Jody lives her life within
clearly defined borders: the office complex to the north, the mall to
the south, Route 1 to the west, and a vast sea of condos to the east.
She herself rents a one-bedroom in that sea and works for a law firm
in a building with no name, only a number. Even though it's not at the
center, Route 1 is the north-south spine that keeps her world
together. She's got the timing of the lights down. She knows when to
change lanes. Pretty much everyone she knows feels the same about this
particular stretch of highway. Their lives depend on it, flow from it
and through it, back and forth every day, several times a day. It's a
part of them. Of course,
they don't like the traffic, but the road itself is not to blame. It
's practically their best friend. They spend more time in its steamy
embrace than with husbands, wives and lovers. Who'd have thought a
strip of asphalt could be all that? But there it is.
When there's time, which isn't
often, Jody eats lunch at the food court at the mall with some of the
other secretaries from the office. But even then, they can't all go at
once, even if it's someone's birthday. They've
got too many words to corral, type, print, bind and ship to the courts
and other law offices. There are so many briefs, motions and
counter-motions, one chasing the other in wide, sweeping circles. Jody
doesn't see how it will ever end.
Today, though, she slips out to
the pet store in a strip shopping center on the highway. It's her
fourth trip this week. She settles on a pink and green tunnel about
three inches high. She thinks Ernie will love it. Ernie is a neon
tetra. She named him after the Sesame Street character because he has
yellow, red and blue stripes that remind her of Ernie's shirt. On
Monday one of the girls from the office gave him to her in a bowl with
some blue gravel on the bottom. "I'm
downsizing," said the girl. Everyone knew she and her
boyfriend had broken up, and she had to move back with her parents
who didn't want an aquarium in the house.
Jody's placed four bird feeders
on her balcony even though it's against the rules. She supports
life in all its forms.
As soon as she arrives home she
moves the alien head and the volcano and the water slide to make
a spot for the tunnel, which will have to be the last renovation to
Ernie's home; there's no more room in the bowl. In
the few days she's had Ernie, it seems to her that his colors have
faded. She's been meaning
to ask someone at the pet store, but she keeps forgetting, plus
there's never enough time.
She's going out with some
friends from high school for happy hour, so she changes quickly out of
her business suit, runs a brush through her long brown hair, freshens
her lipstick and says a short prayer that she'll meet Mr. Right. When
she hears a honk, she sprinkles some food for Ernie and rushes out.
The next morning, Jody's alone,
she has not met Mr. Right, and her head is pounding. Before she even
puts on the coffee, she sees Ernie floating on his side and knows he's
dead. Sometimes, with other fish, she'd seen it coming. They'd stop
eating and moving around so much. She'd find them listing, on the
verge of capsizing, somewhere between life and death, but when she'd
tap on the bowl, they'd start swimming around again to reassure her
that, yes, they were still alive, at least for a little while longer.
She taps the bowl now, but Ernie
doesn't move.
Jody can't drink any coffee. She
can't eat the English muffin. She must buy her parents a 25th
anniversary present today. Ernie is gone, and she doesn't know why.
She doesn't need this.
At the stroke of nine she's
walking through the doors at the pet store, bowl in hand, Ernie in his
watery grave. She stops the first person she sees and says, "My
fish died and he wasn't that old and I want to know why."
The kid makes a joke about not
being authorized to perform an autopsy. Jody's about to lose it
when an older woman, a tropical fish specialist, takes the bowl from
her and sets it on a shelf. She gives the kid a look, basically
telling him to scram. Then she tells Jody that tetras live in schools.
They travel together. They like plants and a darkened environment. Jody
finally asks about Ernie's colors and the specialist says that the
brightness of all the accessories could make a tetra's colors appear
less vibrant.
"But they wouldn't kill
him, would they? The accessories?" Jody asks.
"Maybe he was older than
you thought." The specialist is trying to be nice.
Jody reaches for the bowl, and
the woman offers to "take care of it." Jody trusts the
specialist to dispose of Ernie respectfully. She keeps her eyes down
as she leaves the store, embarrassed at what she's done.
