Ted Mitchell

I don’t want you to get the impression, either, that I am fundamentally opposed to goldfish. As a species, I think they’re swell. In fact, I love all beasts, big and small. I’d better. In addition to my three children, my house is simply crawling with them, like insects beneath a rock: two dogs, two cats, two finches, one guinea pig. A regular menagerie.

So of course I found myself warming up to these little fishies the moment I sat down at my place setting to slurp down lobster bisque and trade small talk. How could I help it? And when my middle child, Ashley, was awarded the centerpiece as a prize, and looked up at me with her big brown eyes, how could I say anything but ‘yes’?

Little did I realize that the centerpiece charmingly adorning my table was in reality a Venus flytrap, and my family and I were the unsuspecting flies.

“Look what I won, Daddy,” Ashley said, eyes full of wonder.

“That’s great, sweetie,” I said mechanically, eyes on the dessert table.

But the appeal started to tarnish within seconds of saying goodbye to the bride and groom.

You see, despite the care and attention that the bride had lavished upon her once-in-a-lifetime (at least, we hope) occasion, she had evidently given little thought about the poor slobs expected to lug her aquatic conceits home. The bowls were, of course, the very height of attractiveness—large, opaque, offering a slightly larger-than-life view of their two occupants. However, as we soon discovered, they lacked a little something in the utilitarian department. They were, to be blunt, heavy as hell, with large wide necks that caused a flurry of water to fly out with every step you took. And not to be snide, but the wedding planner had evidently never heard of plastic wrap.

As I may have mentioned before, this elegant affair had taken place at the summer home of the bride’s well-to-do aunt and uncle. Special buses had been rented just for the occasion, transporting the guests to the location from a large cow field located five minutes away.

Yes, a cow field. Perhaps you have an idea what we were up against.

Well, just in case you don’t, let me fill in the blanks. We made our way through this cow field in the buses, then drove out of said cow field in our less-than-new, hmm-perhaps-the-shocks-need-checking station wagon, then drove down the quaint dirt road that led to said cow field, then made our way on to a highway that was undergoing major construction at the time… Well, let’s just say that, by the end of the ride back to our hotel, my wife, the poor sap holding the fish bowl on this achy breaky journey, no longer was wearing a lovely Laura Ashley black pantsuit. Instead, she was dressed in a wet mop.

As we got out of the car, I glanced over and laughed at her. “You’d win first place in a wet T-shirt contest,” I said.

“Very funny,” she said, frowning. “You wouldn’t be laughing if you’d just gone through the rinse cycle.”

“I had to live through your shrieking every time we hit a bump,” I pointed out.

“At least we’ve gotten through the worst of it,” she said and went to retrieve our sleeping four-year-old from the back of the car.

R-i-i-i-ght.

The new day started uneventfully enough, and we left our hotel at nine in the morning to meet my parents and two sisters at the Publick House in the center of the historic village of Sturbridge, MA. Okay, perhaps I did receive a few glances as I trudged through the quaint, historic meeting place with the goldfish bowl in tow and my brood following faithfully behind. Perhaps my family did stare at me a bit oddly as I plunked the bowl down on to the table and sat down across from Mom and Dad.

My sister, the one who hates me, gave her best smiley grimace. “Matty,” she said, glancing warily at the bowl, which was perched between the salt and peppershakers.

“Hey, if you liked them last night, you’ll go nuts over them this morning,” I joked. “Sure you don’t want to take them home to Utah?”

“Very funny,” she said, and turned back to her companion.

“I like the fishies,” said my four-year-old son, TJ. “Daddy, can we bring them when we go to eat always?”

My oldest daughter, Anna—who’s 15 and thinks she so all that—grimaced, mortified.

An old-fashioned grog wench appeared at my side. Her pear-shaped face was wrapped in a comely bonnet. “Can I take your order?” she asked politely.

“I’ll have a cup of coffee for starters,” I said. “And a side of fries for my pals in the bowl.”

