Copyright

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in 2015 by Liberties Press

Copyright © Caitriona Lally 2015

Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover illustrations © Shutterstock.com

Book design by Fritz Metsch

Illustrations by Karen Vaughan

Caitriona Lally asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008324407

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2018 ISBN: 9780008324414

Version: 2018-09-25

Praise for Eggshells:

‘Inventive, funny and, ultimately, moving’

Guardian

‘Full of action and humour as its beguiling narrator takes her surreal jaunts around the capital in search of a portal to another world … The black comedy gives the book a jaunty quality that complements the dazzling trip around Dublin’

The Irish Times

‘Delightfully quirky … Vivian’s voice alone is enough to keep us reading, charmed by her unique brand of manic, word-hoarding wit’

Irish Independent

‘The book’s style calls to mind The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Engaging and humorous’

The Dublin Inquirer

‘This urban fairy tale delivers something that is both subtle and profound in its examination of the human soul. Magically delicious’

Kirkus

‘Highly original, Lally has a unique voice as a writer’

Sunday Independent

‘A whimsical jaunt through Dublin and a modern take on many old Irish folktakes … Humorous, charming, and original’

Booklist

‘Eggshells expresses a Joycean sense of the ordinary. A brilliantly realised first-person narrative … a memorable debut’

Totally Dublin

‘Caitriona Lally has created a character of almost maddening originality’

Wales Arts Review

‘A highly impressive debut … a touching account of difference, showing how life must feel for somebody who cannot conform’

Books Ireland

Epigraph

Sometimes the fairies fancy mortals, and carry them away into their own country, leaving instead some sickly fairy child … Most commonly they steal children. If you “over look a child,” that is look on it with envy, the fairies have it in their power. Many things can be done to find out if a child’s a changeling, but there is one infallible thing—lay it on the fire … Then if it be a changeling it will rush up the chimney with a cry …

—W. B. YEATS

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Eggshells

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

About the Author

About the Publisher

1

WHEN I RETURN to my great-aunt’s house with her ashes, the air feels uncertain, as if it doesn’t know how to deal with me. My great-aunt died three weeks ago, but there is still a faint waft of her in every room—of lavender cologne mixed with soiled underthings. I close the front door and look around the house with fresh eyes, the eyes of a new owner. My great-aunt kept chairs the way some people keep cats. There are chairs in every room, in the hall, on the wide step at the bottom of the stairs and on the landing. The four chairs on the landing are lined up like chairs in a waiting room. I sometimes sit on one and imagine that I’m waiting for an appointment with the doctor, or confession with the priest. Then I nod to the chair beside me and say, “He’s in there a long time, must have an awful lot of diseases or sins, hah.” Some of the chairs are tatty and crusty, with springs poking through the fabric. Others are amputees. There are chairs in every colour and pattern and style and fabric—except leather, which my great-aunt said was the hide of the Devil himself. I go into the living room and sit in a brown armchair and examine the urn. It’s shaped like a coffin on a plinth—I chose it because death in a wooden box is more real than death in a jar. I shake it close to my ear, but I can’t hear a thing, not even a cindery whisper. I prise open the lid. The scratch of wood on wood is like a cackle through the ashes, the last laugh of a woman whose mouth never moved beyond a quarter-smile. I’ve seen people on television scattering ashes in significant places, but the only significant places in my great-aunt’s life were her chair and her bed, and if I scatter them there, I’d be sneezing Great-Aunt Maud for years to come.

I take the address book from the shelf and sift through it. There are a few A’s and C’s, a couple of G’s, an H and some M’s, but my great-aunt seems to have stopped making friends when she hit N. I take some envelopes out of the desk drawer and write the addresses on the envelopes: twenty-two in all. Twenty-six would be a symmetrical person-per-alphabet letter ratio, so I take the telephone directory from the shelf and flick through from the end of the alphabet. The pages are Bible-thin, and my fingers show up as ghostly grease-prints. I decide on Mr. Woodlock, Mrs. Xu, Mr. Yeomans and Miss Zacchaeus.

In school we sang about the tax collector who cheated people out of money. “Zacchaeus, Zacchaeus, Nobody liked Zacchaeus,” I sing, or I think I sing, but I don’t know what other ears can hear from my mouth. I open my laptop and type:

Hello,

You knew my Great-Aunt Maud. Here are some of her ashes.

Yours Sincerely,

Vivian

I print twenty-two copies of the letter, but it looks bare and mean, so I draw a pencil outline of the coffin-shaped urn in the blank space at the bottom. Now I type a different letter to the four strangers.

