The Fourteenth Goldfish (4 page)

All this talk of Chinese food has made me hungry.

“I’ll take a wonton soup,” I say.

My mother sighs.

“Fine,” she says, and a little of the excitement goes out of her voice.

When my mom returns from picking up the food, we settle in on stools at the counter. My grandfather digs around in his carton suspiciously.

“This doesn’t look like the moo goo gai pan I usually get. This looks spicy. You know I don’t like spicy food, Melissa.”

“It’s regular old moo goo gai pan, Dad,” my mom says.

My grandfather takes a bite. Delivers the verdict.

“It’s not spicy,” he says.

“Good,” my mother replies. “I was really worried.”

“Humph,” he says. “Did you ask for extra soy sauce?”

“Yes, Dad. It’s in the bag,” she says, rolling her eyes at me. “Well, in other news, the kids I cast as Emily and George are amazing!”

My grandfather’s head snaps up. “You’re doing
Our Town
? That show is a snooze.”

He’s right; I’ve seen it before and not much happens. It’s basically just about these people who live in a small town called Grover’s Corners. My mom likes to stage it because it has a big cast, so lots of kids can get a part.

My mom starts lecturing him like he’s one of her students. “Excuse me, but
Our Town
is quite possibly the best play ever written about the totality of the human experience.”

“Too bad it’s so boring,” my grandfather snarks.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s an amazing play. A hallmark of American playwriting. You just don’t have any flair for drama.”

My grandfather yawns widely.

The phone rings and I leap up to answer it.

“
Bonjour
,” my dad says in a hearty voice.

I take the phone into the hallway.

“Hey, Dad! How’s it going?”

“I’m tired of chasing Jean Valjean every night. But I’m not going to complain.”

He got the part of Javert in a touring production of
Les Misérables
. He’s been on the road since August. The play is a big break for him, but it doesn’t feel the same without him around. My dad’s the one who stayed home with me when I was little so that my mom could get her teaching degree. He says trying to keep a toddler entertained was the best acting experience he’s ever had.

“Where are you?” I ask.

“Iowa City.”

“Do they have a pool in the hotel?”

“Yep. Indoor.”

“The toilet’s been getting clogged up again,” I tell him.

My father groans. “I’ll take a look at it when I
swing back through.” Even though he doesn’t live here, he always takes care of house things for my mom.

“I miss you,” I say.

“I miss you, too,” he says.

My grandfather says something loudly and my mother shouts back. Their voices carry into the hall.

“Sounds like there’s company,” my dad says.

“Grandpa’s over for dinner.”

“Don’t tell me: you’re having Chinese,” he says in a dry voice.

“How did you know?”

My father snorts over the phone. “That old man never changes.”

I look back at my grandfather in the kitchen. He’s slumped in the chair, his long hair brushing his shoulders, his shirt hanging on his skinny body.

“I don’t know about that,” I say.

I have science first period. My teacher’s name is Mr. Ham, and all the kids make fun of him behind his back by doing oinking sounds. But I kind of like him. He’s funny and wears silly ties that have lobsters and cupcakes.

I barely made it to class in time this morning because we were running late. My grandfather wouldn’t leave until he finished printing
out something from the Internet. I didn’t even have time to go to my locker and get my science textbook.

Naturally, the first thing Mr. Ham says is “Please open your textbooks to page thirty.”

I groan.

“You can share with me,” Momo whispers, and slides her book between us.

“Thanks,” I whisper back.

At lunch, it’s sloppy joe day. No one’s exactly sure what’s in the sloppy joes, but everyone agrees that they’re gross.

After I get through the lunch line, I’m looking for Brianna when I hear someone shouting my name.

“Ellie! Over here!” My grandfather is sitting at a table and waving wildly at me. “I saved you a seat.”

He’s wearing another interesting outfit today: white button-up shirt with a light blue tie, polyester khakis, and, of course, black dress socks. The quirkiest part of his outfit is the ponytail holder.
It’s one of mine—a bright pink one—and it kind of works on him.

He taps a pile of papers in front of him.

“I’m going to show that Raj character!”

That’s what he’s been calling him—“that Raj character.”

“Is that what you were printing out this morning?” I ask. “What are they, anyway?”

“My articles.”

“Articles?”

“I told you I’ve published quite a lot. I’m very well known. I have a virtual fan club in Finland, you know,” he says.

“You’re famous?”

His shoulders dip a little.

“It only has two hundred and thirty-one members,” he admits. “But even so, they’re going to go nuts when I finally announce my success with
T. melvinus
. I’m going to be the next Jonas Salk!”

It’s like he’s talking about a relative who I’m supposed to know but have never met.

“Who’s Jonas Salk?” I ask.

My grandfather shakes his head. “Are you learning anything at all in this place?” He looks past me. “If this country spent half as much time on science education as cheering some idiot with a ball, you’d know who Jonas Salk is.”