After a very nice breakfast and a trip to view the room at the inn of my youngest sister, the one who loves me, we all said our goodbyes. I was feeling hot and slightly sweaty, having been lugging the bowl up and down stairs, over and through narrow corridors. The Publick House was quaint, but not air conditioned, and it was clear the day was going to be a muggy one.

Now we were standing by our station wagon, saying our goodbyes to Mom and Dad, as well as my mellower sibling and her husband.

“Sure you don’t want to go antiquing?” asked my sister. I suspect she was simply being polite.

I gave her a hug and tried to be as polite as I get. “No thanks, sweetie.”

“You’re all going to be all right?” asked my mother in her patented ‘Let’s wrap this up’ tone. Hey, she had been entertaining all weekend. She was anxious to ditch her mother-of-the-groom role and get back to her real role—the Cincinnati Slim of the Mah Jong set at her condo association.

“We’ll be fine,” my wife replied, and placed the goldfish bowl on her seat to give my mother a hug.

Then, the closing ceremonies, as the obligatory rounds of good-byes were made: father to son, brother to sister, grandmother to grandkids, father-in-law to daughter-in-law, aunt to nephews and nieces. And then I rested against the rear of our station wagon and watched my sister and her husband climb into their car, and my parents walk towards theirs, and heard the satisfying click of the car door as the kids piled into the back seat, without having had to be herded in the slightest.

The wedding was over. The endless smiles and associations and dancing and eating had ended. We were going back home. Thank God.

“Ouch!”

I looked over at the picturesque scene before me—the rustic old inn, surrounded by willow trees, at the purple rows of balloon flowers poking out of the flowerbeds, at the clear blue sky without a cloud to its name. And I took a deep breath and thought, “Now I can rest.”

“Um, Matt,” Josie said, sounding a bit stressed.

“Mommy!” I heard my youngest call out. “Are you bleeding?”

Bleeding? That was enough to break me out of my trance. “Josie, you’re bleeding?” I rushed over to her side of the car to witness the bloodshed. Josie was standing beside the opened passenger side door, her left arm extended, a thin line of red etched across her wrist. And on her seat, the fish bowl. A large chunk of the top had broken off. A pile of water was staining the cushion, while the fish floated around obliviously.

“What happened?” I asked, my voice going up a notch.

“I was stupid,” she said.

“She was stupid,” repeated Ashley, twirling a curl in her hair, sucking her thumb, and leaning her body against my oldest daughter.

“Stop touching me,” complained Annie, pushing her aside and setting off a bicker war.

“How were you stupid?” I asked, trying valiantly to ignore them.

“I lifted the bowl from the top,” she said. “I just needed a few inches to get my other hand under it. But the bowl’s so heavy it kind of fell apart…”

“And you’re okay?” I asked. She nodded, but I didn’t believe a word of it. Panic was starting to set in. Did she need a doctor? Was she going to bleed the whole way home? What if she had severed an artery? “Look,” I pleaded, “Can I get you a band-aid? Something?”

But where? The inn? No, no, better yet, my parents. Parents always had things like band-aids stored away for emergencies, didn’t they? (Oh, never mind the fact that we were parents, too, and clearly didn’t have anything remotely resembling a band-aid anywhere…)

I started running in their direction, desperate. I could see them entering their car on the other side of the parking lot. “Mom! Dad!” I called out, feeling like a grubby boy chasing after an ice cream truck. I saw the car back out of the spot, then move forward. They were driving away. They weren’t paying any attention. What, no last lingering looks in the direction of their grandkids?

Nope. Mah Jong beckoned.

I trudged back to the car. Josie was walking around outside, applying a napkin to the back of her hand. “Oh, Matt,” she scolded. “It’s not that bad at all.”

In the distance I saw my parents’ car take a left and exit the grounds. “Well, I could go inside and talk to the front desk.“

“You will not,” she said stubbornly. “We’re going home now.”

“That’s a pretty nasty break in the goldfish bowl,” I said. “I wouldn’t want the kids playing around with that.”

