Two-Thousand-Pound Goldfish

by Betsy Byars

  The thought caused him to shudder, and instantly Weezie put her arm around him. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. He shrugged off her comforting arm, which he knew he did not deserve.

  “The doctor should be out soon.”

  “Good.”

  He rested his head on the back of the chair and looked up at the ceiling. Maybe the pipes themselves could come to life, he thought. That would be original.

  Pipes coming alive didn’t seem likely, of course, but his friend Eddie claimed he had once seen a horror movie about a car. A car came alive and went around running people down! Eddie swore it was the truth.

  Convinced he was on the right track, Warren continued. The pipes would have been activated by old radioactive waste material that hospital officials had been illegally disposing of for years through the plumbing. Not bad, he thought.

  It would have to be a very quick thing, sort of catch the audience by surprise. First one pipe would began to quiver—this would be the beginning of the movie—and then one length of the pipe would crack and snap off and fall to the floor.

  In a sort of metallic frenzy, like a fit—the viewer would just see a blur here—the pipe would undergo a transformation and grow a tail and a head. The mouth would be a zigzag line that snapped open and shut, the eyes would light up, and the tail would have rattles.

  Killing these pipes would be next to impossible. Bullets would be out. Poisonous gas, useless. Dynamite would blast them into little pieces, but then the little pieces would activate and start snapping their jaws again. The best scientific brains in the nation would meet to—

  But he was getting ahead of himself. Back to the beginning of the movie. One pipe would form into this snakelike creature, and then another and another until finally an army of pipe snakes would be upstairs in the hospital hall.

  The night watchman would be the first to learn of their existence. He would be at his station, sipping a little booze, listening to the radio, when suddenly he would hear this terrible clattering noise echoing through the empty halls.

  “If I didn’t know better,” he would mutter, getting slowly to his feet, “if I didn’t know better, I’d think something metal was coming down the stairs. Well, it’s probably nothing, but I’d better go check.”

  There would be alternating shots of the old night watchman climbing up the stairs and the pipes coming down. With each shot of the night watchman, the noise would be louder.

  “What is that?” he would ask, more and more puzzled. He would shine his flashlight up the stairs, peering into the darkness.

  Then he would see them, the pipe snakes, their jagged mouths snapping open and shut as they came clattering into view.

  “No! No!”

  Dropping his flashlight, he would turn and start running down the steps. He would trip on the third step and tumble head over heels to the bottom. There he would crouch with his arms over his head for protection.

  “No! Please! No! Noooooooo!”

  But the pipe snakes wouldn’t kill the old man. Eating flesh wouldn’t be their thing. They would just clatter right over him and around him and on down the steps and out the front door of the hospital.

  In the silence that followed, the old man would get up like a cowhand after a stampede. He would brush himself off, check his arms and legs for injuries, pick up his flashlight, shine it around the empty stairs. He would shake his head in disbelief.

  Then he would go to his station, pick up his half empty bottle of booze, and drop it into the nearest trash can. “Never again,” he’d say.

  Warren realized he was sitting there with a smile on his face. He looked around quickly to see if anyone had noticed. Aunt Pepper was still at the door. Weezie’s head was turned the other way. The old man in the wheelchair had fallen asleep.

  Film critics would call the movie “original” and “powerful.” They would say, “Excellent special effects.” He would like to see the movie himself—that was the real test of one of his movies, when he himself would pay money to see it.

  There were, of course, problems to work out. For example, why would everybody be scared of the pipes if they didn’t do anything but run around? Sure, nobody would want pipes running wild in the streets, cutting across yards, making holes in lawns. That would be a terrible nuisance.

  Maybe the pipes could activate other pipes, make them leap right out of washing machines and toilets and join in the stampede. Housewives would see the pipes coming and go after them with brooms. “Stay away from my pipes!” POW! SWAT! ZONK!

  Warren was smiling again. Quickly he put his hand over his mouth to hide his expression.

  Weezie put her arm around him again. Her look was sympathetic. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes.” He pulled away, shrugged off her arm, and settled back into his thoughts.

  Suddenly Weezie’s look sharpened. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I would really like to know.”

  “Nothing! I’m not thinking about anything. What makes you think I’m thinking about something?”

  “You don’t have to be defensive.”

  “I’m not being defensive. I just wasn’t thinking about anything. You want me to make something up? All right, I was thinking about school. Are you satisfied? Anyway, I was not daydreaming, if that’s what you were getting at.”

  “You daydream too much.”

  “I said I was not daydreaming.” He crossed his arms and sat back in his chair, his mouth set, his eyes dark. He began to kick his heels against the chair legs.

  “I can always tell when you’re daydreaming because you have a sort of out-of-it look on your face. It’s very obvious. It’s like you’re on drugs or something.”

  He snapped around and stared at her. “I suppose all your thoughts are perfect. I suppose you were sitting there thinking about world affairs!” He was so angry he was trembling.

  “I was thinking about Grandma!”

  “Sure you were!”

