‘To Fish or Cut Bait’

John Bishop is an abstract expressionist painter based in Houston, Texas, who creates gestural mixed media work in acrylics, ink, collage, pencil and marker. His work centers on layering color and mark-making to create works that allow a different experience up close than at a distance. His art draws one deeper into discovery and recognition. ​ Though his passion for art began as a teenager, he was steered away from an artistic career by well-meaning parents. Instead, he became an English teacher and later a librarian, working in five different countries over the course of three decades.

To Fish or Cut Bait

Spotlights, streetlights, dangling traffic signals, candles, headlights, green-shaded lamps through apartment windows, pulsating red bulbs atop radio towers that burn hot and, once a year, require a change which only a select group of men—one-hundred-forty pounds or less and without fear of heights—can complete; nearly every variety of light on Earth could be seen from the palatial windows of the Fish penthouse. The rest of the city stood in the high-rise’s shadow like toy soldiers at attention. From the apartment, the tiny, twinkling lights down below played along streaks in the glass. Mags Fish paid to ensure that the windows were tended to semi-weekly, but the men tasked with cleaning the outside windows of the Fish penthouse were, consequently, some of the same, lightweight men contracted to change radio tower bulbs, and that week, a bulb had burned out in the next town over. 

Cool, old, navy-blue night rapped its knuckles on the glass, flipped its jacket collar up, and peered into the apartment with cupped hands. The whole place was ablaze. Gilded candlesticks and oil lamps bled waxy, orange light up the walls. The fireplace raged, the oven broiled, the radiators radiated. The Fishes were practically cooking.

In the bathroom, Mags Fish sat naked atop the toilet. Per usual, she ran the shower as hot as it would go—the sound of which would muffle the inevitable sobs and, just as well, camouflage the tears on her cheeks with condensing steam. A weep imminent, her breaths shallowed, became unregulated. The envelope lay face down in her lap, the paper dampening against her skin. She turned to her right and picked up a small wristwatch from the sink counter. It read six twenty-six. Since she had been in there for seven minutes already, she figured she had no more than ten minutes to open the letter, have herself a cry, and get dressed and made up once more without causing a serious delay in the holiday meal, one which would inevitably start an argument.

The steam had begun to open the envelope. Mags slid her finger beneath the flap with almost no friction at all. Inside, on bureaucratic letterhead, was a notice, familiar in form but with unfamiliar text. It read as follows:

            “Mrs. Magdalena Fish,

I am elated to inform you that you and your husband

have been approved for the adoption of one-year-old 

Vincent. Please phone the agency office to schedule

a follow-up with me after the holiday.

Benjamin Evolence

  N.Y. Agency For Adoption”

Mags clutched the letter against her heart and cried hard and quiet for some time. She peeled it off her chest to read once more and gripped the edges of the soggy sheet so intensely they began to tear. The ink bled. She folded it up and placed it on the counter. She used the envelope to wipe the tears from her eyes, blew her nose into it, and tossed it in the waste basket next to the sink. Careful not to slip on the glassy tile, Mags arose once more and crept to the shower, cranking its handle back to the right. She toweled and robed herself, beaming, before grabbing the letter and quietly exiting the bathroom to get dressed.

It was a Thursday—the last of November. The long dining table was dressed in wintery wreaths woven with cranberries and fragrant springs of pine. In the kitchen, a nameless maid was basting a drawn-and-quartered duck. Upon being hired, all of their help took an oath of namelessness, a practice the Fishes upheld to keep themselves from getting too attached (like humans tend to do). It was effective, though it did cause confusion among the personnel, and a call-out for a “maid” or “butler” was often met by multiple, running, staff members that had to veer to avoid colliding with one another.

In the dining room, a maid with two vastly different sized feet laid out the place settings. Her left foot was a women’s size-six, her right a men’s size-eight. To keep her looking uniform, Bastard purchased her a custom pair of men’s size-eight shoes, the left foot of which was insulated to snugly fit a women’s size-six. When she walked, she clip-clopped around the apartment. Bastard often called her “Horsey,” which—in over three decades—is the closest that any of the Fish’s help got to receiving a name. After laying out the place mats and silverware and napkins, which she had painstakingly folded into swans, she danced a gawky hobble back through the kitchen to the bar to fetch the wine goblets. 

At the table’s center sat the duck, browned and bound. There were boats of cranberry-orange relish and brown gravy, blackened sprouts with tangerine gastrique, carafes of vintage wines that outpriced small homes. There were fresh breads of every variety with imported butters and cheeses. Massive salad bowls sat at each end of the table, towered over only by an excessive number of tall, scarlet candles perched on gilded sticks. 

