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