Fishbowl (26 page)

Herman sees the little girl going to school and studying and making friends. She grows up and goes to college. She plays guitar and writes bad, rhyming ballads. She cheats on a university test and feels awful about it so never does it again. She does things both good and bad. She falls in love with a boy and becomes a social worker. Later, they have babies together. She lives to see her children grow and have babies of their own, and she cares for her grandchildren so fully and happily. And when she dies, she is remembered as a mother and a grandmother, and she lasts so long in the memory of the people who loved her that her lifespan is tripled.

Herman watches it all.

And here she is, just beginning, nothing more than a tiny thing in his arms and nothing less than a brand-new life.

Then Herman remembers Grandpa, his arm draped down the side of his easy chair and the pile of newspaper on the floor. He’s still there in their apartment.

“You probably want to hold your daughter,” Herman says. He can’t take his eyes from the everything he holds in his hands. She’s all those things he saw and none of them. That’s the root of wonder he felt. He can’t plot her course and won’t know it all. These things are unknown to anyone.

“I do,” Petunia Delilah says. “But whenever you’re ready.” She sounds so grateful.

Herman takes one last, deep look and then hands the little girl to Petunia Delilah.

Petunia Delilah’s happiness is infectious. Her eyes lock on her daughter, and Herman can’t help but smile along with her. Herman and Petunia Delilah sit side by side. In the quiet that follows the birth, they hear Claire talking. She’s still on the phone, thanking the emergency operator.

“You know my name,” Claire says. “I don’t know yours.”

Claire listens to the phone for a moment.

“Jason?” she asks. “Pig? It’s you?”

45

In Which Ian’s Plummetous Descent Continues Past the Eighth Floor

By the eleventh floor, Ian is physically exhausted, desperate for breath, and mentally drained. It has been a tense few seconds for our little golden explorer since he vaulted from the comforts of home. There have been stresses and revelations and terrors to last a lifetime, and his fall is not yet at its conclusion. Since the halfway mark of his journey, the tedium of travel has deepened within him. There’s no longer the thrill of starting the journey. The dream of the possibilities that the adventure holds has waned. What remains is the anticipation of the destination and the impatience for just arriving and being done with the whole escapade. The trip has grown tiresome, and Ian longs for a rest.

He takes a momentary assessment of his body. The fine webs of his fins are plastered to his sides. Even his dorsal fin, usually flaunted erect and proud, is lying flat from the wind shear. His lungs are wanting for breath but not yet desperate enough for his brain to lose consciousness. A dryness has crept into his scales and into the jelly-filled discs of his eyes. His throat is parched, and his tail riffles uncomfortably in the wind with such vigor that he worries the delicate membrane may begin to tear. There’s a heady sensation in his stomach and a nauseating sensation in his head.

And then there’s the feeling of falling, the wind buffeting his sides and baffling his lateral line. The act of plummeting is often likened to being weightless, which is a gross misrepresentation as weightiness is entirely the problem. To be weightless would be a welcomed absolution from the incessant pull of gravity. Ian knows the difference between the two, for living a life in water is more akin to weightlessness than falling.

The eleventh floor slips by, a flash past the eye, and then it’s an unsteady memory. The tenth is gone in the span of time it takes him to realize the previous floor has passed. So much else is gone.

Ian doesn’t remember the cramped aquarium at the pet store where Katie pointed at him and traced the meandering path of his swim with her finger, picking him out of the crowd of a hundred other identical goldfish at the shop. He doesn’t remember the sign taped on the tank, scrawled with clumsy felt marker lines that read, “Feeder Goldfish: 99 cents.” Nor does he remember the tiny plastic bag or the odd sensation of that bubble of water jostling around as Katie carried him up Roxy toward Connor’s apartment.

Ian doesn’t remember the lazy afternoons and evenings in his bowl on the balcony, watching the city as dazzling reflections of brilliant sunlight turned into the twinkling of office lights in the dark. Ian doesn’t remember sleeping late into the morning, inside the pink castle, and Ian doesn’t remember the easy company of Troy the snail, who never complained or demanded or crabbed about anything. An entire lifetime has been forgotten and exchanged for the immediacy of the plummet.

