She fell down the stairs in that perturbing and very particular way of hers. Some might even call it patriotic, although that may be laying it on a bit slavish. You could count on her to look like a German slab of meat. Her name was Cod, like the fish, but it was a matter of debate in the family.
“She’s so clever,” they would say over deep jars of cabbage. “I don’t know where she gets her ideas from.”
“Are you talking about Cod again?”
“Is that her name?”
“That’s what Papa Grand Master insisted we call her before he got hit by a low flying aircraft.”
“Very well. I’m not sure about it, but very well.”
“Shut up and eat your purple tender strummed broccoli,” grumbled the racist aunty who no one could abide, but who had chained herself to the radiator and kept rabbiting on about irrigation. She hated herself but took much pride in watering land, offending, and bulk-buying cosmetics.
But all things being equal (and they rarely were), they were a relatively normal family. Cod had been sad to move away from home all those years ago under the illusion that she would surely become someone worth admiring. Certainly, she felt that it was her vocation to be admired. And, surely, who could blame her?
Well, Aunty Radiator.
“What you getting in with the wrong sort for?” She said to Cod while watering the lawn, which was impressive considering the fact she couldn’t leave the living room.
“Wrong sort? I live with my mirrors and I haven’t spoken to anyone outside this family since my wedding day. Shut your nostrils or I’m gonna turn the heating on full blast.”
“Don’t you dare. You’ll never amount to more than me. I bet you didn’t know that I’ve read Chaucer and understood all of it.”
“That’s because you’re ancient. Anyway, the Canterbury Tales is the most overrated text in English literature. If they were reciting that swill in my back garden, I’d shut the blinds.”
But that was many years ago and so much had changed. Aunty was dead. She had been flattened by a falling leg of frozen Serrano ham. They said it was ironic, but it’s not clear that it was. They said it was karmic, but why a ham? And now, having fallen down the stairs and having gotten back up with a nervous grin plastered across her incisors, Cod went straight to the front door to see if the postie had left any fish in her pigeon hole. She opened the door and saw something that made her scream like a bag of wood pellets. It was Tuna, her second husband; the one who got away. He was holding a sack of broccoli in his mouth. He was known for his strong jaws, but this was something else.
“What happened to you?” She said, with her seminal brand of casual alarm.
“Ah, ye know. They made me wear this Margaret Thatcher wig and now I can’t get it off. I’m worried that I’m turning Tory like your dead aunt.”
“Well fuck of my door mat then ya big haired cunt.”
