Flushing Nemo

Years ago, when they were small, my daughters needed a pet— something to care for and that would divert attention from themselves. I had always been a dog person, a true canine connoisseur and didn’t really feel the love for any other animal species, but the care, feeding, and housebreaking of two children was enough responsibility without adding anyone short of Lassie to the scene.

Perhaps a fish from the carnival? You know, the ones that come in a plastic baggie full of two-day-old bucket water, the ones your kids are screaming for, the ones that are already bloated by the time you get them home. But I thought a fish would be the perfect first pet. I didn’t want to start them off too big and real with something like a puppy; it would be much better for them to dabble their toes in the water with an easy-come-easy-go goldfish. The same learning opportunity was there, and no sooner were Clary and Kate the owners of their first living thing, than I was lecturing them about this important rite of passage. A fish would do just fine.

I went to the pet store, spent a shameful amount of money on a decorative bowl, food, and of course, home furnishings for the underwater villa. The newly-maturing children would have accompanied me, except that Kate was in the middle of a breakdown over the loss of a tap-shoe bow, and Clary, not interested if her new pet wasn’t going to be a puppy, was lining up her alphabet blocks in perfect order for the third time in ten minutes. This time I would let it slide, but from now on, they would be in full charge of Flippy.

Of course, I was the one scraping the rapidly forming slime off the sides of the cloudy glass everyday. I hadn’t really intended to; it just sort of happened when I wasn’t looking—somewhere between best-friend Sarah’s invitation to come over and play and Sesame Street’s air time. It became my responsibility. Over-feeding syndrome took hold (every mother likes to see a good appetite, and they kept coming up for more flakes) and my kids were desperately disturbed because “Flippy’s just lying on the top of the water, Mom. We need to take him to the doctor!”

He swelled to emergency proportions, and their concern had escalated into full-fledged hysteria; uncontrollable weeping and wailing drowned out the freeway noise outside our kitchen windows. Even Clary, who a week ago could have cared less about the fate of Flippy, had gone from boredom to piscatorial paramedic, while her obsessive- compulsive father capitalized on this golden opportunity to dash out to Barnes & Noble and procure books on veterinary medicine so she could begin her study for what was, in his mind, her destiny.

Doctor? For a fish? I alone knew the truth, smelled death a mile away, and the phone call to Petco only served to provide me with information I didn’t want to hear, as my anxious children stood by, hanging on my every word. I dared not repeat or acknowledge any of the details being suggested on the other end of the receiver lest they leap all over them. There were several products that might work, the voice told me, but I would need to come get them and start right away with water-clarifying drops and medicinal mulch to mix into his food, and vitamins to restore scale superiority. Even then, in the expert opinion of the twelve-year-old behind the counter, there was “little hope.” Those were the only words I loudly repeated so the girls would be prepared for what I saw in my crystal-ball bowl to be Flippy’s future.

How did I spare our aquatic creature lingering agony and save these innocents from witnessing a slow, ugly demise? Murder. It was Flippy’s turn to go if I had to buy all those expensive remedies to save him. Mothers had been secretly engaged in assisted end for years; we all played Dr. Kevorkian with fish so our kids wouldn’t have to endure their passing, and more importantly, so we wouldn’t have to clean that disgusting, scummy bowl one more time or sink more money into the bottom of it. There was no debate, little moral dilemma; Flippy was suffering needlessly, so I owed it to everyone to intervene swiftly. My mother had confessed her own aquatic crime to me when I was in my twenties. Years after she had done her time she obviously still needed closure.

But how to do it? I had neglected to obtain such tidbits of child-rearing strategy from Mama on her deathbed. I wanted the most efficient method, but was not well-versed in mercy killing. If I flushed Flippy down the toilet, my daughters would deduce that I had put an end to him, because I could produce no body. I could hear their plaintive pleas.

"Mom, he might have lived if you’d tried! How could you do that?”

They would be inconsolable and I would be guilty.

I called Kristie, who miraculously still had two of her goldies from last year’s fair. She had always managed to land six or seven of them (her daughters were athletes who excelled in the ping-pong toss); that way, she claimed, something lived. She had been here; she knew what to do.

“Leaving him out can take too much time. Put him in the sink and cover him with detergent. It will be quick.” Her obvious precedent was the reinforcement I needed. I was not the first to dabble in demise, nor to discover that a fish out of water is not as endangered as the saying implied.

Kristie understood that I needed a death that would leave no evidence. With her method, I could place the corpse back in the bowl and no one would be the wiser—he would have died of natural causes.

My motive for murder was of the darkest kind: to spare myself inconvenience and expense. I never knew I was capable of such evil intent. I found it difficult to look in the mirror. I rationalized that Flippy had been a goner from the start, bathing in the 102-degree sun behind a student booth at a school carnival.

To multiply the horror, when I followed Kristie’s instructions, Flippy wouldn’t die, and so deeper and deeper I plunged into the abhorrent abyss as I kept phoning her, more frantic each time. Stab wounds would show. His mouth was too small for poison.

“He’s still not dead, and I have to pick the girls up at school in ten minutes!”

I was screeching, my slender thread to reality wrapped tightly around the wrangling web of deception. I had become the one who, once committed to foul play, would succumb to any workable method, no matter how far beyond my moral code it may have sounded only an hour ago. I was frenzied, shaking Comet until it crusted, squirting Joy lemon-scented liquid until the mixture thickened into a pale yellow paste encasing the bulging body. And after his gills finally gave up, I granted him a gentle rinse before we both could rest in peace—his, or course, being eternal.

On the drive home from school everything went according to plan. After I broke the sorrowful news, followed up by an inspirational homily about Flippy being happier in fish heaven, the soft sniffling from the back seat told me they were taking it pretty well. All things considered, I had prepared them for the worst during the ailing period, so there was sorrow, but no shock. Then Clary walked into the family room, took one look at the floater, and way too smart for her own good, pierced me with what her grandmother had often referred to as “the evil eye.” Her eyebrows lowered as her penetrating stare challenged my innocence. My red herring smelled fishy.

“You killed him, didn’t you?”

I flipped out as I saw what she saw. Tiny soap bubbles had begun to surround the victim, and after some defensive posturing that didn’t fool her for a moment, I realized it was sink or swim for me. I had one more move, my only chance for redemption. What would my mother have done? Kick it up a notch.

“Come on girls, let’s hop in the car and I’ll buy you a bunny!”