CC9: A Number of Words

Her eyebrows were communicating her discontent of our life in a moment when those puzzling details should’ve been secured away from my observation. Last week I informed Emer I intended to devote a whole chapter to her discomforting eyebrow manoeuvres. She was gifted in that department, had curled and pointed her eyebrows so much in her time she could’ve been elected easily on the back of their show alone. I only brought it up in jest however because when I thought about it, there wasn’t an awful lot I could say about eyebrows. I wasn’t an art critic, so I wasn’t able to ponder magnificently about the details in a twig, and certainly incapable I was of plotting the design of a fucking eyebrow on paper. I’m firm in the belief that I lack the tools to describe such things in exacting or analogous ways. For example, I’ve spent the last few pages trying to invigorate myself to describe McManus’s for this book, but unfortunately, all I can do is describe it in much the same way as I described Murphy’s earlier. Dark, mahogany, grumblers, etc. I don’t have much of anything else to add to that description, except to say that in McManus’s the grumblers were younger and their vexations less entertaining. I told Emer this, that it was impossible for me to write a book because I wasn’t able to form a description of any reasonable kind.

Raising her eyebrows oddly, she replied ‘Fine! To hell with it! Paint something instead.’
‘I already tried that. Remember the bunch of roses I painted for you for your last birthday?’
‘Roses? Was that what it was? The big fucking red splat?’

I probably admired her father in some background dementia I had. I suppose he was quite good at describing the things he saw using a number of more words to do so than I would do if so challenged with the objective. I’ve never really thought of words as beautiful things, only as bullets or bombs or wounds or whatever, things to be hurt by, or to fight back with. The day I tried to describe our house to practice for the book, the only words I could think up were distressing shells of memory which had little to do with Better Homes and Gardens. The words described mostly bruisings suffered in different parts of the house, or feelings of consternation concerning some dispute or the other. (eg. Describing the kitchen, all I could muster was ‘plates smashing’) Saying this probably won’t give you any confidence in continuing your receptacles to my narration. But do you think I give a fuck? No, I don’t. I can lie all I want, and time won’t hinder it. I’ve only tales to tell, but if you’re reading this now, you should trust the partial lie of it all. Couldn’t all be lie, I’m sure you’ll agree. The only words I’ve ever taken from Emer’s father as having any fucking wisdom at all were ‘Lie to your heart’s content. I guarantee it’ll be true for someone.’ So I’ll continue to feed you some partial lies if you don’t mind yourself. Here, guess which of the following happenings in the story of my life are true.

1. Geary ran up a bill of 3 million deutschmarx.
2. Emer hit Carol with a beautiful roundhouse kick to the head.
3. I killed Emer’s father two days before all of this event and hid his body along the train tracks out near Ravensdale.
4. The nasty little fuckers who were standing outside McManus’s suddenly stormed the place and battered the shit out of everyone with hurley sticks.

Tick your favourite and wait to find out.

Emer relaxed her eyebrows and turned her attention back to Carol who was once again discussing some associate from her work who she was inclined to refer to as Fuckwit.

‘So Fuckwit comes in, being a fuckwit as usual.’
‘There’s a fuckwit just like him where I work,’ Geary.
‘I know, fuckwits everywhere.’
‘The fuckwit I have to deal with everyday is the biggest fuckwit of all.’
‘Not as big a fuckwit as my fuckwit.’
‘You should see my fuckwit, I swear, he’s a massive fuckwit.’
‘Nowhere near the authentic and bona fide fuckwit I’m talking about, so shut your fucking trap, fuckwit!’