A GOLDFISH IS A GOLDFISH
Neither my wife nor I expected an open casket: Aunt Verdy in repose, mascara, mossy lips, a ruffled shroud, cheeks flushed with rouge. My six year old daughter squeezed my hand. “Is she dead?” Penny asked.
“Dead as she’s ever going to be,” I replied. We hurried by the casket, through the receiving line, the relatives and my wife. Penny grabbed for her mother. “Is she really dead?” Penny asked.
“Get her something to eat,” Debbie said, returning Penny to me, my wife’s solution to imponderables. When Penny asked where babies came from, she got a Meal Deal from Dairy Queen.
An assortment of foods sat on a table in the funeral parlor: cakes, pies, sausage balls, crackers with cheese spread around the edges. How could anyone eat while grieving? It seemed the closer someone was to the deceased the less they ate. Distant relatives ate like wolves while the rest struggled to take a few polite bites. Everything was arrayed on buffed silver. No paper. I noticed names written on masking tape to indicate who owned the plates. Penny picked at a sausage roll. “Why didn’t Aunt Verdy talk to me?” she asked.
“Try a fruit ball,” I said, spearing a watermelon ball with a toothpick. She chewed then spit a seed onto the floor. I wiped her mouth with a napkin. Around the edge of the napkin, the funeral home had printed their name in embossed, gilded letters.
“Dead people can’t talk.”
“Why not?”
“They just can’t. That’s part of being dead.”
“Will I see Aunt Verdy again?”
I handed her a sausage link wrapped in a roll. She obliged, gulping it down. We might not need Dairy Queen after all.
ChatGPT was the one who got us in this mess. It had recommended letting Penny choose whether she wanted to attend the service. Afterwards, Penny greeted us every morning. “Is Aunt Verdy coming to visit?”
“She’ll grow out of it,” I assured my wife.
Pictures of Aunt Verdy disappeared from our family album. I accused my daughter. “I’m the culprit,” my wife said.
“Why?”
“I thought the pictures might be reminding her of the funeral.”
It wasn’t my aunt, but the ragged, cut-out holes made the album appear defiled.
*
It got worse.
“Aunt Verdy visits me at night,” Penny said.
“You were dreaming.”
“Nope. She helps me set up my dolls and talks to them. Her favorite is Ragdoll.” Ragdoll was a doll I had bought in Germany while we were on vacation. The trip had turned ugly. I didn’t pay attention to the election calendar. Skinheads marched in the streets. The doll was a Heidi-doll with braided pigtails and a straw hat.
“What else does she say?”
“She tells me about living near the water in Chicago.”
“That’s nice,” I said, feeling a little weird. From what I knew of Aunt Verdy, she had lived as a child in Chicago near the waterfront.
*
I abandoned the AI therapists and sought advice from our next-door neighbor, a retired Methodist minister. Joe had raised four sons. None of them did drugs or smoked cigarettes. No tattoos so far either. Joe was in the process of de-thorning a rose bush, putting his nose up to the stem before clipping, reluctant to wear glasses that kept fogging.
“Hey, Tom,” he said, and removed his glove to shake my hand. His hand was sandpaper tough.
“If you interfere with a gardener, you’d better compliment their handiwork.”
“Your bushes look splendid,” I said.
“Hand of the Lord,” he replied.
“I need your opinion.” He frowned. He’d heard that statement and its potential liability throughout his ecclesiastical life.
“You must have been around children who became preoccupied with death.”
He put his hand under his chin. “Why?”
My voice faltered, sharing family skeletons with a relative stranger. But he was a minister. Didn’t they take vows of confidentiality? “Penny, all she talks about is her deceased aunt. We made the mistake of taking her to the funeral.”
“That explains it.”
“What?”
“My wife uncovered a doll in the backyard. A ratty old thing. She thought a dog had buried it, but who’s ever heard of a dog burying a doll? My boys got a kick out of it, telling her it was voodoo. I once did a missionary stint in Haiti. The boys were just babies, but they remember. Symbolic re-enactment, the doctors call it. But I’m afraid my wife threw it out.”
