I change into some more respectable clothes. Nothing too flashy, but slightly better than casual. Don’t want Mom insisting on buying my clothes for me like she used to. She went through a stage, a year ago, of buying my shirts, my underwear, my socks. Sometimes I remind her I’m more than thirty years old and can do this myself, but sometimes she does it anyway.
On the small coffee table in my small living room, in front of the small sofa that looks like it belongs in some hippie recording studio, sits a large goldfish bowl with my two best friends inside: Pickle and Jehovah. My goldfish don’t complain. Goldfish have memories of five seconds, so you can really piss them off and they won’t remember. You can forget to feed them, and they’ll forget they’re hungry. You can pull them from the water and throw them on the floor, and they’ll flap around and forget they’re suffocating. Pickle is my favorite; I got him first-two years ago. He is an albino goldfish from China, with a white body and red fins, and is slightly bigger than the width of my palm. Jehovah is a little smaller, but she’s gold. Goldfish can live up to forty years, and I hope to get at least that out of mine. I don’t know what they get up to when I’m not watching them, but so far no little goldfish have appeared.
I sprinkle in some food, watch them rise to the surface of the bowl, and watch them eat. I love them dearly, yet at the same time I feel like God. No matter who I am, no matter what I do, my goldfish look up to me. The way they live, the conditions they live in, when they get dinner-these things are all up to me. I like having that responsibility.
I talk to them while they eat. A few minutes go by. I have talked enough. The pain of killing Fluffy is nearly gone now.
I head outside. The sun has completely gone now and the streetlights are on. A few of them on my street are busted. Tomorrow it will get darker earlier by a minute, and the same every day after that until we break through winter. Or perhaps winter won’t come this year. I walk to the nearest bus stop. I wait for maybe five minutes in the warm evening air before a bus finally comes along.
Mom lives in South Brighton near the beach. No green lawn out here. Like the plants, it matches the shade of rust that visits every metal surface exposed to the salt air. Grow a rosebush and the entire block goes up in value. Most of the homes are sixty-year-old bungalows that are struggling to hold on to their character as the paint flakes away and the weatherboards slowly rot.
All the windows are clouded over with salt. Wooden joinery is stained with dead pine needles and sand. Patches of sealant and plaster block up holes and keep the insides dry. Even crime out here has its downside-when you weigh in the cost of gas it takes to get here against the value of anything you might find in any of these dumps, it’s hardly worth breaking into somebody’s house.
It takes thirty minutes for the bus to get to Mom’s house. When I get out, I can hear the waves crashing against the shore. The sound is relaxing. This is the only benefit to South Brighton. It is a minute’s walk to the beach from here, and if I still lived in this suburb, I would walk that extra minute and just keep on swimming. At the moment it feels like I’m standing in a ghost town. Few houses have their lights on. Every fourth or fifth streetlight is busted. Nobody around.
I suck in a deep breath of salty air while standing at the gate. My clothes already stink of rotten seaweed. Mom’s house is in as much disrepair as any other house in this neighborhood. If I came around here and painted it, her neighbors would probably kick her out. If I mowed the dry lawns, I’d have to mow everybody’s. Her house is a single-story weatherboard dwelling. White paint, now the color of smog, falls from the warped boards and settles in the yard alongside the dusting of rust from the iron roof. The windows are held in place with both cracking joint compound and luck. A real-estate agent would call Mum’s house a great investment for the handyman.
I walk up to the door. Knock. And wait. A minute goes by before she finally ambles to it. It sticks in the frame and she has to pull it hard. It shudders open and the hinges squeak.
“Joe, do you know what time it is?”
I nod. It’s nearly seven thirty. “Yeah, Mom, I know.”
She closes the door, I hear the rattle of a chain guard, and then the door swings back open. I step inside.
Mom will be sixty-four this year, but looks a good ten years older. Or a bad five. She’s only five feet two, and has curves in all the wrong places. Some of those curves stretch out over others, some are heavy enough to tighten the wrinkles in her neck. Her gray hair, she keeps pulled back into a tight bun, but at the moment she’s wearing something over it-one of those old hairnets with curlers tied into it that for some reason makes me think of black-and-white movies and women smoking cigarettes. She has blue eyes so pale they are nearly gray, covered by a pair of thick-rimmed glasses that may, with a lot of luck, one day come into style. On her face are three moles, each of them with a dark hair that she won’t cut. Her upper lip is cultivating a soft line of fuzz. She looks like she belongs in a nursing home as the head matron.
“You’re late,” she says, blocking the doorway while adjusting one of the curlers in her hair. “I got worried. I nearly called the police. Nearly called the hospitals.”
“I was busy, Mom, with work and everything,” I say, relieved she didn’t file a missing person report.
“Too busy to call your mother? Too busy to worry yourself about my breaking heart?”
I’m all she has left. My dad died a few years ago, and I’ve always considered him to be the lucky one. It seems the only thing Mom has to live for is talking. And complaining. Luckily the two go hand in hand for her.
“I said I’m sorry, Mom.”
She clips me around the ear. Not hard, but enough to show me her disappointment. Then she hugs me. “I made meatloaf, Joe. Meatloaf. Your favorite.”
I hand her the rose I picked from Angela’s garden. It’s slightly crushed, but Mom’s expression is priceless when I hand over the red flower.
“Oh, you’re so thoughtful, Joe,” she says, taking it to her nose to smell.
I shrug. “Just wanted to make you happy,” I say, and even for an optimist like me that’s always been a pretty ambitious goal. Her smile is making me smile.
“Ow,” she says, pricking her finger on one of the thorns. “You give me a rose with thorns? What sort of son are you, Joe?”
Obviously a bad one. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“You don’t think enough, Joe. That’s always been your problem. Along with always being late. I’ll put it in water,” she says, and steps aside. “You might as well come in.”
She closes the door behind me and I follow her down the hallway to the kitchen, passing photographs of my dead dad, a cactus that has looked dead from the day she got it, and a seascape painting of a place my mother would maybe like to visit. The Formica-top table has been set for two.
“Do you want a drink?” she asks, putting the rose into a glass.
“I’m fine,” I say, tightening my jacket. It’s always cold in this house.
“The supermarket has Coke on special.”
“I’m fine.”
“Three dollars for a six pack,” she says. “Here, I’ll find you the receipt.”
“Don’t worry, Mom. I said I’m fine.”
“It’s no hassle.”
She wanders off, leaving me alone. There’s no way to say it nicely, but my mother is getting crazier by the day. I believe her that Coke is on special, yet she still feels the need to show me the receipt. A few minutes go by where all I can do is look at the oven and microwave, so I spend the time figuring just how awkward it would be to fit an entire person into either one of them. When she comes back, she has also found the supermarket flyer advertising the Coke.
I nod. “Three dollars, huh? Amazing.”