Fathers and Fish

My father may have cursed me when it came to fish. Let me explain.

It was a late Sunday afternoon and I was reading the Star Advertiser when my friend, Irma called and asked me to take care of her prized Goldfish for a week. I agreed and she came over with a 1 gallon bowl and a large, bulbous goldfish that hung in the center of the bowl like a sun to it’s own solar system. He was radiant and still, like a god. “Call him Kapu,” She said. “Feed him twice a day, and in five days do a partial water change. Here, he’s got his own special mixture so use water from this jug,” she said and handed me an additional gallon of water. “Don’t worry,” I assured her. “Piece of cake. I’ll even sing to him,” I jested. She laughed and told me that the goldfish was a gift from someone very important who was no longer with her. The goldfish seemed aware of this information. It hung in that space with gravitas. I nodded sagely, and carefully set the fish down on top of my microwave and reassured her. “Twice a day, no more, no less. And one partial water change,” I repeated. “A 25 percent water change,” she interjected. She made a pistol finger and pulled the trigger. Caught you slippin. She picked the bowl off my microwave and set it down on a space on my bookshelf. “25 percent,” I repeated. “Do it on Wednesday,” she said, smiling apologetically as she mentally checked off every possible error and lapse of judgment that could occur under my stewardship. “Don’t put him in the sun,” she said. “And don’t put him close to any AC units.” I nodded and let a smidgen of annoyance slip out, “How many people have you asked before you came to me?” Irma took a count and said “Two.” “Well,” I said. “Kapu will be just fine. I’m taking this seriously, Okay? I’ll even text message you a picture every day.” This seemed to satisfy her and so she hugged me and kissed me and we messed around for a while, as we occasionally did. Why not? Although we were just friends, we were in our forties, and we were still single. Back in the day we got liquored up together and fooled around. We never had relationships that lasted more than a few years. Were were both like fish, in a way. We were pets that needed zero affection, and gave zero affection. She thanked me again and left.

Me fish-sitting. What a joke. My father was an award winning aquascaper, and he knew how to take care of fish. He knew every tropical fish's name on sight along with all of the nuances that went with caring for each and every one of them. He had three tanks in the garage and one Dodge Van full of tanks and filters baking in the sun. He grew up on Kauai and fostered a healthy obsession of fish. He caught papio and set crab traps off of the Waimea pier and in the Hanapepe river a single generation before those areas were fished dry. He caught little angel fish along Poipu way before the hotels sprang up, and he kept them in salt water aquariums in his father's garage. Then he joined the military and was shipped off to Korea and Germany, and when he came back, he opened a pet store, met my mother who died a year after I was born, and raised me alone. It was another two decades before he rediscovered his passion for aquarium keeping. After I had gone off to college, he became an award winning Iwagumi aquascaper. He was written about in magazines. He became a legend.

Meanwhile, I dropped out of college and became a bartender, and I had no hobbies to float on that separated me from any other hard working civilian in this modern world, at least not in my father's eyes. I worked, drank, messed around with the uke, hit the clubs in Waikiki and Chinatown, and embarked on a number of get rich quick schemes. None of which took hold. Old friends whom I had always thought would be around throughout my life got married, had kids, sang a swan song of old memories at their keiki's first birthday parties, and disappeared. I jogged Diamondhead, learned to surf, made a few trips back to Kauai as a single man, tried my hand at starting an elaborate aquarium just to bridge the gap between me and my father and failed. I concluded that when he raised me, he regarded me as another resident of one of his elaborate, bloated, ecosystems. I was just another fish, darting across a field of moss gently swaying under the water filter. Having taken care of me, he was always off on another aquarium set up. He had raised me, help paid my way through college, and that was that. Aquarium keeping requires diligence, but hardly any emotional investment. That is the way he raised me, I suppose. I would have liked to have been closer, but my father, a reticent man, looked at me with a mild curiosity. Who is this kid, embarrassingly loud, who I can barely relate to?

