Nonfiction

In early December, I was at dinner with three friends, all of us going through different challenges having to do with illnesses, empty nests, and husbands wrestling with identity and hypochondria. We were looking at the menu and talking about fish when one of them started to relay a recent discovery about flounder. “Apparently,” my friend began, leaning over the table, as if sharing a military secret, “There’s something going on with flounder.” Another friend knew exactly what she was talking about. “Oh right,” she agreed, ripping off the end of a baguette, “I read about that. They are in a state of evolutionary change.” The first friend nodded. “They are turning into something else, that’s for sure.” Baguette looked excited. “And we get to witness it.”

Evolution in real time? What on earth were they talking about? I wanted to learn more but they quickly moved onto more pressing matters like dead family members.

As I tossed my purse on the couch later that night, I asked my husband, “What’s happening with flounder?” In my experience, he usually knows things, or, more accurately, has gotten wind of science things. But he knew nothing and was eager to complain about one of our kids leaving a messy kitchen. 

I had never given flounder much thought. I have probably spoken the word flounder just a handful of times in my life.  

I spent a few minutes googling the issue but didn’t find anything, so I watched a video featuring tiny, crocheted farm animals in stop-motion. 

A few weeks later, I was in Perth, Australia, on South Cottesloe Beach. Our family had finally returned to visit our old home. It was summer in the southern hemisphere and my pale body was happily marinating in sunscreen. I watched two older men in snorkel attire approach the ocean, and after a minute of floating around, scurry out. They then stood on the shoreline, pointing excitedly at something.

It was not a flounder. 

I grabbed my sunhat and approached the tan men to ask what all the commotion was about. “It’s a cobbler,” the taller one said, pointing. I must have shrugged because he added, “Like a catfish, with spikes in the front and the back.” The other one laughed, “You don’t want to step on one of those.” Looking at the long, brown fish half-buried in the sand, I asked if it was poisonous. The tall man answered in customary Australian no-worries-but-also-worry fashion, “It’s not so much the toxins, it’s the three hours of throbbing pain.” He then excitedly shared all the gory details of the time he stepped on a cobbler. “I mean I howled, really cried out, for three straight hours. Throbbing pain I tell you. Hideous.”

I walked back to my towel and told my husband about the three straight hours of throbbing pain. We left for a different beach down the road.  

A few days ago, back in San Francisco, I found myself thinking about the flounder situation, and that ominous cobbler. I was alone in a pre-op room, my chest decorated with black pen. I was about to go back under general anesthesia to adjust one of the breast implants I acquired after my cancer ordeal, as my niece called it in a school assignment. The flounder thing was a mystery I’d left unsolved, and what if I didn’t wake up? And the terrifying cobbler rushed back to me when the anesthesiologist missed the vein in my foot, while trying to insert the IV. “Someone hold my hand!” I had yelled out. “That was sharp!” By the time they moved me to the OR, and I positioned myself on the operating table, I felt calm again. I closed my eyes and imagined swimming in the ocean, a trick I learned during the ordeal. I pictured my arms pulling through the water and listened for the seagulls. This time, I also tried to picture large, flat, happy flounder, and knew that as long as I stayed afloat, I wouldn’t step on anything sharp. 

My mother went to the hospital for a broken hip and stayed for Covid. She is currently in a state of delirium which, according to numerous websites, is not a precursor to dementia nor “a senior moment.” It could be a response to physical pain, a drastic change in environment, a new medication. It could be temporary. No one knows. 

She is talking about a group of well-dressed Mexican men. They are very well-dressed, Rebecca. 

The man in the royal blue scrubs asks me if I’m her daughter. Is she always like this?

No. 

She asks me for a top. A top to what, Mom? A top to wear, Rebecca. She rolls her eyes. 

She is slightly slumped over in bed, preoccupied with organizing an imaginary event. There’s so much to do. So many things to do. Twelve people are at her house and some of them are messy. What will I feed them, Rebecca? What do you want to feed them, Mom? Frankly I just wish they’d go away. They’re leaving soon, Mom. 

Her wrinkled bruised hands move gracefully through the air. Take this for me, she says, handing me nothing. Do you have it, she asks sharply? Yes, Mom. I’ve got it.

The goal is to get her home where people can visit her without filling out forms and getting their temperature taken. Maybe she can get her dog back. In the meantime, she is in a rehabilitation facility in a creaky bed with a view of City College of San Francisco. 

When my mom was a dean at City College, she often had days of back-to-back meetings with cranky administrators and stressed-out students. Once her secretary stabbed someone with a butter knife so she had to deal with that. There might have been a day when she finally got to close her office door to call me and tell me to preheat the oven because she was coming home. And maybe, as she put on her coat, she paused to look out the window. Maybe she could see where she is now.

“Are there any rich guys in the crowd who want to buy me shit?”

