The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3)

by Gerald Hansen

  “This,” Fionnuala sobbed, “be’s the thanks I get for the nine months I carted her around in me womb. Betrayed by me own spawn of flesh! Ungrateful cunt! Nine months of torture I had to endure! Nine fecking months!”

  Maureen didn’t know where to look, her daughter having conveniently forgotten the douching with fizzy lemonade and the sucking down of forty cigarettes daily in an effort to miscarry, which had led to Moira’s premature birth at eight months. Maureen roused herself from the chair and, under duress, placed a hand on comfort on her daughter’s shuddering shoulders.

  “Calm yerself down or you’ll give yerself a coronary. Sure, nobody reads books nowadays anyway. It’s all video games and movies.”

  But Fionnuala had heard some people did read for leisure, and not just for daily necessities such as shopping lists and arrest warrants.

  “Aye, but what about all them nancy boy poofters with no mates and Orange cunts with more education than sense,” Fionnuala said, her wracking sobs refused to subside. “Self-important wankers with their smug turning of the pages as if they know more than the rest of us.”

  “Themmuns kyanny even tell ye the amount of times Derry Football Club won the title, or how many fish fingers comes in a packet, but,” Maureen said, trying to make Fionnuala feel better.

  “I kyanny get outta me mind, but, the image of wer Moira hunched over the typewriter, pecking away on the keys the hatred for her own mother. I don’t know what makes me more ill, the vision of her pinched lips as she types away the poison, or the thought of where them lesbo lips finds themselves at night.”

  They both turned with relief as Dymphna slouched into the sitting room, a screaming Keanu over her shoulder, a can of beer in her hand.

  “And this one!” Fionnuala said with contempt, wiping her eyes. “What time do ye call this to be rousing yerself outta bed? Yer granny there’s already on her second meal of the day.”

  “Aye, and I’d be on me third if this one had gotten itself from around the corner and into me gullet in a timely manner,” Maureen harrumphed pointedly.

  Dymphna perched herself on the edge of the couch, lit up a cigarette and reached for the remote.

  “Isn’t it high time ye prised yerself from in front of that telly and made an effort to find some gainful employment?” Fionnuala rattled on.

  Dymphna looked up at her in shock. “Me arse has barely settled itself on the settee, and I haven’t even had time to turn the telly on, sure. I kyanny miss Judge Judy, so I kyanny.”

  Fionnuala herself had sat before Judge Judy many a time, a notebook on her knee and a pencil in her hand, ready to scribble down tidbits on how to scam money from unsuspecting do-gooders. The program was a treasure trove of inspirations. Those Yanks really knew how much a good deed never went unpunished. But Fionnuala was now in no need of inspiration; she had her own scam planned with her new OsteoCare victims, and could almost feel the Maltese sun on her face and Moira’s flesh under her fingernails.

  “Although why ye should even waste the time pounding the pavement looking for employment in this town, I don’t know. A waste of good shoe leather, so it is. All them places ye’ve been sacked from, there’s not an employer left who would give ye a chance. Useless, so ye are.”

  “Never fear, Mammy,” Dymphna said as brightly as her misery would allow. “It won’t be a job I’m needing when I get meself back in the Riddell’s good books. I’ve a date with Rory the morrow night.”

  “That’s about as likely as me turning Proddy,” Fionnuala said. “I tell ye this, but, ye better beat them odds and nab yerself a job, as ye’ve to pay yer own way across the Continent.”

  “I don’t feel comfortable going to Malta to ruin Moira’s big day, but,” Dymphna revealed carefully.

  Fionnuala’s eyes bored like two rusty pneumatic drills towards Dymphna’s.

  “I’m not taking naw for an answer.”

  “Och, leave the wane be,” Maureen said. “And what are ye still doing here anyroad? Ye’ve already fed me. Why’ve ye yer shopping cart with ye? Away off down the town for the messages?”

  “Ye think I’ve money?” Fionnuala snapped. “Naw, I need to cart that case of tins from the Sav-U-Mor round the corner to ours. Filled with revolting shite, themmuns might be, but a cupboard shelf collapsed this morning and I need themmuns to prop it up. I never thought them manky tins would be more use to me than that daughter of mines guzzling the drink over on the settee; the proof be’s in the pudding, but.”

