Life in a Fishbowl

by Len Vlahos

  Sister Benedict Joan had stars in her eyes.

  ***

  The moment had come.

  Jackie and her mother and sister filed into Jared’s room and arranged themselves around his bed to watch that night’s episode of Life and Death. Sister Benedict, as she had done each night since she joined the Stone household, sat in a corner of the room, not giving the family privacy, but trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. No one said a word.

  The episode began with Megan’s interview.

  Jackie had to stop herself from chuckling as she watched. Megan had really laid it on thick.

  “It was so awful,” she said, her face showing the emotion of a silent film star. “My mother said that if I didn’t leave with them, they would ship me to an all-girls private school and that I couldn’t be with my dad anymore. Now that he’s so close to the end, I didn’t know what to do, so I went.”

  “What were your mother and sister hoping to accomplish?” Andersona asked from off camera.

  “I-I can’t say,” Megan answered, each word a thick cloud of breath.

  “It’s okay, Megan,” Andersona prodded, “you can talk to me.”

  “Well,” she said, “they wanted to buy Jackie a new phone, this time an even better one, the new Samsung Galaxy phone.” The screen showed an inducement to learn more about the phone online.

  “Did they succeed?”

  “No. The man at the store had seen the show and didn’t want anything to do with us. I felt sorry for my mother and sister, really.”

  The interview went on for a while longer, ending with Andersona telling Megan how brave she had been to come forward.

  “I’m only doing this for my father, so that he may rest in peace.”

  The opening credits rolled.

  Jackie reached over and squeezed her sister’s hand. Megan permitted herself a fraction of a smile.

  The first commercial break was Jackie’s cue. She reached over, hugged her father, said, “I love you, Daddy,” kissed his cheek, and got up to leave the room. Her voice cracked when she told Sister Benedict, “I need to use the bathroom.”

  Sister Benedict listened in her earpiece and then nodded.

  Jackie, with the iPhone successfully palmed from under her father’s mattress, walked into the hall knowing she would never see her father alive again.

  ***

  Ethan watched the show from the truck and passed out compliments and kudos to the crew like they were PEZ. It was his effort to get back in their good graces. Andersona, who had been in a foul mood all day—Probably on the rag, he thought—sat huddled in a corner reviewing dailies.

  “Loosen up, Andy,” he said. “You can worry about tomorrow’s footage tomorrow. Enjoy the fruits of your labor tonight.”

  Andersona didn’t answer. Instead, her jaw hung lower and lower from her face, and her cheeks were turning the red of a royal flush, all hearts. Something was wrong.

  “Fuck!” she yelled. It was one curt but penetrating bark.

  “What?” Ethan asked, both startled and annoyed.

  Andersona paused for a moment, but she was too upset to obfuscate the truth. “That little bitch has my iPhone,” she said flatly.

  “I’m sorry?” Ethan said. The temperature in the room fell twenty degrees. “What did you just say?”

  “Today, after Megan’s interview, I couldn’t find my cell phone. That little bitch took it and gave it to her sister.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes!” she shrieked. “I’ve been looking at this footage until I’m blue in the face. You can’t see her actually take it, but the clues are all there. I’m pretty sure Jackie just took it from under her father’s pillow or something.”

  “Okay, let’s stay calm. Phil, tell Sister Benedict to excuse herself quietly from the room and go stall Jackie until I get there. Where is she?”

  “The kid just went into the bathroom near the office.”

  “Just have the Sister stand outside the door and tell her not to let Jackie out. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Got it, boss.”

  Ethan turned to leave the room. As he did, he looked over his shoulder. “Oh, and Andersona?”

  She knew what was coming next before he said it.

  “You’re fired.”

  ***

  Deirdre watched Sister Benedict hold a finger to her ear, listen intently to someone on the other end of her earpiece, and then leave the room. Deirdre couldn’t believe her luck.

  Sister Benedict was the wild card in all of this. Deirdre was going to ask for a private moment with Jared but wasn’t sure the Sister would comply. If that didn’t work, she had planned to use brute force. Deirdre had sized up the nun and was pretty sure she could take her.