  There was a pause and then Weezie said, “A little daydreaming is fine, Warren. It’s like a little food or a little wine. Only when it becomes the most important thing you do, when you gorge yourself with food … There’s a girl in my school who freaks out on food, and she’s bigger than somebody in a sideshow. She’s carried eating so far she can’t even lead a normal life. And you’re carrying daydreaming too far. You’re a daydream freak. You’re not in the world ninety-five percent of the time.”

  “I am,” he sputtered. “I—It’s not the same.” The accusation was so unjust he could not find the right words. “You’re stupid, you know that! And anyway, nobody in the whole world is going to tell me what to do with my thoughts. My head’s mine, and—”

  “Kids!” Aunt Pepper came over. “Be quiet. Honestly, you’re disturbing people. You’ve got to keep your voices down.”

  “I wasn’t the one who was yelling,” Weezie said, adjusting a pleat in her skirt.

  “You were the one who wasn’t minding her own business!” Warren yelled.

  “Kids!”

  Aunt Pepper watched the two of them for a moment. She looked from Weezie’s calm face to Warren’s scarlet one. When she apparently was satisfied that the argument was over, she turned and crossed the room to the door.

  “Anyway,” Warren said through lips that barely moved, “did it ever occur to you that my thinking may turn out to be valuable? Did it ever occur to you that I might really make movies when I get big?” He swallowed. His eyes stung with tears of injustice. He had been creating a movie—he had been going to call it Pipe Snakes!—it was going to be a blockbuster. And his stupid sister had labeled that “daydreaming.”

  “Nobody does anything by daydreaming about it,” she said. “You don’t see successful men sitting around looking like this.” She gazed down the hall with a blank look on her face. “There are people who like to do things and there are people who like to daydream about doing things. It�
�s—”

  “Mind your own business, hear? Just shut up.”

  “Kids!”

  As Aunt Pepper moved toward them, the door behind her opened. “Mrs. Walker?” It was the doctor.

  “I’m Mrs. Walker,” Aunt Pepper said, spinning around. Weezie got to her feet.

  “Well, apparently your mother has had a stroke. We won’t know for a few days how much damage has been done. She’s awake now, if you want to see her.”

  “I do.”

  “Your mother’s a little confused, keeps calling for someone named Saffron—Saffee?” It was a question. He looked from one to the other.

  It was Warren who answered. “Saffron’s my mother.”

  “Well, perhaps she should come if she possibly can.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Warren said.

  “Something is wrong.”

  “There generally is when the cattle are found with two holes in the sides of their necks.”

  “I DON’T KNOW HOW you stand it without a telephone,” Aunt Pepper said. She was pacing up and down the living room like an athlete ready for a race. “It just drives me crazy to think that someone might be trying to call me and because there’s no phone—Aiiiiiiiii!” She shook her head in mock craziness. “Who in their right mind would be without a phone?”

  For the two weeks that Warren’s grandmother had been in the hospital, Aunt Pepper had been staying with Warren and Weezie.

  Warren said, “You can use the Oglesbys’ phone in an emergency.”

  “I have used the Oglesbys’ phone so much that she has put up a sign—‘Local Calls, Ten Cents’—with a little ashtray for me to put coins in. Anyway, I want my own phone. It’s probably ringing right this minute.” She broke off and said, “Doesn’t Weezie have boyfriends? How does she get dates?”

  “I don’t think she has any.”

  “Of course she has boyfriends. Weezie’s very pretty.”

  “She’s too big. Some kids call her Hercules.”

  “She is very pretty. Doesn’t she ever go out and you don’t know where she’s going?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that is dating. ‘Where have you been?’ ‘Nowhere.’ ‘Who are you going with?’ ‘Why do you want to know?’ That person,” Aunt Pepper said with a smile, “is dating!”

  “When Weezie goes out like that—I mean secretly—well, I always think it has something to do with Mom.”

  Aunt Pepper turned and regarded him seriously. Warren was tired of being looked at like that.

  He said, “I know what you’re getting ready to say. I know!” He slumped. He began kicking his heels against the sofa.

  “How do you know what I’m going to say when I don’t know what I’m going to say?”

  “It’s just,” he went on, “that there is so much I don’t understand. Weezie’s always saying things like, well, she says things like maybe I wouldn’t want to find Mom, maybe I wouldn’t like what I found. She tries to make me think there’s something terribly wrong, that Mom’s turned into some sort of monster!”

  Aunt Pepper sighed. She sat down on the arm of the chair. “I think I know what’s bothering Weezie.”

  “What?”

  “Well, Weezie found out from her father—she went to see him a couple of Sundays ago—and she found out that your mother was here for three months last spring.”

  “Here? In this city?”

  Pepper nodded. “She lived with some people in an apartment on the east side, and Weezie’s dad saw her a couple of times and—”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “Honey, it’s true. I wouldn’t make up something like that. She—”

  “If Mom had been here for even one day, she would have come to see me. I know she would.”

  “She did see you once or twice. She went to your school and watched you come out.”