“They won’t,” she replied. “We’ll get a new bowl when we get home.”

“You want to drive all the way home with it like that?”

Josie dropped the napkin and bent down to pick up the bowl. “Give me a hand picking up the pieces.”

“Josie…“

“It’s only an hour drive. Besides, I don’t want to take the kids into the store. They’ll want to spend all our money.”

“That won’t take long.” I sighed and grabbed at a long sliver on the seat, then stopped. “But Josie, the water in the bowl—“

“Can’t spill any more than it has.” Then she smiled and lifted her dress up to her chin. “Besides, I put on a bathing suit this morning...”

***

We took a right out of the parking lot and started to make our way down a short road that would lead to a longer stretch of country road that would eventually lead to the promised land—Route 290. This would take us through Worcester and back to our home sweet home in sixty to seventy-five minutes.

I glanced over at my wife and patted her knee. “How are things going?”

“Pretty good. I’ve only been splashed three times in five minutes,” she replied through gritted teeth.

“We can always stop if you want and—“

Thump! We hit a pothole in the road, and another wave of water flew out of the bowl and onto Josie’s lap. She grimaced and lowered her head.

“You want we should toss them out the window?” I joked.

She looked up, grinned wickedly at me, and started to roll down her window.

“Mommy!” shouted out Ashley, my anxious child.

“Calm down, sweetie, Mommy’s just joking around,” I said, trying to soothe Kayla before things escalated.

“Am I?” Josie asked, in a tone I just knew Ashley wouldn’t recognize as sarcasm.

“Daddy!” shrieked Ashley, “She’s going to—“

“Ashes, she’s not going to do anything,” I said, turning briefly to try and calm her down. Oh, Josie, just quit it, just cut it out. “Those fish aren’t moving from that fish bowl unless…” I pointed to the bowl. “You see? Mommy’s got them on her lap and—“

“Look out!” yelled out Josie.

I suddenly heard a screech of tires and returned my attention to where it should have been in the first place. I felt my body get tight and my nerves stand up and dance, as I realized that the Jeep in front had locked up its wheels, trying to avoid smashing into the rear of a Yellow Mustang, which had stopped short due to construction. “Oh, Jesus!” I cried out, slamming on my brakes.

We were going to crash; I just knew it. I used to be a claims adjuster, so I know these kinds of things. Praying to God, I swerved the car to the left, hoping that there wasn’t a car traveling in the left lane. If there was, we were in for a big bang.

I felt my heart skip a beat, then remembered to breathe again as I realized that we were safe. There was a crash all right, but it was the Jeep creaming the rear of the Mustang. My car jerked to an abrupt stop. I looked out the window and watched the driver in the Jeep jump out and scream obscenities at the driver of the Mustang. My family had escaped unscathed. Somehow.

Then I looked down at Josie.

Well, gravity’s pretty much a constant, and for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and that sort of thing. What I mean to say is, there had been an equal and opposite reaction to my skid into the left lane, all right. All over my wife.

She just sat there, her eyes closed, the entire front of her dress drenched in water, a puddle forming by her feet.

“Um, Josie…” I asked, timidly.

“Did somebody get the number of that tidal wave?” she called out.

“Daddy! That car got smooshed!” screamed out TJ as I took my foot off the brake and started to slowly move forward again.

“Josie, are you okay?” I asked.

“Daddy, that yellow car got SMOOOSHED!” repeated TJ.

“Well, I’m…I’m…” she looked down helplessly at the river that lay before her and lifted up a bit of the edges of her dress, which was clinging to her thighs.

“DADDY! THAT YELLOW CAR GOT—“

“I know TJ, I know!” I called out, but I was suddenly interrupted by a piercing shriek that filled the inside of the car.

“Mommy!!!”

I nearly put my foot on the brake once again. “Ashley?”

“What’s wrong, honey?” asked Josie. I looked into the rear view mirror. Ashley’s face was the color of warm tuna fish.

