Free The Blessings by Elise Juska

least he was old. He lifts his hands from his eyes and stares at the ceiling. His upper lip is sweating. From the other side of the wall, he hears a click as the receiver is returned to its cradle. Then the eternal grind of numbers as his mother dials the next person. Slow, heavy, as if just placing the call is an effort. It’s Margie , she says. Two days to two weeks.
    Stephen’s heart is throbbing in his chest. He tries to empty his mind, focus on the bubbling of his fish tank to distract himself from the sound of his mother’s voice. It’s the tank his parents gave him for his ninth birthday, along with a bag of blue gravel and two goldfish he named Nuts and Bolts. Stephen was really into the tank back then. He saved up his allowance to buy a bunch of other junk for it. A little ceramic bridge, plastic plants, a dorky sign that said NO FISHING ALLOWED . He stuck a kitchen place mat behind the glass, an ocean scene with a lighthouse and waves. He was thinking he might become a deep-sea diver. That summer, when his family was all down the shore together, he’d told Uncle John about his plan. Uncle John always took his ideas seriously, unlike his dad, who chuckled— Aren’t you afraid of swimming? But Uncle John asked Stephen a bunch of questions, the two of them leaning against the deck railing like they were businessmen discussing some proposition, or he was interviewing Stephen for a very important job. Do you have a backup plan? Uncle John said, and Stephen thought about it before answering: Astronaut .
    When they got back from the shore, Nuts and Bolts were dead. The dissolving food pellets hadn’t dissolved fast enough and the bodies floated on the surface of the water, already partway decomposed. The clumps of uneaten food looked gray and wet, like brain matter. They’re dead , his father told him, and Stephen said nothing, watching his father scoop them out with the measuring cup his mother used for baking cakes. A minute later he heard the flush of the toilet, pictured his dead fish flying through the pipes inside his bedroom wall. The next day he trashed the NO FISHING sign, the place mat, the bridge. For years the tank sat empty, a few gray pebbles of gravel in the bottom. A year ago, when he got a job at Pet World, the new fish he picked out were silver, sharp-finned, with teeth and whiskers; they looked like miniature sharks. He didn’t give them names. He rigged black lights to the tank so when the fish swam through, they glowed. Freaky , said Molly Healy the first time she came over, lying beside him, partway naked, the covers pulled to her chin in the semidark.
    Stephen’s blood pounds thickly in his ears. He pulls the five from his pocket and stares at it, the one from the old man’s wallet. The bill is wrinkled and damp, torn at one corner. He opens the tank lid and drops it in. He watches it float like a lily pad, soaking up water, then start to sink. Isn’t that kind of really weird? The five drowns slowly before settling on the bottom, the fish swimming obliviously around it. Stephen thinks of the old man, curled on the parking lot, and wonders what happened after they left. Could the man have died? Could Stephen have killed him? You’re done, Steve —had the man actually said that? He must have been hearing things. Or maybe the old man was a messenger, the thing that had been haunting Uncle John’s backyard, rustling in the trees.
    From the other side of the wall, his mother’s voice rises suddenly and Stephen feels a twinge of panic—then it drops back down to the lower register, murmuring. He grabs the pillow from behind his head, angling himself so he’s leaning directly against the tank, picturing the fish’s teeth just inches from his ear. He hopes the motor will drown out the sound of her voice, but the tank only amplifies it, like a glass pressed to a wall, sharpening every word. I know , his mother says. Stephen closes