The Tale of the Fish

Our dear friends the Maxwells visited this weekend, and we traipsed all around the city Saturday, showing them the Bean, the lions of the Art Institute, the Lego store, American Girl Place, and our Nintendo Wii, as dictated by the laws of hospitality. They left Sunday, hopefully as triumphantly exhausted as we felt, although they, too, had a full day ahead of them.

As dictated by Maxwell tradition, we all gathered on the sofa for the final group photo. I offered my tripod. Karen said that would be perfect, so I went inside the office to retrieve it. It was tangled up with my camera bag, per usual, so I freed it and hopped back to the chaos in the living room. Unbeknownst to me, the door to the office lay slightly ajar. We all scrunched together, dramatic Evelyn, squirmy Henry, Karen and me, with a hole for Dave who was setting up the timer. Dave finished up, squeezed in at the end of the sofa, and we all put on our best smiles.

Something splashed in the office. Distracted, I blinked, and saw the flash through the red of my eyelids. I realized two things simultaneously:
1) we would have to take the photo again
2) Margaret, the Betta fish Brandi took home from Publications International, was in mortal peril from avid fishercat Patrick.
Already, we could hear more splashing. We needed to act, and quickly. Brandi and I jumped up and ran into the office. Both cats had availed themselves of the forbidden space, Rio strolling underneath the desk, Patrick standing over... Margaret, out of her tank and clearly punctured behind her left gill. She lay very still.

Behind us, Evelyn started to cry. She didn't know exactly what happened, but sometimes feels overwhelmed when grownup display heightened emotions. Karen ushered her back into the living room. Brandi and I swept the cats out of the office, ignoring the body of the fish for the moment while we dealt with the photo op. Evelyn continued to cry, and we asked her why. She said she was afraid that Patrick was hurt because he had been bitten by a fish. Brandi assured her our cat was fine and un-bitten, delicately omitting the part of the story where Patrick did the reverse. Brandi smiled tightly and said, "Well, you were right," referring to our longstanding and slowly-simmering argument about whether or not one should take care to close the office doors. After all, what could happen? I asked her not to joke. The thought of playing accomplice to murder, even of something as small and flushable as a fish, made me feel guilty as sin. Dave set up the camera again, and we smiled, some of us falling back on our acting training. This time, everything came out fine, and the Maxwells prepared to head out to Cedar Point on what was turning out to be a decidedly crummy, rainy day. Wait, though, a new wrinkle: Karen still needed the weather report for Sandusky, Ohio. Would the roller coasters still run? Might the sun shine yet on the largest wooden roller coaster in the world? Brandi hinted that we needed to use a computer not in the office. Luckily, my laptop lay on the floor of our bedroom where I'd dropped it the night before, hoping for and, in the end, sleeping through the chance to get some homework done on a sketch writing show. We looked up the weather (lousy) and I helped take the last of the bags to the car, holding the big blue and yellow IKEA umbrella to keep raindrops the size of mothballs off the kids and Karen. Dave did the same with the second umbrella. Finally, waving in the archway of our building, I saw them off and went inside.

Brandi was in the process of cleaning up the office when I saw down heavily on our overstuffed living room couch. She had a paper towel which she was carrying to the bathroom for the traditional fish burial. Suddenly, she stopped. "I felt it twitch," she said. "What do I do?" I didn't know. She opened up the paper towel and saw that Margaret's gills were still moving. "How long can a fish live out of water?" Omce again, I had no idea, although later it would occur to me that Bettas, which in the wild inhabit tiny mud puddles they occasionally hop out of, might have evolved the ability to survive considerably longer than, say, a tuna. "I just don't want her to suffer."

"Well," I said, "Did you keep the tank? Can we put her back in it?"

"I threw it away."

"I'll get a glass. Meet me in the kitchen."

I filled a glass and Brandi dropped Margaret in. We watched for a few seconds as she drifted somewhat lifelessly in the water, the puncture wound all-too clear. But then her gills started moving and her fins got in the act as well. While not exactly speeding through the water, she was clearly hanging on, and I decided it was worthwhile to see how long we could extend her tiny fish life. I pulled her bowl out of the garbage and filled it, and together we poured her from the glass into her old home. Again, she drifted for a few seconds, but this time we could see clearly that she wasn't bleeding into the water, and therefore might not be mortally wounded. So, once again, we set her up on the desk in the office and crossed our fingers. Brandi submitted a question to an online fish expert about where to go from here, and later that afternoon got the answer: droplets to dechlorinate the water and help Margaret restore her natural, fishy slime. Directions call for one teaspoon per ten gallons of water. We put two drops into her softball-sized bowl and called it a day.

Two days later, Margaret is still not floating on the top of the tank, and my guilt is starting to rest, even if my paranoia over open office doors is strong as ever.