The misassembled maid hobbled back around the table and left a goblet at each place setting. She stopped for a moment and took stock of the table, scanning every inch and ensuring nothing was out of place. She took a mighty inhale and held it hard, thinking perhaps if she held it long enough, she might fall unconscious and be sent to her quarters for the night. After forty-or-so seconds, however, she coughed out the breath, left panting, deflated. Poor, winded Horsey galloped her way over to the dinner bell, grabbed its tassel, and rang it. 

~

Down the hall, the faint knell made Bastard grimace. He belched and began collecting his limbs and pulling himself from the depths of his chair. He lumbered to his desk and dumped the contents of his pipe into a small ashtray, then opened the bottom left drawer and retrieved a pouch of tobacco. He took a pinch roughly the size of a mouse and thumbed it into his pipe. From a small box on his desk, he fetched two long matches and struck them. Pipe-in-mouth, he held the matches by their ends and torched the bowl, puffing deep, then shook them out and put them in his pocket. Bastard thought to take a full decanter of cognac with him, even grabbed and tucked it safely into the crook of his arm, but decided against doing so. Tonight, he thought, he’d take it easy. He made for the door. The matches, still hot, burned a hole in his pocket lining, singeing off a few hairs as they fell down his leg and out the bottom of his pants.

On the other side of the apartment, Mags was finishing her makeup. Before the bell rang, she was curling her eyelashes, knee-deep in a stroller-shopping fantasy. Finally, she would have a child to spoil, she thought. Not her own child, but a child of her own, and that was good enough for her. There would be, for the first time in many years, a sense of togetherness, perhaps even happiness, in their home, and the idea delighted Mags to no end. The only issue would be getting Bastard, who had given up on having a family long ago, on board. Perhaps, she thought, tonight might be a prime opportunity to test the waters. But how?

The dinner bell’s chime startled Mags conscious. Gripping the curler still, she threw her hands up, and in an instant, tore every lash on her right eye clean off her face.  

“OH, GOOD CHRIST,” she shouted at the floor, swaying, her eyes clenched shut. A few droplets of blood populated on the edge of her eyelid. Mags unbent herself a bit and ripped a tissue from the box on her vanity. She pressed it into her eye. 

“Oh, my fucking goodness. Oh, my fucking goodness,” Mags choked through her teeth. She paced and cursed for a moment until she gathered the courage to remove the tissue and look in the mirror. Her right eye—now bald and swollen and terribly flush—welled up with tears. Thinking quickly, Mags opened the top drawer of her vanity and tore through it until she came upon a silken, lavender eye-patch, which she’d commissioned years back during a nasty bout with pinkeye. On its front was embroidered a white rose.

She pulled it over her head and muttered a little prayer, hoping no little, pink particles had remained on the patch since she’d last worn it. 

In the hall stood a crowd of house servants who had just peeled their ears off the door. They straightened out when Mags exited her room, nodded softly at them, and continued to the dining room, leaving the door ajar. Two of the maids scurried in to tidy up. Mags’ eyelashes, caught between the small, stainless-steel lips of the curler, laid still on the floor. A maid picked the device up and brought it over to her vanity, on top of which she saw a peculiar, damp letter. She looked over both shoulders, and after ensuring the coast was clear, unfolded and read Mags’ notice from the adoption agency. She gasped, clutched at her neck—where pearls would be if she could afford them—and waved the other maid over to read it. 

Bastard had beaten Mags to the dining room table by a matter of two minutes. In that time, he had tied his end of the jacquard tablecloth around his neck as a bib, drank a full glass of cognac, requested (and drank half of) a second, and polished off a small ramekin of pate. He sat at the head of the table nearest the eastern windows. 

With marked elegance in the face of compromised eyesight, Mags assumed her seat at the end of the table opposite he, her back facing the living area. Bastard squinted at his wife, trying to make out what it was about her face that was so…different. As he clocked the eyepatch, a giddy smirk painted across his reddened face. 

“Yo-ho-ho!” he slurred to her across the grand table, raising his glass-half-full skyward. “Ye look swashbucklin’ milady!” He drank deep.

“I’m pregnant.”

He thought to himself for a moment then shook his head. “No, no—you’re a pirate, dear. You know… yarrghhh, and what have you—”

“Bastard,” she cut him off insistently, “I’m pregnant. I received word from the doctor in the mail today. I am really and truly pregnant.”