Popstar Kim Petras is talking to the audience between songs. She is wearing a black leather miniskirt and an off-the-shoulder gold top. The sunlight is reflecting off her long blond extensions and her white teeth are sparkling. Her backup dancers are dressed for a Sexy Mad Max party. She stomps across the stage and blows kisses to the tall person in the Lucille Ball wig in the front row who is pushed up against the metal railing. 

“It’s a really hard time in the world,” she adds. “Especially for trans girls.” The crowd hollers in solidarity. One tall man next to me in a maroon t-shirt wipes his eyes as Kim launches into her next song, Hillside Boys. I start jumping up and down to the beat. I quickly memorize the chorus, “Hillside Boys you call my name. You make my heart sparkle like champagne.” I pretend I’ve been listening to Kim Petras for years, when in fact I only learned of her a few days ago, in preparation for this weekend. 

I am at Outside Lands, an annual music festival in Golden Gate Park. I am forty-eight which means I paid extra for shade seating and access to upscale porta potties. I am wearing practical sneakers, sunscreen, and a neon fanny pack containing lip balm, Advil, and Band-Aids. Eighty-thousand people are here. There are various stages and dozens of vendors selling acai bowls and dried flower crowns. When I eat my Korean loaded waffle fries at a picnic table across from the Monster Energy Drink booth, I overhear a girl in crocheted pants say to her friend, “Matthew is the king of going to music festivals for the music.” 

Like Matthew, I go for the music. I also love the people-watching and the overhearing of comments like, “Oh my god your parasol is everything.” When Pussy Riot plays the Ukrainian national anthem, a dad with his toddler on his shoulders turns to me and says, “These girls are amazing.” He hadn’t heard of Pussy Riot until his Russian coworker suggested he “go pay tribute.”

Pussy Riot is amazing. Apparently so is Wet Leg, the band my husband is seeing on the other side of the park. He texts, this show is incredible. Thank god women can now lead bands. I know what he means. It is no longer unusual to see female-led acts, or in the case of Pussy Riot and Wet Leg, all female bands. I text him back, First bands, next the country.

Later, swaying back and forth during Mitzki’s set, I am transfixed. She sings about the strange discomfort happiness can bring when you are conditioned to constantly wait for bad things to happen. And her dancing is more like theater. At one point she death-stares the audience and then mimics slowly slicing her neck with the microphone. Between songs, I can hear Post Malone across the park screaming, “I fucking love San Francisco.” I whisper into my friend Sarah’s ear, “The patriarchy is always in the background.” 

Most women I know feel like we have a lot to be angry about. When Phoebe Bridgers leans into the mic and says, “The world is burning,” thousands of high-pitched “Yeahs” travel across the grassy field like an electric current. 

Kim Petras is right. It is a really hard time in the world. Music won’t save us. We will save us. And when we do, music will be blasting.

The Salesforce Tower is the tallest building in San Francisco. It wasn’t there when I moved away in 2015, but when I returned three years later, my city had gotten a mohawk. It’s visible from the beach, the park, the grocery store. 

Like a new loud family member, at first it was embarrassing, but over time, I’ve gotten used to it. It’s just who we are now. 

A month ago, I was downtown, ordering an iced coffee from a place with too many milk choices. Leaving the café, I looked up at the office buildings. I couldn’t see the Salesforce Tower. I walked a few blocks and kept searching for it. It had vanished. Then it occurred to me. The tower is not visible when you’re right next to it.  

I had forgotten about that until yesterday. My daughter and I took a long walk down a path surrounded by weeds and wildflowers. We talked a little, about boyfriends and pancakes, but were generally quiet. “Can we walk a little slower?” she said at one point. “It’s so pretty.” 

Our footsteps on the gravel sounded like popcorn crunching. We stopped to watch a brown bunny chew on a leaf. And then my daughter said, “Mom. Look. A fish.” At first, I thought the shimmering skin on the ground was the flesh of a bird but I was wrong. There were dead fish strewn on the path. Some whole with eyeballs intact, others in pieces. “My friend told me about this,” she said. “Anchovies fell from the sky.” She said this with the nonchalance of a teen who has lived through a global pandemic. 

“How the hell did anchovies fall from the sky?” 

She shrugged and said there was an article about it. I told her we should watch Magnolia later that night. We continued to walk in silence. Crunch, crunch. 

We were over a mile from the ocean. How did anchovies fall from the sky? I concocted various scenarios in my head, but was too ashamed to share them with my analytical child.

Later, at home, my daughter looked it up. “Overpopulation of anchovies,” she announced, sprawled out on the couch with her phone. “Sea birds tried to get them all to their young but carried too many, so they fell on the ground.” She took a sip of her banana smoothie.   

There was no mysterious fish tsunami. The explanation was perfectly logical. Birds were responsible for the fish on the ground. This had not occurred to me. I was ready to believe in fish clouds. Then I remembered the Salesforce Tower, the thing you can’t see when it’s right in front of you. And then I started thinking about what else I’m not seeing. The thing that later, when it reveals itself, will make me say, “Of course. How obvious.”