But she scrunched up her face and started to sob before she could get out another word. She did, however, manage to point a maple syrup stained finger in Josie’s direction. I followed the line created by her finger point over to my wife, towards the bowl that lay on her lap, towards the shallow pool of water that rested at the bottom, towards the chilling fact that, where once there had been a pair, now there was—

“There’s only one fish!” screamed out TJ.

“AGGGGGGH!” screamed Ashley at the top of her lungs.

I looked over at Josie in alarm and started to pull over to the side of the road.

“It’s got to be under the rocks!” Josie called out. The pebbles at the bottom of the tank had shifted from the swerve and were now slanted to one side. Had the fish been buried under an avalanche? What a ghastly way to meet one’s maker.

My wife shoved her hand inside the bowl, oblivious to the sharp broken edges. A fish’s life hung on the balance, after all! Risks must be taken! She started to dig through the pebbles furiously, pushing aside the solitary silvery fish that wiggled furiously out of her way.

“Come on,” she called out, searching desperately for some sign of the little orange fish that the kids had affectionately named Binky.

“Binky,” I thought idiotically, feeling my sanity slipping away. “Binky’s gone down the tinky.”

“Waaaa!” continued Ashley.

“Mommy!” yelled out TJ.

Josie continued to ‘fish’ around for some sign of life. “I can’t seem to find anything,” she called out.

“Mommy!” yelled out TJ.

“Waaaa!” continued Ashley.

“How long can a fish survive under all those rocks?” I contemplated.

My wife stopped digging around to glare at me. “Do you really need to bring that up right now?” Some people just don’t have any appreciation for scientific curiosity.

“Mommy! Is the fishy on your TOE?” called out TJ, so loudly that we couldn’t help but hear him.

We stopped talking. Ashley stopped screaming. After the shouting and fussing that had gone on before, the silence was deafening. And then, in unison, we shifted our gaze down to Josie’s open-toed sandals, where, perched precariously between my wife’s big toe and a plastic strap, wiggled the little fish, its tail flapping frantically back and forth.

I felt obliged to break the silence.

“You didn’t feel that thing on your big TOE?” I cried out.

“Give me a break!” she shouted back. “I was too busy looking around for him inside the—“

“Will you two stop arguing long enough to put him back in the bowl?” our oldest daughter screamed out.

Well, she did have a point.

“Should you touch him?” I asked. It seemed like a sensible question at the time. “What if he’s allergic to human germs?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Matt,” Josie huffed. “He’s been sitting for a half an hour on my toenail!” And with that, she reached down, picked him up, and plopped him back into the goldfish bowl.

“It was not a half an hour,” I said petulantly. “It wasn’t even five minutes.”

“It was to that fish,” my wife replied in even meters.

We all continued to stare inside the goldfish bowl, waiting in delicious anticipation for what would happen next. Had it been too traumatic an experience, one moment swimming happily about, the next, perched upon the reef of Josie’s big toe, stranded like a beached whale upon the hard enamel of Josie’s “blueberry cheer” dry-in-minutes nail polish?

I felt as if we were physicians waiting for the prognosis. Would our patient live?

We must have sat there for about five minutes, completely motionless, waiting for some sign—a spasm, a gasp, something. But all we saw was a goldfish innocently swimming around the bottom of the bowl. Which was probably a good sign.

“He’s going to be fine,” my wife announced, although when she had become a medical authority on fish was beyond me.

We all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

There was only one problem left.

“Not enough water,” said Josie.

“Daddy, can they live in there very long?” asked Annie.

“I’m not sure.” I turned to Josie. “We should probably pick up some more. They might last in the broken bowl, but this—“

“There’s a Happy Mart down the street,” she replied.

I nodded, started up the car, and merged back into the main road. It only took me about a quarter of a mile before we reached the convenience store, a dumpy looking Happy Mart decked out in sun-faded blue and orange.

“Just get a bottle of water,” said Josie. “One’s enough.”

Annie put a hand on my shoulder before I could exit. “Perrier,” she instructed. “Don’t get the cheap stuff.”

