“Where are you two? Get in the damn car!” Dad yells from downstairs. “Get in the damn car — we’re leaving!” As usual, Lis and I drop everything we’re doing and head downstairs. We’ve gone from amusing ourselves in our bedrooms to immediate departure mode. When Dad says something, we tend to do it — as soon as possible.
I’m kneeling to turn off the record player when I glance at my fish tank. The tank is blurry, and things swirl in the water — little tornadoes of dust. I can hardly see my fish. I cannot see the treasure chest at all.
I know Dad is standing downstairs by the front door, with work boots, flannel, and jeans. He has his flask of gin and his pack of Kools. I don’t want to tell him about the tank. He’s impatient and drunk and possibly even hungry. I know we’re going to Pepe’s for dinner, and he doesn’t want to wait for a table. I know I’m going to be in trouble for the fish tank and the tornadoes of dust I didn’t cause.
But I also know I love my fish, and this doesn’t look good.
I’m deciding whether I should go downstairs and tell Dad or call him upstairs when Lis comes in from her bedroom. She looks at me as I look at the tank.
“What’s wrong with the fish?” Lis asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, looking in the tank.
The pump is burping, and the tank is foggy. I open the top lid, poke the water with my finger. It feels normal, but smells horrible.
“Dad!” Lis screams.
“Lis!” I’m shaking my head. “I could have tried to fix it myself.”
“Goddamnit,” Dad says.
I hear him clumping up the stairs in his boots. Lis escapes from my bedroom. Goes in the bathroom.
“What’s the problem now?” he asks, standing at the door. As if I have problems hourly, ones only he can fix.
“I think it’s the filter,” I say, pointing at my tank. I’m proud I remember this — it’s what he brags about to my uncles on Thanksgiving. They stand and admire the water in his clean, shiny tanks.
“It’s not the damn filter,” he says. “It’s the water temperature.”
Dad’s glugging from his flask of gin. It sounds almost the same as the bubbling pump.
“OK,” I nod sagely. “How do you know?”
Sometimes, I don’t know if I want to learn from him or just tone down his anger. I ask questions. Listen. It’s what I do when he’s mad and drunk. I try to feel my way around — or leave the entire situation.
This time, I want him to know I’m learning. That I feed the fish the way he said — just a pinch; that I wipe down the coral and plastic pirate chest once a month. That I named the fish: Wispy and Dorothy and Dale the Snail.
He’s leaning on my window seat, swaying. Smelling like limes.
“Don’t worry about how I know.” He lifts the lid. “Just leave me be.”
So I leave him be; I go downstairs for my pink puffy jacket and moonwalk boots.
* * *
On the way to dinner, Dad sits in the passenger seat, too drunk to drive. His cigarette butt half hangs out the window, his flask in hand. He’s mumbling about the weather, how no one needs heating or cooling calls in 70-degree temperatures. Dad owns an HVAC company — runs it alone. His van says “24 Hour Emergency Service,” but he’s mostly passed out drunk for those calls.
Mom sips from her water bottle as she drives. It’s not water — it’s rum. She ignores him and sideswipes cars, runs yellow lights.
We pull into Pepe’s. The manager knows us; the waiters, too. It’s OK for Dad to raise his voice here, for Mom to slosh the rum she brought from home into her Diet RC Cola. That’s why we frequent Pepe’s. We can fight and sneak in alcohol and not eat and generally act as if we’re still at home.
We order the same appetizer, the same dinners.
“And easy on the red sauce,” Mom says. Like always.
“And extra guacamole,” Lis says. Like always.
Pepe’s doesn’t charge us for the guacamole. We come here too often. We deserve guacamole on the house.
When our food comes, I ask for extra napkins. I know something will spill, and I want to be ready.
“Will the fish be OK?” I ask.
Dad shovels his tostada suizas in his mouth, fork in one hand, drink in the other. Mom pours more rum, and I take a bite of my chicken flauta. Lis ignores her dinner and dips the complimentary tortilla chips: first in the guacamole, then in the salsa.
“Lis is making the salsa green again,” I tell Mom — as if she can’t see.
“Oh, hell,” Dad says. “Just order some more.”
I ask him about the fish again, and he grunts, noncommittal:
“They’ll be fine.”
I wonder if I didn’t clean the coral well enough, if Dale the Snail is sick, or if I left too much slime in the tank. I wonder if it is my fault.
Mom talks to Lis about ice skating — landing her double toe loop, not getting overconfident. Dad orders another gin and tonic. I pick at my flautas, stir the rice into the beans. My stomach hurts.
Lis reaches for more chips in the basket and knocks over the salsa. I hand her napkins.
“What if they’re not fine?” I ask him. I know it is risky to keep up a conversation that Dad has clearly ended.
“Worry about your C in math and not the damn fish tank!”
I have a D in math now, but report cards don’t come out until next week. I’m safe until then.
After my Mom’s three rum and Cokes, after Dad’s three gin and tonics, after Lis leaves her entire mini taco dinner on her plate, and after I don’t eat my flautas and wonder about my fish, Dad pays the bill. Leaves a tip.
* * *
At home, I go up to my room without taking off my shoes. I know my fish are dead — can feel it in the air. My bedroom smells murky, swampy. I don’t want to go by the tank, but I need to see.
The water is roiling, and there’s water on the carpet. I see Wispy and Dorothy floating at the top. Dale the Snail is bobbing in the water.
“Dad?”
He boiled the fish — alive.
“I don’t want to hear about the fish,” he says from the bottom of the stairs. “I’ve got other things to do.”
I know he has nothing to do but sit in the basement and drink more gin, pass out by his workbench.
I unplug the tank. The filter stops bubbling, and the water calms. I know I need my green net — it will be a deathbed now, not a jacuzzi.
Lis comes in, sees me sitting by the tank, sees the water:
“Maybe we can bury the fish by my hamster under the big tree,” she says.
