The Aquarium
Two grieving sisters, an old woman, and a bird
Wren and Noel live down the street from the aquarium. They’ve lived in that house their whole lives, sharing a room since they were born. Up until their mother died.
It’s a homely green cottage, with dead hyacinths and a wilting lavender bush planted in the front yard. The kids across the street have started picking at the grass that is yellowing on the edges of the yard. Sand has been tracked permanently into the hallways of the home, embedding itself in every crevice. Wren’s mother used to get so irritated with the sand constantly between her toes, but she was always the one dragging it in. The floor boards in the kitchen have begun to shift and creak.
Wren turned eighteen 8 months ago, on a crisp, yellow October morning. She woke up at 4am and could not fall back asleep, watching the moon reflect on her mother’s closet. Her knit sock-clad feet climbed out the window and onto the roof. Laying her head on the crumbly shingles, she counted all the stars she could see. When she was fifteen, she used to come out on the roof every night. Picking at her nail beds, she would sit and weep.
After a few months of following this nightly routine, Wren began being joined by a goldfinch that had a clipped wing and a missing foot. He would fly by, and land a few inches from her feet. For the first few weeks, he would ignore her, never turning his little face to look at her. Eventually, he started landing next to where she would lay her hand. His small, sweet eyes would watch her, in between picking at the roof with his beak. There came a day when Wren stopped going on the roof, she can’t really remember why. She just woke up one day and no longer needed to be up there. After that, she stopped seeing that little bird. She would look for him on her walks to school, sometimes making herself late to look up into every tree. She did this for weeks, and he still did not return to her.
Wren goes to the aquarium every weekday while Noel is at school. She watches her sister drive away, down the street her mother used to drive down. She packs her tote, watching the early morning sun stream against the water, as she walks down the block.
She bought a yearly pass for the aquarium with money her mother left her, specifically the cash she had left in her purse. She bought it from an old woman who had been working at the aquarium for the last few years. She’s the mother of someone she went to high school with. The girl’s name was Amy, or Amelia, or Emma. She had died in a car wreck when Wren was in her junior year. Her death was ruled an accident; Amy was presumed to be drunk and had driven right into a tree, while she was driving up the mountain. Her car had fallen off the cliff, and when they found her, she was completely unrecognizable. Her mother never let it go. She was positive it hadn't been an accident, positive someone had ran her daughter off the road.
Wren sees her every time she goes to the aquarium, her long brown hair tied into a bun and her fingers shuddering as she scans her ticket. She’s studied the lines on her face, her cuticles picked at until they bleed. She knows the despairing look in her eyes; it follows her as she walks down the hallway into the blue abyss of the pools.
Wren loves the jellyfish and the otters. Ever since the summer started, this first summer without her mom, she would sit outside near where the otter enclosure is, and watch them for hours. She’s given all of them names, and personalities, and stories. She likes imagining them having better lives, better families, than her own. Her favorite one is a beautiful shade of chocolate brown, with tan paws. Sometimes, she thinks he is reaching his paw out to her, stretching it out above the glass of his enclosure.
When Wren’s mother died, before she bought the pass and spent all her days at the aquarium, she used to walk through her neighborhood during the evening and into the night. She would walk into the early morning hours, listening to the leaves blowing in the wind, the squirrels scuttling around, and the beating of her own heart. She used to look into the windows of houses with their lights on, and watch the figures behind the curtains. When she was very young, her mother used to walk down these streets with her, telling her about all of their neighbors. Her mother had a knack for describing miserable things kindly.
She remembers the walks they took in the fall the most fondly. The crunch of the leaves underneath her mother’s boots, and the smell of the chill in the air. She would count all the cracks she saw in the sidewalk beneath her feet, and her mother would let her play in the yellow leaves.
Wren thinks about dead Amy (or Amelia, or Emma) and her mother. How they probably took walks just like she did with her mother. How her mother probably can no longer walk by trees like she used to, or drive up the mountain.
She thinks about saying something to her, about talking to her when she comes in to scan her ticket. But every time she tries, it’s like her mouth closes shut and she can’t speak. Wren struggles to speak about her mother, even with Noel. It’s almost unbearable to talk out loud about what she misses, what she resents about her life now.
After she sees the sharks and the jellyfish and the seals and the otters, she finds herself in the gift shop. Running her fingers on all the stuffed sea animals, she stands and stares into their plastic black eyes. There’s something so comforting about these things that are not real, these objects that cannot hurt her.
Wren thumbs the fur of the stuffed otter, and thinks she might cry. She brings its it up to the counter, and pays for it with a twenty dollar bill wrinkled in her mom’s old wallet.
The walk down the hallway back to the entrance feels like it lasts forever. The cartoon pictures of whales and seahorses make her feel like a child again. When Wren gets up to the ticket counter, her mouth still feels like it’s filled with cotton and glue. Pulling the otter out of her bag, and shakily sliding it across the counter to that poor dead girl’s mother, she feels the most alive she has felt since her mother died.
She doesn’t wait to see what she does; she can’t stand it. She feels too close to living.
When she gets home, she climbs back up onto the roof, and lays like a starfish on the asphalt shingles. Her skin bakes underneath the sun as she covers her face with her hands. When the sun begins to get unbearable, she turns to the side and hides her face against the roof. She lays there until the sun begins to set, and her sister has joined her.
Noel forcibly takes her hand, and lays down next to her.
“You know I used to come out here right after mom died? While you were planning the funeral and calling all the cousins mom hated, I was sitting right here.”
Wren turns and looks up at her, removing her now sunburnt fingers from her face.
Noel continues, “I didn’t help you with anything. I was terrible. I sat here for hours, doing nothing at all. That little girl that lives across the street used to call out to me from her yard but I ignored her. I didn’t want to be around anyone. I didn’t want to breathe. It was like I was dead. And when I’d come back in at night, you were wandering the hallways like a ghost. Wandering back and forth, staring at the photos of us as kids. I’d walk by you and it was like you weren’t there at all. You didn’t speak to me and I was so thankful you didn’t.”
Wren sits up, stretching her stiff bones and pressing her fingers into her hot skin. She turns to look at her sister, who looks so much older now than she did yesterday. Her eyes are kinder, her face less soft.
“I couldn’t bear to speak to you, to make it real, by saying it aloud. I wanted it all to be a dream. I felt like I was growing up so instantly, so alone. Like in an instant childhood was dead, and I had no ability to go back.”
Noel wraps her arms around her legs, and rests her chin against her knees. She looks up at the receding sun and the clouds drifting in and out.
“I wish it was all a dream too. But I feel awake now.”
They sit there quietly for a while, when a little goldfinch flies down onto the roof, landing on Wren’s knee. He nuzzles his head into her skin and when she reaches out to pet him, he doesn’t shy away.
This is the first short story I’ve written in years. I've been wanting to write one for so long, but just have not been able to. I come up with ideas and they either fall short, or I can’t create them in a way that feels satisfying to me.
I’m glad to have finally gotten through that case of writer’s block, and hope I continue to be free of it. As this is my first short story in years, it is a bit rough around the edges and is a work in progress. As always, thank you for reading. <3