Aquarium (11 page)

I’m sorry I’m not excited enough about Christmas. I’m sure my parents will want to remedy that.

Jesus Christ. You’re only eleven or twelve.

Twelve.

I shouldn’t have to be dealing with this shit yet. You’re going to be a nightmare in junior high.

I’d rather do math than make a paper-mache reindeer. That’s a bad attitude. You’re right.

Fine. Do your own Jello pool thing and ignore the rest of the world.

Thank you, Baba Gustafson. Shalini bowed to him and smiled as he left. In India, my teachers were tougher. America is too easy.

I have a grandfather.

What?

The old man at the aquarium is my grandfather.

No.

Yes.

Shalini gave me a hug, both of us pressed in close to Lakshmi Rudolph, getting paste on our shirts. You have a family now, she said.

At snack break, we went out behind the baseball backstop and lay down in the gravel. I was on my back, Shalini on top of me. Her tongue fluttering around mine, the sky white above her, as if she were some giant descended to pin me down to the earth. Pulse of her, and our breath ragged. Her lips so soft.

I could not pull her close enough, and the break was so short, instantly over. We had to run to class.

The sleigh had grown, puffy and misshapen, a children’s playhouse on skids. Near it, an enormous dreidel with a point made from wire hangers. It would never spin. Along the back wall, the long skin of a dragon and its spiky head with a large red tongue. Most of its brown canvas still showing, all needing to be painted. Two other reindeer, with wire horns and knobby legs, two elves with green slippers, and a Santa. Our Rudolph was the only piece of Diwali. No elephants, no goddesses with many arms. Hundreds of Hindu gods, all represented by Rudolph.

This is ridiculous, I said.

Come here, Shalini said. She pulled me behind Rudolph and kissed me. We were in the back of the room, and if we crouched down and hid behind his belly, no one could see us. Mr. Gustafson was looking at his book of classic cars, which was what he did when he felt overwhelmed.

Shalini held my head in both hands and pulled me in closer and closer, but I was afraid, so I backed away and stood up.

You don’t have to worry, she said. Everyone is in a panic. Look at them.

It was true. The room was total chaos, so loud I could hardly hear her.

Shalini scrunched her nose and snorted, and she raised her eyebrows, eyes wide.

I laughed. Mr. Gustafson’s eyebrows were always raised as he looked down at his book, the classic cars continually amazing, and his nose did seem almost to quiver, snuffling for something tasty.

A
fter school, I was running. I’d thrown my backpack behind some bushes. Enormous white-gray sky, heavy, the air like milk. Fear of being caught by my mother. The land jagged as I ran, all shaken on impact, skyscrapers tilted and tossed.

Cars passing beside me, drifting away, this street unbearably long, endless apartments and houses and businesses. A city holds all that we want and a million times what we don’t want.

You have to be there, I thought. Please be there.

I burst through the front doors out of breath, sweaty, and had to throw off my coat. The aquarium staff not saying hello, only watching. After our scene, they didn’t want to come anywhere near me.

I used the drinking fountain and waited for my breath and heart to calm. I was looking down the dark hallway but didn’t see him.

I dragged my jacket and walked slowly down the corridor. I was early, so it was possible he hadn’t yet arrived, or he could have been looking at the fish. At the first fork, I didn’t know which way to go, but I decided against the larger, brighter displays and sea mammals. I decided to go toward the darker hallways, the nocturnal fish and deep-sea dwellers, and I found him here. Dark tank of black sand and dirt, no rock, nowhere to hide. My grandfather leaned in close to the glass, peering at the ocellated waspfish, one of my favorites. It looked like a moth, pale yellow-green wings and a head that could have been covered in white fuzz. Thin white feelers like insect legs. And then the body of a fish, as if the two had been grafted together, some transformation in darkness unexplained, two worlds that should never have touched.

So beautiful, I said.

Caitlin, he said, and he rushed to hug me, pulled me in close against him. Rough sound of his breath and beating of his heart. Dry skin of his hand cradling my head. I wrapped my arms around him. Grandpa, I said.

Odd ridges and folds of him beneath his shirt, smell of laundry and deodorant and someone old. He was the same as home, as belonging.

I love you, Caitlin.

I love you too, Grandpa.

We just held each other for the longest time. I closed my eyes. Swaying a bit, as if we were in a warm current, our own lagoon somewhere in the Marshall Islands or Indonesian archipelago.

I’m so sorry, Caitlin. That was an awful thing on Monday. You shouldn’t have had to see that. But things will get better now. It may take a long time for your mother to forgive me, but things will get better.

I held him as tightly as I could.

It was such a shock to see your mother up close. She looks the same, just older.

She won’t let me see you.

The old man took a big breath and sighed. He let go of me and straightened back up and looked at the waspfish. I don’t blame her, he said. My baby, and I left her. And left her mother. If I could go back, I would.

I didn’t know what to say. It was hard not to think of him as the old man, and he was suddenly far away. I watched the waspfish cruising just over the bottom in dim light, white feelers exploring, searching for food, for anything buried.

It was just unbearable, he said. Something in me couldn’t stay. I couldn’t watch my wife dissolve into nothing. The terrible part was the helplessness. I couldn’t do anything to make her well.

