THE GOLD FISH: Orange You Glad (1.6)

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Barbie sat with Gigi on the bottom step of the back porch doing her, she thought with a giggle, dooty.

Cutting away the offending clumps from Gigi’s hindquarters wasn’t really so terrible. Especially given Joan’s promise of a Slurpee. After a swimming pool, Barbie had to admit, a slushy Slurpee was next on her list of favorite things on a hot day. But it had to be orange, and only orange.

Orange was the best Slurpee flavor. Period. End of story. It wasn’t an opinion, Barbie thought. It was fact. Not only was orange the most delicious and most thirst-quenching, it had a consistency to it, which she appreciated. It possessed the orange name, the orange color, and the orange flavor. It fulfilled its essential promises, and was therefore, trustworthy.

Barbie wasn’t a particularly angry person -- at least not yet -- but it irked her to no end when a kid said that red or blue was their favorite Slurpee flavor. Flavor! It was the kind of ignorant comment that made her want to scream. Why didn’t these dumbbells know that, as opposed to orange, red and blue were colors and colors only. They weren’t flavors. And if that wasn’t bad enough -- and it was -- those colors didn’t even attempt to taste like the things they were supposed to be. A red Slurpee tasted NOTHING like a cherry. Or a strawberry, for that matter. And what the heck were cola and lemon-lime? Abominations, that’s what they were.

Not that a purple Slurpee was any better. It was the worst -- what Karen might have called totally beat -- because whatever flavor purple was supposed to be, it sure didn’t taste anything like a real grape. Or the grape flavors Barbie knew from Tang and Welch’s grape jelly. It was possible -- a slim possibility, but a possibility nonetheless -- that Barbie could have accepted that flaw, if not for the fact that a purple Slurpee -- when sipped through a straw -- induced a hot, burning tickle in the back of your throat. Instead of being thirst quenching, it was cough- and choke-inducing. It was a travesty.

So it was orange -- and only orange -- for Barbie.

There was another reason Barbie preferred orange. One she might not care to admit because it carried with it the sin of pride. It was this: orange was consistent with her.

People called her a redhead, but in her mind, she wasn’t. Not really. Her hair was more an orange-y gold, which is why she understood -- but still hated -- the term carrot top. Her hair color was technically closer to a carrot than, say, a strawberry, but it still made no sense. The top of a carrot was green. But there was no use pointing that out because Barbie had discovered that when someone calls you something in the spirit of meanness -- after all, carrot top was rarely said in kindness -- correcting them just made things worse. It was another thing Barbie had learned to keep her smart mouth shut about.

Inside her head, however, Barbie could do whatever the hell she wanted. And at that particular moment, she prayed. Not to God, capital “G,” but to the often overlooked 7-Eleven Slurpee god. “Please, oh please,” she muttered to herself. “Have orange today.”

:::

While Barbie was having deep thoughts about the superiority of orange, Joan, having fed The Belle and put her down for a nap, stood at the kitchen counter and allowed herself a moment of peace.

She shook a cigarette out of her pack of Doral Lights, lit up, and drew in a blessed lungful of smoke. The effect of that first drag was immediate. For one blissful moment, she could breathe again. Oh she knew it was ridiculous. Smoking wasn’t actually good for her breathing. The Surgeon General had come out with its report on the dangers of smoking years ago and had been hounding the public about it ever since. Smoking was a killer.

But what the Surgeon General didn’t know -- about Joan anyway -- was that a death from lung cancer was no more and no less terrifying than a death from a broken heart. And Joan’s heart was terribly, irrevocably broken. Not in that silly school-girl way, although God knows her romantic disappointment with Don would have been enough to shatter her heart in a million different pieces. No, her heart break was bigger than that. It was with life itself. The life she felt she had been promised along with her union with Don. Every single thing she had believed was her due for being a good girl, a good Christian, a good wife, a good mother -- was a lie. At 37, Joan had learned that nothing she did or didn’t do made one goddamned bit of difference. Her husband would continue to drink, waste and gamble away what little money they had, and fail to perform any household or fatherly duties. It didn’t matter how much she begged, bartered, or threatened. Don just drifted through their lives, contributing little more than the chaos he left in his wake. So why not smoke? It was a victimless crime... unless you counted her. And she didn’t. She was -- and felt -- invisible, certain in the knowledge that the only real evidence of her existence was the meals she prepared, the clothes she laundered, the bottoms she wiped, etc., etc.

Joan felt that if lung cancer came to get her tomorrow, no one would mourn her passing. Definitely not her surly teenager, Karen, who didn’t give two shits about anything. Her eldest daughter could barely tolerate being asked about her day, let alone being managed, coddled, or protected. If she died tomorrow, Joan was certain Karen’s standoffish nature and venomous tongue would keep her safe, repelling any individual stupid or fool-heartedly enough to try to cross her.

Why Joan would harbor such a naïve notion is beyond comprehension. Because if Joan had only looked in the mirror, she would have seen proof positive that a cranky disposition and vitriolic mouth was no inoculation against victimization. But Joan wasn’t fond of self-reflection, so she didn’t look. Nor did she see that, in Karen’s case, this delusional belief was terribly, tragically wrong. She just didn’t know it yet. 

Regardless, Joan checked Karen off the worry list, took another drag of her cigarette, and considered her beautiful youngest, The Belle. The baby of the family was so self-possessed that, even at 2, the world seemed to delight in orbiting around her rather than the other way around. If the Grim Reaper showed up at the door, which given Joan’s three-pack-a-day habit, might not be too much of a long shot, she could relax in the knowledge that The Belle would be surrounded and protected by countless adoring family members and friends like concentric rings of downy pillows. Until, of course, she was full grown, when a dashing prince would come along to sweep her off to a life of ease and bon-bon eating. Of course, Joan would be wrong about that too, but ignorance -- or rather, delusion -- is bliss.

Joan drifted over to the screen door to consider her middle child. Who at that very moment was praying to the Slurpee gods (small “g”) and diligently performing the crappy task she had been given. Ironically, even though she was perhaps the most self-sufficient of her children, Joan believed Barbie would suffer the most. That girl, she thought, would notice if she dropped dead. Because to Joan’s great annoyance, Barbie noticed everything. As the middle child, she seemed to have the perfect, if not unfortunate, perch from which to witness all the family goings-on. Good and bad. Mostly bad. Like a goddamned insect, antennae waving frantically, Barbie was always picking up the dysfunctional dynamics in the home. And worse, feeling them. For godssake, thought Joan, who could bear that kind of constant surveillance?

To add insult to injury, the girl also had the condescending gall to try to counter Joan’s disappointments, to try to lighten her load and mood. Not that Barbie wasn’t successful occasionally -- a case in point was right in front of her; Joan was quite happy to not cut shit off the family dog -- but it was annoying just the same. Joan could almost hate her for it. A grown woman should have some privacy in her own goddamned home, and not be subjected to the constantly prying eyes, ears, and pity of a 12-year-old.

She whirled away from the door and the sight of her middle daughter. Then shook her head violently from side to side.

What the hell is wrong with me, she thought. Because Joan knew, at this particular point in her life, Barbie was perhaps the only person in her life that she could truly rely on and trust. It was her daughter, perhaps, who shouldn’t trust her.

Joan sagged against the kitchen counter in shame, took another drag of her cigarette, and closed her eyes, horrified by her own thoughts, yet incapable of making them go away.

Next → Fat Stacks (1.7)