Well, the fishies had been through a traumatic experience and all. Perhaps there was something to her suggestion. Perhaps they did deserve the good stuff.

I fended off requests from the two youngest to pick up candy, soda, chips…anything, and entered the little convenience store before the noxious aroma of trash overflowing from the blue trash bin could get too bad.

The clerk inside practically hovered over the counter. He was an Indian man with an eager-to-please smile. The tiny store was crammed like a clown car with one thousand and one items. Yeah, I thought, like I’m going to have any luck here.

“How may I help you?” asked the clerk, in slightly imperfect English.

“Oh, I’m just looking for a bottle of water,” I replied. “Do you sell Perrier?”

“Water’s in the cooler,” he replied, continuing to make eye contact.

I turned to the coolers and looked around. They only carried something called Nanataskette Springs. Well, it would fill the bowl just as well, I guess. I pushed back the sliding door and walked three steps forward to the counter.

“Dollar four,” said the clerk.

I reached for my wallet. My wallet? Now where was…I patted my pockets and searched around. “Okay, calm down,” I thought. “I just forgot it in the car. Avoiding a train wreck will make you forgetful…”

“Be back in a minute,” I said.

My eternally chipper clerk beamed at me.

I ran outside, replacing the artificial air-conditioned coolness for the dry heat of the open outdoors. I moved to Josie’s window. “Need my wallet,” I said.

“Of course you do,” she said, as if she had expected me to return all along. She retrieved it from the glove compartment.

I returned to the shop and stood in front of the counter.

“Dollar four,” repeated the clerk. I swear he had not changed his facial expression since I left the building.

I opened my wallet and looked inside.

It was emptier than the inside of a poodle’s head. Well, actually it was quite full, with receipts and bills, the accumulation of an entire weekend’s worth of debt. But there wasn’t a single greenback to be seen anywhere. Should I throw it all on credit? What, for dollar four? No, that would be silly.

This whole trip was starting to seem silly.

“Hold on just a minute,” I said and turned around. I think his smile actually did drop just a notch at that point.

I ran back to my wife, who was in the middle of loudly berating the kids over an argument about…oh, something.

“Do you have any cash?” I asked. “I’m all out.”

“You going to be able to handle this?” she asked with a smirk. I could just tell it was all she could do not to laugh.

Now was not the time. “Look,” I snapped. “You want me to go visit their rest room and scoop out some water from the—“

“Okay, okay,” she said, dipping into her pocketbook. “Let’s see if I have any…well, no dollars.”

“No dollars?” called out an exasperated Annie. “Great! They’re going to swim around in toilet water!”

“Toilet water?” repeated TJ.

“I hope the last person flushed,” I said and winked at Annie.

“Matt!” Josie dug around her purse. “I should have some change, though. How much do you need?”

“A dollar four.”

“Well, here are two quarters,” she said. “Look around under the radio and see what we have there.”

Altogether we managed to scrape together ninety-four cents. I looked at Josie in horror. The bathroom water was looking better and better all the time. “We’re off by ten cents,” I groaned. “Do you think he’ll let me get it, even though I’m a little short?”

“Your height has nothing to do with this,” she said. “And we’d better get these boys something soon.” She turned around and snapped her fingers under Annie’s nose. “Come on, kid. Fork it over.”

Annie looked up in annoyance and turned off her Walkman. “Huh?” she asked. “Fork what over?”

“Just give me a dollar,” replied Josie. “You know you have it. You have more money than both of us combined.”

Annie rolled her eyes. “Mom!” she whined. “I was using that for—“

“Don’t you make me lift this wet butt up from the seat!” snarled Josie, and moved to unlock her door.

“Fine, fine,” grumbled Annie, and removed the dollar bill from her short jeans.

And so, armed with the price of admission, I made my way back into the store for the third time.

The clerk was still standing behind the cash register. In fact, he still looked as though he hadn’t moved a muscle since the last time I had left the store.

Except, the bottle was nowhere to be seen.

“You moved the water?” I asked, aghast.

