Life in a Fishbowl

by Len Vlahos

  Max

  Tell them it is for class project.

  Jackie

  Oooh. Good idea!

  Jackie had never felt so conspiratorial, and she found herself enjoying it.

  Jackie

  What are we going to call our show?

  Max

  I was thinking on this. I think we call it “The Real Stone Family of Portland, Oregon”? It is joke on terrible show we see in Russia called “Real Housewives of Orange County.” I hope this is not too, what is word, unsensitive?

  Jackie

  LOL. The word is insensitive, Max, and it’s not. I love it. But can we change it to Family Stone instead of Stone Family?

  Max

  Yes, of course. Is this how American families are called?

  Jackie

  No, but my grandfather used to listen to a band called Sly and the Family Stone, and it became a kind of joke in our house.

  Max

  Da. It is settled. “The Real Family Stone of Portland, Oregon.” We go into production right away.

  ***

  Jared barely made it to his office futon after the meeting with Ethan. Once there, he drifted quickly off to sleep. With fewer and fewer memories for his brain to access, the fewest possible neurons were firing; only those needed to control his most basic bodily functions were active. Jared’s sleep was as peaceful and deep as Crater Lake.

  It was in this moment that Glio reached the nadir of his existence, the consumption of Jared’s seminal memory. All people have such a memory, the one moment in time that, more than any other, defines who they are and who they are to become. For most, it’s something that happens in the fourth or fifth year of life, after the brain has developed enough intellectual capacity to begin to comprehend the world, but not enough emotional capacity to process the new thoughts streaming along its synaptic pathways. For a few people, those able to overcome the circumstances of an unfortunate existence, it happens later in life.

  Jared’s seminal moment happened just after his fourth birthday.

  The sky was the color of the Caribbean Sea, a few clouds billowing through the ether like punctuation—ellipses and commas, not periods or exclamation points. The sun warmed Jared’s skin as he sat in the grass moving a toy cement mixer back and forth. His father, engrossed in a book, sat in a lawn chair a few feet away.

  All of a sudden, little Jared began to blubber. Quick as a wink, his father was kneeling beside him—though in Jared’s memory, his father moved in slow motion, taking an entire age of man to cross the stone patio to his distraught son.

  “What is it, Jared?” his father asked, his concern real but measured.

  “Bug!” Jared shouted, and pointed at a grasshopper that had landed on his truck. “Bug!”

  “Oh, well, we can fix that,” his father said. Glio expected to see the father shoo the grasshopper away, but he didn’t. He was astonished to see Jared’s father pick up the grasshopper and hold it out for his son to examine, the creature immobile in the gentle grasp of the man’s forefinger and thumb.

  “You see, Jared,” his father told him, “whatever you’re afraid of is probably way more scared of you.”

  Jared was just old enough to grasp this concept, and he let it rattle around in his brain.

  “Really?” he asked.

  “Really,” his father told him. “Just look at this grasshopper. You’re ten times his size.”

  Jared smiled.

  “No, wait, you’re a hundred times his size.” Jared’s smile crept into a laugh. His father went through a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand, and a million until little Jared was doubled over in laughter.

  He was scared of many things after that but never so completely frightened that he was paralyzed. That moment helped Jared see the world the way he was sure it was meant to be seen. The lesson followed him unconsciously through the rest of his life, giving shape to the character that would come to define who he was.

  When Glio finished the memory, he swam through a sea of psychoses, largely calm waters dulled by the pain-relieving drugs Jared had been prescribed in the wake of the radiation. From there, he climbed mountains of regret, reaching their craggy summits with ease. On the other side was a kind of Shangri-la of mirth: memories of joy and abandon.

  But through it all, Glio knew something was wrong. There was a foul aftertaste on the wind, the stench of disease. And Glio knew. He knew that he, or rather the corporeal he, the physical body, was dying.

