THE GOLD FISH: A Perfect Day (1.1)

The idea struck her like a blow. Driven by what her mother, Joan, would have said was the goddamned heat, which on that day was as hot as Hades. Sitting on the back porch of her Baltimore row house that scorching August day in 1972, 12-year-old Barbie thought Joan’s description sounded about right. But not exactly. If asked -- and Barbie had to admit, she was rarely ever asked for her opinion about anything -- she would have said the heat felt more like a demon spawned from Hades’ depths, rather than the place itself. And not just any demon either. The Devil, with a capital D. Because the heat felt personal. Like it was intent on inflicting pain specifically on her. Sear her pale skin scarlet and raise a new set of dime-sized blisters across her freckled shoulders.

What Barbie longed for -- dreamt of -- was a cool, blue swimming pool. And not just any pool either. But a built-in pool with a real deep end. Maybe even a diving board. Like the one she had once spent an afternoon two summers ago darting in and out of, effortlessly twisting and turning weightless circles in its blue depths. She had held her breath that day until her lungs were fit to bursting, her eyes open wide in wonder at the fractured patterns of sunlight reflected on the pool’s bottom, her hands sculling frantically to race them to and fro. Even though the experience had left her with aching, bloodshot eyes for days afterwards, it had been worth it.

That the day had come courtesy of her least favorite grandmother, Hazel, was an irony not lost on Barbie who, even then, understood that the world had a wicked sense of humor. Hazel was mercurial, happy as a lark one moment and quick to deliver a stinging slap the next. Like many things in her short life, Barbie had learned not to trust her.

But Hazel had been kind that afternoon. She had taken Barbie, and Barbie’s older sister, Karen, to visit a friend who lived in an apartment complex with a pool. While Karen, who had been 12 at the time, lounged on a nearby chaise reading a Nancy Drew novel and idly picking her lips (a habit that no manner of incentives or punishments from either Hazel or her mother, Joan, could ever break), Hazel and her friend -- Myrna maybe? -- cackled under a fringed umbrella smoking Benson & Hedges 100s, downing Whiskey Sours, and nibbling daintily from a box of Chicken in a Biskit crackers.

So on that day, Barbie had had the pool to herself, quite content to leap and splash and dive to her heart’s content. Free of company, yes. But also blessedly free of external comment, censure, or criticism. And on nearly every day since, she’d had the memory of it.

That perfect day, of course, hadn’t been engineered for Barbie’s benefit. Or Karen’s for that matter, although Karen was Hazel’s favorite. Karen was the firstborn grandchild, and what with her wide green eyes, perfect bone structure, and raven hair, she might have been Hazel’s own mini doppelganger. The lip-picking notwithstanding, Karen also knew how to keep still -- the quality Hazel most appreciated in a child -- and arrange her long, tanned limbs in beautiful repose while she read, as if demanding to be observed and admired. Which, as luck would have it, she usually was. And if that wasn’t enough for favored grandchild status -- and it was plenty -- Karen had also been born miraculously, providentially, and deservedly on November 10, 1958, Hazel’s very own 45^th birthday.

That Karen’s birth had been a full week late -- the first incidence, by the way, of habitual lateness that would plague Karen her entire life -- was taken by Hazel as evidence that Karen’s delayed entrance into the world had occurred expressly to please and honor her.

It did please Hazel. It pleased her very much. A shared birth date with her firstborn granddaughter provided the perfect justification for exclusionary over-the-top indulgences and special treats for just us birthday girls on every November 10th thereafter. It was literally the gift that kept on giving. Neither Hazel nor Karen ever tired of it, although friends and family certainly had.

So between birth order, beauty, poise, and that shared birthday, Karen won the favorite grandchild contest, hands down.

In contrast, Barbie was a skinny, redheaded, knobby-kneed, perpetual motion machine with a constantly peeling nose. To Hazel, a more unattractive, twitchy child never existed.

If pressed, Hazel could probably find a redeeming quality in Barbie. She supposed that the girl seemed bright, but as any smart women knew, that could be a blessing or a curse. And it certainly wouldn’t have been a reason to admire Barbie or even observe her. In fact, if one’s eyes accidently caught Barbie in their gaze, they’d automatically skip past her in search of better pastures. Even the pool’s teenaged lifeguard that day was a case in point. Despite constantly finding Barbie submerged in a “dead man’s float” as she stared at the bottom of the pool, the young man’s eyes seemed to inadvertently veer away from her pale, lifeless form and over to Karen, another prepubescent who -- at least to him -- was more curiously and deliciously compelling.

But that’s beside the point. The point is while the excursion had been positioned to Barbie and Karen as a special outing for just us girls -- Hazel was nothing if not consistent in her love of just us occasions -- it had actually been engineered to benefit Joan, who had just given birth to Hazel’s third grandchild and needed rest! The new baby, named Michele but immediately and fittingly dubbed The Belle, was an easy, gray-eyed dumpling who given time, might have had the potential to knock Karen off Hazel’s favorite grandchild perch if not for Karen’s birthday trump card.

Barbie, who tended to be somewhat literal, wanted to point out that her mother and new baby sister were also girls and wanted to know why they had been excluded from the outing. But by that point in her life, Barbie knew enough to keep her smart mouth shut.

Truth be told, Hazel’s motive in taking the girls that day was driven by a truth she would never tell nor admit. A truth that was like a pebble in her shoe, sharp and annoying. One which she could never, ever quite shake out.

And the truth was this: Don, her first and only son, father to her granddaughters and husband to Joan, was a complete and total dud.

Next → Caustics (1.2)