  “What? Watched me come out of school? How would she know which one I was? How would she know when my room gets out? The third graders get out a half hour before us—did she think one of them was me?” He got to his feet and began walking around in circles. “How did she even know what school to go to? Why didn’t she speak to me? There’s a boy in my room that looks like me and people get us mixed up—maybe that was who she saw, maybe she spoke to him.”

  “Oh honey, stop it. Honey!”

  He turned. “Did you see her?”

  “Once.”

  “Where?”

  “Well, she was waiting when I got off work. She was standing across the street by the newsstand, and we walked down the street and went into Albert’s and had a beer. We talked and—”

  “Why didn’t she talk to me? Why didn’t she take me somewhere?” He felt he had so many questions he would spend the rest of his life getting answers. “What did you talk about?”

  “She wanted to know about you. She said she’d seen you. And, honey, she knew exactly which one you were. She knew immediately. She said you had on a navy jacket and dark glasses.”

  “A lot of kids wear dark glasses.”

  “And I told her you wanted to be a movie director and that—”

  “Why did you tell her that? I didn’t want her to know that.”

  “I told her because I knew she would be interested. And I told her about how you and Grandma come over every Sunday and how you and I talk. I told her you were original and funny and that she was missing out on a lot.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She said, ‘I know that.’ ”

  He sat down heavily. It was a rocking chair, his grandmother’s, and he sat on the edge. He had thought when he was little that this was a magic rocking chair because it would never turn over. No matter how hard he rocked, and sometimes he would rock hard enough for the chair to balance for one scary moment on the tips of the rockers. Still, it never turned over.

  Now the world had gone so wrong that if he leaned back even the slightest bit, the old chair would tip him onto the floor. He held on with both hands.

  “Oh honey, your mom’s gotten herself into such a mess. She’s gotten in with real violent people. They’re making bombs, and some of them have robbed banks, and—”

  “Not my mom!”

  “I think she wants to come home. She looks tired. She’s thin. She’s—”

  “I don’t even want her to come home now.”

  “You’re just hurt because your mom was in town and you didn’t get to see her, and I understand how you feel. It’s all right if your mom’s out in San Francisco and she really can’t get to see you, but if she’s here, well, it’s so much worse.”

  “I used to go around when I was little, and I would want my mother so much that I would say it to myself over and over. ‘I want my mom—I want my mom,’ like that. And sometimes I would forget and say it out loud on the bus or at school. ‘I want my mom!’ like that. And kids would look at me like I was crazy. ‘He wants his mommie. Warren wants his mommie. Warren wants his mommie,’ and I would sit there with tears in—”

  “What are you two sitting in the dark for?” Weezie opened the door to the apartment with a bang and snapped on the overhead light. “There.”

  “We were talking about your mom,” Aunt Pepper said. She spoke as carefully as she used to say her lines on television. “About how she was in the city for a few months last spring.”

  Weezie let her books drop onto the end table. “And did not bother to see us.”

  “She saw you, Weezie, she—”

  “Oh yes, she stood on the school steps—or she says she stood on the school steps—and watched for our faces in the crowd. There are, may I point out, thirty-four hundred students in my high school, so she would have to be very quick.”

  “She saw you,” Pepper said. “She described you perfectly—your hair, your clothes …”

  “Oh, all right, maybe she saw us. But that makes me even madder. She saw us, probably for about thirty seconds, and then she went away feeling all wonderful and satisfied, probably motherly. ‘I
have seen my children. They looked so happy. They looked so healthy.’ That’s what she said about us, isn’t it?”

  Aunt Pepper didn’t answer, just watched her with sharp eyes.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “She felt better after she saw you, yes.”

  “And so off she goes feeling better, without a backward glance. Without once thinking that Warren and me might want to feel better too. We could use a little satisfaction ourselves. I wanted to see my mother! Warren wanted to see her! And yet the only thing that mattered to her was her satisfaction, her feelings.”

  There was a knock at the door. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Mrs. Oglesby said, sticking her head inside, “but there’s a call from the hospital.”

  “I’m coming,” Aunt Pepper said. She got up and started for the door in one motion. “We’ll finish this later, Weezie,” she said over her shoulder.

  Weezie and Warren remained where they were—Weezie beside the end table, Warren holding tightly to the arms of the rocker.

  “Something’s wrong,” Weezie said in the sudden silence. “I know it.”

  Warren did not answer. There had never been a moment this filled with dread even in his movies. Often actors had said, “Something is wrong,” and it always sent a chill of pleasure up his spine. And it was always followed by something even more chilling. “There generally is when the cattle are found with two holes in the sides of their necks.”

  Waiting for something bad to happen was one of the pleasantest parts of a movie, like waiting to go over the top of a roller coaster was the best part of the ride.

  There was no excitement in this, sitting on a rocking chair that had begun to tremble because he himself was trembling.

  He glanced over at Weezie. She was looking down at her school books, lifting the cover of her English book, letting it fall.

  They heard Aunt Pepper coming back from the Oglesby apartment. Warren got up from his chair so suddenly that it rocked back and forth like a chair taken over by an invisible spirit.