  Fionnuala headed to the kitchen to get the cans, and Maureen turned to Dymphna, sobbing before a shrieking Judge Judy.

  “I know that one be’s a hard-faced bitch,” she said. “She be’s yer mammy, but, and only has yer best interests at heart. A heart of slate, mind, but a heart nevertheless.”

  CHAPTER 25

  URSULA CLOSED THE BOOK, tears of joy threatening to spill from her eyes. She looked up to the heavens, a smile gracing her face for the first time in ages. During the dark days of the fallout from the lottery win in Derry, she had only wanted one kind word, one, spoken towards her. And now here were words, many kind words, written. She wanted to circle them all with a pencil and count them.

  “Thank you, Moira,” she whispered. “Thank you, dear God.”

  It was true there were some kind words directed towards the character of Nelly Frood in the book as well—her being a working-class mother struggling to raise a litter of ungrateful and violent hooligans on a budget and blah, blah, blah—but Ursula assumed Moira had stuck them in only as life insurance against Fionnuala’s wrath. It was so nice of Moira to send her a pre-release copy, together with a note that was as kind to Ursula herself as Moira had been to Una Bartlett in the book. Ursula now knew that, in Malta at least, somebody really did love her. The cozy fantasy life of Lotto Balls of Shame saved in a special part of her mind forever, Ursula set the book aside and forced herself back onto the ledge of nervous exhaustion and free-floating anxiety that, ever since her ID had been stolen by that creature in the casino, was her reality.

  She froze in horror at the beeping from their new motion-sensitive alarm system. Someone had entered their property! Ursula crouched behind the curtains and whimpered at the forms she spied waddling down the path, sure it was the woman from the casino with a male friend. Casino Woman had scrubbed herself up, cut her nails and made herself resemble a respectable member of the human race, and a white one at that. Ursula wasn’t fooled.

  The doorbell rang and Ursula screamed.

  “I’ll get it, dear,” Jed said from some depth of the house. “It’s only Slim and Louella.”

  He looked into the living room on his way to the door, and his heart fell at the frazzled look on Ursula’s face, the hair she had let go to pot, the nibbled fingernails. “Aw, honey,” he said. “It hurts to see you looking so bad. I can always tell them to go away. We can play cribbage another night.”

  “Naw, it’s fine,” Ursula said. “There be’s safety in numbers, after all.”

  He looked at her as if stricken with buyer’s remorse, but truly his heart welled with affection and the need to protect. He had spent a military career protecting the nation, and now he was protecting his wife. For someone who had grown up in a warzone, Jed thought, Ursula was quite vulnerable.

  Jed’s watch beeped and he gulped a pill as he headed for the door. Jed had bottles of pills for high blood pressure and the like strewn all over the house, and a timer on his watch that went off when he had to take one. He got a bit confused as to which one and how many he should take every time it beeped but he hadn’t collapsed yet, so he supposed he must be doing something right.

  Ursula got up from the floor and swallowed a pill of her own (she wasn’t without medication either). Jed opened the door and greeted his brother and his wife.

  “Hey, Jed!” Slim said. “The store was packed today.”

  “Great news!”

  Jed had invested in Sinkers, Scorchers and Shooters, Slim and Louella’s store which sold fish tac
kle and bait, hot sauce and a small selection of arms. They were considering branching out to beef jerky.

  Ursula plastered a smile on her face as she hugged as much of them as the length of her arms would allow. Beauty is skin deep, she kept muttering to herself. She could have used a session on the Stairmaster herself, but there was, she sniffed, a difference between overweight and morbidly obese. A year earlier, though, Slim and Louella had accepted Ursula with open arms—albeit flabby ones—and for that Ursula would always be grateful. Company was difficult to come by in Wisconsin, and it was more than her family did. The cribbage game at the kitchen table, bowls of popcorn and pretzels and kielbasa and crackers and cans of beer spread amongst the cards, would keep Ursula from fantasizing about Casino Woman’s impending attack. She only wished Louella didn’t cheat.

