The Fourteenth Goldfish

  “I need to borrow the car,” he says.

  My mom won’t let him borrow the car.

  “Do you have any idea how many times she borrowed my car?” he rants on the bus ride to school. He’s furious.

  “Why don’t you just ask her to drive you?” I suggest.

  “She won’t drive me to the lab,” he says. “That rent-a-cop told her he’d press charges if he saw me on the premises again.”

  “Oh,” I say. I see his point.

  But on the bus after school, his mood is completely different. He seems almost happy, excited even. When we reach our stop, he doesn’t get up.

  “Come on. This is us,” I tell him.

  He doesn’t move. “We’re getting off at a different stop today.”

  “We are? Where?”

  His eyes gleam.

  “My lab.”

  I take the public bus to school every day, but this time feels completely different—like an adventure.

  My grandfather stares out the window. His hair is pulled back in another of my ponytail holders, a purple one.

  “Your grandmother loved to ride the bus,” he murmurs.

  “She did?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Her dream was for us to take a bus trip across the country. Stop in little towns. Visit all the tourist traps.”

  “Did you do it?”

  He shakes his head, and something sharp and raw flashes across his face.

  “No,” he says. “I was always too busy with work.”

  My grandmother died when I was three. I have a vague memory of walking in on my mother crying in the bathroom.

  “Do you miss her?” I ask him.

  He blinks fast. “I miss everything about her. I miss her voice. I miss our life together.” He swallows. “I miss seeing her walking around in slippers.”

  “Slippers?”

  He shakes his head as if bewildered. “She didn’t care about jewelry or perfume or any of that. But she liked a good pair of bedroom slippers. The kind that were furry on the inside. I gave her new ones every year on our anniversary. Silly when you think about it.”

  But it doesn’t sound silly to me. It sounds like love.

  We have to switch buses four times. The last bus lets us off on a commercial strip peppered with car dealerships. My grandfather leads me down a side street to a group of buildings. All the buildings are identical—brown brick with dark windows—and they have numbers on their sides. When we reach number twenty-four, my grandfather stops.

  “This is it!”

  “It is?” I ask. I was expecting something shinier, with glass and metal; this seems pretty ordinary.

  But my grandfather seems almost relieved to see the building, like it’s an old friend.

  “Old number twenty-four,” he says.

  He hands me a plastic card attached to a lanyard ring.

  “What’s this for?” I ask.

  “To get in. It’s my key card.” He gestures toward the building. “The security guard will recognize me. It has to be you. I’ve drawn you a map. The T. melvinus is in the freezer in my lab.”

  I’m a little nervous. “What if the guard sees me?”

  “I have that all figured out,” he assures me. “Just tell him your father works here. Sweet girl like you? He won’t suspect a thing.”

  I swipe the card and slip in a side door without anyone noticing me. I walk down the hall like I have a perfect right to be there, checking my progress by the numbers on the office doors. I’m nearly at my grandfather’s lab when a voice stops me dead in my tracks.

  “Hey, kid, where do you think you’re going?”

  I turn around slowly.

  A middle-aged security guard is standing there, holding a cup of coffee. He has a walkie-talkie at his waist and a suspicious expression on his face. “I asked you a question, kid.”

  I use the cover story. “My dad works here.”

  His shoulders relax. “Oh,” he says. “Right.”

  I give him a little smile and start walking again. Relief pours through my body, the kind of relief you get after passing a test you didn’t study for.

  “Hey, kid,” he calls to me.

  I look back at him.

  “What’s your dad’s name?”

  I hesitate a moment too long.

  Just like that, his eyes narrow and he shakes his head. “We had another one of you crazy kids sneaking in here the other day. Let’s take a walk to my office,” he says.

  In the split second before he reaches me, I see my future: in the back of a police car.

  I start running.

  “Stop!” he shouts.

  I fly out of the building toward the bushes where my grandfather is waiting. When he sees me running, he starts running, too.

  We hide out in a tiny taco place until the coast is clear. Then we catch a bus home.

  “I’m proud of you,” my grandfather says to me.

  “But I didn’t get it,” I tell him.

  He shakes his head. “Scientists fail all the time. You tried. That’s what counts. You have to keep at it. Just like Marie Curie.”

  It feels like a compliment.

  “What did she do?”

  “Marie Curie won a Nobel for her work on radiation.”

  “Do you think I’ll ever win a Nobel?” I ask.

  “Of course you will,” he says without a second’s hesitation.

  And I believe him.

  It’s Saturday night and my mom has a date with Ben. They’re going to drop off my grandfather and me at the movie theater, grab dinner, and pick us up on the way home.

  I watch her as she gets ready. Her hair is blue now. She changed it a few days ago, and when my grandfather saw it, he shook his head and asked if she was working for the circus.

  “How do I look?” my mom asks me.

  She models her outfit: a purple skirt, a silver-sequined top, a wide black vinyl belt, and tall pleather boots. Sometimes it’s a little hard having a mom who’s hipper than you are.

  “Great!”

