Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 15, Issue 3
Page 2
He had always lied.
Ever since he stopped wearing his wedding band.
And he had always stuffed her house full of things. Always filling her house up. Always creating something to empty. Filling her house up. Filling it up until she only had the garden to escape to, or, like now, the bedroom. Always poking fun at her when she complained. Always telling her she was ungrateful for what she had.
She could hear him downstairs. His large, bellowing, overwhelming, filling-the-house-up voice. Cooking dinner for the children. Cooking dinner for her. Cementing reasons to stick around. Making them jelly and frog-in-a-pond. And it occurred to her—for a moment it occurred to her—that he would not be taking the fish home that night. That’s right—she felt it strongly now—he would concoct some story about why he couldn’t take his four separate individual fish tanks home that night.
It’s too dark to take the fish home, he said as soon as he put the children to bed.
And for the first time in their short, unsuccessful marriage, she found a funny side.
I’m not sure why you’re laughing, he said. It’s impossible to take the fish home now.
I want them gone when you go, she said.
You don’t have to like it; you just have to live with it.
TAKE THE FISH HOME.
No, he said. And he elongated the word ‘no’, so it was drawn and pointed. I promised the children we’d bury it together.
God you’re creepy, she said. Then she looked towards the fish, and there it was again, that empty packet of green aeroplane jelly she kept throwing out, just sitting there like a neat little resurrected coffin, and she thought of Cam again, and April too, outside near the sandbox standing next to their dad’s ashes to ashes prayers, and she said, if you leave the fish here, I will flush the dead one the minute you leave. I will clean it up. And I will buy a new tank for the other three. Then you’ll have a story to tell. Then you can tell whomever you meet what a controlling ‘ex’ I am.
You do that, he said.
You don’t have to like it, she replied quite smugly. You just have to live with it.
Do what you like, he said, and he took the tank with the dead fish—only the tank with the dead fish—home that night.
He did not come back, not the next day, nor the day after, nor the day after that. Three little orphaned fish filling her house up. Three little lonely fish in their individual tanks, staring at each other through the glass.
It was Wednesday again when she went to the pet store. It was Wednesday, and she bought a tank and pebbles and plants and a little undersea castle. She followed the shop assistant’s advice exactly: carefully cleaning the new tank, rinsing the pebbles, running the pump and fixing the castle in the exact middle. Then she poured the water in, added her filter system, and when she was done, she let it all run for another couple of days or so.
On Saturday she floated the fish in the water, first via a plastic bag, and then all the way in.
They looked happy swimming in their new home.
They looked happy, and they kept coming together and pulling apart, almost as though they were kissing, and it was so beautiful to see—their gills fanning like that, the saturation of colour—that she called for the children. Quick, quick, come, she said. Come and see.
But by the time they came, she realised the fish were not kissing at all; they were sparring. Oh my God! Oh my God! Go, go, go, she said to the kids, go, but the children wouldn’t go, and the fish were sparring and fighting, and she plunged her hand in the water to separate them, to pull at least one or another out, but their fins were flapping, and they wouldn’t stop, they just wouldn’t stop, all three of them like that, flapping about, sliding out of her hand, going crazy, pushing each other, biting even. All that was missing was the screaming. And then suddenly the screaming was there—April this time—and then two fish were dead and the other was calmly swimming away.
Just at that moment a car pulled into the driveway. His car. And he came to the door, and he pressed his face to the glass, and he started banging on it, looking in, carrying on, my fish, my fish.
And Cam said something or other.
And she stood there. What? she replied, because she couldn’t hear him over all the flapping and banging out the front.
And so Cam came to her, right up to her, and he tugged her skirt, and he said, Mum.
And she said, ‘Sweetheart?’
And he repeated himself all over again. They were Siamese fighting fish, Mum. They’re not supposed to live together.
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