Ian doesn’t remember how he got here, outside the ninth-floor window with that fat, naked guy sitting on the couch, watching television and eating chips right out of the bag. That fat, naked guy, absorbed by flickering images and calories, doesn’t see Ian flash by the window. Even if he did, he may have mistaken him for bird poop or something of the sort. He’s oblivious to the two ambulances parked at the base of the building. He’s vigorously scratching under his balls, that pair of nubbly walnuts in a saggy flesh sack draped casually over the back of his hand as he roots around beneath them. He licks chip salt from the fingers of the other. His eyes are locked on the television set.

And, thankfully, the naked guy is gone as quickly as he appeared.

Naked fat guy nut-scratcher’s private offense is no more in Ian’s sight, though Ian does not judge him. Ian has seen many a thing when people thought they weren’t being watched. All goldfish are privy to a secret world where how one acts in private is at odds with one’s conduct under scrutiny. Most people don’t recognize the unblinking eye of their pet fish, but Ian’s owner did. That is why Ian was on the balcony of the twenty-seventh-floor apartment in the first place.

Connor had been partaking in a nasty bit of the nasty with a busty brunette when he had noticed Ian staring at them. Connor had lost his erection almost immediately, and the woman he was pinning smirked. Then Ian was on the balcony. Ian was not aroused or judgmental in any way. He had simply been attracted to the motion of her tits swinging back and forth, just the movement, nothing more. It was the same way his eye was locked on Connor’s dangling member as he took the bowl out to the old card table on the balcony. The motion attracted the eye, not the subject. To Ian, human copulation was a mere novelty, and having no external reproductive organs of his own, he was not one to offer opinions on Connor’s member. Indeed, their activities didn’t even register as a logical act in the fish’s mind.

Naked fat guy nut-scratcher is not alone in the world even though he is alone in his apartment, observed fleetingly and then left to root around under his balls.

The eighth-floor window offers a sight beyond that of the ninth floor. In the shadows of the surrounding buildings, even in the late-afternoon light, this apartment shines like a beacon. Every light is on, and every surface gleams. The glow blasts through the windows to fight back the late-afternoon shadows.

Inside lies a woman on her back on the floor; her legs are bent at the knees, and her knees are spread akimbo. Another woman stands in the kitchen, stooping to look in the stove. Her head, cocked to one side, pinches a phone between her shoulder and her ear. The apartment door is open to the hall, and two men in blue uniforms bustle in, one shoving past the other. One kneels beside the woman on the floor, placing a hand on her shoulder and looking into her eyes. He talks constantly, and the woman on the floor nods. The other paramedic steps over them and places a large toolbox on the island in the kitchen.

The woman at the stove stands up and glances over her shoulder at the bustle. She says something into the receiver and smiles in a shy, cutesy sort of way, as if flirting. The movement and the lights are dazzling to Ian’s goldfish brain and so much more engaging than the view into the ninth-floor window. He is almost sad when he passes by the scene.

The seventh floor is black, the windows dark. The air becomes cooler as Ian approaches the concrete … the concrete below that has grown so close. It’s spotty with people mingling around the ambulances. The few dawdlers look at the building, not upward. He can see a few of the larger cracks in the pavement, their dark and jagged lightning strikes across the sidewalk’s surface.

Ian can also see the dark splotches of spat-out and trod-upon gum, their shapes similar to what he imagines a splattered fish making.

46

In Which Our Heroine Katie Assaults the Crockery and Defends Her Heart

“What?” Connor says, lowering the bunched panties from his face and exhaling the breath he had drawn through them. He looks at the wad of purple fabric in his hand.

“Those aren’t mine,” Katie says again.

She shakes her head, and Connor doesn’t raise his eyes from the handful of wadded-up material. She wonders how anyone could be so clueless but doesn’t pursue the thought too far considering she was duped by him. She doesn’t want to contemplate how clueless she has been to be fooled by the foolish.

“Faye’s panties?” Katie asks.

Connor furrows his brow at them. He holds them like a lavender-colored bouquet, the fabric folds setting the light in deep contrast.

Katie can tell he isn’t sure whose they are. It’s a moment of honesty in his face, and to his credit, he doesn’t try to hide it.