  The doorbell rings and my mom says what she always says: “Tell Ben I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Ben is standing on the front porch with a bouquet of carnations. Even though he and my mom are way past the flowers stage, he brings her flowers every time they have a date. I think it’s sweet.

  “How’s it hanging?” he asks, which is what he always says.

  My mom says that the thing she loves most about Ben is that there’s no drama, which is a funny thing for a drama teacher to say. I like that he doesn’t try to be my dad. He’s just Ben.

  “She’s still getting ready. She’ll be down in a few minutes,” I say, although he and I both know she’ll probably be a while.

  Ben’s eyes crinkle and he says half-jokingly, “I’d wait for your mother forever.”

  He’s asked my mother to marry him twice, and both times she’s told him she wasn’t ready. I once overheard her tell Bernadette she was scared of making a mistake again.

  My grandfather walks into the hall and gives Ben an icy look. In addition to his usual polyester pants and button-up shirt, he’s put on a crimson tie. He told me he always dresses up when he goes to the movies.

  “You must be Ellie’s cousin,” Ben says. “Melvin, right? I’m Ben.”

  My grandfather doesn’t say anything; he just gives Ben a hostile look.

  Ben nods at my grandfather’s tie. “So you’re a tie guy, huh? That’s pretty classic.”

  “Classic” is definitely a good way to describe my grandfather.

  My mother walks in.

  “You look beautiful, Lissa,” he says.

  She points to her top. “Not too sparkly?”

  Ben smiles. “It’s perfect.”

  “You need a shawl,” my grandfather tells her.

  “What?” my mom asks.

  “All that skin,” my grandfather insists. “It’s like something a teenager would wear. You need a shawl.”

  My mom’s mouth opens and cl
oses in fury.

  After the movie, my grandfather and I wait outside to get picked up. The nightly parade is going on: girls walk with arms linked by boys who pretend not to notice them, while other boys whiz by on skateboards.

  “Idiot,” my grandfather comments when a skateboarder executes a neat flip. “One good fall and he’ll need a knee replacement.”

  He shakes his box of Raisinets. He’s already worked his way through a bag of popcorn, a box of gummy bears, nachos, a root beer, and a milk shake.

  “They’re not as good as they used to be,” he complains.

  “They’re just chocolate-covered raisins,” I say. “How can they taste different?”

  “They were just better. Like a lot of things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like movies. That one was a piece of garbage. Back in my day, they made quality movies.”

  It was an animated fairy tale and I didn’t like it much, either. I’d really wanted to see a Japanese horror movie, but it was sold out.

  I like scary films; I’m not a big fairy-tale fan. Mostly because I always wonder about the after part of happily-ever-after. Like in “The Three Little Pigs.” What happened after the third pig cooked the wolf in the pot? Did he hold a funeral and let the wolf’s friends know? Or with “Cinderella.” Sure, she got the prince, but what about the stepsisters? They were still her family. Did she have to see them at Thanksgiving dinner? Talk about awkward.

  “Looks like Halloween is early this year,” my grandfather says, gesturing to a group of goth boys standing in line. I find myself looking for Raj, but he’s not there.

  A sweet-looking old lady pushing an equally elderly man in a wheelchair passes us. The man is hunched over and holding a cane. He’s wearing dark polyester pants, a button-up shirt, a navy-blue blazer, and loafers with dark socks.

  He’s dressed just like my grandfather.

  “Do you see that, Ellie? Growing old is a terrible disease. Things you take for granted, you lose. Your ability to walk. Your vision. Your hearing. Even being able to go to the bathroom.”

  “Huh?”

  He gives me a knowing look. “Everything falls apart when you get old. Believe me, you don’t want to know how many times I used to get up during the night to pee.”

  I nod my head in agreement. That is way too much information.

  “But that’s not even the worst of it. They stick you away in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities just because you’re old.”

  Kind of like middle school.

  “Then do you know what happens?” He pauses dramatically. “Everybody around you starts dying! Heart attacks! Strokes! Cancer! People you’ve known your whole life are just gone! People you love! Can you imagine how painful that is?”

  I think of Brianna.

  There’s a chorus of laughter from a bunch of kids as a boy kicks his skateboard in the air.

  “I’d rather be dead than old,” he declares.

  Then he crumples the Raisinets box.

  “I’m still hungry,” he says.

  Things are a little different with my grandfather living with us. The pullout couch in the den is permanently pulled out, and our antique bookshelves have been emptied and turned into an open dresser. The whole room has a gamy, boy-sock, locker-room smell. My mother has taken to spraying air freshener when he isn’t looking.

  My grandfather has a few quirks. He’s always ready to go somewhere a good half hour before it’s time to leave. He drinks a cup of hot tea every day because it’s “good for digestion.” He has a thing about the trash.

  “You should put the trash cans out at night,” he tells my mom.

  “I like to do it in the morning,” she says.

  “What if you forget?”

  My mother grits her teeth. “I won’t forget.”

  “You might,” he says. “And you’ll end up with two weeks of trash in your cans. Then you’ll have a real problem.”

  There’s no need to try to figure out what he really means, the way there sometimes is with girls; he’s blunt. And he always does what he says he will, so when he doesn’t show up at the end of the school day, I start to get nervous.