And so here comes Irma and her portentous goldfish, reawakening these memories. Petulant arguments. Like that night on Thanksgiving. I was on the patio with a Primo in hand, and I remember standing there, absorbing my father's harsh final assessment of me. "Boy, what do you do besides get drunk? You do any good?"

"Pops, it's not like I'm selling crack. What, you're still harboring a grudge about me not taking over the pet shop?"

"Screw the pet shop. You don't got the gills for it."

"No soul for keeping fish, huh?"

"I curse you with fish, boy."

He was a blunt man.

* * *

The fish began fizzing an hour after she had gone. I called Irma on her phone and left a message. I said “Hi Irma. It’s me. I’m kind of wondering about the fizzing. The fish has thousands of bubbles coming out its sides as if it's carbonated.” I hung up and looked at the fish. Millions of micro bubbles percolated from its scales as if the fish itself was porous and filled with gas. Other than the fizzing, however, it seemed fine. It swam around in circles, rising and falling like a carnival ride, streaming a comet's tail of bubbles. I fed it some flakes and it inhaled them with it’s large mouth.

Another hour later, the fish was like a giant, floating alka seltzer tablet. The entire bowl was like a jacuzzi. I could see the source of all of those bubbles moving around in circles, rising and falling, allowing intermittent glances at the fish’s eyes and mouth as it flitted about. The fizzing was profuse, and the bubbles hissed as they popped along the surface of the bowl. It was as if the fish was boiling the water around it. I took a picture with my blackberry and sent it to Irma. The message read “Yo Irma. Fish is fizzing :/” and waited for a reply. She must have gone to the airport right after she left my apartment and was now en route to California.

What would my father have done in this situation? I imagined him watching me, shaking his head in disgust, wanting to hit me over the head with a scoop net.

At around 8pm, I decided to do a partial water change thinking that it would calm the fish a bit. Maybe it was some form of separation anxiety. Maybe it was the water quality. So as it went on fizzing like an Alka Selzter tablet out of Willie Wonka’s Pharmacy, I inadvertently emptied the bowl more than half way, and refilled the bowl with the water that Irma had given me. This amounted to an 80 percent water change. The fish resumed its fizzing, and the bowl hissed in my hands as if I had just filled it with a gallon of Sprite. I was sure my friendship with Irma was nearing its terminus.

I could hear my father saying, "You never learned to take care of anything. Why start now?"

By 10pm, the water was roiling with bubbles as if it were a pot on a stovetop. The fish was no longer visible. As the fish percolated, larger bubbles slid up from the bottom and burst at the surface. At that point, I was sitting down in front of the bowl and eating a bowl of ravioli, watching it like a television set, wondering if the fizzing would ever stop. Will the fish look different when the fizzing is complete? Will he simply dissolve? Will the airborne water vapor make me sick? Is the water hot? Caustic? Will the fish bite? Where was it? I set down my bowl and reached in and felt for it. The water was cold and slimy and I could feel the goldfish’s slippery body moving among my fingers. Not knowing what else to do, and with my curiosity at it’s insatiable peak, I gently closed my fingers around its body and pulled him out of the water.

I held it’s shimmering body in my palm, and with my thumb, gently pinned him down. It’s bulbous eyes seemed vacuous as it gulped for air. It flapped it’s tail weakly once then remained still enough for me to get a better look. Although I was no expert on the average carassius auratus, it looked like any other carassius auratus. It was an inch and a half long, with flowing fins and a nice orange and yellow luster. It was of textbook appearance; a completely boring animal – that is — until it shriveled up like a deflated balloon. Within seconds, it emitted a faint whistle, shrank and dried out to a tenth of it’s original size. It looked like a cross between beef jerky and candy corn, and when I dropped it back into its bowl in horror, it sunk to the bottom and quietly exploded into a cloud of yellow and orange dye.

"Say what?..." I said, not knowing what else to say.

What else could I do? I mourned it for a few minutes, then flushed the poor thing down the toilet. The next morning I went out an bought a duplicate.

