THE GOLD FISH: Caustics (1.2)

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Oh, Don wasn’t a dud as a human. As a human being, he was a delight. He was affectionate, funny, and charming. Extremely charming. If anything, it was Don’s sweet, cheerful nature and his capacity for unconditional love that grounded his children. And he was bright. Don could have been a success in any sort of endeavor -- familial or otherwise -- had he ever bothered to apply himself. To anything. He might happily participate in family festivities, activities, or events, and was often the life of the party, provided the start time wasn’t too early. But organizing, preparing for, and/or cleaning up after said events? No thank you. That was for others. Specifically, Joan.

In the fathering department, the only thing Don consistently applied himself to was in the doing of absolutely nothing. He didn’t take his children to the zoo, teach them how to ride a bike, or read to them. He didn’t walk them to school, make them breakfast, or supervise their homework. Whatever typical Dad activity or responsibility one might imagine a father would perform was most certainly one Don didn’t do. Unless you considered teaching a child -- specifically Barbie -- how to play poker a typical Dad activity. Don did do that. If only to have someone to play with.

If Don’s lack of effort was perhaps disappointing to his daughters, it was small potatoes compared to what he didn’t do as a husband. He didn’t file the taxes, change a lightbulb, or fix a leaky faucet. He didn’t change the oil, mow the lawn, or take out the trash.

What he did do was eat, drink, sleep, play cards, gamble, and occasionally sell cars... that is, when he managed to haul himself out of bed and drag himself to work.

But wonder of wonders, Don had managed to sire another child. And with the addition of The Belle to the family, it meant that Joan had four children to care for, rather than the three she had personally given birth to. Honestly, if Joan needed a break that day, it was from her husband, not her daughters.

If Hazel had really wanted to help her daughter-in-law, she might have offered something more valuable than a day off. A simple acknowledgement -- just the tiniest scrap of validation would have sufficed -- that Joan was shouldering an inhuman and unfair burden. Alone.

To Joan, that admission would have been a priceless treasure worth more than a hundred days free from caring for her older children. But that kindness hadn’t occurred to Hazel. Or if it did, she couldn’t or wouldn’t offer it. Because that would mean admitting another truth: that she herself had been a dud as a mother. She had raised her only child, Don, to be an irresponsible, baby-man and Joan and the girls would always suffer because of it.

That acknowledgement from Hazel might have changed everything for Joan. Made her feel considered. Cared for. Seen. It might have prevented -- or at least slowed -- the build-up of muted rage that hardened and congealed against Joan’s ribs with each passing day. Making it more and more difficult for her to take an easy breath. And turning her into a scorpion whose stinger was so poised and ready to strike, it rendered her incapable of giving -- or more tragically, receiving -- love.

But Hazel said nothing, so nothing changed for Joan. Not then and not ever. The hardened mass remained, even when, later in life, Joan’s circumstances tilted towards the privileged and there was no longer any reason for it.

On that day in the pool, however, things were changing for Barbie. Maybe it was the beauty of the watery blue world or the weightlessness she felt within it. Who knows? It doesn’t matter. What mattered was that Barbie felt something new take up residence inside her and start to stick to her ribs. Actually, maybe it wasn’t new. Maybe it had always been there, but she had never really taken notice of it. Like the color of her hair or the freckles on her nose. But now, it made itself known and felt. Being in water, being under water, filled her with the purest joy she had ever known. The weightlessness and freedom. The quiet. The peace. Whether it was jumping waves in Ocean City, the beach town her family vacationed in for a week every summer, or jumping off her grandfather’s boat into the Chesapeake Bay, water was her happy place.

But on that particular scorching August day, it was the memory of that particular pool she’d spent an afternoon in two years prior that came rushing back at her. Because in that water, she could see.

She looked down at the dungaree cut-off shorts she wore over a faded bathing suit -- both hand-me-downs from Karen -- and fingered a crude embroidery she had made just below one of the front pockets. She had tried to re-create, in thin blue thread, the dancing patterns of fractured sunlight she had seen on the pool’s bottom that day. To anyone else, these thin, scraggly lines might have looked like lightning bolts or random scratches. But Barbie beheld them for what they were: underwater magic.

Thanks to Mr. Charles, Barbie’s friend and next-door neighbor, she now knew the patterns were called “caustics” and were formed when a concentration of sunlight passed through a clear, uneven surface, like a curved piece of glass or a swimming pool’s undulating surface. Mr. Charles had explained that the name came from the Latin causticus, which meant burning. And that made perfect sense, because if anyone understood how concentrated sunshine could burn, it was the fair skinned, redheaded Barbie. What delighted her most was that underwater, where those caustics lived, the sun couldn’t get to her.

At that thought, Barbie remembered her idea and leapt to her bare feet, fingers of energy racing through her. But the sight of The Belle -- now a sweaty toddler sitting in a turtle-shaped sandbox under the shade of the yard’s one tree -- made her pause. Barbie had been made expressly responsible for watching her baby sister, and the dangers of running afoul of Joan’s instructions were legend. But boy, oh boy, how that idea was building inside her, calling to her. Loudly. Urgently. Honestly, Barbie thought, what was the harm in leaving The Belle untended for the two seconds it would take to run into the house and get what she needed? Besides her mother’s wrath, of course, was there any real danger?

She scanned the alley and block of neighboring homes in search of it, but there was nothing out of the ordinary or particularly threatening. Just the usual activity on a hot summer day. Dads mowing lawns. Kids running through sprinklers churning other lawns to mud. The Chi-Lites “Have you seen her?” drifting lazily on the air, no doubt from an open window or someone’s transistor radio. A teenaged boy washing his car two houses away was totally preoccupied, sending rivulets of soapy water trickling down the center of the alley. And in the identical yard next door was Mr. Charles, puffing on his pipe and re-staking his leggy tomato plants, his trusty terrier, Trixie, splayed in the grass beside him. God knows Mr. Charles was no threat. Honestly, Barbie was more worried about threats to Mr. Charles, than the other way around.

Because Mr. Charles was what you might call, in those days anyway, a dwarf.

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