  As they popped the tabs on their beer, Ursula sipped a chilled chardonnay out of a wine glass and shuffled the cards. Their black poodle, Muffins, yipped at their side, trying to get at the snacks. They played away, dealing and cutting flipping cards, calling out how much they amounted to, moving pegs around the scoring board. Money, of course, was being bet, and dollar bills and tarnished quarters piled up before them. Ursula kept a close look at the progress of Louella’s peg around the board. They discussed cheese varieties and Dr. Phil episodes, and which flavors of beef jerky the store should stock. And then the discussion turned to the new security measures.

  “I thought you were gonna get an electric fence?” Slim asked through kielbasa and cheese. “Five.”

  “Nine,” Jed said. “I thought it was a bit too much, though.” He took a gulp of beer.

  “Aye,” Ursula said, “And when I thought about it, nine and seven be’s sixteen, I had a vision of wer poor Muffins fried to a crisp as she did her business in the yard.” She reached under the table with the hand not holding the cards and fed Muffins some popcorn.

  “It must be terrible,” Louella said, “being under all that pressure constantly. Nineteen. Not knowing if that crazy woman’s going to come knocking at your door.”

  “Twenty-three,” said Slim. “You shoulda gone to the police.”

  “Well,” Jed said, “Ursula asked me to bring her, twenty-five, a gun home from the store so she could feel safe.”

  “Aye, twenty-eight,” Ursula said. “I wanted one with a pink pearl handle. Jed was too mortified to order it from the suppliers for me, but.”

  “Thirty!” Louella squealed with delight. “That’s two extra points for me!”

  She counted her peg two spaces around the board with glee, and scooped the kitty to her breasts, Queen of Kitchen Cribbage.

  “So he got me a Glock,” Ursula said, staring into Louella’s eyes.“Who cut these cards?”

  “Why don’t we order a pizza,” Louella suggested.

  Ursula looked down at the empty bowls and was surprised even as she realized she shouldn’t be.

  “I want pepperoni,” Jed said.

  “I want sausage and mushrooms,” Slim said.

  “I want extra cheese,” Louella said. “And jalapenos.”

  “Foreigner!” Slim joshed.

  “And make sure,” Louella said, “it’s a deep-dish with one of those cheese-stuffed crusts.”

  “I’ll pay,” Ursula said.

  She reached for the cash on the table, but their hands shot out.

  “Leave that, honey,” Jed said. “We’re using all our cash to bet. Use the credit card.”

  Ursula excused herself and moved to the hallway to phone. Louella winning again was making her angry and she needed a self-imposed time out. She phoned PizzaPielotta, pitying the poor fool who would have to ride through the miles of tundra to feed them for the sake of a two dollar tip. She put in the order, had to repeat it three times so he could understand, then said as clearly as her annoyance would allow: “I’m using a credit card.”

  The PizzaPielotta man took her details. There was some muttering on the line, then he said: “I’m sorry, ma’am, your credit card isn’t going through.”

  “Och, catch yerself on,” Ursula said. “We’ve a $5000 limit, sure.”

  “It’s been declined.”

  Ursula hung up, relieved she had moved to the hallway; she would have been embarrassed if Slim and Louella had heard. Ursula stabbed the numbers to the credit card company on her phone. She was furious and hungry herself now.

  “Aye? Hello? I’ve just heard me credit card be’s declined, and I know we’ve not charged anything on it.”

  “I’m so sorry, ma’am.”

  “Och, nothing to be sorry for. Ye’ve not done nothing. Have ye?”

  “Er, no. Why don’t you give me your account number?”

  Ursula barked the numbers in the phone and fiddled with the plug of a lamp as she waited. Barbra Streisand’s “Woman In Love” played in her ear, and just as it got to the good bit, the man came back on.

  “Yes, we had to place a temporary hold on your card as there’s been suspicious activity on it.”

  “It’s been here in me handbag all the time, and I can assure ye me handbag never be’s far from me side.”

  “Not that card, ma’am. The other card.”

