The Friday Night Fish Fry became Paddy’s version of Mass, and Vivian enjoyed it about as much as she enjoyed sitting in church. She had no problem eating the applesauce and fried potatoes, but when they were gone she was left with the fish. She’d look around at everyone else’s plates to see if they’d eaten theirs yet. That fish was all that was standing between Vivian and the apple crisp for dessert, but she just couldn’t bring herself to eat it. She couldn’t eat it and she couldn’t think of a way to get rid of it. It would sit on her plate until she remembered to push it around and around with her fork.

“Vivian, eat the fish,” her mother ordered.

“Oh, now, Myrtie, Vivy doesn’t have to eat the fish if she doesn’t want to.”

Vivian tried to hide her smile behind her napkin. She loved when her father was “half seas over,” as he liked to say, because it meant he either wouldn’t notice the kids’ behavior or wouldn’t care. On the days when Pawpy knocked off work early, he’d take the front porch steps two at a time up to their white two-story clapboard on Buckeye Street, fling open the front door, and go straight to the liquor cabinet. He’d open the whiskey while their mother was still stirring the boiling pot on the stove, which always smelled like it was dirty socks and bloomers rather than food.

“Doin’ the warshing on the stove tonight, eh, Myrtie?”

After a few slugs from the bottle there was a good chance Pawpy wouldn’t really be able to taste the meal anyway. By the time they sat down at the table and bent their heads in prayer, Mr. McGinty could’ve been convinced they’d already eaten dinner.

Vivian looked back at the fish on her plate. She tried to remember, at least at mealtimes and on her knees before bedtime, to be grateful she had food to eat. She tried to remember to be grateful about a lot of things, but it was harder when you were the middle kid. Henry and Will claimed they were middle kids, too, but Vera liked to remind everyone, “Vivian’s the real middle child,” with her voice full of oldest-child authority, “commonly overlooked and perpetually craving attention.” Perpetually, Vivian repeated the word to herself. Perpetually. She wondered what that meant.

While the grown-ups and older kids talked to each other across their plates of awful fish at the long table, Will and Violet kicked each other under it. Forks and knives scraped against plates while Vivian, not quite old enough to talk to the grown-ups and a little too old to kick Will and Violet under the table like she used to, let her mind wander to what she had planned for after dinner. She glanced at the water glasses and began to fidget. Tonight it didn’t matter that Ruby, Opal, and Vera wouldn’t let her play with them afterward.

“We don’t ‘play,’ Vivy,” Vera would scoff, and then shut her bedroom door, leaving Vivian on the outside, every single time.