Of all the jokes, he thought, that his pirate wife could play, this one in particular was not very funny. Opting to wear a parrot on her shoulder to dinner would’ve been a far funnier gag. “Well matey, I think ye should get a second opinion,” he leaned forward. “I’m not sure if ye recall, but we caught a touch of infertility a few ports back.” He finished his drink.

“Christ, Bass, can you take this seriously? You’re going to be a father, for god’s sake.” She took a sip of wine.

Moments prior, two maids had begun piling the evening’s offerings onto gilded China dishes. Mags’ palate was by all accounts refined & well-rounded, and the vast, colorful contents of her plate reflected that. On Bastard’s plate sat only two duck drumsticks and a molehill of mashed potatoes. With swiftness, the maids flitted toward the respective Fish to which their plate belonged, placed them gingerly, and disappeared into the peripheral of the dim apartment like mist into the ether. Between the couple, candlefire raged on. Flickering wicks threw hot light onto their faces that danced, drawing and erasing shadows from beneath their features in perpetuity. 

Bastard picked up a duck leg, took a bite of it, then shook it at Mags. “For your information, I happen to take plenty of things seriously,” He dropped the drumstick on his plate. “And I resent your thinking otherwise.”

“The last time I saw you put forth as much interest as you do in getting drunk toward your work or me was…I don’t know, Bass. It was a long time ago; I’ll tell you that much.” She glanced down at her full plate, unhungry. 

Mags did, in fact, recall the last time Bastard had taken something seriously. Following their wedding, the couple sought to take seven consecutive honeymoons—one to each continent. The idea was Bastard’s, coinciding with his wedding vow that “the world should belong the Fishes” (a sentiment which Bart Gravel, marine biologist and second cousin to Bastard, found particularly moving). Their excursions to Paris, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Acapulco, and Tangier had all gone off without a hitch, but it was in learning that there were no resort-hotels (or even just a lousy bed and breakfast) in Antarctica that put Bastard over the edge. Mags recalled him staying on two phone lines all night, taking turns laying into his accountant and travel agent until they admitted defeat. The two never did end up going, but his efforts and insistence on the matter made her feel secure, even quite confident in the future of their marriage. She felt such no longer.

Bastard chewed and swallowed. “Forgive me,” he began, “if I seem…dubious…of your ‘pregnancy’. Because I remember trying as vividly as I remember failing at it. Surely you must too, no? Being told we were as fertile as a parking lot by every medical professional in a 50 mile radius?”

“Well, something’s changed.”

“I just don’t buy it.”

“There’s nothing to buy, Bass.”

“I’m well aware.”

“We’re having a child together.”

“And just how are we doing that?”

“What do you mean by that, Bass?” Mags snatched up her utensils. She stabbed an oblong slice of duck with her fork and sawed it down the middle. 

Bastard flashed a tight-lipped grin. “What I mean,” he gushed, his hands cupped, his gaze wide, “is that my confusion is twofold, dearest angelic wife. Not only do I not understand how your eggs have magically un-shriveled, but I can’t for the life of me remember the last time you and I so much as kissed.” 

“The problem was never my eggs Bastard; it was that accursed essence your parents left you with.” She shoved the piece of duck into the back of her mouth and chewed it hard. “As for the child’s inception—well...” Mags froze, her mouth still open, mid-chewing. She hadn’t thought this far ahead.

Bastard built up his walls once more and reverted to piracy. “Oh, don’t mince words now, matey,” the buccaneer called out. “Say it with ‘yer chest!”

“Well,” she explained, “one night back in September, after you tied one of grand proportions on, see, you…you came into my room and we made love. That’s it. You must not remember it, is all, but it happened, Bastard. I’ve just…I’ve been reluctant to talk about it until I got word back from the doctor. But I had a feeling that night that it had taken, so to speak.” She smiled, quite pleased with herself.

“No. That doesn’t sound like me.” Bastard shook his head.

“Well, you did it. We did it.”

“I doubt it.”

“Doubt it or don’t, it doesn’t matter, I mean can’t you,” Mags implored, “for once in your life, take me seriously? Honestly Bass, every time I come to you with an issue or grievance or even something I’m ecstatic about—thrilled about, you rip it from my hands and turn it into your…plaything! Can’t you just try to be sincere, even if for just a moment, for one day of your life? We’re going to be parents for god’s sake, and all you can do is talk like a pirate and seek out the bottom of your goddam glass!” Mags unfolded a swan and wiped at the corners of her mouth. She laid the napkin across her lap, crossed her right arm over her left, and knotted her hands into fists, all while, with one eye, staring a perfect hole directly through Bastard’s skull. 