Hello,

You didn’t know my Great-Aunt Maud. You probably wouldn’t have liked her, unless you’re very tolerant or your ears are clogged with wax.

Yours Sincerely,

Vivian

I print four copies of this letter and fold all the letters into envelopes. I add a good pinch of ashes to each envelope and lick them all shut, my tongue tasting the bitter end of gluey. The pile of envelopes looks so smug and complete, I feel like I’m part of a grand business venture. Now I peer into the urn. The small heap of ashes, probably an elbow’s worth, looks like a tired old sandpit after the children have gone home for tea. I close the lid, put the urn on the bookshelf between two books, and sit down. I look around the room. The idea of owning something so unownable is strange: owning a house-sized quantity of air is like owning a patch of the sky. I laugh, but the sound is mean and tinny, so I take in a lung of air and laugh again—this one is bigger, but too baggy. I’ll save my laughs until I have worked on them in private. If anyone asks, I’ll tell them that I’m between laughs.

My glance keeps returning to the urn; I’m expecting the lid to open and the burnt eye of my great-aunt to peek out. When they were deciding how to bury her, I said she had always wanted to be cremated. It was a lie the size of a graveyard, but I wanted to make sure she was well and truly dead. I spot a thin slip of a book on the middle shelf and pull it out, wondering how a book could be made from so few words, but it’s a street map of Dublin, its edges bitten away by mice or silverfish. I unfold the map, spread it on a patch of carpet and write in my notebook the names of places that contain fairytales and magic and portals to another world, a world my parents believed I came from and tried to send me back to, a world they never found but I will:

“Scribblestown, Poppintree, Trimbleston, Dolphin’s Barn, Dispensary Lane, Middle Third, Duke Street, Lemon Street, Windmill Lane, Yellow Road, Dame Street, Pig’s Lane, Tucketts Lane, Copper Alley, Poddle Park, Stocking Lane, Weavers’ Square, Tranquility Grove, The Turrets, Cuckoo Lane, Thundercut Alley, Curved Street, The Thatch Road, Cow Parlour, Cowbooter Lane, Limekiln Lane, Lockkeepers Walk, Prince’s Street, Queen Street, Laundry Lane, Joy Street, Hope Avenue, Harmony Row, Fox’s Lane, Emerald Cottages, Swan’s Nest, Ferrymans Crossing, Bellmans Walk, The Belfry, Tranquility Grove, Misery Hill, Ravens’ Court, Obelisk Walk, Bird Avenue, All Hallows Lane, Arbutus Place.”

I close my eyes, circle my finger around the map and pick a point. When I open my eyes, I see that my finger has landed nearest to Thundercut Alley. If a thunderclap or lightning flash can transport characters in films and fairytales to other worlds, visiting Thundercut Alley might scoop me up and beam me off to where I belong, or cleave the ground in two and send me shooting down to another world. When my parents were alive, they tried to exchange me for their rightful daughter, but they must not have gone to the right places or asked the right questions. I crouch at the front door in the hallway and listen; I can’t hear my neighbours, so it’s safe to go out. I walk to the bus stop and stand beside a man wearing a grey jacket with a hood, holding a bottle of cola. He nods at me.

“Baltic, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

I give an exaggerated shiver, because one word seems a fairly meagre response. I think about the seas of the world.

“It’s really more Arctic than Baltic,” I say. “Surely the Arctic is the colder sea.”

“Yeah, yeah love.”

He unscrews the cap from the bottle, pours some on the ground in a brown hissing puddle and balances the open bottle on a wall. Then he takes a brown paper bag containing a rectangular glass bottle from inside his jacket, pours the clear liquid from the glass bottle into the cola bottle, and puts it back inside his jacket. When he takes a sup from the cola bottle, he smiles like he has solved the whole world.

