Fish Heads and Duck Skin

by Lindsey Salatka

  I walked into the girls’ rooms and leaned over and kissed each of them before tiptoeing into my room. Daniel had cocooned himself in a duvet cover and was asleep on the couch in the adjacent sitting area—this had been happening with greater frequency lately. I squeezed my eyes tightly and exhaled, then padded out and down the stairs. I filled the largest clean glass with tap water and drank it in one gulp. Then I opened the drawer beneath the mini-desk in the kitchen. A glue gun and a Ziplock sandwich bag of replacement sticks were wedged in the back left corner.

  In the garage, I found two clear plastic bins filled with plastic yellow daisies, pink roses, and purple forget-me-nots—remnants from a long-ago craft project gone wrong—next to the Christmas ornaments. I plugged the glue gun into an extension cord.

  An hour later, I wiped the sweat from my forehead. The perimeter of the fairy house roof was now exploding in yellow, pink, and purple blooms. It only needed one more thing. I pulled a small cylinder of silver glitter from a container on a higher shelf and sprinkled a path from the door of the fairy house to the garage window. I wrote a note and taped it to the glass. It said, “Thank you for our new home, Piper and Lila. We love it and we love you. Love, the Fairies.”

  If only fairy dust fixed everything.

  4.

  Daniel and I met during the second semester of our freshman year at the University of Arizona. It was a case of love at first essay test when, in US History 101, he leaned over to mooch a pencil and I said, “Sure, if you give me the other blue book in your two-pack.” The rest, as they say, is history. His oldest brother used that line in his speech at our wedding. Looking back, it seems possible, however, that a modest surplus of supplies and a lukewarm appreciation for well-intended cheesy lines were where our commonalities ended.

  My parents were predictably unpredictable, largely due to their shared resistance to the surprisingly difficult chore of raising accidental progeny. It was no surprise to anyone when they divorced before I turned two. I hadn’t spoken to my dad since my sophomore year in high school when he no-showed at Thanksgiving. He had a new wife by then, but I assumed his second marriage would go the way of the dodo as well since the ditz he was married to was sitting next to me at Thanksgiving when he called during the pie course to say he wasn’t quite going to make it. Second wife’s uncensored diatribe against dear old Dad complemented the undercooked blob of canned pumpkin pie—my contribution to the feast. That holiday was a disappointment in every way—most of my childhood holidays were.

  My mom’s favorite pastimes were reliving her youth and making regrettable decisions. She had dated not one, but two of my grade school basketball coaches, not one, but two of whom had been married at the time. Mama liked her hooch a little too much. Her dad—my grandpa—had tried many times to intervene on my behalf without success. He was the only dependable adult in my childhood, so when I was eighteen and my grandpa died, I steered clear of my mom and my dad as much as possible.

  Daniel’s family hailed from Ohio, and was, in contrast, stalwart, Christian, and stern. With five boys, all exactly 2.5 years apart, they participated in activities like church, on Wednesdays, and vacationing at the same lake for the same week, every summer. His mom had had the same sensible hairstyle, for decades. They had organized, chronological photo albums to prove all of this. Photo albums! I couldn’t relate.

  In reaction to his buttoned-up, stay-the-course, grace before dinner and same-bedtime-every-night home situation, Daniel pursued a path with less structure. He didn’t concern himself with routines or expectations. He did what he wanted to do and aimed to please no one but himself. He was even-keeled and well-adjusted. Kind and friendly. His resting expression was a smile, and not a dopey one. I’ve always envied his ability to fall asleep in a nano-second and his stress-free countenance. I can’t even fake that calm demeanor.

  Why? Because my personality pendulum had swung the opposite way. In the interest of being nothing like my parents, I was rigid, strict and calculated. No one could ever accuse me of not trying my best, of not working hard, of not showing up. My routine was rigorous and rarely broken; my expectations for myself were high and multitudinous. I set the curve in every class. I was at the gym every day at 6 a.m. My diet was limited and almost completely fat-free. I worked twenty hours a week at the bookstore to maintain my academic scholarship, and I wrote a weekly column for our campus newspaper, the Daily Wildcat. I was relentless and high-strung. I pushed myself at everything I did, until I met Daniel.

