The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer Holm

Author:Jennifer Holm [Holm, Jennifer L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 978-0-307-97436-5
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2014-08-25T16:00:00+00:00

It’s eight o’clock on Saturday morning and my grandfather is pacing the front hall. He’s been up and dressed since six-thirty. I know because I’m the same way: I get up early even on Saturdays. Maybe it’s a scientist thing because my mom is all about sleeping late.

“When are we going?” he calls out, his voice ringing through the house.

He wants to get his own computer and a few other things from his apartment. My mom promised him we would go over the weekend.

“Rome is going to fall again by the time you people get moving!”

My mom stomps down the hall in her pajamas. She is not an early bird.

“Would you just relax?” she snaps. “I haven’t even had my coffee.”

It’s after ten when we finally get in the car and head to my grandfather’s apartment. I look out the window as we drive along the highway. We pass a sign for a biotech company. It says WE ARE THE FUTURE OF MEDICAL RESEARCH and has a picture of a bacterium I recognize.

“Look! It’s Escherichia coli!” I say to my grandfather.

“So it is,” he says.

“What’s that?” my mother asks.

“It’s a bacterium,” I tell her.

She gives my grandfather a quick glance. “Are you brainwashing my daughter?”

“Your daughter’s interested in science. She shows great aptitude. You should encourage her.”

I feel a flush of pride. Maybe this part of me—the science part—was there all along, like the seeds of an apple. I just needed someone to water it, help it grow. Someone like my grandfather.

When we get off at the exit, my grandfather says to my mom, “Drive by the old place.”

He lives in an apartment building now, but when my grandmother was alive, they lived in a house. This is where my mother grew up.

My mom parks next to a Craftsman-style house with big blooms of lavender out front. There’s a tricycle in the driveway.

My grandfather says, “Your mother’s lavender is still there.”

“Looks like they put in new windows,” my mom observes.

“Your mother would be thrilled,” he says, and for some reason they both laugh.

I don’t know if the memories I have of my grandmother are actually real, or if they’ve just been told to me so many times. How she wore chopsticks in her hair and how she stitched up the hole I chewed in my baby blanket so that it looked perfectly new again. What I do remember is a feeling: people shouting less and laughing more when she was around.

“It’s nice to see a family living in the old place,” my mother says. “Life goes on.”

My grandfather just stares at the house.

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