The Goldfish Pond by Florence Witkop
THE GOLDFISH POND
By
Florence Witkop
Published by The Jackpine Writers Bloc
This story was originally published in 1997 in volume 4 of The Talking Stick by the Jackpine Writers' Bloc and is reprinted here with their permission. Thanks, all of you wonderful people who meet monthly and publish such a delightful literary book.
Vinny's mother picked up a bandanna that had been twisted into a headpiece and a single gold earring and stared at them. "Vinny likes pirates." She tried to smile but couldn't. "He sailed the seven seas right here in the goldfish pond." This time she managed a half smile. "He'd start near the lawn chairs at this end of the pond, and then go beneath that bridge in the middle to the other side, where he'd tie his raft to that willow tree."
The yard was laid out as meticulously as a Japanese garden. The goldfish pond was the centerpiece, melding a stone walk, a fence, a few artistically arranged boulders, and several flower beds into a single harmonious whole.
Vinny's homemade raft was the only thing missing and the lack was conspicuous because how did something that his mother described as having been made from an old barn door disappear in the middle of the day without anyone noticing? What I found even more interesting was why it had been taken at all. What could a kidnapper possibly do with an old barn door? But I said nothing. She was upset enough.
I flipped my notebook to a fresh page. I'd been hired to find Vinny and it was time I got down to business. "What makes you think the pond has anything to do with his disappearance?"
She shrugged the way people do when they know they aren't making sense. "A feeling." Her hand waved and her fingers fluttered towards the mirror-still water. "Because he spent so much time here."
I stifled a sigh and counted the pitifully few pages of notes that were all I had to help me find this little boy who'd disappeared without a trace. "You may be right. I'll take a look around. Anyway I've no more questions. When I'm done I'll let myself out." Beyond the yard lay the driveway, my car and a hot dinner if Vinny's mother would leave so I could finish and go home.
She read my mind. "I have things to do in the house." Her voice trailed off as she turned to go. Then she stopped and shoved the bandanna at me. You keep it. Hold it."
"I'm a detective, not a psychic." But I took the bandanna and tried hard to look as if it could lead me to Vinny. "You never can tell." I held it up. "It's red. Did he like red?"
"He always said that when he got a pirate ship he wasn't going to fly a black skull and crossbones like all the other pirates. His was going to be red."
"Blood red?" Her face drained and I cursed myself for saying the wrong thing. Wherever Vinny was, whatever had happened to him, the color of blood could be his color now. But she said nothing, only made her way swiftly to the house so I tucked the bandanna into my belt, put my notebook in a pocket, planted my hands on my hips, and stared at the goldfish pond.
A shadow at my shoulder blocked out the sun. "Vinny wasn't one for lots of friends." I looked up. A man stood beside me. "Didn't seem to need friends."
An ordinary man with gray hair and large hands. I wracked my mind and knew he was the next-door neighbor Vinny's mother had told me about. "They're good friends," she'd said ruefully. "Jack spends more time with Vinny than we do."
I inspected him now unobtrusively. He didn't look like an axe murderer but they never do. "I'm looking for Vinny."
He nodded pleasantly. "I know, but you won't find him."
The hair stood up on the back of my neck. "Why do you say that?" I couldn't get my voice above a whisper.
"Because he doesn't want to be found." He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against a tree. "Because he's where he wants to be."
"How do you know where he wants to be?" I wanted to take my notebook out again and write down everything but that might make him careful and I'd learn nothing so I took a different tack. I barged right ahead with what I hoped he'd see as an amateur's foolish question. "Where does he want to be?" And when he didn't answer, "Where is he?"
He smiled to let me know he was miles ahead of me and waved an arm in the general direction of the goldfish pond. "There, somewhere."
The bottom of the pond was cement a foot thick and the yard was so carefully manicured that any disturbance would have been noticed immediately so he wasn't playing games with me the way murderers sometimes do, telling me where the body was and then daring me to find it. So I let my questions take another direction. "You knew him well?'
"We talked." He levered himself away from the tree, seated himself on a bench, and indicated that I sit next to him. "Rather, he talked and I listened, as boys do with neighbors, and it was easy for me because you see, Detective, I'm a psychiatrist. I work with children. I'm a good listener."
"Vinny was seeing a psychiatrist?"
He shook his head. "Not at all. He's one of the most pleasant, happiest children it's been my privilege to know. I just happen to live next door and Vinny is very interesting. He's an imaginative child." We watched languorous willow branches drift over the water on a riffle of air, dappling the water with shadows. Then he sighed. "Imagination. Do you know how rare that is in these days of Nintendo, Disney and all the other prepackaged games? Talking with Vinny was a pleasure."
"He didn't like games?"
"Just those he created."
"Like the pirate ship?"
He was silent for a long time. Then he turned to me. "Yes, that was his favorite game, the one he returned to again and again. It was the kind of life he wanted except pirates don't sail the seas any more. But it was his favorite." His eyebrows narrowed. "And now that you know Vinny's favorite game, you know how he thinks, how he operates, what makes him tick." He was the psychiatrist now, watching patiently, waiting for me to understand but I hadn't a clue so I asked still another question, knowing that Jack would read the direction of my thoughts as easily as he read his morning paper. "Did he know it was only a game?"