I turn to see what he’s looking at and feel a stab of pain. At the edge of the lunch court, a bunch of girls are throwing a volleyball around. Brianna’s with them. She spikes the ball and the girls collapse on the ground in laughter. I force myself to look away.

“Tell me about Salk,” I say.

“Jonas Salk developed the vaccine for polio.”

I’m almost afraid to ask, but I do anyway. “What’s polio?”

“Polio is a terrible disease! It left children crippled. Killed them. Salk and his group of scientists pioneered a vaccine to prevent it. He even tested it on himself.”

“Himself?” This seems nuts to me, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. “Was he a mad scientist or something?”

My grandfather sits up straighter, stares at me hard.

“All scientists are a little bit mad, Ellie.”

For a moment, I think he’s kidding, but then I realize he’s serious.

“Average people just give up at the obstacles we face every day. Scientists fail again and again and again. Sometimes for our whole lives. But we don’t give up, because we want to solve the puzzle.”

“I like puzzles,” I say.

“Yes, but have you ever tried to put a puzzle together and given up because it was too hard?”

I nod.

“Scientists
never
give up. They keep trying because they believe in the possible.”

“The possible?”

“That it’s
possible
to create a cure for polio. That it’s
possible
to sequence the human genome. That it’s
possible
to find a way to reverse aging. That science can change the world.”

And I get it.

A palm tree sways in the breeze, its fronds brown and shedding. Something shifts inside me, like a puzzle piece snapping into place.

I look at my grandfather. “I think I know where Raj hangs out after school.”

Raj is waiting at the curb. His eyes are fixed on the cars driving up and down the street.

My grandfather stomps over to him, digging in his backpack. It’s my old one from elementary school; it has kittens on it. I thought it was a little uncool for him, but he told me it was a perfectly good backpack and he didn’t care what people might think.

“You!” my grandfather shouts.

Raj turns, watches us. His eyes flicker to me briefly before returning to my grandfather.

My grandfather pulls out the papers and shoves them into Raj’s hands.

“Read ’em and weep,” he says.

Raj scans them. Then he looks up.

“Most of these were published over thirty years ago.”

My grandfather is stunned into a momentary silence, then says, “Einstein published a long time ago, too. Are you gonna pooh-pooh him?”

“You’re being a little ridiculous,” Raj says.

A compact car pulls up to the curb, a teenager behind the wheel. He has the same dark eyes as Raj but looks a few years older. Raj folds his tall frame into the front seat.

“Ridiculous, huh?” my grandfather sputters. “What do you know, anyway? You’re just a kid.”

Raj leans out the open window, gives my grandfather a slow look.

“I don’t know. You’re a kid, too.” He pauses. “What do
you
know?”

When we get home, my grandfather heads straight for the kitchen.

“I’m starving,” he says.

“I’ll heat up some burritos,” I say. There’s probably not a more perfect combination than rice, refried beans, and cheese.

He makes himself a cup of hot tea to go with his burrito. He pours the steaming water into the mug with precision, adds two perfect spoonfuls of sugar, and methodically stirs the sugar like he’s making a formula. It makes me think of the mad scientist conversation.

“I liked what you talked about at lunch,” I confess. “About science. But how do you start?”

He looks up from his tea. “What do you mean?”

“In a puzzle, I always begin with a straightedge piece. If you wanted to cure polio or anything, where would you even start?”

“With your eyes, of course,” he says.

“Eyes?”

He looks at the bowl of fruit on the counter.

“For example, that bowl of fruit. What do you see?” he asks.

It’s a battered wooden bowl. There are a few apples, a banana, some pears, and a mango. I’m pretty sure my mom got the mango on sale because she doesn’t usually buy them otherwise.

“A bowl of fruit?” I say.

“Is the fruit alive or dead?” he probes.

I look at it more closely. The apples are red and shiny, and the banana doesn’t have any bruises.

“Alive.”

He picks up an apple, turning it. “Is it, though? Is it attached to a root system? Is it ingesting nutrients? Water? Those are all signs of life.”

“I guess not,” I say.

He waves the apple at me. “It actually begins dying the minute you pick it.”

Then he goes to the counter and takes a knife from the butcher block. He slices into the apple, exposing a neat row of dark brown seeds.

“Now,” he says, touching them with the tip of his knife, “what about these?”

“Dead?” I guess.

“This is trickier. They’re dormant, waiting. Bury them in soil. Give them water and sunlight and they’ll grow. In a way, they’re immortal. And they were inside the apple all along.”

I’m kind of blown away.

“I thought science was all experiments and laboratories,” I admit.

My grandfather shakes his head. “The most powerful tool of the scientist is observation. Galileo, the father of modern science, observed that Jupiter had moons orbiting it, proving that the Earth was not the center of everything. His observations forced people to think differently about their place in the universe.”