The Thing About December

by Donal Ryan

  In September the cooking apples abroad on the trees beside the haggard would be bursting with ripeness and only barely clinging to the branch. Some would have turned to rot on the tree; more would have fallen to the earth – the barest puff of a breeze would dislodge a big fat cooking apple in September. You had to be quick to get to the windfalls before the scavenging insects. You’d pick one up thinking it to be good and turn it to see the other side was brown mush moving with worms and you’d fling it from you in disgust. You had to twist each apple off gently; otherwise no bud would reappear on that spot the next year. Only thick ignoramuses yanks apples off of trees, Mother always said. Like Uncle Frank – you couldn’t let that fella out to fill a bag for Theresa or you’d have nare a cooking apple of your own to bake a tart ever again. He’d wreck before him, that fella. He didn’t fit with nature.

  September had its miserable strictness of school’s restart and freedom’s loss, its watery, mocking sun, and its big anti-climaxes above in Croke Park, but it also had tarts and crumble made with the finest of Mother’s own apples that were still ripening an hour before, and that nearly made up for everything.

  JOHNSEY WOULD fill four or five boxes with apples for the bakery every year. He wondered whether it was best just to leave it this year, or to fill them as normal and have them ready, or to put a box up on his carrier and cycle down to the Unthanks and drop them in and sit down in the kitchen and drink a cup of tea and watch Herself cooking and listen to Mary with the Cod Eye getting mar dhea chatted up by them blackguards from the building site out the Ashdown Road and not mention anything to do with land or zones or newspapers or other people’s plans or consortiums or what have you. Wouldn’t that be the right job?

  It was all the one for a finish: the Unthanks arrived in their old Nissan Bluebird on the Tuesday after the terrible Sunday and Johnsey said nothing about the land thing and nor did they and the three of them crossed the haggard and gathered windfalls in near silence. But now the comfort was gone from that silence and embarrassment had taken its place and they loaded the full bags into the Bluebird’s big boot and Himself praised the quality of the apples and promised to prune the trees back and Johnsey said twas grand, he’d do it and Himself said no, he loved doing it, wasn’t it a fine excuse to be out from under Herself’s feet? And he winked at Johnsey in mock conspiracy and Johnsey laughed and Herself asked what were they laughing at as she took Pyrex dishes of dinners out of the Bluebird and took them in to the fridge and everything was lovely and normal and comfortable and destroyed forever at the same time.

  AFTER THE UNTHANKS had gone away and left Johnsey looking out the window after them with one of those painful lumps in his throat that are surely a blockage caused by a build-up of the words you should have spoken, a red car drove slowly past the gate. There was a blonde girl driving it. He heard the car pull up in the gravel out by the road, and a door slam. The blonde girl walked back past the gate. And a few seconds later, she passed up again in the opposite direction. She slowed and half turned to face into the yard and squinted against the sun and leaned a bit forward as though she needed to get closer to get a better look but didn’t dare pass in until she was sure of her place and Johnsey squinted back at her through the cat-scratched kitchen window and Mother of Divine God, it was Siobhán.

  Maybe it’s better that a man is given no notice of the arrival of a beautiful woman. That way he can’t be expected to have readied himself and can be more easily forgiven for looking and sounding like a fool opposite her. Either way, Johnsey knew, he would make an awful bags of it. He couldn’t hide behind eye bandages or incapacity now. He’d have to be a proper person. Please God let Mumbly Dave arrive. She was in through the gateway now, starting to pick her steps through the caked yard, waving in at him with one hand and reaching for an invisible handrail with the other to steady her passage. He could see that she was only a couple of steps away from Daddy’s boot-worn track – she’d surely stumble and fall. That thought poked him in the back and propelled him out along the hall, his heart kicking at his ribcage. Just as he came through the front door into the yard, the edge of the rut grabbed the sole of her shoe and she was nearly toppled. But she righted herself with two quick steps forward and said Jesus, is this place booby-trapped?

