Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 15, Issue 3 by Brenda Walker

Author:Brenda Walker
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781922171894
Publisher: Review of Australian Fiction

So when her sister called and said he brought his fish to the house, she said, well that’s nice.

And her sister said, not really, one of them is dead.

Are you sure?

Yes I’m sure. It’s dead, sunk down at the bottom of the tank, and the house stinks like off salmon past the use by date. Then she said, I shouldn’t have told you. And then, I think at least another one is sick. Your house smells.

It was a Wednesday night, a lonely night between friends, and not the kind of night where she felt like being on her own, and all she could think of was this dead fish sunk down at the bottom of the tank, and Andrew just leaving it there, and the smell, and her canaries, and their sensitive little lungs. And then she thought of the other fish looking through the glass, looking at that horrible aquatic death. And her children too, sensing that something wasn’t right, sensing it, but without the means to acknowledge what had just gone on.

I asked him about it, her sister said. He told the children it was sleeping.

Sleeping, she echoed.

Yes, sleeping, her sister replied. Anyway, I’d better get going.

The phone clicked shut. The hotel room seemed somehow dimmed, more lonely than before. A car lit the window, and then the window went black again. Somebody’s footsteps filled the hall. Voices. Coming in. Or more likely going out.

She thought about making a cup of tea.

She thought of her canaries right next to that dead fish and the gases curling out of the water.

And then she thought of that fish at the bottom of the aquarium, and Andrew telling the children it was asleep, and their eyes wide and inquisitive, ready to believe anything and anyone. And there he was, their father, lying like he had lied when their grandfather died. Exactly the same, actually. Avoiding. Not mentioning. Like he always did. And it made her angry. Because deep down, deep in her heart, she really did see them as her children. Yes, they were HER children; she was the one who carried them and nursed them and looked after them six nights out of seven. They were HER children, and there was a dead fish in her house, sunk at the bottom of the tank while three other fish looked on. And the canaries looked on. And her children looked on. And it broke her heart to think of the two of them, like Hansel and Gretel, every night with their dad, sprinkling food-flakes into that tank, sprinkling and waiting and wondering why that fish never got up.

And so she called.

What’s up with the dead fish?

What? he said, his voice crackling over a tenuous connection.

I heard your fish is dead.

It’s a non-issue, he said.

But it was an issue to her. I want to talk about it, she said.

Well it’s not up for discussion.

I want to… she began again.

I said, NOT UP FOR DISCUSSION.

Then he started going on in his usual way,

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