The Fourteenth Goldfish (8 page)

“So it is,” he says.

“What’s that?” my mother asks.

“It’s a bacterium,” I tell her.

She gives my grandfather a quick glance. “Are you brainwashing my daughter?”

“Your daughter’s interested in science. She shows great aptitude. You should encourage her.”

I feel a flush of pride. Maybe this part of me—the science part—was there all along, like the seeds of an apple. I just needed someone to water it, help it grow. Someone like my grandfather.

When we get off at the exit, my grandfather says to my mom, “Drive by the old place.”

He lives in an apartment building now, but when my grandmother was alive, they lived in a house. This is where my mother grew up.

My mom parks next to a Craftsman-style house with big blooms of lavender out front. There’s a tricycle in the driveway.

My grandfather says, “Your mother’s lavender is still there.”

“Looks like they put in new windows,” my mom observes.

“Your mother would be thrilled,” he says, and for some reason they both laugh.

I don’t know if the memories I have of my
grandmother are actually real, or if they’ve just been told to me so many times. How she wore chopsticks in her hair and how she stitched up the hole I chewed in my baby blanket so that it looked perfectly new again. What I do remember is a feeling: people shouting less and laughing more when she was around.

“It’s nice to see a family living in the old place,” my mother says. “Life goes on.”

My grandfather just stares at the house.

I haven’t been up in my grandfather’s apartment for a while now.

“It’s like walking into 1975,” my mother murmurs under her breath.

The furniture is old. There’s a yellowy-orange velour couch that has a plastic cover on it and a matching orange recliner. I remember playing with the lounging chair when I was little, tipping the wooden handle and lying back.

“Seriously, Dad,” my mom says, running her hand along the couch. “Maybe you should think about a new couch.”

“I like that couch,” he says. “I don’t want to get rid of it. Your mother picked it out.”

There are piles of scientific periodicals and little china figurines of fat-faced children that belonged to my grandmother. Everything has a thin layer of dust on it.

I wander over to the kitchen. Sitting on the counter is a huge cookie jar in the shape of a brown owl. I take off the lid, peek inside. Instead of cookies, there are packets of soy sauce. I guess that solves the mystery of where all the soy sauce ends up.

My grandfather goes to a rolltop desk and opens it. He starts gathering papers and notebooks.

“Ellie,” he orders, “there’s a suitcase in the bedroom closet. Get it for me.”

“Okay,” I say.

The bedroom is just like I remember, the furniture painted white with dark knobs. The bedspread is flowery and quilted and has a sheen to it. There
are two dressers, his-and-hers. My grandmother’s dresser looks like it’s been dusted, and there’s a vase with dried lavender on top of it. But my grandfather’s dresser is crowded with stuff: a jelly jar full of coins, a framed wedding photo of him and my grandmother, piles of receipts, pens with the logo of a local bank, toothpicks, dental floss, two pairs of glasses, random buttons, and folded cloth handkerchiefs.

In the middle of the mess is an old, faded greeting card propped up next to a teddy bear. It says
Happy Anniversary
in flowery script on the outside. I recognize the handwriting inside the card; it’s the same as in the recipe box:

I go to the closet and take the suitcase out. It tumbles to the floor, the top falling open. As I’m
zipping it up, something nearby catches my eye. I feel like a scientist making a discovery, except it’s not a vaccine or a bomb. It’s a pair of fuzzy pink bedroom slippers.

They’re tucked neatly under the bed, as if waiting for their owner to slip them on again.

Heads turn when my grandfather comes storming across the lunch court.

He hates to do laundry and has started to borrow from my mom’s closet when he’s running low on clean clothes.

Today he’s wearing her hot-pink sweatpants and
Phantom of the Opera
T-shirt.

“I can’t believe
this
is on the reading list,” he huffs, and holds up a book—
The Catcher in the Rye
.

“What’s wrong with it?” I ask.

He starts eating my leftover chips.

“All this Holden kid does is whine. He should just get a job.”

“I haven’t read it yet,” I say, although my mom talks about it all the time. Holden Caulfield is one of her heroes.

“You don’t need to,” my grandfather says. “You should be reading the classics.”

“I think it
is
a classic.”

“Please. I highly doubt Newton wasted his time on this drivel.”

“Newton? You mean like the cookie?”

“No! Isaac Newton! The father of modern physics!”

My eyes are drawn past him to the lunch line, where Brianna is waiting to pay. She’s with a bunch of volleyball players. It must be some kind of spirit day because they’re wearing their team shirts and have put on silly face paint.

“Isaac Newton established the three laws of motion,” my grandfather says, and points to the
plastic fork on his tray. “The first law states that an object at rest will stay at rest and an object in motion will stay in motion
unless
an external force acts upon it.”

He smacks the fork and it bounces.

“Which, in this case, was my hand,” he explains.

Was it science that happened to Brianna and me? Were we two objects in motion, hurtling through space, and then an external force—middle school, volleyball, life?—hit us?

As my grandfather drones on, I wonder: shouldn’t there be a “law of friendship,” that if you’re friends with someone practically your whole life, you can’t just suddenly stop and change directions without the other person?

My grandfather’s voice shakes me back to the present.

“And that is Newton’s laws of motion in a nut-shell,” he finishes. “You just learned physics, Ellie. Don’t you feel smarter?”

