The Fourteenth Goldfish (5 page)

Then he looks around and says, “But now that you’ve mentioned it, I am going to need a laboratory.”

“For what?”

“For analyzing the
T. melvinus
when we get it back, of course,” he says, like it’s obvious. “I need to replicate my results if I’m going to publish.”

I think for a minute. Our house isn’t exactly huge.

“What about the garage?” I suggest.

We go out to the garage and my grandfather does a slow tour. One half is clear for my mom’s car, but the other side is stacked with boxes of props from her shows over the years. There’s an old workbench that was my dad’s, our bikes, and a freezer. My mom likes to stock up on frozen food before she goes into production on a show.

My grandfather rubs a nonexistent beard on his chin. “Electricity. Decent lighting. It’s not climate-controlled, but it could be worse. At least I’m not in the desert like Oppenheimer.”

I just look at him.

“Robert Oppenheimer? World War Two?”

“We haven’t gotten that far in history,” I explain. “We’re still at ancient Greece.”

“Robert Oppenheimer was a brilliant physicist. He ran the Manhattan Project, which developed the
atomic bomb. Oppenheimer tested the atomic bomb in the middle of a desert in New Mexico.”

“Wow,” I say.

He looks around. “Well, no time like the present. Let’s get this place organized.”

My grandfather wants to set up the lab around the main electricity outlets, and that means shifting all the prop boxes out of the way. It takes us the better part of two hours to move everything. There’s a box of clip lights, and he arranges them around the workbench.

The garage door suddenly rolls open and my mother’s car is there. But she can’t pull into the garage because of all the boxes. She kills the engine and walks into the garage.

“What are you doing?” she demands.

“We’re setting up a lab,” I tell her.

“Here? In the garage?”

“So I can continue my research,” my grandfather explains.

“Where am I supposed to park my car?” she asks.

“Outside?” I suggest.

“I don’t think so,” she says.

My grandfather stares at her. “You’re standing in the way of scientific discovery.”

“I’m standing in the way of birds pooping on my car.”

It takes the rest of the afternoon to put everything back.

I’m supposed to do a report on a famous historical figure. But instead of choosing from the likely suspects—William Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, Harriet Tubman—I use my computer to look up the names my grandfather’s been batting around. Galileo. Jonas Salk. Robert Oppenheimer.

Galileo’s picture is an old oil painting, like something that should be hanging in the de Young Museum in San Francisco. He’s dressed like he’s
in a Shakespeare play and doesn’t seem like a real person.

But Salk and Oppenheimer are interesting. Salk looks exactly the way you’d imagine a scientist: glasses, white lab coat, holding test tubes. Nerdy in general.

Oppenheimer is more unexpected: he’s handsome, with piercing eyes. He stares broodingly into the camera like an old Hollywood actor. In one shot, he’s wearing a hat and has a cigarette dangling from his mouth. I can almost imagine my dad playing his part in a movie. Also, Oppenheimer has a local connection to the Bay Area: he taught at the University of California at Berkeley. My mom is always raving about the theater program there.

I can’t help but notice the similarity between the two men: they were both involved in wars where science played a big part in the outcome. Jonas Salk and the War on Polio. Robert Oppenheimer and World War II. Salk found a vaccine that prevented polio, and Oppenheimer helped create the bombs that were dropped on Japan and ended the war.

Oppenheimer’s story especially seems like a Hollywood movie. The race against the Germans to create the bomb first. And then there’s the photo of one of the bombs exploding with a big mushroom cloud. There’s a quote from Oppenheimer, his reaction to the successful testing of the atomic bomb:

“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed. A few people cried. Most people were silent.”

I understand how he felt. Like when my grandfather walked through the front door looking like a teenager. Science fiction becoming reality. My mom talks about how she couldn’t even have imagined cell phones when she was a kid and now everyone has them. Except me, of course. My parents say I’m too young.

My grandfather comes into my bedroom without knocking. He freezes when he sees the handprints.

“Good grief. What happened to your walls?”

“They’re supposed to look that way,” I explain.

“That’s a style? Whatever happened to a nice wallpaper?”

He points to his face. He’s totally breaking out. He’s got zits on his forehead and a big red one on his chin.

“Do you have any acne cream?”

“There’s some in the bathroom,” I tell him, and he follows me in.

“I can’t believe I’m seventy-six years old and dealing with pimples again,” he grumbles.

I dig through a drawer, find a tube, and hand it to him. He smears some cream on his zits.

“Maybe next time I’ll find a cure for acne,” he says.

We order Chinese takeout again for dinner. My mom wanted to order sushi, but my grandfather said the person who has the most degrees should get to choose. Since he has two PhDs, he won.