  Now there was no need. The Sister’s overlords—that was the word that popped into Deirdre’s head to describe Ethan and his minions—had called her away. The time to act was now.

  “Meg,” Deirdre said with as gentle a tone as she could muster, “I don’t think you should stay here for this. You can take a moment if you want to tell Daddy good-bye, but it has to be quick. We probably don’t have a lot of time.”

  Megan looked at her father, but she couldn’t go over to him. She started bawling. “Good-bye, Daddy.” She choked the words out.

  “Okay, sweetheart,” Deirdre said, pulling her daughter into an embrace. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.” Deirdre’s nerves were rock solid. She didn’t know where her resolve was coming from. Love, she figured, can make us weak-kneed and wobbly, but when it needs to, it can make us stronger than steel.

  Megan was still crying but managed to get herself under control. “You wait outside the room,” Deirdre told her. “I’m going to lock the door. I’m pretty sure they’ll try to break it down, but you do your best to stall them. Just get out of the way before they can do anything to hurt you. Okay?”

  Megan nodded and hugged her mother. She left the room without looking back. Deirdre was alone.

  She locked the door, went over to her husband, took his hands, and kissed his lips.

  “This is for you, Jare. I love you.”

  Deirdre reached across Jared’s body, her finger poised on the ventilator, and paused. She had come to the precipice, but she couldn’t go through with it. She couldn’t stop her husband, the father of her children, from living.

  She looked at Jared’s face and so many memories came flooding back, as if his life was flashing before her eyes.

  She remembered the night they sat on a stone wall high on a hill in some park near where Jared grew up, watching the moon rise. It was fall, and Deirdre was nestled into Jared to keep warm. Ninety minutes passed as the moon traced its arc from the horizon to the sky. Neither one spoke and neither one moved. It was a perfect evening.

  She remembered the day Jared took Megan, when she was three, to her first movie. Jackie was in kindergarten, and the legislature wasn’t in session. The two of them, Jared and Megan, came home covered in popcorn butter and cotton candy, singing, dancing, and hugging. Until that day, Jared hadn’t really seemed to connect with Megan, and Deirdre was beginning to worry. She thought maybe there wasn’t enough love in his heart for two children, but Megan, who was persistent, won him over.

  She could still see in her mind’s eye the day they buried Deirdre’s mother. Jared was so full of compassion and so full of strength that Deirdre just let her entire being collapse into him. He was stronger than anyone she’d ever known.

  And now, now he was this.

  Deirdre took a deep breath and closed her eyes, looking for the courage to do what her Jared wanted, but it wasn’t there. She drew her hand back.

  Then she opened her eyes and looked up.

  The lens of a camera—the crew not bothering to hide the cameras in the sick room—was trained directly on her face. The convex curve of the glass distorted her features, stretched them like a funhouse mirror. On the other side of that glass, she knew, was the rest of the world. They sat ther
e, gawkers at a zoo. It disgusted her. It made her angry.

  It gave her all the strength she needed.

  Deirdre removed the pillow from under Jared’s head, took the pillowcase off, and tossed it over the camera. Then she leaned forward, turned off the ventilator, and put the pillow over her husband’s face. A throbbing pain exploded behind her eyelids, but she didn’t flinch. Deirdre was prepared to stay there until the end of time.

  ***

  “Young lady.” Jackie heard Sister Benedict’s voice through the door. “We know you have Andersona’s phone. Mr. Overbee is coming here now. You would be a smart girl to just give it back to us.”

  Jackie panicked. They knew. They knew before her mother had a chance to do what she had to do. Maybe they knew about that, too. Maybe it was already over. She looked at the bathroom window, trying to figure out if she could wriggle through and escape, but she was pretty sure it was too small.

  “Is she still in there?” It was Ethan’s voice. There was no answer from the Sister, which Jackie thought was strange. Not sure what else to do, Jackie started the video recording on Andersona’s phone.