  Now that he had an identity and memories, Glio very much wanted to live. He also knew that death, unlike the grasshopper, wasn’t afraid of him, that it couldn’t be. But still, the memory of that day with Jared’s father gave comfort to Glio in a way he didn’t think was possible.

  Glio was becoming Jared Stone. But he also now knew that Jared Stone was going to die. Glio didn’t know how, but he needed to stop that from happening.

  In the meantime, he would continue his feast.

  ***

  Two days before Life and Death was scheduled to return to the air, Jackie started collecting little snippets of video. Max told her to keep them short, under twenty seconds each.

  “Excuse me,” she would say, interrupting a crew member, “I’m doing a school project on the show. Can I film you while you work?”

  The entire crew was suffering from a mélange of guilt and posttraumatic stress over the murder of Trebuchet and would have done just about anything for the Stone family. Each one tripped over the next to help Jackie get some behind-the-scenes footage. They showed her how to light a set, taught her about the 180-degree rule for framing a shot, and gave her tips on when to use a close-up versus an extreme close-up.

  At first, they mugged for the camera, smiling at Jackie, offering a small quip or bit of wisdom. But as that day and the next wore on, they started to forget Jackie was there. The irony of this—that the crew should have the same reaction to being filmed as the cast of Life and Death or Big Brother or Survivor or any other reality show, that they completely tuned out the existence of the cameras—wasn’t lost on Jackie. The project made her feel subversive, rebellious, and so very alive.

  ***

  Jared read the bathroom scale in disbelief. He’d lost thirty-five pounds in the last month. He looked up and saw his reflection: the skin under his eyes was a dark brown—any darker and he would look like a scrawny baseball player using a grease pencil to stop the glare of the sun—his cheeks were starting to sink back into his face, and his hair was thinning. He looked like he was dying.

  The doctor told Jared to expect some side effects from the radiation therapy he’d been receiving since his diagnosis, and he wondered if this was part of it.

  The treatments were kind of weird. The radiation technician had him lie flat on a table—the table reminded Jared of an operating table, or maybe a table in a morgue—and fixed a mesh mask over his head and face. The idea was to make sure his head was in the exact same position for each treatment.

  “If I zap you a little too far to the left,” the technician told Jared when he was first being fitted for the mask, “I’ll fry your ability to blink your eyes. A little to the right and I can make you act like a chicken.”

  Jared thought that maybe this was supposed to be funny, so he laughed politely.

  “I’m just kidding,” she said, confirming his suspicion that a joke had been told, “but we do need to make sure that tumor stays where we want it.”

  “I’d prefer it not be in my head,” Jared said, trying a joke of his own.

  Once the mask was on, the treatments were almost peaceful. He would lie still and try to clear his mind. It was forty minutes of uninterrupted lack of interruptions three times a week. He could have done without the side effects, however.

  The nausea hit hard after his third treatment. He tried all manner of remedies to settle his stomach: Pepto-Bismol, silver nitrates, opiates prescribed by his doctors, even blackberry brandy and ginger ale. The only thing that seemed to make him feel bet
ter was vomiting. Eventually, though, the severity of the nausea settled down, or maybe he just got used to it.

  Now, standing in the bathroom, all of it seemed like a blur.

  Maybe it’s more than side effects, he thought. Maybe dying, without the radiation, looks like this, too. He tried to remember friends, relatives, and colleagues he’d lost to cancer over the years, but no one was coming to mind. That didn’t seem right. There must be someone.

  The only thing Jared knew for sure was that he was tired. So incredibly tired.

  ***

  The return episode of Life and Death aired exactly one week after the Sherman Kingsborough fiasco. It opened with this warning in bold white letters on an all-black background:

  The first five minutes of tonight’s episode of Life and Death include scenes of graphic violence that are not suitable for young viewers. Parents are encouraged to escort children from the room.

  The warning was on the screen for a full twenty seconds before the voice-over started.