  I never had to try with Daniel because our relationship felt easy and natural. Initially I must have been drawn to him as my polar opposite: his non-volatility, his happy-to-be-here attitude with zero angst. He was not gifted with freakish tendencies at birth and then left to his own devices to manifest them to toxic levels. After eighteen years of being me, Daniel was foreign and refreshing, like how a PB&J on Wonder bread might taste like a delicacy after a lifetime of rancid egg salad on a stale Triscuit. I never considered looking for someone more like me, someone who shared my tenacious drive. He provided a much-needed break from the voice in my head that incessantly whipped me into a frenzy.

  I majored in journalism and received many awards for my craft. Before Daniel, writing had been the only thing to occasionally silence the internal critic. I loved to write, and since my earliest memories of latch-keydom, I had been maniacal about it. Stories and plays, poems and letters, and, when hormones kicked in, notebooks upon notebooks of pre-teen rants. Writing calmed my jiggy ways and quelled my inner vex.

  Daniel studied engineering. Since early childhood he had been obsessed with robots, saying they were the “next big thing” and “someday we’ll all have one,” which everyone knew was as absurd as a pocket-sized portable phone. I thought he read too much sci-fi, but I also found him to be adorable and funny. Even his cockamamie dreams were charming. What he saw in me was more of a puzzle. I was cute but not pretty, slightly taller than him, with the body of an adolescent boy. Sometimes I was quiet but other times, often in the middle of the night, a deluge of plans and ideas streamed from my head. I became impatient and moody when something or someone altered my routine.

  Daniel was good-looking enough to entertain other options in the female department. Once I asked him why he liked me. He shrugged and said, “You sparkle.” I still don’t know what that means. The laws of attraction are strange and mysterious.

  Early in our final semester, Daniel was accepted into a master’s program in engineering at San Diego State University. The day after graduation, we headed west as a unit. We moved in together to save money while he went to school and I looked for a job.

  We were both broke during undergrad, but in San Diego, money was tighter than ever. Rent, even in a dumpy apartment located in a busy, smelly alley, was significantly higher than in Tucson. I needed a j-o-b, right away, and no one was hiring journalists. I decided to walk my resume into every journalistic establishment in San Diego County until I found a position.

  When I was almost out of both journalistic establishments and resumes, the fate eagle landed. After dropping my resume at the front desk of the San Diego Business Journal, I rode from floor 12 to the underground parking lot in the world’s slowest elevator with Jeff, an extra tan, extra friendly guy with extra white teeth. Jeff acted as the sales manager for a new magazine with the same parent company as the Business Journal. He told me all about the advertising sales position he needed to fill as we crawled from floor to floor down the elevator shaft. He liked my pointed, persistent questions. He noted that I was perfect for sales, but because I had no experience and the magazine was a fledgling, he could only pay a small monthly draw and commission. However, if I worked hard, I could easily make triple the income of the already-hired staff writers in my first year. Triple the income? I envisioned myself buying food that was not ramen or Taco Bell. Purchasing running shoes that hadn’t been previously worn. A new used car! I would never need anything from my parents ever again.

  This was on
a Thursday. Jeff said I could start in four days, on Monday. Did I want to give it a crack? Yes! Wait. No, I was a journalist, a writer, and writers write. So no. Hold on, yes! I was plagued by indecision.

  Daniel didn’t want to influence my decision. “Do what makes you happy,” he said. I was too full of doubt and fear and determination and occasional hunger pangs to care about being happy—it’s possible that I didn’t even know what happiness meant. I only knew I didn’t want to be poor anymore. I wanted to be the opposite of poor so I would never need help from anyone ever again. I thought about our bare fridge and the strange odor emitted by Daniel’s car, which smelled expensive.

  I took the job and didn’t look back. Not until much later anyway.

  5.

