For Everyone Concerned by Damien Wilkins

to me. ‘Have you tried kiwifruit?’
    The man moved his head a little. He looked grey, unhappy.
    ‘Have you tried prunes?’
    ‘Yes,’ said the man.
    ‘What about your water intake?’ said the chemist.
    ‘I’ve tried everything.’
    ‘Exercise?’
    ‘Is that my bottle?’ said the man, reaching for the package the chemist held.
    ‘Lots of bran in the mornings?’ said the chemist, still withholding the package.
    Finally the poor man cried out, ‘Please, I can’t shit for anything!’
    That evening when I told my wife the story of the constipated man, she said, ‘So now you feel like your present condition isn’t so bad after all.’
    We were watching TV. It was the ads. My face was a grotesque version of itself.
    ‘No, no,’ I told her. ‘That’s not the point at all.’
    ‘What is the point then?’ she said.
    ‘If I pass out,’ I said, ‘catch me. The point is something to do with the humiliation we put up with. To have one’s private business aired like that.’
    ‘Oh please,’ she said. ‘I’ve had my breast dischargepus in a projectile fashion right into the eye of a stranger.’
    ‘What are you saying? Back to the old “women handle suffering better than men”?’
    ‘All I’m saying is when Dad severed his thumb on the farm, it was Mum who found it and put it in the freezer.’
    ‘Maybe he had other things on his mind, like bleeding etcetera.’
    ‘Next she attended to his bleeding.’
    I reasoned that slaughter was daily in the rural sector. ‘You reach inside cows up to your elbow and pull stuff out,’ I said. ‘It’s an exposed existence.’
    She unmuted the TV. ‘Here,’ she said, and she pulled my feet into her lap. I was lying on the sofa. She took off one sock. God, my feet looked white and ugly in her beautiful brown hands. She began to rub.
    ‘If only you could reach into my mouth and do that,’ I said.
    ‘Don’t be disgusting,’ she said. ‘Now be quiet, I’m watching my programme.’
    For some reason I thought then of a story from her childhood, which I asked for occasionally because it cheered us both up. It was the one about the school bus pulling up outside their place and driving over their pet lamb. It was a funny story, or rather it made my wife laugh a lot when she told it. There was the alcoholic bus driver who’d failed to stop in time andwho then, to cover his tracks, as it were, reversed over poor lambie. My wife could never remember the bus driver’s name, unless she was with her sisters. Together they could dredge it up but they needed each other. What was his name? It always looked hopeless at first, then not so. They’d shout his name, scream his name. The bus driver lived again! Of course for the lamb it was a different story.

conversion
    For weeks after the crash there were threatening phone calls.
    She’s been prepared for a scar, the voice on the phone said. There will be a scar.
    It was the boyfriend’s father making the calls.
    That’s terrible, I said. I’m so sorry.
    She hasn’t got her mood back, he said.
    Her mood?
    You caused her to have these headaches all the time, so she’s always in a bad mood. She’s foul now.
    Oh—
    Once she was sweet, not a temper on her. Now she’s mad with everyone. She’s mad with my son because of what you did out there on that road.
    Look.
    Look yourself. I know where you live.
    By this time I’d usually become silent. I should have put the phone down. Yet I couldn’t hang up on the boyfriend’s father—how many people did I want to hurt.
    Are you listening to me? Imagine being her. Imagine a headache which is with you all day, every minute you have a headache. Can you imagine that? Even from the outside? It gets her in the left temple. I know who you are. She has to comb her hair down because of you.
    Please—
    You are responsible for this and I don’t hear any contrition in your voice. Do you have a feeling of contrition somewhere?
    Yes.
    Don’t agree so quickly. Do you think these are