25
After calling in the pizzas, I wander over to the aquarium and am treated once more to dazzling yellow dorsal fins, incandescent blue lateral lines, particularly startling scarlet caudal fins. I push back the glass lid and sprinkle in fish food, noting the one and only ingredient listed on the cardboard box.
The angelfish drift to the surface of their tiny sea and nibble daintily on dried flies. What a contrast to the piranhas biting furiously at bits of raw ground beef.
Is that why the water babies shapeshift from angelfish to piranhas? The food is better? It’s a theory.
Turning to my duties as super, I play back two messages blinking on the answering machine. A silence with heavy breathing followed by a hang-up and a whisper identifying the speaker as “the Owner,” thanking me for banking the checks on time and promising that my first paycheck is on its way.
My first paycheck. Yes! Now I can go shopping.
A pizza delivery guy buzzes the intercom. I jog to the front door, pay him with Tesla’s twenties, and jog back to my kitchen carrying two gargantuan, steaming-hot boxes smelling deliriously of garlic, pizza sauce, and fresh-baked crust. I uncork the very acceptable sauvignon blanc Twitch left me and inhale a paper cupful.
Gluttony, here I come.
More business before pleasure, though. I return to my home office, fire up the iMac, and clear out my emails. A hundred solicitations from online local merchants and two messages from Daniel I don’t want to read and summarily delete. Then I log off the Web to work on the word processor. I open a file, “Know Thyself,” and begin keying in my thoughts.
All right. Who am I, anyway?
Who is the living, breathing Abby Teller?
A daughter who cared for her dying mother and misses her long-dead father. A donor to animal shelters and rescue foundations. A woman who loves our precious blue planet. A bred-in-the-bone tree-hugger who catches spiders in the bathtub in a peanut butter jar and lets them loose in the garden.
Am I a saint or what?
I’m also the daughter of a mother who warded me so powerfully, she caused her own debilitating wasting illness. An illness which, in turn, required my constant care, a codependency to our mutual detriment. A protective, fearful mother who kept me ignorant of the true nature of my father’s death, the true nature of my past, the true nature of my destiny, the true nature of my power. A mother who told me my power was an aberration, something shameful that had to be kept a secret. And worse, much worse, a mother who begged me never to use my power till she stood on the brink of her own death.
Was Alice Teller a saint?
Or controlling. Overprotective. Toxic with her anxious, overweening love.
Rage and resentment explode in me. Red, I literally see red. My fingers fly over the keyboard, spelling out the rage and resentment of years, and then the iMac crashes. The screen goes blank, an empty field of blue except for a question mark flashing over and over.
********
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