  “A speculum is a medieval torture device,” I whined. “And I’m pretty sure it’s about to come out my nose.”

  Jennifer, a.k.a. Dr. Sanders, a.k.a. my OB/Gyn and BFF since grade school, glanced up at my face and then back at my crotch. “Actually, a speculum is a diagnostic tool used to—”

  “No, no. Just stop.” I shook my head, rustling the paper mat below me. “I know they make you say that, but we women know that—”

  “I’m also a woman,” she said as she rolled her stool over to the counter to grab the sample container and rolled back between my legs.

  “Right, well, if it were truly a diagnostic tool, they’d have improved upon it in the last century. Changed the lines at least, like they do to cars every few years to enhance aerodynamics. Something. No, I’m certain it’s an archaic tool used to keep women down. Immobile. Helpless.”

  “Once again, I’m a woman, and I couldn’t do my job without it.” She pushed her glasses higher onto her nose with her forearm.

  I ignored her. “It’s basically a car jack with a satellite dish on the end of it, used to identify signs of alien life in hoo-has everywhere, and it was most definitely designed by a man. A real asshole of a man, probably in ancient Mesopotamia.” I peered at the ceiling tiles, noticing the hole missing in the corner of the tile straight above my head. It looked like someone had taken a messy bite out of it.

  “Relax and stop talking.” She adjusted the beam of light.

  “Relax? Please. I think you’re getting me back for that time in sixth grade when I called you out at recess for not wearing deodorant.”

  “I’m not getting you back.”

  “But everyone laughed at you, and you ran away crying.”

  “Well, the truth hurt, but I forgave you the next day. And besides, if it weren’t for you, I might still have BO today.”

  “Just admit it, I’m a shitty friend, and that’s why you’re torturing me,” I said.

  “We’re both shitty friends because we work all the time and have families and life’s very busy. But we love each other and always will.” She pressed into my abdomen, one hand inside, one hand outside.

  “Why are you trying to get your fingers to touch through my skin?”

  “Be serious for once.”

  “I use humor to deflect agony,” I said, shredding the side of the drape.

  “You know what would really be remarkable? If I didn’t already know that. We’re done,” she said, pulling off her gloves with a suck and a smack, then liberating her ears from the straps holding on her mask. “Now, tell me how you’re doing while I wash my hands. Quick, before the nurse knocks.”

  “I’m okay. No, that’s a lie. I’m a disaster,” I said, and without warning, I started bawling. My tears blind-sided us both.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s going on, Tina?”

  “I hate my life,” I sobbed.

  “Did something happen that I don’t know about? Did Daniel cheat?”

  “What? No!”

  “Did you cheat?”

  “No!”

  “Are the kids okay?”

  “They’re fine!”

  “Did you get fired?”

  “Of course not, I got promoted,” I said and cried harder.

  Jennifer sat heavily on her stool, brows furrowed. She leaned toward the sink, pulled three tissues from a box, and held them out to me.

  “Thank you,” I whimpered.

  She waited for me to quiet down and then said softly, “I can’t help you, or even comfort you, if I don’t know what happened.”

  “Nothing happened, I swear.”

  “So Daniel’s fine, the job’s great, kids are healthy, home’s still standing?”

  “Yes, yes, go ahead and say it. I’m despicable,” I wailed.

  “You’ll never be despicable,” she said. “However, if nothing’s changed, it may be time to watch my gratitude DVD again.”

  “No, Jennifer. It’s not … no,” I said firmly.

  She frowned at me as I stood and tugged on my underwear, sniffling.

  “I’ve watched umpteen series of DVDs, listened to endless sets of self-help books on cassette, and even completed the bonus workbooks. I’ve moved my cheese, been highly effective, discovered my strengths and then workshopped the snot out of them. I probably pay for Brenda’s entire car lease on her new 5 Series.”

  “Wait, who’s Brenda?”

  “The therapist I’ve gone to since I had Piper!”

  “Oh. That’s right.”