That girl from the office, the
one who gave her Ernie, why hadn't she told Jody what a tetra needs to
survive? But in the next moment, Jody is blaming herself. She'd been
in the pet store four times -- four times -- and hadn't asked. How
stupid was that? She'd had fish before. They all needed something
different. She'd hemmed Ernie in, had given him no companion, drained
the life and color right out of him.
Normally she'd head to the mall
to look for a gift for her parents, but today she wants to go where
she doesn't know the way. This thing with Ernie has made her a
little crazy. She turns to where she's never been before and
drives, leaning into the curves, feeling herself letting go, following
the black current and bright yellow stripes of the road. It
seems like she's miles and miles from where she started, but when she
checks the clock she's only been driving a few minutes. She goes
over a bridge and ends up in a university town on the other side of a
canal. There she wanders down narrow streets, some no more than
alleys really. She crosses and re-crosses the same
intersections. Finally, when she is satisfied that she is lost,
she sees a parking spot and knows instinctively that this is a special
occurrence, a form of forgiveness maybe. She pulls in. The
meter offers her a half hour, no more, no less. At this point,
she'll take whatever she can get. Her legs shake a little when
her feet hit the pavement.
She has no plan and finds
herself looking in the window of a swank jewelry store, and there they
are, two crystal swans, elegant, glistening in the sunlight, waiting
patiently for two candles. Her mother will love them and because of
that, her father will love them too. Ten minutes later Jody's walking
out of the store with new burdens, she's maxed out her VISA card and
the swans are heavy in the bag. But she likes the heft of them, their
solidity pushing ephemeral little Ernie a little further away.
She
thinks she can drink coffee now and stops at a café
called Small World where they sell T- shirts, caps and mugs with the
shop's name on them. While
she waits to place her order, she stares at a wall of photos taken at
recognizable landmarks all over the world. Everyone in the pictures is
wearing a Small World tee shirt and a smile. Cute, she thinks, and she
orders a chai even though she has no idea what it is. Back out on the
street, a hot, sweet sip goes down smoothly, and she looks at the cup
with maybe a bit of wonder in her eyes. Then she's walking again and
before long she stops in front of a travel agency. The posters are
vivid -- sapphire water, pink beaches, emerald palms. She puts down
her shopping bag and balances the chai on the window ledge. Cupping
her hands around her eyes, she presses her face to the window.
It's dim inside, some of the
lights having burned out. But the one at the back shines
brightly. An agent sits in the center of the glow, a
beacon. She is on the phone. The seat next to her is
vacant. The chairs beside the desks of all the other agents are
occupied, all those people making plans to go somewhere. Jody
discerns the path to an empty seat. It is a maze that will
require her to weave around shopping bags, an elderly woman's walker,
a toddler playing with a pile of toys. But she sees the
path. It is clear and navigable.
All the agents swivel toward her
as she enters the building, and they simultaneously nod in the
direction of the agent in the back. The air smells of new
carpeting. Jody makes her way and takes her seat. The
agent hangs up the phone and asks all sorts of questions that Jody
finds hard to answer. Then she focuses on the poster behind the
agent, the one with the school of fish swirling around a coral reef,
and she points to it and asks where that is. The agent goes on
at length about Tabatinga and Leticia and Putamayo and asks if Jody's
ever been snorkeling.
"No, never." She
whispers it and glances around, afraid the others will hear and know
that she has never been anywhere. Just for a second she remembers the
parking meter - time is running out - and she's finding it hard to
breathe. She has the feeling she must be drowning and there's nothing
she can do to stop it. But then the agent says that she can be there,
in that picture, for a reasonable price. And then Jody can breathe
again, although something has changed. The in and out of the air --
it's not the same -- and she wonders if it's easier somehow to live
underwater.
She gathers the brochures,
promising to come back this afternoon with her checkbook. She gets to
the front of the store more surely this time, stepping over and around
the belongings of the other travelers who smile as she passes. Outside
the sidewalk is empty, the light is bright, and there are no lines to
mark the path, but somehow she will find her way.
Sue Repko's writing
has appeared in Bryant Literary Review, New Millennium Writings,
The Kelsey Review and online. You may also view her work at www.SueRepko.com.
When she's not writing or taking care of her own children, she
coaches girls' basketball and softball teams. She currently lives
and thrives in New Jersey.
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