  What can you say to something like that? No? Yes? Ha ha? Mumbly Dave would have a funny reply out inside of a second; he’d be over to her like a hot snot, taking her hand to help her across the uneven ground, smart words spilling from his lips. The best Johnsey could do was: What are you doing here? And he’d hear himself saying those stupid words over and over again for hour after terrible, tortured hour that night. Siobhán said Oh, well that’s fucking lovely! After I risk my life to find you in this … bog! And he tried to take it back: Oh cripes no, I didn’t mean that, it’s great to see you, I just wasn’t expecting … And she said Well, I did ask my social secretary to liase with yours, but that girl is just useless these days. And he looked at her like a gom and said Ha? Name of God, what was she on about? Oh, she was joking. Oh right, he said. Ha ha ha!

  He could hear himself: the thickness of his voice, the fakeness of his stupid laugh. It was like the time Mother had made him go on the phone to her brother in Australia on account of he was dying and he was to ask him how was he and tell him he’d say a prayer for him but he knew that Mother’s brother was just as embarrassed as he was and he’d have preferred not to have to make small talk with imbecile nephews he’d never seen in the flesh and now never would on account of his kidneys were doing for him and Johnsey burned with mortification and misery and he could hear everything he was saying echoed back along the line from Australia a second after he said it and he could clearly hear how foolish he sounded and his uncle was dead a week later and Mother didn’t cry at all nor hardly seemed bothered but then she dropped a small box of eggs that she was only after collecting in the haggard one morning three weeks later and she started crying and didn’t stop for the rest of that day.

  His brain was pulling against him big time. It was giving him no digout with all this talking, but it’d have a great time for itself later, playing it all back to him, tormenting him, making him want to saw his own tongue off with Mother’s old carving knife. It was leaving him down badly, as usual. Making him think of ancient phone calls to Australia and dropped eggs and tearful mothers and what have you in the middle of this emergency situation. What in the name of all that’s good and holy was he going to do? Oh God, why send an angel to a fool? What a waste.

  She stood and looked at him and he stood looking back at her and he could feel the burning redness igniting around his neck and creeping up along his jaw and she was wearing one of those dresses some women wear in the summer that look as though they’d feel silky to the touch and the sun was playing with her hair and if the world halted itself there and then and the sky exploded and rained down fire he wouldn’t have been able to look away. Siobhán asked was he going to invite her in or would she have to stand there in a puddle of cowshit all day? Mumbly Dave would have said something like You could eat your dinner off of that yard, girl, the only cow that does be trotting along here now is Bridie McDermott bringing Johnsey the rent! But Johnsey had no such talent for smartness and he just told her to come in, come in.

  SIOBHÁN TOLD HIM it wasn’t every patient got home visits. As a matter of fact, he was the first patient she’d ever visited at home. She walked from the hall to the good room and looked at everything and then she crossed the hall to the kitchen and she examined the table and the couch and said Jesus, do you have a cleaner or something? Or did you get married since I saw you last? And all he could do was stand in the hall looking at her like a gom and he just about caught himself in time before he started scratching himself.

  No, no, I do be tipping away myself at it, like, while I’m waiting for D … How do you explain that you only clean your own house because it makes the time go faster while you wait for the sound of Mumbly Dave’s exhaust pipe? There’s a word for th
at manner of carry on: pathetic. The last thing you want to do in front of a woman is look pathetic. Only having one friend is pathetic. Only having any sort of a life because of that one friend bothering with you and being constantly frightened he’ll get bored and drop you is worse again. It could even be worse than having none; at least then you could make out to yourself that you’re too tough to need anyone, you plough a lonely furrow, you’re a lone wolf, like John Rambo or your man in Mission: Impossible.

  Waiting for who? Have you a girlfriend? You haven’t, I know. I kept track of you, my little blind farmer boy! Sure I had to keep tabs on you. That wasn’t a great picture of you in the paper. You wouldn’t want to be relying on that now for attracting women. You’d nearly be as well off chancing your arm in Lisdoonvarna than plastering your face all over the newspapers. Johnsey told her how that newspaper fella with the camera had snuck up on him and she said he must have. Anyway, who do you be waiting for? Dave, he told her. What? Mumbly Dave?