On the other side of the hallway wall, an unnamed butler peeked his head out to check on the Fishes. Behind him, most of the staff was lined up single-file and leaning ever so slightly forward, right ears pointed to the dining area. A maid, three spots from the front, was reading Mags’ letter. She finished it and passed it on down the line. The butler at the front could see Mags’ wine glass was a few sips from empty, however he knew better than to dare show his face in the middle of this level of conflict. This was about the very time of night and blood-alcohol level at which Bastard would begin to gauge the opinions of the help and use their answers as ammunition in whatever battle he and Mags were, at that present moment, engaged in. Each butler and maid had, for as many drinks they had served and beds they had made and tables they had cleared, been used equally as many times as small-scale political pawns & hostages in Fish-centric conflicts. Far down the hall, the two maids last-in-line to get a look at the letter sat on the floor with a deck of cards. They played “Go Fish.”

“Okay,” Bastard sighed, “I’ll play along. But, even if what you’re supposing happened did happen, have you ever truly considered what it will require of you to mother a child? Have you considered the time away you would have to take from the business? Or perhaps the nursing? The swaddling? The diaper-changing and bathing and feeding?”

Her smile dimmed. “Thankfully Bass, I’m well-prepared: I’m married to a child.”

“And, what,” Bastard continued,” if that precious child of ours grows up lonely? Are you prepared to accept responsibility for bringing a child into the world to be miserable, if for no other reason than you wanting a living, breathing, doll to play with and dress up? Or because you think having a child is what you’re supposed to do?”

“Having a child is what you’re supposed to do, Bass, when you’re married and well-established. There’s just…no good reason not to.” Her words felt like a pleading of sorts, but only just so, less overtly desperate. She labored to maintain composure as best she could. 

“Well, it’s not what we are supposed to do, according to the universe and the doctors and my testes, and just as well, as I see it, I’m not quite sure there is a good reason to do it.”

Mags turned away from her husband, and her eyes began to well with tears. “Well,” she explained with hitching breath, “some of us are quite lonely here, like this. And let’s be honest Bastard, some of us don’t have the same… ‘close friendships’ with the help as you do.”

Her eyes darted to Horsey, who at that very moment emerged from the hallway where the rest of the help stood in wait. Tucked against her lower back—into the waist of her pinafore—was Mags’ letter. 

“And some of us,” Mags continued, “miss feeling loved, needed. Is that such a crime? To want that back?”

Bastard looked at Horsey then back at his wife, eyes bugged. He softened. “Darling,” he began, “of course you are needed. You’re essential to the business, dear, and we owe so much of our success to you. As for loving, well, I do love you, Mags, and it…it hurts to hear that you think otherwise. I’m not sure what you’re implying about my relationship with, erm…any of the help, by the way.” He gulped. His brow perspired a bit. “It’s all strictly professional, I can assure you.” 

Bastard, very proud of his performance just then, clutched a glass of brandy that was topped up to the very brim, raised it carefully, and drank in quick celebration of himself. At this hour, the glasses of cognac seemed to be magically filling up just for him, and he thanked his lucky stars that the universe never let him go thirsty. In all reality, Bastard had, years prior, hired a dwarf butler—a man shorter than the dining table whose sole responsibility was to keep his glass full without ever being seen. Between pours, while the petite butler waited for Bastard’s glass to drain, he sat crisscross on the floor beneath the table with a drawing pad and pencil, sketching intricate portraits of Magdalena’s feet. Once, while the Fishes were vacationing in Crete and all the servants were left alone and taskless in the penthouse, Horsey had asked the small fellow to make a drawing of her unusual foot. He tried his best but he, being unable to accurately fit its likeness on just one sheet of paper, fell short (as he often does). She wore a long face for the next few days. 

Mags frowned. “The business brings me no joy, nor does the success. I want happiness.”

“You and I have plenty here to be happy about—wealth and luxury and success that folks the world over would, quite frankly, skin people for. Skin, Mags.” 

“But it was all handed down to us! Actually, no…to you! This home, the business, the help—all of it belonged to your parents at one point. I feel no happiness when I look at any of it. I want something of our own, and a family could be that something.”

“Magdalena, please. I don’t know what kind of hormonal, lunatic tirade you’re on, but it’s starting to make me think you might actually be pregnant. We have plenty things of our own here I…”

Under her breath, Mags muttered and spat and kept her eyes down on her plate, where she pushed around a chunk of duck she thought looked like her arm. 

