Teeth(25)

I’m trying not to wonder why I care so much. It’s curiosity. That’s all it is. It doesn’t have anything to do with how I feel about Teeth.

She says, “Four years before I was born, my mother decided to take a swim at almost exactly midnight. She’s living all alone, because this is right after her parents died in a car accident, when they were on vacation in Capri. She’s been told to never go into the ocean, that it isn’t safe. And at this time, there are very few others living on the island. Fiona and her husband and some other people who are not at all important.”

Yeah, it would be Fiona.

“So Mother wears her favorite bikini and goes down to the shore. A pink bikini. Her diary is very specific about the bikini. She usually used it for sunbathing. The diary implies there was once sun here. I don’t know if that is for effect. Maybe this is like Holes and the weather is very metaphorical.”

I have absolutely no options but to hear this story or to lie in bed at night and listen to the ocean and his screaming and wonder, wonder, imagine who is right. These are my only two choices.

I need to be right.

I need to hear that the fish are bad.

Diana lowers her voice to this dramatic whisper. “So she wades into the water, up to her hips. She’s in too deep, it’s too dark. She takes a step backward. She falls. She feels something pinch her skin, feels her bikini bottoms rip.”

I’m picturing Fishboy doing this, even though I know that his part of the story doesn’t come until later. I can’t get the image out of my head, and it’s scaring me.

With her voice so quiet I can hear the ocean groaning outside and the ticks of the clock on her shelf, each one so small and precise, like drops of water hitting the ground.

Diana says, “At first she thinks it’s a piranha, but she looks down and sees a chubby Enki fish. Her father has told her horror stories about these fish. Their scales are poisonous, their teeth can crush rocks, they are only safe dead, but she’s always been so fascinated, thought they were beautiful, loved them. Now she wonders if she can scoot out of the water before it bites her. And then . . . ”

I stare. Her voice is so excited. I wonder if she forgot that this is something that really happened—to her mother—and not just some horror story she read in her library.

Diana says, “She looks down and sees the fish has entirely disappeared. And she feels so much pressure—”

“Wait—”

She nods. “The whole thing.”

“No.”

“The entire fish. En. Tire.”

“Christ, Diana. That’s disgusting.”

She looks offended while she rolls onto her back and looks at me with her head tilted into the carpet. “It’s not disgusting. Books are disgusting.”

“I like books. I thought you liked books.”

“Let’s be honest, Rudy, books are pornography for brains. All that subtext and bullshit and hidden imagery. This is real life. It isn’t like that. Isn’t that what you just said?”

“I . . . ”

“You said, ‘Sometimes there’s just a transformation.’”

“I . . . ”

“This is real life. This is a woman raped by a fish. And sometimes it just happens.”

I’ve never hated getting what I want quite this much.





twelve


“YOUR FISH.” DYLAN POINTS TOWARD THE SEA. “THERE?”

I see the tip of Teeth’s tail poking out of the water. He does that on purpose when he knows I can’t come be with him, just to screw with me. “Yep, there’s one right there.” If Teeth heard me tell my brother he’s a fish, he’d never let me live it down. He’d do that little dance where he waves his arms around his head and go, “I’m a fish, I’m a fish!”

Sometimes, when I think about it too hard, I start wondering where Teeth learned how to be happy. I try not to think that hard, especially not about him.

To be honest, I’m having a hard time thinking about Teeth at all right now. I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I’ve been avoiding the dock and spending more time at the mansion with Diana these past few days. I don’t know if he really knows that. I really, really hope not.

I glance at Dad to make sure he hasn’t noticed the fish tail that’s a little too big to be real. But he’s focused on the house, up by where Mom’s cooking with the door open. We’re sitting on the beach so close to the house that we can smell the fish she’s frying. I can’t see the dock from here, so I know Teeth came out of his way to wave his fin at me.

Dylan gets up by himself and scales the very edge of the shoreline, heel-toe, arms out for balance. He’s right in front of our house, and I’m sure for a second that it’s finally going to fall. And crush him. I watch his feet leaving tiny prints in the sand.

“What are you looking at?” Dad asks me.

I don’t want to tell him. They get mushy when I admit I’m worried about Dyl. And I probably shouldn’t admit my obsession with our house collapsing. He’d probably turn it into a metaphor. Something about my shit of a life. Enough metaphors.

I say, “Are you and Mom going to get divorced?” I don’t know. Just to have something else to say. Just because I can’t stop thinking about our house crumbling, and now I’m thinking about metaphors.