  “Nothing’s changed except that I become more aware every day that when my kids cry? Like this?” I waved my hands at myself. “They don’t ask for me. I don’t comfort them, Jen, they barely know me. And after all we went through to conceive …”

  “I remember.” Jennifer sighed.

  “And Daniel is, I don’t know. He’s someone I don’t understand at all. And Jen,” I leaned toward her and whispered, “I’m starting to think I never will!”

  “Because he’s from Mars and—”

  “I know Jen, I read that book, too! But the problem is, Daniel and I are on two different journeys, and the roads are veering even farther apart. There is so much distance between us that I’m not sure we’ll ever be connected again.” I wiped my eyes and took a deep breath. “I’ve been working at my company for ten years—two years longer than we’ve been married—and the work just grows and grows, and I don’t want it to grow anymore because it’s taken over everything, but I can’t make it shrink because I’ll get fired. And then where will we be?”

  “You could always get a different job?”

  “No, I can’t! Our monthly expenses are too big now for me to make any dramatic changes. I could never quit my job and, you know, go build homes in Ecuador with my family. I have to feed my family! And pay for daycare and preschool and ballet and piano and soccer and baby singing time and all the rest of it!”

  “Do you want to go to Ecuador?”

  “No! Forget I said Ecuador. I just want a lighter burden. Life feels too heavy; there’s too much pressure bearing down from every direction.” I blew my nose and squinted at her. “Hey, wait a sec, why don’t you feel heavy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I balled up my tissues and lined them up on the crease of the exam table. “I mean, we’re in the same boat. You work your ass off supporting your kids and paying your house payment. Jeff must make one-tenth of what you bring home.”

  “Well his job’s a lot more flexible.”

  “So why don’t you feel the weight of the world? You don’t seem miserable. Why aren’t you miserable, Jennifer?”

  She thought for a moment. “Because I have a good life?”

  “But so do I!”

  She shrugged. “I love what I do.”

  I looked at her like she was crazy. “Seriously? You love this?” I pointed at the small square of an instrument table with both hands. “And these?” I waved at the stirrups.

  She gave me a look that I disregarded. “My work entails more than vaginal exams.”

  “I know that, you delivered my babies.”

  “I’m guessing you wouldn’t love my job, Tina, but I’ve always wanted to be doing exactly what I’m doing, looking after the health and well-being
of women. Nurturing and fostering life is a privilege to me. Do I love it every day? No. Do I occasionally run the numbers for early retirement? Absolutely. But on the macro, I love what I do.”

  “That’s so great.” I started sobbing again. “I’m really happy for you.” I walked over to the sink and pulled out four more tissues.

  “You sound ecstatic.”

  “I am ecstatic! I just can’t relate.”

  “You love parts of your job, admit it!”

  “Of course I do! The money, the trips, the other rewards, the recognition … but the work itself is bleeding me dry.”

  “I remember how much you loved writing,” Jennifer recalled.

  I snorted. “I also loved playing trombone in the eighth grade honor band.” I sniffed. “But I couldn’t have supported a family with either of those things, so I jumped the track and started in sales. The irony is, if I’d sucked at sales, I’d probably have gone back to writing and be living my dream right now, like you’re doing, except a lower rent dream—more of a Stouffer’s/Ikea-type dream. My lifestyle would’ve never become so grandiose and expensive. I’d have never ended up trapped in this career.” I dropped my face into my hands and took a deep breath, then another. “Sometimes I want to disappear,” I said softly.

  “Tina! What’re you saying?” She strode up and put her hands on my shoulders. “Do you really mean that?”

  “No,” I said into my hands. “I don’t know. I’d never hurt myself, if that’s what it sounded like. I’m too big a chicken.”

  She squeezed my shoulders and then let go, gently pulling my hands away from my face to hold onto them. I stared at my toes, curled them, wondered where my flats were.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Tina. You’re not too chicken, you’re too brave. You’ve planted yourself firmly in this struggle, because that’s exactly how brave you are. Even this—questioning your life and your choices—this is incredibly brave. Tina, look at me.”