His eyes gleamed briefly and I had the oddest feeling that he was laughing at me. "Do you mean did he know the difference between reality and make-believe?"
"Did he?"
"Of course he did." The laughter spilled across the rest of his face and it was all he could do to keep it from erupting into sound. "The question, Ms Detective, is whether you know the difference."
I withdrew into myself. "I'm an adult."
"So you think you know what's real and what's not?"
"I do."
He tossed a stone into the pond. Ripples spread and startled goldfish scattered, orange flecks changing shape and size as the ripples refracted the light. He pointed. "Are they real?"
"Of course."
"Real fish can't change shape and size the way they just did."
It was a mind game, a trap, but I wasn't falling for it. "They didn't change. They just appeared to."
"My point exactly." He stood up. "Like Vinny's raft." He started away.
I was more confused than before and he was walking away. "Wait!" He stopped in mid stride and stared at me through opaque eyes. "I don't understand." His hands hung at his sides as he laughed at me silently while I asked one more question drawn through sheer desperation from somewhere inside of me. "What does Vinny's ship have to do with the goldfish?"
His fingers steepled together. "His ship? Nothing." He started walking again. "His raft, on the other hand, has everything to do with them." And he was gone.
I should have left to do some serious detective work. To call a couple of missing children's hot lines to see if anyone resembling the missing boy had turned up somewhere and then, when that lead went nowhere, to come back to the neighborhood and talk to the few friends of his own age that Vinny had. The usual things. Instead I sat on that
Two hours later Vinny's mother came outside and sat beside me, sighing. "I'm sorry. Maybe I was wrong about the goldfish pond."
"You weren't wrong." I heard myself say it but until that moment I hadn't known that I believed it. "The answer's here. I just haven't found it yet."
"Maybe the answer's around the corner if you can find the corner. I never could." She stared at me intently. "Because there are no corners in a round goldfish pond."
"What's this about a corner?"
"I saw Jack talking to you. Didn't he mention Vinny's corner?" I shook my head. "The corner he said Vinny sailed around." Her hands dropped into her lap. "To find the ocean and the pirates."
"A corner," I said. "A pirate corner."
"Jack called it Vinny's corner."
"Vinny's a very imaginative child." I wondered if my use of the present tense was wrong.
She rose. "It's silly isn't it? My child is missing and all I can think of are imaginary corners and pirates and the goldfish pond." She shifted unhappily. "When you have something, let me know, will you?" And she left.
So help me, I walked around that pond and looked for a corner. There was none, of course, and yet, as I passed beneath the willow tree with slender green and gray leaves grazing my shoulders, I could almost believe that such a thing was possible and that there truly could be a corner right there in the middle of the goldfish pond, one that only a small child with a vivid imagination would find and around which waited pirate ships flying blood red flags.
Except there was no corner. It only seemed so because of the hypnotic effect of the sun reflecting on the surface of the water, refracting light and making all things possible, including goldfish who could be there and not be there at all, who could be large and small at the same time, and who could come and go without changing position one iota.
And then I knew. I knew…
I retraced my steps, found the exact spot where I'd been daydreaming and looked again, and it was there. Caught in a shaft of light between the willow branches and the brilliant white sunlight and it was as clear as day. A ship, a pirate ship with a blood red skull and crossbones flying from the masthead and a boy standing on the bridge. A boy I recognized from the picture his mother had given me to help me find him. Vinny. I froze, knowing that if I moved a fraction of an inch in either direction, the ship and the boy would disappear.
For the second time that day a shadow fell across me. "I see you found it. I wasn't sure you could." The words startled me into movement and the pirate ship disappeared and all I could see was a psychiatrist named Jack leaning lazily against the willow tree. "At last you understand." His eyes swept over the goldfish pond. "It's so simple. It's all in how you look at things."
"Is it real?"
He shrugged. "All I know is that Vinny got in his raft and sailed across this goldfish pond and around a corner and into the life of a pirate."
I squinted and stared and tried hard to bring the ship back again but it remained an ordinary goldfish pond with two people standing along the edge, one of whom was making a fool of herself by giving credence to the rubbish the other was describing.
He went on, as if to himself. "I listen to children all the time. It's my job. That's how I know about the corner. I think lots of kids used to go around that corner, finding it in one place or another, not just in the goldfish pond, but now only a few like Vinny can make the trip."
"It's a goldfish pond and it was a trick of the light, nothing more."
He tipped his head. "Believe what you wish." He dusted his hands and stepped away. "But remember that whatever you believe you are one of the few adults who have looked into that other world. If I were you, I'd consider myself lucky."
He left by the back gate. When he was gone I turned back to the goldfish pond. I found a stone and threw it and watched the ripples spread across the surface, turning the goldfish into strange, wavering creatures, there and yet not there.
I wondered if Vinny would ever tire of being a pirate and come home so his mother could know where he was and that he was all right.
And I wondered if, in the meantime, she could stand in a certain spot beneath the willow tree, close her eyes, think about sunlight refracting on the water of the pond, open her eyes, and find her son.
THE END