The bus arrives. I get off on O’Connell Street and walk in the direction of the river, passing the bank on the left, which has a carved stone skull of a cow over each side window. A blue-and-white football is wedged beside one window, as if the dead cows had a kick around in the dark of night. I cross the street near a building with the look of a fairytale, and a sign that reads “E Confectioners Hal.” It’s a shoe shop now, but maybe they sell shoe measures of jam or sweets, and the people with the biggest feet have the rottenest teeth. I cross Bachelors Walk to the boardwalk, and head west. The river and the traffic flow east on either side of me, which makes me feel the wrong way around. I stop and sit on the wooden bench and look at the other side of the river. From this angle, the buildings on the south quays look like they were dropped from a height and shoved together, with the Central Bank sticking up behind, like a Lego brick they forgot to paint. When the boardwalk ends, I cross the street and pass solicitors’ offices, bargain furniture shops and dark pubs, until I reach the museum in Collins Barracks. I come here when I need to look at furniture and containers; I’d rather look at the things that hold other things than at the things themselves. I take out my notebook and walk through the museum, collecting names: “Posset Bowl, Mether, Pitcher, Tankard, Water Bottle, Sweetmeat Box, Chalice, Salt Cellar, Monstrance, Sugar Bowl, Goblet, Vase, Trinket Box, Ewer, Jug, Inkstand, Flagon, Hot Water Urn, Decanter, Snuff Box, Patch Box, Cruet Stand & Bottles, Finger Bowl, Carafe, Pickle Jar, Sweetmeat Cup, Chocolate Pot, Coffee Pot, Teapot, Kettle, Cream Ewer, Strawberry Dish, Sugar Basket, Egg Cup, Butter Dish, Tea Caddy, Salver, Cigar Box, Needlework Box, Correspondence Box, Bridal Coffer, Blanket Chest, Calling-Card Box, Travelling Box, Writing Cabinet, Log Carrier, Coal Scuttle, Double-Compartmented Meal Bin.”

Every item in the glass case is labelled with its function. It knows what it’s supposed to hold; its task has been assigned. It is clear and ordered and contained. I peer closely at the snuff boxes. If I tried some snuff, I’d probably sneeze ferociously, but they would be pleasant-smelling sneezes. The ornate chests and trunks are behind glass. The caption says that the bridal coffer is decorated with mother-of-pearl and gilt inlays, brass escutcheons and lacquer. I would like to be decorated with escutcheons, but I probably should find out what they are first. My gravestone could 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.

2

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, the way I’ve seen women do when they talk about their boyfriends and husbands. I won’t have the belly space for two bags of chips, but the man will think I have a “himself,” and I can reheat the leftovers tomorrow. I walk to one side and read the posters on the wall. There’s an ad for discounted meals, a programme for a local festival and a notice about a fundraiser for a smiling woman called Marie. More people come in and I sneak peeps at them to see how they’re dealing with this wait. One leans against the counter and two lean against the window; they look as if they were born to stand in fish bars. I try leaning against the wall, but I haven’t moved my feet and the top part of my body strains at an uncomfortable angle from my hips. A couple of the men are looking at their phones, so I reach into my pocket and pull out mine. I open my inbox, it contains one old message. I read it again.

Vivian,

Maud is getting worse, come to the hospital quickly.

Vivian.

This is the only unprompted message my sister has ever sent me, so I can’t delete it; it’s like a line from a family poem. My sister and I have the same name. She was born first and has more rights to the name; I whisper mine in apology. I would like a nickname, but nicknames must be given, not taken. I hear the soft thud of chips on paper.

“Salt and vinegar?”

“Yes, please.”

He hands me the bags and I pay. I clasp them tight, one in each hand, and walk home like I have won a grand potato prize. Next morning I wake to the voices of my neighbours, Mary and Bernie, talking outside. I get out of bed and open the curtains a jot, then I stand behind the curtain and watch. Mary and Bernie live on either side of me, like a sandwich. They are white sliced pan because they know everything, and I am mild cheddar.

“Lauren’s communion is on the twenty-first, I’m putting a bit by every week,” Bernie says.

She has the most great-grandchildren so she is superior.

“I’m looking forward to Shannon’s christening,” Mary shouts over her.

“They’ve booked the Skylon, should be a lovely day out—”

“—then Ryan’s wedding is on the twenty-eighth,” Bernie says.

“I’ve the dress got and all.”

They each talk as if the other wasn’t there. They would shove their words into the ears of a cockroach if they thought it would listen.

“Any word from herself?”

Mary nods in the direction of my house.

“Last I heard she’s advertising for a friend,” Bernie says.

“Jaysus.”

They shake their heads. At least they listen to each other when they’re talking about me. I stay as still as I can, still as a wall, still as a girl in a painting. I used to win musical statues in school, but here the prize is to be not-noticed. When Mary and Bernie have gone into their houses I watch the daytime people pass: elderly people in beige, women with prams, men in tracksuits. There’s a sudden smack of blue and the postman comes out of a house further down the terrace. He’s moving in and out of houses like a needle stitching a hem. He stops at my gate, looks at his bundle of letters and walks to the front door. I listen for the clatter of the letter box, then I run downstairs and look at the hall floor.

