Knock Knock, Open Wide

by Neil Sharpson

Like any city-dweller newly alone in the dark countryside, Etain realized that she suddenly believed in ghosts.

Normally she was a walking cacophony of worries and reminders and inner recriminations. A song her mother had taught her early on that she had never been able to get out of her head. But now, there was only peace.

Betty’s first term in UCD passed in a mad rush of stress, drinking too much, eating too little, insecurity, and anxiety that would years later, somehow, bake and cool in her memory as happiness.

That is the purpose of Na Daoine Maithe. The awful and arbitrary cruelty of life, reduced to something that can be bargained with, reasoned, or outwitted. A face, put upon that which cannot be faced.”

Ah, there was the word. “Family.” It was an old Irish word. It meant: “Do nothing. Challenge nothing. Change nothing.”

She fantasized about going to a psychiatrist and being told: “This is what is wrong with you. Take this pill. You are better now.”