  Her eyes widened and one side of her top lip twisted upwards. Was this the way women talked to men all the time? As though they were trying to catch you out or make a fool of you? Was this flirting, he wondered? It was certainly embarrassing enough. When she used tease him inside in the hospital it was funny; he knew she was only pulling his leg. Now it seemed like she was nearly insulted that he and Dave were friends and the jokiness in her voice and her mar dhea surprise sounded like it was half sourness. The shock of her arrival, her scrutiny of the house, her high-pitched questions, the scalding loveliness of her – there were too many things attacking his brain at once. He thought of a cartoon where a lad’s head would burst like a balloon. He felt sweat pricking through the skin of his forehead. His brain could marshal not a word to send to his mouth. Oh Lord, he was coming undone. If she went at his mickey now, he’d probably pass out. But then he heard a distant trumpet that rose and fell with the changing of gears – Mumbly Dave was on his way, to save him from himself! And to save Siobhán’s lovely eyes from the sight of his exploded brains dripping down the kitchen wall. Thank God for Mumbly Dave.

  IF YOU PUT two boy rats in a cage together, they’ll more than likely get on the solid finest, provided they’re given a bit to eat and aren’t driven mad with the hunger. Put in a girl rat with them, though, and no matter how much food they’re given, they’ll tear strips off of each other over her and one will kill the other for a finish. That’s something Daddy used tell Johnsey to let him know how women could cause terrible trouble for men. Mother used tell him shut up out of it and stop poisoning the boy against women and signs on he used a story about rats to illustrate his point – sure weren’t all men the same as rats, really, with their little beady eyes and their little pointy snouts twitching the minute they see a flash of skirt? Then Daddy would smile and tell Johnsey about Helen of Troy and Kitty O’Shea and Maud Gonne and the trouble they caused for men and the downfalls from greatness they brought about, but he’d be all the time casting an eye over to Mother and she’d be ironing or baking and smiling away and shaking her head and Johnsey would know then that Daddy was only trying to get a rise out of her and he didn’t really believe all that stuff about how women were awful troublemakers. Still though, he couldn’t help remembering Daddy’s story about the two boy rats and the girl rat as he listened to Mumbly Dave and the same auld smart talk out of him opposite Siobhán as he used be going on with in the hospital.

  The Lovely Voice, in his house. Imagine! And Mumbly Dave, spouting smartness and doing his best to show off, and she laughing at his auld spiel; it was an almost unbearable pleasure. But now he couldn’t sit there dumbly and listen and feel the mad mixture of laughter and jealousy bubbling in his stomach like he had in the hospital; he had no blindness or sickness or weakness to hide behind, he’d have to try and be a proper person who throws out whole lines of conversation, all casual and cool and without making people lean closer and look embarrassed and ask him to repeat himself. He might as well try and sprout a pair of wings and fly about the yard.

  Mumbly Dave was telling Siobhán all about Johnsey being a property tycoon and how he was sticking to his guns for his twenty mill and letting them all go and shite and Siobhán looked at him and tutted and said it was a shame they were let say what they want in newspapers, there should be some kind of law about telling lies about people like that, and Mumbly Dave said Sure what lies, isn’t it true that Johnsey’s a bad yoke, sure look at him, he’s the worst kind of a blackguard, he’d sell his granny to the highest bidder and Johnsey knew what that was – it was sarcasm – which Daddy had often told Mother was the lowest form of wit.

  Sometimes it was hard to tell if someone was saying good things or bad things when there was sarcasm involved, but Johnsey was fairly sure that by calling him a blackguard and saying he’d sell his granny, Mumbly Dave was actually saying that the opposite was true and that all the stuff about him being a greedy divil and holding the poor developers over a barrel and destroying the whole village’s future was lies. Why is it at all that things can’t be said simple?

