off, get out of your way,’ he said.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Any of the buses at the end of the road will take you into town.’
‘Brilliant. Good luck with it.’
‘What?’ she said, the noise of the dryer getting the better of the conversation. She switched it off and turned around to look at him, making sure not to smile but not to frown either. Neutral, keeping it neutral.
‘I just said—good luck with the Communion. She’s a nice kid. She’s funny.’
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘If I could stop her swearing.’
‘It’s a phase with them, isn’t it?’ he said. He was doing well. Mature, like.
‘She’s just doing it to get noticed.’
‘Well, I think you have the next big ballerina on your hands there. I’ll be watching out for her.’
‘Right. Yea,’ she said, turning back around.
‘No, it’s just that I’m off to Canada soon. Toronto.’
‘I remember you saying,’ she said.
‘No, I meant,’ he said and stopped. She watched him raise his hand to behind his ear like he was about to ask a question in school but not quite sure whether it was a stupid one or not. He took a step to her, outstretched a hand, made to say something and decided against it.
‘Bye,’ he said finally, his eyes opened hard, suggesting she could maybe say something instead.
‘Bye now,’ she said, switching the hairdryer back on and getting to work on the strands still wet. He turned. She got on with drying. He hurried down the stairs and opened the front door then closed it behind him. The rain had started and the puddles collected. Drops dripped from the locked bicycles and that was it really. A day for the ducks. The houses snoozed on, curtains still drawn. The cars stayed parked, nobody to work, nobody for a jog, nobody venturing out for fresh orange juice or breakfast rolls, nobody even able to look at food, a time fit for only paracetemol and maybe a hammer over the head to knock them out until Monday. He looked up at the bedroom window.
‘It’ll be fine,’ Vanessa said out through the letterbox.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘You want a loan of some money?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll be alright.’
(c) David McGrath, 2014
David McGrath has won the Peirene Press Short Story Competition, StorySlam at the Royal Festival Hall and was highly commended in the Manchester Fiction Prize 2013. He has been published in Litro, Open Pen, Words with Jam's new anthology An Earthless Melting Pot, and the League's Weird Lies anthology.
Gloria Sanders trained at Drama Studio London. She also performed The Clock, a devised one-woman show, at the Brighton Fringe, and The White Bear. She is a narrator for the RNIB, and her poetry has been featured in inc.zine and Annexe Magazine. She is chuffed to be lying to you on behalf of the League.
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