There are two envelopes: a large white one and a smaller brown one. My name is handwritten in looped, slanted letters on the brown envelope: “Vivian Lawlor.” It could be the name of a film star or a businesswoman in a suit or an Olympic gymnast—it could be anyone but me. I open it. A man called David from the Social Welfare office will pay me a visit on Wednesday. I put it down and pick up the second envelope and sniff, it doesn’t smell of people at all. I open it and stop reading after “To the House-holder.” Even though I don’t like the dead hope the envelope gives me, I like the fact that circulars are delivered to a street off the North Circular Road. I’d like to use this topic of conversation at the bus stop, but I can’t find a way to introduce it casually. I would need to get to a second conversation before I could announce those kinds of things.

I go into the kitchen and take a red bowl from the cupboard, because I need some red in my day. Then I take the least battered-looking spoon from the drawer—I want to wear out the cutlery evenly. Next I take out the box of cornflakes, scoop up a fistful and scrunch hard. I bring my fist to the bowl and open it, watching the orange silt form a small heap. I repeat the process three times then I pour in a good dash of milk until the corn dust is sodden, and eat. After breakfast, I go up to my bedroom and climb inside the wardrobe. I tap the wood at the back, but the door to Narnia hasn’t opened today so I close my eyes, feel around for a jumper and pair of jeans and climb out. I get dressed without adding water to my body or looking in a mirror. I want to grow into my smell. I want to grow out of my appearance. I want a smell-presence and a sight-absence. The mirrors were covered with sheets when my great-aunt died, and I haven’t uncovered them since. I pick up my bag, go downstairs and stand in the hall, listening. I time my comings and goings around my neighbours’ Mass trips, pension collections and shopping expeditions; I time my life around theirs. I can’t hear anything, so I let myself out and pull the door quietly behind me. I repeat safe safe safe in my mind, and it seems safe safe safe until Bernie’s head pops up—she’d been kneeling down, weeding the garden.

“Ah, Vivian, there you are!”

I think, Where else would I be? And I stand still and clenched, waiting to soak up her paragraphs. She speaks whole troughs of words, words about the priest who upped and died in the middle of his sermon and the neighbour who had a stroke and the other neighbour who’s been diagnosed with cancer and the jobs that aren’t there and the foreigners that are taking the jobs that are there and the social welfare benefits the foreigners are getting and the benefits the likes of me and you aren’t getting. Her sentences leave no gaps for me to fill, so I take advantage of the word-torrent and start to creep further and further away until she is shouting louder words about the government cutting her pension and my feet are walking down the street away away away and I am free. “Poor Vivian,” I’ve heard her call me, but she is the poor one, with her rage and conniptions.

I walk through Phibsborough and head down towards Constitution Hill, passing King’s Inns Court. Some letters have been blue-ed out so that it reads “K_N_ _ _O_RT.” “Knort,” I say aloud—a lovely word, but only if the “K” is silent and reassuring. One arm of the “T” has been blue-ed out—it looks like an upside-down and back-to-front “L”—so I try saying it some place between a “T” and an “L.” I turn left onto Western Way, and then right onto Dominick Street. I don’t go into the church today, because I’m too unsettled from Bernie’s ravings to enjoy the silence. I have no religion, but I like big silent echoey buildings with seats all facing one thing. I would like to believe in that thing they are facing. I would like to believe in something so much that I would turn myself inside out for it. I wave at the carved stone heads staring down from the church spires. Some of them look quite serious, as if they don’t approve of my doings, but one of them looks like she’s on my side. I call her Caroline, a nice open name with a gaping “C,” like a gum-filled toothless grin. I cross Parnell Street and head onto O’Connell Street. The statues this end of the street have outstretched arms—Parnell, Larkin, Jesus at the taxi rank—all have arms agape in half a hug. I walk down the middle island of O’Connell Street, by a group of taxi drivers chatting at the rank. When the first driver on my left gets into his car and drives around the island, the other drivers go to their cars, open the drivers’ doors, grip the insides of the cars and push them forward to close the gap. They might be birthing calves or playing tug of war or straining against the weight of an automated world.

I cross at the Spire onto North Earl Street, passing the statue of James Joyce with his legs crossed. He looks easy to topple and, if I had to read Finnegans Wake, I’d probably try to topple him. I skip the bustling café on the corner—it’s all show-face and windows—and go into the long narrow café a few doors down. I order coffee and a chocolate eclair. The staff here know me and are kind; they greet me with short sentences that end in “love.” I like living in a city where I am mostly unknown, and going into small places where I am known. There are metal knives and forks in the cutlery holder but only plastic teaspoons, probably to deter the masked spoon thief who steals spoons from the city’s cafés to build a gigantic spoon tower. I sit at the table nearest to the toilets, at the back, and take out my notebook, which has kind blank pages that don’t scream at me to stay within the lines. I make a List of Things That I Like: “Conkers, Sherbert, Gold Ingots, The Smell of Petrol, Dessert Trolleys, Graveyards, Sneezes, Terrapins, Scars that Tell Stories, The Number 49, The Smell of Pencil Parings.”