I didn’t want to listen. It was too much, hearing my mother and then my grandfather. I only looked at the waspfish. Folding those pale green wings, then opening them again at any threat, any sense of someone watching behind the glass or a larger shape coming from above. That black sand and dirt should have been the continental shelf, extending out hundreds of miles from New York, and this fish cruising right to the edge, to the drop-off.

Did you know waspfish bury themselves in sand during the day, with only their eyeballs poking out? he asked me. He always knew when I was panicking. He always knew how to calm me.

Yeah, I said. But they’re never in less than fifty feet of water, and usually deeper, so it’s not much light. I don’t really see the difference.

Good point. I guess you learn a certain range in your life. What looks like no change at all to us is day and night for him. And the cold. It’s always cold where he is, but he might feel a change as something enormous.

Like us now.

That’s right, like us now. You’re smart, Caitlin.

He put his arm around me and I leaned into him.

My life has had a narrow range for too long, he said.

The waspfish made a quick dash and then turned and opened her wings. I kept expecting her to flutter and break free of that fish half and rise through water become air.

Do you know how deep this tank is? I asked.

No.

It’s forty feet deep.

No.

It stacks up way above us to provide pressure for the fish. If she turns into a moth, she has to swim up forty feet before she’s free.

I love that. I can see her become a moth and rise up toward the light. And you’re right, it’s not a he.

The tank wasn’t really forty feet high, but I liked to think it was, and I was happy he believed me. I imagined the back rooms like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, a bright land of colorful pipes and bubbles and pumps. I knew it wasn’t like that, of course, but I wanted it to be.

We drifted on to a tank that was a bubble, dark and under pressure, with king crabs. My grandfather’s arm around my shoulders. Smooth stones, almost black, and this red spiky armor, white underneath.

It looks like someone put it together piece by piece, I said. You can see all the joints.

It seems impossible it could grow, my grandfather said. To begin small with all those same plates, and all the plates grew and still fit.

One of the crabs was reaching high on the glass toward us, legs three feet long outstretched. Underside of its body like fingers interlocked, which looked as if they might open and some other creature emerge.

I can see myself in the fish, my grandfather said, but not in the crabs.

Me either. Those tiny eyes on stalks have nothing behind them. And that mouth. You can’t call that a mouth. It’s just more legs.

He laughed. I feel so lucky to be with you, Caitlin. I wish this aquarium could go on and on for miles, with every fish and crab and other strange thing in the sea.

He pulled me even closer against him, and I was so happy I couldn’t speak. The king crab would never know this feeling.

You’re right that it’s the mouth, he said. If it had lips, we’d feel closer to it. All we need are eyes and lips, apparently, and we think we can say hello. I don’t think I realized that before, how much we need the world to look like us.

My grandfather drove me back to school in a very old Mercedes. Everything polished, as if new, as if we were going back in time.

I like your car, I said. My mother drives a Thunderbird.

He smiled. I know. I had to find the two of you, so I’ve seen where you live, and Sheri’s car, and where she works. Please don’t tell her that. She’ll be angry. But I wanted to find you.

Okay, I said, but I didn’t know what to think of that. How long had he been watching us?

I’m a mechanic, he said. Or was. I’m retired now. But I worked on diesel engines all my life. This is a diesel. Can you hear the difference in sound?

I listened, but I couldn’t really tell. Maybe, I said.

Well listen to the Thunderbird again. It’ll sound smoother, like all one sound when your mother accelerates. The diesel is like hearing pins, and if there’s a turbo, you hear that over the top after the acceleration, as it winds down. Almost like an airplane. This one isn’t a turbo.

He accelerated then and I listened. It did sound like pins. It sounds like it could break, I said.

Ah, it lasts much longer. I can go a million miles on this engine, and I can also run it for a week, if I want, without turning it off. Day and night. No gas engine can do that.

Wow.

Engines have lives, like people. If something happens, some sign of that remains, always. There’s history in an engine. I’ll be with this engine until the end.

What do you mean, the end?

Sorry, Caitlin. I meant my end, but it’s not coming soon, I promise. There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll be here for you.

I felt like crying suddenly, but I just stared out my side window and held it back, and soon enough we were at Gatzert.

I’m sorry, Caitlin. I didn’t mean to upset you. He took off his seat belt and leaned across the bench seat to hug me. I clung to his arm, which was thick and strong, I noticed now, from his work. And thank you for coming to see me. I’ll be there every day, and we’ll figure out something with your mother. She just needs time.

I
found my backpack in the bushes and sat on a metal bench by the front doors. Sunset, maybe, the light still from nowhere but less of it now. I was bundled up, but it was cold, so I went inside and waited there. Eternal light in long tubes. I don’t think they ever turned off. Just flicked on once until they died and were replaced. So maybe not eternal.

It was fully dark when my mother arrived. And she was tired. How are you, sweet pea? she murmured.

Okay, I said. How was work?

Oh, just more of the same. I could miss every day of work, never go back, and it would all still be the same there. I don’t have any effect. Just doing time.

It was rare my mother was like this. Only when she was really tired.

Steve is coming over, fixing dinner right now. I hope that’s okay.