  It was Jackie’s voice. It had been taken from an interview she’d done with one of the producers the day after Trebuchet died. The producer, a young, attractive woman with the unfortunate name of Andersona (the same person who had delivered the fan mail), sat with Jackie on Jackie’s bed. It was an old fashioned girl-to-girl heart-to-heart. But the video of the interview wasn’t on the screen when the voice-over started.

  This is what viewers saw and heard:

  JACKIE: Of course I loved him. He was my best friend. [Her voice chokes.]

  FADE from warning about graphic violence to a grainy image of Trebuchet’s bloody body on Jared’s office floor.

  JACKIE: That man, Mr. Kingsborough, he wanted to hurt my father.

  DISSOLVE TO a stupefied Sherman Kingsborough being escorted from the Stone house in handcuffs.

  JACKIE: I don’t know why anyone would want to hurt us. I just don’t understand.

  DISSOLVE TO Jared lying on the office floor, clutching his temples in obvious agony. Next to him is the blood-soaked rug where Trebuchet had been stabbed.

  JACKIE: Yes, I think he’s in heaven. With my grandma.

  DISSOLVE TO Jared, Deirdre, Jackie, and Megan burying Trebuchet in a hole in the backyard. It’s clearly been filmed without their knowledge by a camera hidden in a nearby tree.

  SOMBER MUSIC starts softly and begins to swell.

  JUMP CUT TO JACKIE and PRODUCER on Jackie’s bed. Jackie is crying hysterically.

  JACKIE: Please, can we stop? I need to stop. [Jackie buries her face in her hands. The sound of her heaving sobs fades slowly out and mixes with the music.]

  FADE TO BLACK. ROLL OPENING CREDITS.

  ***

  Late the following morning, Deirdre was sitting on the futon in Jared’s office reading a book. Jared was lying on the floor, eyes closed. In the days before the cancer, before the cameras, this was unheard of.

  Deirdre knew that Jared hated the term “man cave,” but Jared’s office, to her mind, was just that. It was his space, his kingdom, and she was careful not to intrude.

  But now, now that she knew his time was limited, she wanted to spend every possible minute with her husband. Part of her wanted to be nearby in case he needed help, but mostly she just wanted them to be together. Spending time with Jared, even passive time, was the only cure for the overwhelming sadness that had settled in the marrow of her bones.

  Raised voices were coming from downstairs. It wasn’t unusual. There were often arguments between members of the crew—usually about something small like the placement of a light or the angle of a camera—and she had learned to tune it out. But this was different.

  “How did they even get past the gate?” she heard someone ask.

  “Everything okay?” Jared, his eyes now open, had heard it, too. “What’s that ruckus?”

  “ ‘Can you describe the ruckus, sir?’ ” This was a line from one of Deirdre and Jared’s favorite guilty-pleasure movies, The Breakfast Club; they used it with each other often when the girls were younger and more boisterous. Now Deirdre saw no flicker of recognition in her husband’s eyes.

  “The ruckus downstairs,” he said.

  “I’ll go check,” she answered, a new drop of despair added to the lake growing inside her. Cancer, she thought, is like being nibbled to death by ducks. She got up to go.

  “Me too.” Jared started to stand.

  “No, sweetie, I’ve got this.”

  “Really, D, I have nothing else to do.”

  She looked at him and nodded.

  When they got to the landing on the bottom of the stairs, they saw one of the new ATN security guards, a burly man in a black T-shirt that didn’t quite fit, talking to someone at the door.

  “This is private property, and you’re trespassing. You have to leave now. If you don’t, we will forcibly remove you.” The guard said this in a flat monotone, but his sheer girth left no room to question his intentions.

  “What’s going on?” Deirdre asked.

  “Oh, Mr. and Mrs. Stone,” the guard said, seeming flustered. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you. The construction crew hasn’t completed work on The Wall, and someone managed to get to the front door. Would you like us to call the police?”

  Deirdre was about to answer, but Jared put a hand on her arm. “That depends,” he said. “Who is it?” Deirdre turned to her husband and saw that the politician in him had found its way back to the surface. It was the most fervent sign of life she’d seen in Jared since they’d made love on Jared’s office floor. She allowed herself a rare smile and hooked arms with him.

