It’s too big to be a goldfish. More like a carp. It’s bright orange. Almost red.
You’re seeing things—maybe it’s blood or something, I said; then I wished I hadn’t. The clinic was attached to the county hospital; all sorts of things were liable to pop up in the toilets: hypodermic needles, appendixes, tonsils.
No, no, it’s a fish, it’s beautiful really. It’s got these gauzy fins, like veils. I wonder how it got in here. It looks too large to have come through the pipes. It’s swimming in circles. Poor thing.
Well, then, come out and use a different one, I said. I suddenly started to worry that she was going to miss her appointment. You’re just stalling, I said.
Come in and see. We have to save it somehow.
I heard her pulling up her pantyhose, fixing her skirt. Then she unlatched the door to the stall and opened it. She was smiling. Look, she said.
I followed her into the stall.
Come see, she said. Together we leaned over the bowl.
I saw only the toilet’s bland white hollow and our two identical silhouettes reflected in the water.
Now where did he go? my mother said. Isn’t that the strangest thing?
We looked at the empty water.
How do you think he got out? she said. Look, you can see, the water’s still moving from where he was. Look, look—little fish droppings. I swear. Lisa, honey, look.
My mother is going crazy, I thought. Let’s go back to the waiting room, I said.
But I still have to use the bathroom, she said.
I stood by the sink and waited. You’re going to miss your appointment, I said. I watched her feet. Silence.
I was making her nervous. I’ll wait for you in the hall, I said.
So I left, leaned against the wall, and waited. And waited. She was taking a long time. I started to wonder if she had been hallucinating. I wondered if something really was wrong with her, if she was bleeding internally or having a weird allergic reaction. I didn’t think she was making it all up; she couldn’t lie, she was a terrible, obvious liar.
Mother, I called.
Mom, I said.
I went back into the bathroom.
She was gone.
The stall doors swung loose, creaking. I checked each cubicle, thinking she might be standing on the toilet seat, with her head ducked down the way we did to avoid detection in high school. In the handicapped stall the toilet water was quivering, as if it had just been flushed. I even checked in the cabinets under the sink and stuck my hand down in the garbage pail.
I stood there, thinking. She must have somehow left and darted past me without my noticing. Maybe I had closed my eyes for a minute. She could move fast when she wanted to.
Had she climbed out the window? It was a small one, closed, high up on the wall.
She had escaped.
I walked slowly down the halls, listening, scanning the floor tiles.
I thought of her narrow back, the gaping mouth of the toilet, pictured her slipping down, whirling around and vanishing in the pipes.
I tried to formulate a reasonable question: Have you seen my mother? A woman, about my height, brown hair, green eyes? Nervous-looking? Have you seen her?
Or were her eyes hazel?
I came back to the waiting room with the question on my lips—I was mouthing the words she’s disappeared—but when I got there the receptionist was leaning through the window calling out in an irritated voice: Ms. Salant? Ms. Salant? They’re ready for you, Ms. Salant.
The receptionist was opening the door to the examining rooms; the nurses and technicians were holding out paper gowns and paper forms and urine sample cups. Ms. Salant, Ms. Salant, we’re waiting, they called; people were everywhere suddenly, gesturing impatiently and calling out my name.
So I went in.
Later I wandered up and down the rows of painted white lines in the lot. I had forgotten where she parked the car. When I finally came upon it I saw her there, leaning against the bumper. For a moment I thought she was smoking a cigarette. She didn’t smoke.
When I drew closer I saw that she was nibbling on a pen.
We got in the car and drove home.
All of a sudden I thought of something I wanted to pick up for dinner, she said at one point.
Some fish? I said.
We drove the rest of the way without speaking.
So how did it go today, ladies? my father said that evening.
My mother didn’t say anything.
Did you go with her? he asked me. Yeah, I said.
So, you’ll hear the results in a few days, right? he said, with his hand on my mother’s back.
She looked away.
Right, I said.
She looked at me strangely but said nothing.
I told them not to but they both came to the airport Sunday night when I left.
Call me when you get the news, all right? I said.
All right, she said.
I wanted to ask her about the fish in the toilet, whether it had really been there. Whether she had followed the same route out of the clinic it had. But I couldn’t work myself up to it. And the topic never came up by itself.
We said good-bye at the terminal. My hugs were awkward. I patted their backs as if I were burping babies.
I told them to go home but I knew they would wait in the airport until the plane took off safely. They always did. I think my mother liked to be there in case the plane crashed during takeoff so she could dash onto the runway through the flames and explosions to drag her children from the rubble.
Or maybe they just liked airports. That airport smell.
I had a window seat; I pushed my carry-on under the seat in front. A man in a business suit with a fat red face sat down next to me.
I wondered if my mother even knew what I had done for her. I had helped her escape. Although at the time I hadn’t thought of it that way; I hadn’t really thought at all; I had gone in when I heard my name, automatic schoolgirl obedience, gone in to the bright lights and paper gowns and people who kneaded your breasts like dough. I began to feel beautiful and noble. I felt like I had gone to the guillotine in her place, like Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities.
I called Piotr when I got home. I’m back, I said.
Let me come over, he said, I’ll make you breakfast.
It’s seven-thirty at night.
I just got up, he said.
My apartment felt too small and smelled musty. I’d been gone three days but it seemed longer. Piotr came and brought eggs and milk and his own spatula—he knew my kitchen was ill-equipped for anything but sandwiches.
He seemed to have grown, since I last saw him, and gotten more hairy; I looked at the hair on the backs of his hands, and the chest hair tufting out of his T-shirt.
He took up too much space. As he talked his nose and hands popped out at me, huge and distorted, as if I were seeing him through a fish-eye lens. He came close to kiss me and I watched his eyes loom larger and larger and blur out of focus and merge into one big eye over the bridge of his nose.
I was embarrassed. My mouth tasted terrible from the plane.
What kind of pancakes do you want? he asked.
The pancake