“Yes. I’m sorry,” he said warmly. “I didn’t think you want.”

“Well, I do want,” I said testily, and moved to retrieve it from the freezer. I placed it on the counter one last time.

“That’s—“

“I know,” I grumbled, and placed the money before him. “Dollar four.”

With the coveted agua now firmly in my possession, I bid the clerk adieu and headed back to my beloved family, a Herod bringing back the head of John the Baptist to his Salome…or would that be, salamis? Anyway, the dance was over. I was the victor.

I opened up the car door and handed my prize over to Josie. She looked at it clinically.

“I figured as much,” she said, and handed the bottle back to me. “That’s cold. It’s been in a freezer.”

“So?” I asked, hearing my voice rise.

Josie shook her head. “Matt…think about it.”

“Think about what?”

“Sweetie, you can’t dump a bottle of freezing water into a fish tank,” she said patiently, with a slightly condescending tone that implied I was two crayons short of a crayon box. “The fish are used to water at room temperature. They’d die for sure if you put that in there.”

“Can’t they get used to it?” I asked desperately, sounding as though I were two crayons short of a crayon box. “It’ll warm up sooner or later.”

“Too late for them at that point. Matt, go and see if he has any bottles outside the cooler.”

“Oh, I don’t think that he does…”

“Matt!”

And so I made trip number four into the convenience store.

Maybe it was just my imagination, but for some reason, the clerk no longer looked very happy to see me. In fact, I could distinctly detect a worry line starting to form on his forehead.

I chose to ignore all this.

“I’d like to return this,” I said, placing the bottle on the counter. “It’s too watery.”

The clerk looked at me as though I had two heads.

“It’s just a joke,” I said, since it had gone over like the Hindenburg. “Actually, I was wondering if…” My eyes looked around the busy little room and spotted an unopened crate of bottles in a corner. “Ah! There we go.”

So it is that at long last we were able to refill the goldfish bowl, restoring it successfully to its previous level of liquidity, and probably improving the drinking content a few levels, in the process, too. I pulled out of that store with a wide smile across my face, confident that we had at long last crossed the Rubicon; that the worst was over.

“Which way would you like to go home?” I asked Josie. “Do you want to take the Pike or 495?”

“Oh, 495,” she replied and pulled out a garish romance novel called ‘Love for the Loveless.’

“495 it is,” I replied, continuing along 290. We were finally approaching Worcester.

Josie flipped the book open, thumbed through a few pages, and then threw it on the floor. She took off her sandals and wiggled her toes. “Think I’ll take a little nap,” she said and closed her eyes. “Wake me up when we’re pulling in the driveway…”

“We have a lot to do when we get home,” I said.

She kept her eyes closed. “I know. That’s why I want to try and sleep now.”

“I need to get this car inspected. It’s four months overdue.”

“Go for it,” she said. “So is mine. Now would you let me have a few hours of peace and quiet?”

Which is exactly what I did. For exactly 10.54 minutes. That was when her peace and quiet was disturbed by a thunderous—

BANG!

It actually sounded like a small explosion. The bang was loud enough for my wife to lift her head up with a jerk and look out her window, loud enough for Annie to take off her earphones, loud enough for TJ, who had successfully drifted off to sleep, to wake up with a start.

And the really frightening thing was that the small explosion had come from under the hood of our car.

I’ll be honest. I just kept driving for another minute, trying to pretend as though nothing had happened. I guess I figure that by this act of denial I could somehow will the car back to wellness, could somehow get through the next hour without even acknowledging that the small explosion, and subsequent rumbling and belching noises, had taken place at all.

“Matt,” said Josie gently, knowing that the ice was thin. “I think we need to pull over…”

It sounded as though the muffler had blown, only the sounds were coming from the front of the car, not the back. And the car was starting to shake, too, even though I had reduced my speed from fifty to thirty-five.

“Just what I wanted,” I groaned. “To get stranded in the center of Worcester.”

“Do you think we can drive home like this?” asked Josie.

As if in response, the car shivered violently. “I don’t think so,” I replied.