As we eat, I find myself observing my grandfather and mother, like I’m a scientist, an Ellie version of Galileo. For one thing, our whole seating
arrangement is different. When it’s just my mom and me, we sit next to each other. But my grandfather sits at the head of the counter, like he’s the king. Then there’s the way they talk to each other—or rather
don’t
talk to each other. My grandfather grills my mom with questions I can tell she finds annoying: Does she still have her college transcripts? Would she like to meet with a friend of his in the Stanford biology department to talk about the program? Would she like his help in applying?

She answers him the first few times, but after a while she stops and just looks at her plate, the way a teenager would. I have a sudden realization: even though my mom’s a grown-up with her own life, my grandfather still treats her like a kid.

After we finish dinner, I pass out the fortune cookies. My grandfather doesn’t look very happy when he reads his fortune.

“What does yours say?” I ask him.

“You are going to have some new clothes,”
he says.

“Not a bad idea, Dad. Maybe we could get you some clothes with a little style. You look like you
shop in the old-man department. I can drive you to the mall,” my mom offers.

“There’s nothing wrong with my clothes. They’re brand-new! I just bought them a few weeks ago after I turned young.” To me, he says, “I had to because I shrank.”

Then he turns to my mother. “But now that you mention it, I do need to borrow the car, Melissa.”

My mom chokes. “
Borrow
the car? I thought you gave up driving.”

He gives her a look. “Things have changed. And I have an errand to run.”

“Well, you can’t drive my car,” she replies slowly. “You’re not old enough.”

He sits up to his full height.

“I certainly am old enough. Would you like to see my driver’s license?”

“Dad,” she says, her tone placating. “What would happen if you got stopped? You don’t exactly
look
like your driver’s license.”

She’s right. With his zits and his long hair
falling out of my ponytail holder, he barely looks old enough to get into a PG-13 movie.

“I won’t get stopped.”

“I remember how you drive! You always try to pass from the right lane,” she says with a groan.

“I get more swing that way,” he says. “Simple physics.”

“You’re going to end up in an accident.”

His gaze hardens. “Accident? You want to talk about accidents? Who was the one who wrecked the Volkswagen? Who wrapped it around a tree?”

“It—it wasn’t my fault,” she stammers. “It was raining. The road was slick. It was dark.”

“I’d just paid that car off.”

They stare at each other like bulls in the ring.

“I need to borrow the car,” he says.

My mom won’t let him borrow the car.

“Do you have any idea how many times she
borrowed my car?” he rants on the bus ride to school. He’s furious.

“Why don’t you just ask her to drive you?” I suggest.

“She won’t drive me to the lab,” he says. “That rent-a-cop told her he’d press charges if he saw me on the premises again.”

“Oh,” I say. I see his point.

But on the bus after school, his mood is completely different. He seems almost happy, excited even. When we reach our stop, he doesn’t get up.

“Come on. This is us,” I tell him.

He doesn’t move. “We’re getting off at a different stop today.”

“We are? Where?”

His eyes gleam.

“My lab.”

I take the public bus to school every day, but this time feels completely different—like an adventure.

My grandfather stares out the window. His hair is pulled back in another of my ponytail holders, a purple one.

“Your grandmother loved to ride the bus,” he murmurs.

“She did?”

“Yes,” he says. “Her dream was for us to take
a bus trip across the country. Stop in little towns. Visit all the tourist traps.”

“Did you do it?”

He shakes his head, and something sharp and raw flashes across his face.

“No,” he says. “I was always too busy with work.”

My grandmother died when I was three. I have a vague memory of walking in on my mother crying in the bathroom.

“Do you miss her?” I ask him.

He blinks fast. “I miss everything about her. I miss her voice. I miss our life together.” He swallows. “I miss seeing her walking around in slippers.”

“Slippers?”

He shakes his head as if bewildered. “She didn’t care about jewelry or perfume or any of that. But she liked a good pair of bedroom slippers. The kind that were furry on the inside. I gave her new ones every year on our anniversary. Silly when you think about it.”

But it doesn’t sound silly to me. It sounds like love.

We have to switch buses four times. The last bus lets us off on a commercial strip peppered with car dealerships. My grandfather leads me down a side street to a group of buildings. All the buildings are identical—brown brick with dark windows—and they have numbers on their sides. When we reach number twenty-four, my grandfather stops.

“This is it!”

“It is?” I ask. I was expecting something shinier, with glass and metal; this seems pretty ordinary.

But my grandfather seems almost relieved to see the building, like it’s an old friend.

“Old number twenty-four,” he says.

He hands me a plastic card attached to a lanyard ring.

“What’s this for?” I ask.

“To get in. It’s my key card.” He gestures toward the building. “The security guard will recognize me. It has to be you. I’ve drawn you a map. The
T. melvinus
is in the freezer in my lab.”

I’m a little nervous. “What if the guard sees
me
?”