I stare at him.

Raj walks up to the table and eyes my grandfather.

“Love the new look, doc,” he says.

Speaking of looks, Raj has a new piercing: a silver ball under his lower lip.

My grandfather shakes his head.

“Why do you do that to yourself? You’re going to get a terrible infection. Have you heard of staph?”

“It’s self-expression,” Raj says.

“Self-expression? Really?” my grandfather mocks. “I’ll be sure to alert Harvard.”

Raj comes home with us after school. We sit around my puzzle at the kitchen table. My grandfather’s been working on it lately. Sometimes when we’re watching TV, he’ll abruptly walk over to the puzzle table, pick up a piece, and click it in. It’s like he’s been thinking about it the whole time.

My grandfather gives Raj an assessing look. “Do you know any underworld types who could help us break into building twenty-four?”

Raj stares at him. “Why would I know someone like that?”

“I just assumed,” he says, waving a hand at Raj’s black clothes, the metal piercings.

Raj gives him a funny look.

“Well, start thinking of a way to get in,” he orders Raj. “You’re on the clock.”

Then he grabs his copy of
The Catcher in the Rye
and stomps out of the kitchen.

Raj turns to me. “Where’d he go?”

“The bathroom. He’ll probably be in there for a while.”

I heat up some burritos. It turns out that Raj loves them as much as I do. We settle down at the kitchen counter to eat and make lists of how to break into the lab. Our ideas are silly—mailing ourselves to the lab as packages or parachuting in.

The strange thing is, it all feels so cozy. I wonder if this was what it was like for Oppenheimer and his team of scientists when they were working on the bomb. Did they sit around eating burritos and coming up with ideas?

“We need a name,” I tell Raj.

He cocks an eyebrow and I explain.

“Like they did with the Manhattan Project. When they were creating the atomic bomb.”

We try out a few names (the Melvin Sagarsky Project, the Jellyfish Project, the Raj and Ellie Are Totally Cool Project). And then Raj snaps his fingers.

“I got it,” he says, pointing to his plate. “The Burrito Project.”

My grandfather explodes into the kitchen, shouting, “They closed my email account!”

“Who?”

He’s outraged. “My email account at the lab! Someone closed my account. I can’t access it anymore!”

“That’s a bummer,” Raj says. “But you can just set up a new email account, you know. They’re free. I did one for my grandmother.”

But my grandfather is beside himself. “It’s not that! All of my contacts are in there! The diver who found the
T. melvinus
! I don’t even know his last
name! All I know is that his name is Billy and he’s Australian. Do you have any idea how many Australian Billys there are?”

Raj and I share a look.

“A lot?” I guess.

My grandfather fumes. “I bet it was that Terrence character, the one in the flashy suit. He kept telling me to move my stuff out of the lab. Little upstart. Who does he think he is? I have years of experience on him! Decades!” He waves
The Catcher in the Rye
in the air like a weapon. “He’s just like this Holden character! A phony!”

There’s a beat of silence.

Raj says, “You’re reading
The Catcher in the Rye
? That’s a really good book.”

Ben’s taking us all out for dinner. My grandfather insists on wearing a jacket and tie, even though we’re just going to the Mexican place.

“Quite the fashion statement,” my mother says.

“What? Don’t people dress up for dinner anymore?” he counters.

When we get to the restaurant, Ben’s not there yet, so we grab a table at the back. I love the burritos at this place.

“Real big spender, huh?” my grandfather says, looking around at the linoleum floor, the plastic flower arrangements. “We should have just gone to a Chinese place.”

“They give free refills on chips here,” I tell him.

“Ooh la la,” my grandfather says. “How fancy!”

My mother glares at him, and then the bell on the door rings and her face lights up. Ben walks in, wearing a dark suit and a tie.

“You see?” my grandfather mutters. “He’s wearing a jacket and tie!”

“Sorry I’m late,” Ben apologizes. “Client meeting.”

The waitress comes and takes our order. I get my usual—a burrito. My mother and Ben both get the fish tacos. My grandfather gets a cheese quesadilla, three beef tacos, chicken fajitas, a side of rice and beans, and an extra side of guacamole.

When the waitress brings our meals, my grandfather’s order takes up half the table. He starts eating immediately, working his way methodically through his food. Ben seems a little envious.

“I was like that at your age,” Ben tells my grandfather, patting his belly. “Now I have to watch myself.”

My grandfather just looks at him and stuffs another forkful in his mouth.

“So how are you liking your new school, Melvin?” Ben asks my grandfather.

My grandfather doesn’t even look up. He’s got the whole sullen-teenager thing down pat.

My mom clears her throat.

“I’m unimpressed,” he finally says. “I find the curriculum rather lacking.”

Ben looks taken aback. “Really?”

“Melvin was in the gifted-and-talented program at his old school,” my mom quickly improvises. “He’s used to more of a challenge.”

My grandfather burps loudly.

“Melvin!” my mother hisses.

“What?” he says.

“Don’t be rude!”

“I’m not being rude; it’s the bacteria.”

My mother looks at him. “What?”

“There are bacteria in your stomach that help digest food. During the process, gas is released,” he explains. “That’s why you burp.”

“And fart?” I ask.

He nods. “Exactly.”

My mother groans, but Ben laughs and says, “Seems like
you’re
learning something at school, Melvin.”