“I don’t know how Penny could have buried it.”
“There’s no fence between our properties.”
“She must have walked over from her sandbox. Anyway, she has plenty of dolls.”
“I suspect she’s grieving. People—children, do strange things when they’re grieving. Have you thought of a pet?” he asked.
“No.”
“When Martha’s dad died, we gave her mother a schnauzer. It helped. She sleeps with him on the bed.”
“I should get Penny a dog?”
“You might do better with fish. Children don’t get as attached to them as dogs, and they don’t pee on rosebushes.”
*
At the far end of the aisle, next to the stinking rodent and parrot cages, were the fishes. Wal-Mart had an assortment of aquariums: round, rectangular ecosystems with filtering systems, lights, modular algae, multicolored gravel. Penny pressed her nose against the glass. A plump goldfish floated motionless before her. She laughed, “That goldfish is talking to me, Daddy.” The fish’s mouth sucked in and out.
“That’s the way a fish breathes, honey. It sucks air through its mouth and over its gills.”
There were many fishes to choose from. But other than the goldfish, the only ones I recognized were an Oscar—black and scarred from fighting, zebra and angel fish, and some miniature catfish. I remembered reading you wanted to buy fishes of comparable size. If a fish was much smaller than his compatriots, he stood a good chance of getting eaten. The Oscar was out of the question; he would swallow everything in the tank.
I located a saleswoman and led her from Toys to Pets. “I don’t usually do fish,” she said as she dipped the mesh strainer into the fishbowl. The fishes darted around the sides of the strainer. Penny struck the front of the glass with her fist. My daughter and the saleswoman worked in tandem, trapping the fish in the back of the tank behind a long ribbonlike plant of algae. Penny smiled, enjoying the hunt. It was the first time I’d seen her smile since the funeral.
The saleslady placed our fish in tied-off plastic bags of water: goldfish, a miniature catfish, two zebras, an algae eater, snails. Snails were scavengers and kept the insides of the aquarium clean. The filtration system was separate. The saleswoman assured me that it was easy to assemble and provided an instruction booklet for free.
I purchased a couple of cartons of fish food, gravel, a ceramic aesthetic rock that resembled the semicircular canals in the inner ear and sat at the bottom of the tank for the fish to swim through, and a pH testing kit. All the items were on a single shelf in the Pet Section. I got one each to make sure I didn’t leave anything out.
On the drive home, Penny talked to the fish, telling them stories. I’ve heard her talk to dolls, birds, even a frog after I assured her that frogs don’t bite. Her voice inflected just like she was talking to a friend. By the time we got home, she had named all the fish: adopted family.
*
At Penny’s birthday party, four children came: three classmates—Pam, two twins who had a fetish for ice cream and cake—and Penny’s cousin, Sara, who lived close enough that she couldn’t dodge the invitation. The teacher had mentioned Penny had become more reserved lately but I didn’t expect such a small turnout. Penny didn’t mind. She was just happy to have Pam there.
Debbie was upset. The Dairy Queen ice cream cake was melting. The punch bowl was full. I tiptoed around the living room, folding up the extra chairs. Debbie had overcalculated by seventeen chairs.
*
People mistake Penny and Pam for sisters. They share button-down noses, blonde curls, and blue eyes. Pam talks with a Midwestern accent and uses adult phrases such as “That’s the way I see it,” “Explain that to me,” or “I don’t know why I bother.” Both of her parents are lawyers.
Pam is also fascinated with the aquarium. Pam attends the Montessori School. She can name all the parts of the fish. Guess that is what you get when you are a child genius.
She purchased several paperbacks on fishes and aquariums. When I asked her if she had checked them out from the library, she said her Daddy had bought them on Amazon. Her father buys whatever she wants. Penny said Pam owns a roomful of international dolls, some of which he won at Christie’s. Pam got to sit beside him and hold the paddle raising it when her father bid. “The only thing her Dad hasn’t given her that she has asked for is a baby sister. “But he’s working on it.” I told Penny you might want to keep that a secret.