Now I imagine I can smell pencil parings, so I sniff deeply. The man at a nearby table turns to look at me. He has three mobile phones laid out like playing cards on the table in front of him. One of them rings and he turns back to answer it. I continue with my list: “Donkey’s Tufty Heads, Marshmallowed Silences, Butter Lumps, Elephants, Zoos in Winter, Pencils that Write Sootily, The Name Aloysius, Anything Egg-Shaped, Moths that Think They Are Butterflies, Hospital Noises, Liquorice Sweets in the Shape of Pink Toilet Rolls, The Smell of Garden Sheds, Damp Canteen Trays, Marbles with Coloured Swirls.”

I’ve smeared some chocolate from the eclair onto the page, so I include “Chocolate Eclair,” with an arrow to explain the stain. The man in front of me is still talking on his phone. I take out mine and put it on the table. There’s a greyish tint to the screen: I have a message! I open the message and an unfamiliar number appears. It reads: “Hello, Vivian, I am Penelope. Can you meet me in the tearooms beside the hardware tomorrow at eleven?”

As I re-read the message, my belly feels like a pot boiling over. I have a new friend called Penelope who spells out her numbers; it just can’t get much better than this. Now I decide to make a List of Words That I Like. I start off with “Propane and Butane.” I want to go on a camping trip just so I can use these words. I don’t know exactly what they are, but I imagine myself saying to the person in the next tent, “My propane’s running low, mind if I borrow some?” Or I could show off my camping experience with an abbreviation, “I’m all out of bute, have you any to spare?” I’ve written down “Propane and Butane” because they go together, but now it looks like “and” is one of my favourite words, which would be like saying that flour is my favourite food. I scratch out “and” and write: “Propane, Butane, Smear, Pufferfish, Trodden, Eiderdown, Plethora (but only the way I pronounce it, pleh-THOWE-ra), Beachcomber, Mischief, Bumble Bee.”

I like the words “Bumble Bee” so much that I once said them over and over until they stopped making sense as words, and became meaningless babble. I drain the last of my coffee—I love meals that are all puff and froth and little else besides—and walk up North Frederick Street, my knees crunching like overcooked biscuits. If I have biscuit knees, maybe I have chocolate blood and a blancmange brain, a Hansel and Gretel house of a body. When I get home, I trace my route. Today I walked the shape of a head with a hollow scooped out of the back, and a quiff of hair blown flat to the front. I place it on the kitchen table, next to yesterday’s route.

To celebrate my success in finding a Penelope, I pour a dash of my great-aunt’s wine into a mug. It tastes sweet and sneezy but it isn’t cold. There’s no ice in the freezer so I drop some frozen peas into mug; now it looks like a diseased pond. I sit on the blue velvet armchair, the kind of chair an off-duty policeman might sit in, and drink with my lips pursed to keep the peas out. After some large gulps, I feel garrulous and wine-smug. I don’t want to waste this fruity connected feeling, so I call my sister.

“Hello?” She whispers the word, as if the phone has threatened to bite her ear.

“Vivian? Hi, it’s Vivian,” I giggle.

Never has this sentence sounded funnier.

“Vivian? Is everything alright?”

“Everything is better than alright,” I say. “I tried to make thunder, and I advertised for a friend.”

My sister sighs, a sigh so long that I snatch it up in my mouth and spit it right out again.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m cancelling out your sigh.”

“Oh, Vivian.”

Her voice sounds like it’s coming from another century.

“How are Lucy and Oisín?”

“Oh, they’re great. Lucy is … Oisín is …”

Her voice has plumped up again, and she sends a clatter of words down the line. In between sups of wine, I say words like, “wow, ooh, mm, really, oh, aren’t they great, ah that’s nice.” The small words seem to be the most important, but I’m not sure if they count as actual words.

“I’d better go, there’s something in the oven,” I say, when I have run out of new words to use.

“This late?”

“I’m making midnight cake.”

“Oh?”

She has managed to make a full question out of a two-letter word.

“Good night,” I say and hang up.

I write “Call my sister” on a blank sheet of paper, and put a line through it with a pencil. A pen is too neat; a smudged grey line is more like my relationship with my sister. I check the oven, hoping that a cake has magically appeared from my lie, but there are only crumbs and stalactites of old cheese that could feed a family of three gerbils for a week.

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