  “Yes, who is it? We do have neighbors, you know.”

  “They say they’re from the Portland Area Hospice Foundation.”

  Deirdre and Jared looked at each other before Jared said, “Let them in, please.”

  “But we’re under orders from Mr. Overbee—”

  “When Mr. Overbee starts paying the mortgage on this house, he can decide who does and does not get through the front door.”

  The guard, like the rest of the crew, was on pins and needles after the Sherman Kingsborough incident. While he did have strict instructions to let no unauthorized outsiders on the property, it was also made clear that he should make any and all accommodations for the Stone family. Had he known that ATN had assumed the responsibility for the mortgage on the house as part of Jared’s contract, he might have acted differently. But he didn’t know that, and Jared, largely because he didn’t remember that detail, didn’t offer it. The guard let the intruder pass.

  The guest was a tall, slender woman steeped in middle age. She had curly, unkempt hair that was gray enough to obscure its original color; she wore a black pantsuit with a cream-colored shirt, a peacoat draped over one arm. The only word to describe her shoes was sensible.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Stone,” she said, extending her hand, “I’m Joanne Stark. I’m the director of the Portland Area Hospice Foundation. May I have a few minutes of your time?”

  Deirdre and Jared each shook her hand in turn, then invited her into the living room. Deirdre watched the woman marvel at the television equipment strewn about.

  “You don’t see all this on TV, do you?” she asked.

  “No,” Deirdre agreed. “It would ruin the illusion of reality. Can I offer you a cup of coffee or tea?”

  “No, thank you. I don’t want to be an imposition.”

  “It’s not an imposition at all. As you might imagine, we don’t have many visitors these days.” She could feel a silent understanding pass between her and Joanne.

  “Really, I’m fine. I don’t want to take up much of your time. I just want to talk with you about your options regarding Mr. Stone’s condition.”

  As the three of them sat on the couch, Deirdre could see the wind go out of Jared’s sails. His brief burst of energy had cost him. The spark that had been in his eyes just a moment ago was fading quickly.

  “Please,” Deirdre said, “call us Jared and Deirdre.”

&
nbsp; “Thank you. I’m wondering how much you know about hospice?”

  “Quite a lot, actually,” Deirdre answered. “My mother had hospice care during her last days.”

  “And how did you find that experience?”

  Deirdre liked Joanne. As was the case with the hospice workers she had come to know during her mother’s long, painful exit from the world, this woman had a mixture of directness and compassion. She was unafraid to confront difficult truths but not blind to the anguish they caused.

  “It was a very positive experience, but as you can see, this situation is somewhat different.”

  “Is it? Do you have nursing care? Do you have—”

  “Please,” Deirdre interrupted. “I appreciate what you’re doing. I believe in the hospice movement, and I hope your visit to our little circus turns out to be a good platform to promote it.” Joanne, realizing she’d been outed, looked at Deirdre with something between resignation and admiration.

  “But our situation,” Deirdre continued, “is, in many ways, out of our control. Besides, all of this”—she swept her arm across the room, her motion taking in the television cameras and all that they represented—“has allowed me to stop working and care for Jared full-time. I can be here for him.”

  “Well,” Joanne said, starting to rise, her coat still on her arm, “I do appreciate your time, and—”

  “What does the hospice foundation think about the Death with Dignity Act?” Both women were surprised at Jared’s sudden question. He asked it softly, staring at his hands, like he was trying to remember the words to say.

  “We’re opposed to it,” Joanne answered matter-of-factly as she sat back down.

  “Why?”

  “Do you know, Jared, the number one reason cited for ending a life prematurely?” Deirdre watched her husband. She could see him searching for the answer. It was an answer he almost certainly knew at one point but had now forgotten. She wanted to cry when he shook his head no.

  “People don’t want to be a burden to the ones they love.”