The Lightbox

‘If you had to describe yourself in a single word, what would it be?’

We’re sitting around our dinner table under the halogen strip light in the early evening dark. It’s October 1983. I’m eleven. My mother has recently decided the family should be vegetarian, so dinner is Hungarian goulash with mushrooms, sour cream and cheese. The melted cheese has turned stringy and is stuck to my teeth. Flattening his ears back like an owl, our cat mews outside the kitchen window – a pure-black boy cat called Morris. Morris Morrissey. We tend to name or acquire things that sound just like us. At one point we even had a Morris Minor. Whenever we got a lift to school instead of having to walk, my brother and
I ducked our heads while my mother parked, in case anyone saw us.

 ‘Isn’t that a fascinating idea?’ says my father. ‘A single word.’

 ‘Well, it’s possibly a bit reductive’, says my mother, getting up to let the cat in and sitting back down again.

 ‘Yes, okay, perhaps. But this way you get to the essence. You know. Like the relations of production, but in terms of the personality.’

 ‘Can I have some more?’ I hold up my bowl, starving as usual.

 ‘What would you say, Conor?’ asks my father.

 ‘Human’, replies my brother, instantly.

 ‘You see?’ says my father. ‘That’s so interesting.’

 ‘Why is that interesting?’

 ‘Well, it’s the essence, if ...