“Well, we’re going to have to get it fixed then,” she said. “I just hope we’re near…something.”

I pulled off at the first exit I could find. As I moved down the ramp, I spotted a gas station to my left. And then I realized, my luck being what it was that day…all on account of that damn fish…that I couldn’t actually take a left. I’d have to take a right, travel for an eighth of a mile and then attempt a U-turn.

“You fix cars here?” I asked the attendant when I finally pulled into the gas station.

“We don’t,” answered the stern-looking attendant with cold gray eyes and an impeccably clean work shirt. “You need to go nine blocks down.”

“We were on the highway and my car hit a bump, and I—“

“Nine blocks down,” he repeated. “Tell them all about it.” He turned and walked back into his office.

The car continued to blast and pop. I glanced over at Josie, to see if she looked as nervous as I felt. Here we were, in a strange city, the wagon filled to the gills with luggage and packages and children. We might as well put a ‘steal me blind’ sign on the back of the car.

Josie was gripping the goldfish bowl tightly and staring ahead.

I flicked at a dead bug on the top of my dusty dashboard. “I guess we go nine blocks,” I said.

“Let’s just get this over with.”

“I hope it doesn’t cost too much,” I said.

“It will.” Then she smiled and put a hand on my shoulder. “At least you can get your car inspected.” We both laughed, far too loudly, the gallows humor of prisoners trapped in the same dark cell.

I pulled out of the gas station and took a left. “God, let this car keep moving,” I prayed, even though I’m not much of a Christian. “I don’t want to have to push this thing down nine blocks. Please God, please…

I approached a traffic light turning red. I considered flicking on the emergencies and running it…but no. No, better not…not today, of all days.

We waited at the red light. I continued my prayers, hoping that the car wouldn’t stall out, gunning the accelerator every few seconds, trying to breath some life into this flickering candle. I drummed the wheel impatiently and wrinkled my nose suddenly.

“Do I smell gas?” I asked, more to myself.

In retrospect, this was probably the very worst thing that I could possibly have said.

“Oh my God!” screamed out Annie. “We’re going to blow!”
That did it. All hell broke loose. Ashley erupted like a powder keg, screaming, kicking, and screeching at the top of her lungs. “We’re going to blow! Let me out! Let me out!”

“Thanks, Annie! Thanks a lot!” I called out.

“What? It’s what I thought!” she said indignantly.

“But you know how Ashley gets—“

“You shouldn’t have said you smelled gas!”

“We’re going to blow up!” shrieked Ashley, kicking the back of my seat. “Let me out! Let me out!!”

“Well, I did smell gas. Now, Ashley, honey—“

“Let me out! Let me out!”

“Matt,” said Josie. She had been absolutely quiet before this. In fact, she was still quiet. She didn’t need to raise her voice. I knew immediately from the tone that she meant business. “Pull over to the side of the road. I’m walking the rest of the way.”

I didn’t argue. I just did as instructed. It seemed perfectly fitting, given the circumstances.

Which is how my beloved wife received the opportunity to walk nine blocks through the center of Worcester on a 90-degree day, barefoot, with a small child trailing behind her and a broken goldfish bowl in her hands.

We were informed that a spark plug had burst. The bill came to $250, inspection included. I don’t think we were ripped off too badly, given the circumstances. Maybe it was the broken goldfish bowl that actually saved us. With the fire in my wife’s wild eyes when she finally reached the shop, I don’t think anyone in their right mind would have dared mess with a madwoman wielding broken glass.

Three hours later, we finally returned home alive. I have never been happier to make it back in my life.

The goldfishes, unbelievably, survived. In fact, they’re still alive, so now we have fourteen members in our happy little family, having successfully survived our little swim upstream: me, my wife, our three kids, two dogs, two cats, two finches, a guinea pig and our two new guppies.

That is, until the next wedding.

I hear they’re handing out lovebirds at that one…

Saturday, September 1, 2001

1:00 a.m.

THE GOLDFISH BOWL