  Siobhán said she had to go; she had to see about a job looking after an old couple in their house out towards Rooska, seeing as that fat cow was due back from her maternity leave in a few weeks. Mumbly Dave said Yerra Jaysus, she hadn’t even been asked had she a mouth on her, and Johnsey jumped up from the edge of the couch and offered to make tea and cursed whatever slowness was in him that stopped him knowing to do these things without having to be told by Mumbly Dave. There wasn’t as much as a barmbrack or a cut of tart in the house. Why had he to eat everything as soon as he got it? Should he offer her a proper drink? He said there was a bottle of red wine there if she’d like a glass, it wasn’t in the fridge, though, and Mumbly Dave laughed all shrill like a little girl and looked at Siobhán and asked had she ever heard the bate of that? Red wine in the fridge, ha ha ha, and Johnsey thought again about the two rats who got on the finest until the girl rat came along and isn’t it a fright to God to say a man could have violent thoughts about his only friend over a bit of a slagging that wouldn’t cost him a thought normally, but delivered in front of Siobhán was like a stab into the heart?

  Siobhán said she was grand, she’d have a drink the next time she called – the roads were crawling with guards lately. If she got this job looking after these two auld geriatrics in Rooska she could call loads, because it’d be on the road out. Mumbly Dave told her to call any time, as if it was up to him to be telling people to call to Johnsey’s house. They walked her out to the gate and Mumbly Dave laughed at her car and called it a nun-mobile and Siobhán laughed as well and looked back at Mumbly Dave’s yahoo car and said Little willy, big exhaust, and Mumbly Dave, who could talk a dead man back to life, just stood there with a wounded face on him and a fake smile painted across it, and Johnsey knew he was thinking about how Siobhán had probably actually seen his mickey inside in the hospital, and her slagging therefore had an edge to it like a new razor, and Johnsey caught himself enjoying Mumbly Dave’s torment and felt ashamed. She wrote a number on a tissue from a plastic packet with a little black pencil that she had in her handbag and handed it to Johnsey and said Send me a text or whatever and we’ll arrange something, and Johnsey took it and his hand was shaking a bit as he reached for it and he wondered did she notice the shake and if she did, did she know he was shaking with nerves just from being near her and did she think he was an awful weirdo?

  Mumbly Dave was quiet for a while after Siobhán had gone. When he eventually came back around to being himself, he told Johnsey how Siobhán must have the hots for him big time. Why else would she have called to his house and gave him her phone number? You didn’t see her calling to his house, did you? She didn’t give him her number, written with an eyebrow pencil, which every fucker knows is a way women have of telling a fella they want to ride them. Why would someone like Siobhán want to be hanging around with a fella like Johnsey? Mumbly Dave told him not to be thinking too much about her reasons – if you won the lotte
ry would you ask the crowd above in Dublin what their reasons were for having a lottery in the first place? You would in your hole; you’d snatch the big cheque off of them, hand and all. A wan like Siobhán bothering with you without having to be begged – for a lad like you, that’s like winning the lottery. Seeing as you’re determined to refuse all them millions on offer from Herbie and the gang, you may as well take what’s offered in other departments. Big land deal or no big land deal, you’re still a farmer, kind of, anyway, and that counts for a lot with wans of a certain age and inclination. It’s not your sultry good looks is after attracting her, that’s for sure.

  Mumbly Dave told Johnsey there was no sense trying to do a line with a girl in this day and age without a mobile phone. Texts are the new tool of seduction. And you, my friend, are a tool, he said, but not one skilled at seduction. You could have a wan all warmed up and gagging for action before you met her at all with a few nicely worded text messages. He said not to worry; he’d look after that side of things. You also need a couple of them nice shirts that you don’t tuck into your pants. And pantses are out – you has to wear jeans, boot cut jeans – not them fuckin Lees or Wranglers from the eighties. And boots are out; you has to wear nice slip-on shoes. But not black ones, they has to be brown and pointy-looking. And you has to make your hair look as though you don’t bother your hole combing it. And you can’t be going around in a big puffy jacket with a hood or a duffel coat; you has to get a nice blazer or a leather jacket, but not one that looks new; like it has to be new but look old. And some lads only pulls their trousers halfway up their arses so you can see the tops of their jocks, but you had to wear right cool jocks in that case, with Calvin Klein written on them – the old three-pack Penneys Y-fronts wouldn’t do. Yerra, forget about that anyway, you’d probably get bate up again if anyone saw you.