  “This is Jackie Stone,” she whispered with urgency, pointing the camera at her face. “I’m trapped in my own bathroom with a stolen iPhone. The Life and Death producer, Ethan Overbee, and that nun, Sister Benedict, are outside the door demanding I—”

  “Sister?” Ethan asked, alarm in his voice. “What is it?”

  “NOOOOO!!!!” the Sister wailed. “The control truck … they’re saying … it’s Deirdre! She’s, she’s …”

  “Fuck, no!” Ethan yelled in response.

  Jackie heard them both running down the hall away from the bathroom. With the phone still recording, she opened the door to see what was going on.

  ***

  Megan was overwhelmed. Sister Benedict made it to the door first, with Ethan hot on her heels. The doctors arrived only seconds later. All of them were shouting at Megan to move.

  “Out of our way!” the Sister bellowed.

  “Megan, please!” Ethan implored.

  “We need to get in,” one of the doctors said, panic in his voice.

  Only they were all talking at once, creating a wall of sound that was indecipherable. The Sister’s piercing scream cut through it all.

  “Enough!” she shouted. The hallway went silent. “Move, you insolent brat. Your mother is in there committing murder! Move! Now!”

  When Megan didn’t budge, Sister Benedict slapped her across the face. It was a hard slap, and it stung.

  In the wake of the startled silence created by that slap, the echo of hand on cheek reverberating through the house, a noise of movement from down the hall drew everyone’s attention. All the heads turned as one, just in time to see Jackie holding the phone out in front of her and pointing it at the assembled crowd. She left the bathroom, ran down the stairs, and raced out of the house.

  Ethan ran down the hall in pursuit, faster than Megan thought possible.

  When the Sister turned her attention back to the office door, Megan was ready. She landed her right fist on the very end of the nun’s nose, making blood splatter and making the woman shriek in pain.

  “That,” she said, “is for, is for everything.” Megan, overwrought with a tidal wave of emotions, started to cry. A nurse pulled her aside and hugged her while the doctors tried to open the locked door.

  Megan buried her face in the nurse’s shoulder and let it all out.

  ***

  Jackie held the phone behind her as she ran, filming her pursuer while she tried to narrate.

  “My mother is trying to end my father’s suffering,” she said through heaving breaths. “Sister Benedict attacked my sister, and Ethan Overbee is chasing me. I think he wants to hurt me or kill me.”

  Jackie was across the yard in a heartbeat. She stopped at the edge of the seven-foot fence they called The Wall.

  “Give me the phone, Jackie,” Ethan said. He was panting, too. “There’s nowhere else for you to go. It’s all over.”

  Jackie looked straight into his eyes. “Almost,” she said. She saw the perplexed look on his face, then turned around and threw the phone over the fence. They both watched it tumble end over end against the night sky.

  A second later, there was an exclamation of joy from the other side of The Wall. “I got it!” It was Jason Sanderson’s voice. He was exactly where Hazel said he would be. What Jackie didn’t expect to hear was the cheer that went up from the crowd that had gathered around him.

  Jackie turned back to Ethan. “Now,” she said, “it’s over.”

  Ethan dropped to his knees, then to his butt, and sat down on the grass as if he’d been shot.

  Jackie stepped around him and went back into the house.

  ***

  Deirdre held the pillow over Jared’s face for what felt like an eternity, but what the clock on the wall revealed to be only about ninety seconds. That’s when he flatlined. Jared never moved, never twitched. Deirdre was still holding the pillow there when the doctors broke down the door nearly four minutes later.

  She stepped out of the way knowing she had succeeded. Jared was dead.

  Deirdre, understanding the gravity of what she had done, staggered backward and fell into a chair, where she started to cry, and then she cried some more.

  ***

  Glio’s life ended a few seconds after that of Jared Stone. But to a high-grade glioblastoma multiforme, a few seconds is an eternity. With no memories to eat, with no external stimuli to occupy its attention, Glio fell into a black hole of nothingness.

  Some would say it was just deserts, that it was what a brain tumor had coming, and they would probably be right. But Glio had been transformed. He had become the sum total of Jared Stone’s memories. He had grown to love Jared Stone’s wife and daughters; he had come to love Jared Stone.