*
My wife and I have discussed having another child. Debbie isn’t sold on the idea. “Penny practically killed me,” she said. Debbie referred not to the pain (we did Lamaze, the deep breathing and relaxing exercises), but to septicemia she developed afterwards: fever, listlessness, severe abominable pain. She was in intensive care for three days. She even had a dream like those who see a bright light at the end of a tunnel. She considers the dream sacred and doesn’t like talking about it.
*
The screams of my daughter wake me up. Ominous thoughts flash through my mind—burglar, housefire, a bad dream. Her hearty cries become more pronounced. In her pajamas, Penny lies in a heap on the floor. In one arm she holds her Heidi doll. Having just awoken, her hair is disheveled, cheeks puffy from sleeping face down. The way she sprawls herself on the floor makes me think of a penitent before an altar. Dead fish float side up atop the aquarium.
“I’ll buy you more fish, honey. Now stop crying.”
“I don’t want more fish,” she says, jutting out her lips in defiance. “I want Goldie.”
“You won’t be able to tell the difference,” I say.
Debbie enters the room. “Yech,” she exclaims, seeing the floating carcasses.
“It’s only fish,” I reply.
“Tell that to your daughter.”
“If this is the worst trauma she faces, she’ll be lucky,” I say.
I buy the replacements, the nearest replicas of the ones that died. The salesman, becoming frustrated from chasing down the ones I requested, assures me that a goldfish is a goldfish. Humor me, I reply.
As I leave, I meet the saleswoman who sold me the first batch of fish. She looks at me skeptically. My hands hold three water bags full of fish. “Problems?” she asks.
“We’re getting ready to breed,” I reply.
Returning home, I notice Pam’s bicycle parked behind Debbie’s car. If Pam is such a genius, she doesn’t know where to park. Since my hands are full, I direct it—it has training wheels—with my foot out of the way.
Debbie has cleaned the aquarium. “Thank you,” I say. “What did you do with the others?” I ask. She offers a sinister smile. “You didn’t,” I say, thinking of the garbage disposal.
“Penny watched my every move. I wrapped them in newspaper and buried them in the back yard. I discovered the problem. The pH bottle was empty. Someone unloaded its contents into the tank. Do you think Pam could have done it?”
“Maybe. I doubt Penny would do something like that.”
I lower the fish into the newly replenished tank. Using a strip, I check the pH: 6.7. Perfect. In three hours, when the temperature in the bags approximates the temperature in the tank, I’ll untie them and let the fish go. Penny has her door closed—a rarity. She usually plays with it open. I knock on the door. “Who goes there?” A rough voice masquerading as an adult—Pam.
“Tell Penny I bought more fish. Why don’t y’all come out and look at them?”
“We will later, Tom. Pam and I are busy right now,” Penny replies. They giggle. When she has friends, I cease being “Daddy.” I become “Tom.” Her first step toward adulthood.
“Alright,” I say, and am about to leave when I hear whispering. Curious, I put my ear to the door. In a quiet, respectful voice I hear Penny introduce Pam to “Aunt Verdy who lives in Chicago near the waterfront where she goes fishing every day.” I try the door. Locked.
“Open the door.”
“We’re busy,” Penny replies.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s just me and Penny,” Pam says, pausing, “and Aunt Verdy.”
“There’s no Aunt Verdy,” I say.
They giggle. “Open this door, I mean it!” I shout, thinking this is serious, my daughter’s mental health could be at stake.
Finally, the door creeps open. They’ve been playing dress-up. Pam and Penny sit on the bed. I have no idea where they got the white gloves, shawls, high heels, makeup, earrings.
“Where’s Aunt Verdy?” I ask.
They look at each other, trading secrets. “It’s just pretend, Tom,” Pam says. More giggling.
“Yeah, Tom,” Penny echoes, brimming with a sudden confidence: a maturity I haven’t seen before. “Don’t you know, there’s no such thing as ghosts?”