THE GOLD FISH: Fat Stacks (1.7)

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Barbie set Gigi down on the linoleum floor, tossed the filthy scissors into the sink, and turned to face her mother. “Okay, I’m done.” Joan was leaning against the counter, the cigarette between her fingers burned to ash, staring off into space. She seemed to neither see nor hear her daughter.

Barbie took a breath and looked around, as if hoping the room would at least acknowledge her. But the kitchen -- despite its outspoken 1960s harvest gold and brown splendor -- remained silent. While neat and clean, the tiny, galley style room was so cluttered with furniture, it seemed overwhelmed with itself, let alone have surplus capacity for anyone else’s issues. 

“Ma?” Barbie ventured again, this time a little louder. “I said, I’m done.”

Joan startled, noticed her spent cigarette, and stubbed it out in the ashtray. “What?”

“Can I still get a Slurpee?”

One look at Barbie’s eager, sunburnt face, strengthened Joan’s vow to be better, to show this poor child the love she deserved. 

“Yeah. I guess.”

Joan squeezed the pack of cigarettes on the counter beside her, and it compressed, the crackling cellophane layer signaling how empty it was. “I need cigarettes anyway.” She nodded towards the purse that sat on one of the kitchen chairs nearest Barbie. “Hand me my pocketbook.”

Barbie handed the bag over and watched as her mother rummaged unproductively in her wallet. The billfold yielded nothing and the change pocket little more.

“Damn. I only have change.” She lifted her eyes to Barbie.

Barbie slumped in disappointment, but Joan straightened with decision. “C’mon,” she said, and started out of the room.

When Barbie failed to follow her, Joan turned back, eyes now narrowed with impatience, and snapped, “you want a goddamned Slurpee or not?”

Habits are, indeed, hard to break.

:::

Barbie followed Joan on tippy toes into the master bedroom, its dim interior lit only by a thin strip of light struggling valiantly to sneak past the black-out shades.

The room held a king-sized bed, two big dressers, two side tables, a hamper, a tv stand, and a chair no one ever sat in. As far as Barbie could tell, the chair existed only to hold her father’s discarded pants. To say the room was cramped would have been an understatement. In the best of times, the available floor space between the foot of the bed and her mother’s dresser was so narrow you could barely squeeze through to the other side, let alone fully open the dresser drawers. But in the worst of times, like now, when the bulky bedspread had been kicked off the foot of the bed and lay puddled on the floor below, that narrow gap became an impossible gauntlet. Honestly, it might have been easier to crawl across the huge bed on all fours than try to tightrope through that tight, lumpy space.

Although not at this particular moment, because blocking the way was the last thing in the room: Barbie’s father, Don, a snoring, hulking mass sleeping the day away. As was his habit.

This scenario was all-to-familiar, and therefore, did nothing to deter Barbie’s mother from her mission. Joan was equipped with a petite frame and years of covert tightrope experience, so she easily entered the breach and bunny hopped soundlessly through the lumpy, narrow gap towards Don’s pants. And the money within them.

“Oh Jeez,” whispered Barbie.

Joan whirled, shot Barbie a warning look and held her index finger to her lips. Then, eyebrows still raised, she gently lifted Don’s pants, dug into the pocket, and retrieved a wad of bills. 

For someone perennially short on funds, Don always managed to possess a thick wad of cash. His habit of cashing his weekly check and sticking the whole dang thing into his pocket made sure of that. Don eschewed wallets for their limited storage capacity, as well as banks, where Joan might gain access to his cash for pesky things like the mortgage and groceries. No. Cold hard cash, close-at-hand was the way Don liked it. To his hand anyway. A comforting lump to pat reassuringly through the day and use however he saw fit. Like when it was time to pay off a bet or pony up for the next round at Bo Brooks, the favored watering hole of Don and his buddies at the car dealership.

Unfortunately for Don, however, his unguarded wad of cash was at this moment accessible to Joan. With one eye peeled on her husband’s unconscious form, she used pincher fingers to peel off first one, then two dollar bills from the center of the stack. Don liked to keep his higher denomination bills like twenties or fifties on the outside -- where they were most likely to be seen -- with lesser bills like ones and fins, as he called fives, in descending order towards the center. In this manner, one twenty wrapped around a hearty, yet measly, stack of ones would look like he was packing fat stacks. Although he rarely was past check cashing day. The good news -- for Joan anyway -- was that Don was more meticulous about the ordering of his money than, say, the remembering of how much he had. Late nights at Bo Brooks made sure of that.

Her light-fingered mission accomplished, Joan stuffed the remaining wad back into Don’s pants, bunny hopped her way back through the pass and pushed Barbie out the door.

Once the door was quietly closed behind them, she thrust the bills at Barbie.

“Get your Slurpee and two packs of Doral Lights,” she whispered. “And don’t forget the matches. And my change!”

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