  I’m waiting for him at our usual meeting spot—the flagpole in front of the school. The stream of kids rushing by slows to a trickle, but he’s still nowhere in sight. I know he wouldn’t just leave me here. Then I remember Nicole talking about old people wandering off. Even though my grandfather has a teenager’s body, he still has a seventy-six-year-old brain.

  I check by his locker and his last class of the day, but nothing. Now I’m getting really worried, so I go to one of the boys’ bathrooms and shout in the door.

  “Melvin?”

  Raj walks out.

  “I think you have the wrong bathroom,” he says lightly.

  “Is Melvin in there?”

  “Uh, you want me to check?”

  “Will you?” I ask.

  He’s back in a moment. He shakes his head. “Nope, no Melvin.”

  “Where is he?” I ask. Something like panic fills me.

  Raj says, “I’ll help you look for him. He’s around here somewhere, I’m sure.”

  Raj checks all the boys’ bathrooms and the locker room, but he’s nowhere.

  It’s only when we’re going past my locker that I see it: a note sticking to the metal.

  I’m in detention.

  —Melvin

  Raj offers to wait with me. We sit on a bench outside the detention room. He’s fun to talk to.

  “Your cousin’s a little strange,” he says.

  I look at him.

  “I mean, the way he dresses and all? Those polyester pants? He reminds me of my grandfather.”

  If he only knew.

  “Uh, yeah. It’s just kind of his style, I guess,” I say.

  “Huh,” he says.

  He’s got a dangling earring in his right ear. It looks like a hieroglyphic.

  “That’s Egyptian, right?”

  “It’s an ankh. It’s the Egyptian symbol for life,” he explains.

  “Cool,” I say. “So you kind of have a thing for ancient Egyptian stuff?”

  “Kind of. Did you know they left in the heart?”

  “What?”

  “When they made mummies, they took out all the organs but they left in the heart.”

  “Why’d they do that?”

  His eyes are serious. “They believed that the heart did the thinking.”

  The detention door bangs open and kids flood out. My grandfather storms up to us, red in the face, his hair bouncing everywhere.

  “What happened?” I ask him.

  “I used the facilities,” he says.

  He’s not making any sense.

  “The facilities?”

  “The toilet!” my grandfather snaps. “I went to the toilet during class without getting a bathroom pass! Apparently that’s a state crime!”

  A bunch of kids who were in detention with my grandfather shoot him high-five signs when they pass.

  One laughs and says, “Fight the power, bro!”

  My grandfather gives him a withering look.

  “You’re supposed to take a hall pass when you go to the bathroom,” I explain.

  “By the way, the teacher who sentenced me should not be teaching history. She’s twenty-two if she’s a day.” He shakes his head in disgust. “What does she know about anything?”

  “Maybe next time you should just take the pass,” Raj suggests.

  “I prefer to keep my dignity,” he announces.

  As he marches off, hair flying, I realize my mom’s wrong.

  He does have a flair for drama.

  My mom gets home from school early. When she walks in the door, she’s carrying two big bags of groceries.

  “Rehearsals are going great, so I let everyone have the day off! I thought I’d make us dinner,” she enthuses. She adds, “I feel like I’ve been neglecting you lately, Ellie.”

  She spends the rest of the
afternoon in the kitchen. When we go in for dinner, it looks like a tornado hit the place: dirty bowls and measuring cups are piled in the sink, and flour is all over the counter. She must have used every single pot in the house.

  “Dinner is served!” she announces, and places our plates in front of us with a flourish.

  There’s a breaded, fried, patty-like thing lying in the middle of each plate. Next to it is some singed asparagus.

  My grandfather and I both take a bite.

  “So?” my mom asks. “What do you think?”

  It’s mushy, with a weird texture, and has way too much pepper.

  My grandfather makes a face. “What is this supposed to be?”

  “Fried eggplant,” she says.

  His answer is decisive. “Nope. Don’t like it.”

  She looks at me. “Do you like it?”

  I shake my head.

  Her shoulders sag in defeat.

  The eggplant goes in the trash and we order Chinese.

  My grandfather and I are in the kitchen the next day after school, and he’s complaining about my mother’s cooking.

  “If she had paid as much attention to chemistry as she did to this theater nonsense, she’d be a good cook,” he says. He exaggerates the word “theater” so that it sounds like thee-a-tah.

  “Chemistry? What does that have to do with anything?”

  He looks at me. “Cooking is science.”

  “It is?” It has always seemed so arty to me.

  “It’s all basic chemistry,” he says. “In fact, science has its fingerprints all over the kitchen.”

  He opens the refrigerator and takes out a block of cheese, waves it.

  “Louis Pasteur discovered a way to kill bacteria in drinks: pasteurization, or heating at high temperatures. It was practically a miracle at the time! That’s why we can drink milk and eat cheese without getting sick.”

  I’d had no idea that cheese was a miracle.

  “I like to cook,” I tell him.

  “Of course you do,” he says, as if it’s perfectly obvious. “You take after me.”

  Maybe I do take after him.

  He claps his hands. “Let’s make dinner.”