“There’re others?”

“Maybe they’re Deb’s,” Connor mumbles to his chest.

“Maybe?” Katie slumps, exhausted by him.

He looks up at her. His eyes are streaming tears again, and she can tell he exhausts himself as well. There’s a blunt look into which she reads, I’m so tired of myself, I’m so sick with what I’ve done to you, and I love you, I really do.

Katie winds her arm back and then punches him in the shoulder as hard as she can. It makes a flat smacking sound, and a shock of pain races through her fist, radiating up her arm and spreading into her shoulder.

Connor’s body jolts back with the impact, and he grunts. Instinctively, he raises his hand to his shoulder.

It hurt them both.

“I can’t—” Connor stutters, rubbing his shoulder. “I don’t—”

“Shut it,” Katie says. “You’re done talking.”

She grabs the plastic bag full of her things, spins on her heel, and storms toward the balcony door. Connor blinks once at the panties and then follows her.

“Katie, wait,” Connor calls. “You can’t— They’re just an artifact. Leftovers from the past. It will never happen again.”

Katie steps one foot over the doorsill and onto the balcony. She spins to face him, raising a finger in his direction. Connor freezes at the threat of her and then takes a step backward so he’s just out of striking distance. Just when he thinks she isn’t going to say anything, she does.

“I can’t believe I was even considering forgiving you.” She shakes her head, tears welling up in her eyes again. “I can’t believe I was so stupid. I mean, look at you. You’re so fucking gorgeous. You aren’t built to do anything but what you’re doing. Why I thought I could be the one for you … why I thought there could be just one for you … I should have my fucking head examined.” She pauses and takes a step toward him. He takes a step back. “No, on second thought, it’s not me, it’s you. You’re the one who needs his fucking head examined. I can’t believe it. You’re such a fucking…” Katie trembles, her eyes wild, searching for the right word. “You’re such a fucking butt.”

And then she’s laughing. That wasn’t the word she was looking for, but it was the one that came out of her mouth, and once it had escaped, she realized it was completely ridiculous. It’s just that she couldn’t reach a word that was strong or hurtful enough to call him, and she wants so badly to hurt him like he did her. She can’t help but laugh because she knows the perfect word will come to her when she gets home and she will have to shout it at her empty apartment instead of his face.

Connor stands, still clutching his shoulder, a few steps away from her. He’s confused by this hysterical woman laughing and bawling at the same time. Then he laughs too. And for a few seconds they laugh together until Katie stops cold and raises her finger at him again.

“You don’t get to laugh,” she says. “Not at me.”

Connor stops. He flexes at the knees, leaning back and dropping his arms to his side in frustration. “Katie, please don’t go. Let’s talk about this.”

Katie is already out on the balcony. It feels good to be under the sky, out of the oppressive confines of the tiny studio apartment. There’s sickness between those walls. She instantly feels a weight lifted from her. The late-afternoon sun warms her skin, and she breathes in a sweet, gentle breeze. The city stretches far beyond her, thousands of glass windows looking into concrete rooms from the outside. Thousands of people doing thousands of things out there, all at once. For a moment, her problems seem a lot smaller than they had a second ago.

She reaches for the coffee mug, but Connor grabs her elbow before she has a good grip on it. It falls from the stack of papers on Ian’s bowl and shatters against the cement. Dozens of shards skitter across the balcony, and there is a powdered, comet-shaped smear where the mug made contact with the concrete.

The first pages of Connor’s thesis start to silently peel off in the breeze. Page by page, Connor’s arguments curl back and unfold out into the void, over the safety of the balcony railing, shuffling and flipping through their descent.

Connor spins Katie around, his hand still firmly latched to her elbow.

“I can’t be without you,” he begs. “I know that now.”

“I knew I couldn’t be with you as soon as I saw that girl in the nightshirt,” Katie said. “And even so, you almost talked me into it again.”

“I’m slow. I need to be taught this stuff.”

“Most people know their feelings. It’s not something you learn, it’s something you know. That’s why it’s a feeling and not a thought.”

“Please, I’ll do anything. Just tell me what I have to do and I’ll do it.”