  The Glio wasn’t sorry to die, only sorry he hadn’t lived more.

  Epilogue

  Later

  The final episodes of both Life and Death and The Real Family Stone of Portland, Oregon aired the day after Jared Stone passed away. The network, having dispatched Ethan and his senior crew without the courtesy of an in-person meeting, elected not to show any of the footage from that harrowing night in the Stone household. Instead, Roger Stern, in a bold move, did a live interview with Deirdre, Jackie, and Megan, during which he apologized for the behavior of the American Television Network and handed a shell-shocked Deirdre the five-million-dollar check she had been promised.

  She and the girls were quiet but respectful. They thanked Roger but didn’t say much more. The balance of the hour was a commercial-free montage of images and clips of the Stone family in happier times. Much of it had been provided weeks earlier, when Jared had first signed the deal, as background for the producers.

  The Real Family Stone of Portland, Oregon was equally simple. It showed Jackie’s unedited footage, beginning when she was locked in the bathroom and ending with the iPhone held high over Jason Sanderson’s head. The final image was of the assembled crowd—including many of the kids from Jackie’s school, along with Ms. Onorati and a few of the other teachers—cheering. There was no commentary; there were no titles or credits, just two words in a plain, unassuming font: “The End.”

  ***

  Jared was laid to rest in a small, private funeral, attended only by his family and closest friends. It was, in typical Portland fashion, raining. Deirdre, Jackie, and Megan stayed huddled under a single umbrella and cried as they bid their husband and father a final good-bye.

  It was short. It was elegant. It was bittersweet.

  Afterward, everyone went back to the Stone house, now completely free of television equipment, and ate lunch.

  ***

  A public memorial, including a solemn march down Burnside Avenue, was staged by the euthanasia lobby, but Deirdre, Jackie, and Megan declined to attend. They’d had enough of the spectacle.

  Sister Benedict Joan was there, praying for the s
oul of the man with whom she had inexplicably become obsessed, and praying for the souls of those who would treat life as if it was disposable. She was largely ignored.

  After the media frenzy died down, Sister Benedict was summoned to the office of Cardinal Trippe. The video evidence of her behavior the night Jared Stone died had found its way to the Cardinal. He was speechless. He shook his head in disappointment.

  “I’m sorry, Sister,” he said.

  “You’re sorry, Your Grace?”

  “To have misjudged you.” A golf-ball-sized lump formed in the Sister’s throat. “I’ve carved out a new assignment for you.”

  “New assignment?” There was dread in the Sister’s voice.

  It was the last the Lower 48 would see of Sister Benedict Joan. As penance for her actions, the Cardinal assigned her to a convent in Fairbanks, Alaska. Sister Benedict would spend the endless winter nights lamenting her involvement with Jared Stone and his family.

  ***

  Ethan Overbee cursed and swore like a sailor as he drove his Tesla home from the studio, his meager personal possessions in two cardboard boxes. He had been escorted off the premises by security.

  The previous sixty hours were a blur. He wasn’t really sure what had happened.

  As his rage subsided, he started to go through his options. Without knowing or understanding he was doing it, Ethan had dropped back to the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He thought, mostly subconsciously, about his safety. Check. Food, clothing, shelter. Check, check, check. His physical desire, however, was unsated. He picked up his cell phone and called Monique.

  He got her voice mail.

  “Hi, you’ve reached Monique. I can’t talk right now, so leave a message. And if this is my former boss, Ethan Overbee”—she emphasized the word “former”—“I hear they fired your sorry ass. Don’t fucking call me again.”

  Ethan wanted to be mad at Monique, to ruin her, but he knew he was no longer in a position to ruin anyone, which stoked his fury all over again. He needed a way out of this nightmare. It was all the fault of that lunatic, Kingsborough. That was when the whole thing had started to go sour. Why the fuck would a billionaire playboy sneak into Jared Stone’s house in the middle of the night and stab the guy’s dog? Had the world gone mad?