  Unease filled Ursula. She wished she were still listening to Barbra Streisand instead of this man.

  “The other card?”

  “Yes, the card you opened last month.”

  “I did no such thing!”

  “Yes, you did ma’am. You opened another credit card, and we extended a $5000 line of credit to you. It was gobbled up in three days.”

  Ursula hung up, frenzy in her brain, and ran into the kitchen, where she screamed. The cards in Louella’s hands scattered to the floor.

  “She’s gone and stolen me identity!” Ursula wailed. “She be’s Ursula Barnett now! With $5000 worth of gear bought on me credit!”

  As Jed and Slim stared at her, Louella slipped her peg two holes up the scoring board.

  CHAPTER 26

  “AND WHAT WILL YOU BE doing for the talent show?” Miss McClurkin asked the next girl in line.

  “Irish dancing,” was the reply, the eyes brimming with excitement.

  Miss McClurkin heaved the sigh of a martyr as she dug the point of her pen into the paper on the desk before her.

  “Marvelous choice,” Miss McClurkin said in a voice devoid of emotion. The clueless girl scampered out of the office.

  “What’s your talent?” Miss McClurkin growled to the next.

  “Irish dancing.”

  Miss McClurkin struggled to find her center. The pen flew, and she was unable to look the girl in the eye.

  As the twenty-fifth girl exited her office, Miss McClurkin reviewed the list with dread. She had one girl who would play “Danny Boy” on a recorder and twenty-four girls Irish Dancing. She envisioned the endless stream of stiff arms, flailing legs, clacking shoes and treble jigs, and realized she would have to bring either a stiff drink or a small pistol to turn on herself on the day.

  Next in was Siofra Flood and Grainne Donaldson, with Catherine McLaughlin at their side. What sweet little Catherine could be doing with those hardened thugs the teacher couldn’t imagine. Miss McClurkin inspected Catherine’s arms for bruises of coercion, her eyes for a sign of panic. She saw none, but didn’t know if the girl was intelligent enough to speak to her with her eyes.

  “And what about the three of you?” Miss McClurkin demanded, no longer able to keep up a pretense of civility. Was this to be a group display of Irish Dancing?

  “Me and me mates Grainne and Catherine are to sing and dance to Lady Gaga’s ‘Poker Face.’” Siofra announced.

  Miss McClurkin froze with surprise. Of course, she wasn’t “with it,” as she believed the youngsters now termed it, where the day’s popstars were concerned, but she had spent a long night with a flagon of white zinfandel after her outburst of prudishness in the headmistress’ office, and the alcohol had helped her see she should perhaps allow the world to march its way to eternal damnation. Just the name of th
e artist, let alone the title of the selection—she was sure it had something to do with gambling—made her squirm with unease. And, yes, she was sure she had overheard a trio of housewives at the frozen foods section of the Top-Yer-Trolley cackling on about Lady Gaga being a disgraceful role model for young girls. Hadn’t they discussed something about tarty fashion sense, bad mothering, promiscuity, mental instability and writhing with live snakes? Hadn’t the “singer” even, sin of sins, gotten one of those divorces? Or was that that Britney Spears?

  Miss McClurkin was certain Lady Gaga and her “Poker Face” song were elements not befitting an institution like Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow, but at that moment, she would gladly have invited Satan himself to perform naked cartwheels onstage; anything to avoid another entry of Irish Dancing.

  “What a delight,” she said, cooling; at least that little terror Siofra Flood was showing some imagination. “But I’m afraid I’m not familiar with this tune, er...‘Poker Face?’ Would you be so kind as to give me a printout of the lyrics so I can ensure they are appropriate for the school?”

  “Lyrics?” Siofra asked.

  “Words.”

  “Och, the words be’s fine.”

  “Nevertheless, I must insist on a printout. And, these dance moves... Nothing too suggestive, do you understand?”

  The three girls exchanged a look of confusion.

  “Suggestive, Miss?” Grainne asked. “What be’s that?”

  “Never mind,” Miss McClurkin said with a quick shake of the head. “We’ll see during the rehearsals if modifications need to be made.”