“Oh, no, no. Speak up, dear, this table isn’t built for trading sweet nothings.”

“What is it that we have made?” she murmured, only just loud enough for him hear the faint timbre of her voice, her words still illegible.

“Oh, just say it Mags, you’re being cowardly.”

“WHAT HAVE WE MADE?” She clutched the edge of the table as she roared.

Having been conditioned to always listen for a summoning call, two preoccupied maids—one in each of the Fishes respective rooms, tidying—heard Mags’ bellowing “MADE” and set off, from opposite ends of the apartment, at full speed toward the dining table. Each with their eyes fastened on Mags and not the path before them, they sprinted head-first into one another with concussive force, then collapsed unconscious to the floor. 

The micro-butler was doing a study of Mags’ ankles from the floor when the two maids collapsed in front of him. Startled, he jumped up and smashed his head on the underside of the table, knocking Bastard’s glass of cognac off the edge and down to the floor. He slipped backward in the spilled liquor and, too, knocked himself unconscious. Bastard jolted up to save the booze but, on account of his being wasted, did not. As he shot out of his seat, the tablecloth—still tied as a bib around his neck—was pulled from the table, taking the food, glasses, wreaths, and candles to the ground with it in an expensive avalanche.

Bastard stared drunkenly down at the holiday feast which now covered the floor and a few of the help staff. He rubbed the back of his neck with his right hand. Mags stared at Bastard with her good eye. As a troupe of maids and butlers poured into the dining area from the hall, cleaning up what remained of Thanksgiving, Mags observed coldly. No matter what she did, Mags felt she had no control: the universe and her husband and his genetics were conspiring against her, and not even looming fatherhood seemed enough to really wake Bastard up. She pushed her chair out from the barren table and absconded to her quarters defeated, empty, and hungry still.

Mags rushed into her room and threw the door shut. She ripped her eyepatch off and hurled it at the window. Locked away from the rest of the household, she halted, heaved, and with the intensity of a thousand monsoons, wept. It shook the whole apartment, and some of the folks living beneath the Fish penthouse—when asked about it later on—thought there had been an alarm of some sort sounding. After a few minutes of intense wailing, feeling just slightly better, she sat down at her vanity, looking to read over the letter from the agency. There was surely some comfort and hope still yet to be wrung out of it. But as she reached for it, she found nothing but…nothing. There was no letter. Frantic, she scanned the desktop before ransacking the drawers, thinking it had, perhaps, fallen into one during her search for an eyepatch. There was no letter.

Bastard, having watched his meal and wife leave the table, had taken the hint and made a simultaneous exit, albeit a more lethargic one. When Mags slammed her door shut, Bastard was shuffling his way still through the kitchen, past the living area, and to the hallway where his study was found. And as she began to weep on the other side of the apartment, he rounded a corner and saw at the end of his hallway Horsey—feet and all—backing out of the study on her large tiptoes, delicately closing the door. He cleared his throat. Her head shot up and she locked her fearful eyes with his like a horse in headlights: terrified. The two of them stood there, frozen for a moment, before Horsey broke the stalemate and released the doorknob. She turned her gaze away from Bastard—who was trying to smile at her and wink but, in his drunken state, couldn’t command his fine motor skills, and was instead fluttering both eyes and twitching his face—and looked to the floor as she galloped down the hall. 

Bastard shrugged it off. He pushed into his study and locked the door behind him. From down the hall, Mags’ bawling shook the walls and rattled the bookcases. Now, he thought, would be a good time for another cognac, and made for the decanter he had left behind before dinner. On his desk, next to the bottle, there lay a letter folded thrice and with bleeding ink. He inspected it, then brought it close to his face, where it would be harder for the letters to float around as much, and read it three times over. He belched so hard that a trickle of vomit climbed his throat. He swallowed it back down, and it burned as it went. He did not pour himself another cognac but instead turned around and, with letter in hand, climbed back into his leather chair. “Shiver me timbers,” he sighed, and tried his damnedest to close his eyes through Mags’ thundering sobs. The room spun like a top.

Jason Telese is a writer and MFA candidate in Creative Writing at The University of Alabama, where he is an assistant fiction editor at Black Warrior Review. His stories often explore varying portraits of masculinity, addiction, and existential discomfort. His work can be found under large rocks or sometimes—if you don’t floss daily—between your teeth, causing serious decay.