When I was paying for it, I told the pet shop owner my story and asked about the fizzing. The man blinked twice and then laughed. He said he recognized me, and that he knew my father from a long time ago. I asked him again about the fizzing, and he just laughed and laughed. He slapped the counter top. He wiped tears from his eyes. He folded over, shook his head, and called out my last name in vain.

* * *

When Irma returned from her trip she apologized for not returning my calls and asked me what I had meant about the fizzing. I told her that her goldfish was just blowing bubbles from it’s gills and she laughed and said that it was nothing to worry about. “Of course not,” I said and went back into my apartment to fetch her doppelganger gold fish.

When Irma held the bowl in her hand, I could see her smile magnified though the glass. That smile vanished after a few seconds of inspecting her fish. She raised her eyes to mine, and I could see that she was about to cry.

"This isn't him. What happened?"

"Of course it's him. Okay, I forgot to feed him once. Maybe he lost a few grams..."

"Sure."

“So. Anyway,” I said. “What are you doing now? Wanna get some food?” My heart began racing. At that moment, I thought that maybe I could love Irma, or that I was in love with her suddenly, and this realization slid along a razor's edge. I was about to lose her.

Irma set the bowl down on my microwave and walked out without a word.

* * *

That one time I had a ten gallon Aquarium set up in my living room, I called home and asked my father why the fish were bloated. They looked like pine cones. My father told me they were as good as dead, and hung up. The next week, I had another school of tetras and the same thing happened. I called him and asked him about the bloating. "Dropsy," he said, "Good as gone," he coughed and hung up. A few weeks after that, I called him and asked him the same question. "What are the pets stores selling you? Why don't you figure it out with them?" he growled. I argued back, "You're a pet store owner. You're famous for this shit, Dad. Why not give me a hand here?" He grew angry "Over the phone? How can I do anything over the phone? What's wrong with you, boy? You think I got one of those high tech phones with video?" I took a breath. "Why do they keep dying on me, then? That's all I'm asking."

"Because you're a piece of shit son, and you coulda learned but you didn't, so now you're a shit aquarium keeper. So stop bugging me, be a man and learn on your own. Now you're really cursed with fish." he said and hung up.

I didn't understand my dad back then. Why wouldn't he recognize the effort? Then it came to me. I realized that it was beyond his capacity. All he could give, he had given me. I went to my aquarium, emptied out my tank and threw it in the dumpster. You see, everything hinged on the aquariums. This hobby, or passion, was the fulcrum on which our relationship revolved. His assessment of me was equal to his final judgement on me as an aquascaper. I was neither. It was the last time I was able to speak to my father.

* * *

The fish incident reopened some old wounds, and I sent an email to Irma about it. I apologized profusely and told her that the death of her goldfish was not something I took lightly. Irma did eventually forgive me and we resumed our friendship. Months later, she moved in. Another six months later, she miraculously got pregnant. We found a good doctor at Kapiolani Women's Center, who was keeping a close eye on her. I had a steady job at the Sheraton. She maintained a steady job working with computers and setting up networks. And I had finally come around to the art of aquarium keeping. It was while I was setting up a new fish tank that I figured out how to propose. While she was away, I set the ring in a treasure chest aerator that opened and closed as it released air bubbles. Weeks later, as we were watching a Koi Angel explore its surroundings, she finally spotted the band percolating in the chest. Then I got down on one knee, and proposed.

She said "Yes! Yes! Yes! Now can you fetch it for me before Oscar tries to swallow it?"

* * *

Aquascaping requires a lot of patience and diligence. It requires artistry and vision. When an ecosystem blooms as the result of a craft with its own set of rituals – something your own father mastered but never imparted to you, that you learned on your own long afterward – and the green grass sways gently under an arch of moss covered driftwood that looks like a bonsai tree, and a school of tetras shimmer against what looks like an underwater sky, by then it's very hard not to be invested emotionally. When your son points his finger to a luminous neon tetra, and says for the first time – "Fish!" – tell me you won't hope that he turns out to be exactly like you.