Ron, Howard

When people called Ron’s goldfish ugly, he took it very personally. He felt it in his blood and in his bones and allowed it to simmer so deep within his marrow he felt as if his bones would crack. 

The massive, three-pound calico oranda, Howard, drifted in all his orange-and-black-splattered glory in the square plexiglass aquarium Ron spent an entire afternoon setting up for him in his living room. 

Ron had glimpsed Howard’s reflection in the pet store window and purchased him on impulse.

The clerk laughed as he scooped Howard from the tank. “Thought we’d never be free of this ugly mother.”

Ron fought back his irritation. “Is that so?” 

“It’s not a gag gift, is it?”

“Do you get a lot of that?”

The clerk eyed Ron thoughtfully. “In this business, that’s practically a guarantee.”

Ron paid in cash, finishing with a flourish of quarters he let clatter on the countertop. He gathered up the tank in one arm, and hefted Howard in his unwieldy plastic bag with the other. 

He did not return the clerk’s hearty goodbye.

Once home, he set up the tank, placed Howard in his new home, and stared. 

And stared.

†

Howard looked like Ron. 

The resemblance was striking. Uncannily so.

But ugly is all Ron got from people—family, friends, co-workers—when he showed them pictures of Howard. Ugly. 

Ugly, ugly, ugly. 

Did no one else see it? That resemblance? 

Did Ron really want anyone else to see it? 

And what if they did? 

Wouldn’t that make him the joke or the punchline? Both?

As Ron pondered and fretted, Howard ate. 

And ate.

Fish flakes, mostly, but also blood worms and table scraps (carrot tops and celery ends and strips of roast beef). Ron could not refuse him.

The subject of Howard’s virtue weighed heavily on Ron. 

He tried to ask his son about it.

Ron Jr. only sighed. “He’s yours, daddy.” 

And that was the last Ron Jr. had to say about the matter, and about Howard the fish, such as he was.

†

Pets often resembled their owners, didn’t they? An old woman and her borzoi. A young man and his silky-haired cat. Maybe, thought Ron, it was a proximity thing, something to do with flattery as well as survival and a bit of cheap magic. It happened with dogs and cats. Even rabbits! Sometimes goats. 

But fish? Ron resisted the urge to perform that particular online image search. Resisted, that is, until he could not:

FISH THAT LOOKS LIKE A PERSON

What he discovered was horrifying, to say the least, much of it involving ill-fitting teeth, bugled-out eyes, and eerie markings that set off lips, noses and browlines in grotesque but undeniably human faces.

And yet. 

As ostensibly ugly as Howard was, he looked nothing like those waterlogged monstrosities. And neither, therefore, did Ron:

PERSON THAT LOOKS LIKE A FISH

Ron’s finger hovered over his mouse. 

In the end, he decided that he already had an answer and, more importantly, it was one he could live with after all.

†

Did fish blink? Howard, certainly, did. He also tilted his head just so and, naturally, he smiled. 

Despite himself, Ron smiled back.

†

It was Ron Jr. who gave Howard his name, naming him after his grandfather, Ron’s father. Howard died a year after Ron’s divorce, but just before Ron Jr.’s sixth birthday, so Ron supposed that it wasn’t all that surprising that his son chose Howard for Howard—he and Ron Jr. had been close.

As a boy, Ron was often told he looked just like this father. But since Ron was the second-born son and not the first, he had been named Ron instead of Howard.

Ron Jr. looked almost nothing like Ron. He got most of his looks from his mother, who got her looks from her own father.

As for the rest? Those ears that hung a little too low? That slight cleft of the chin? 

Anyone’s guess really. 

†

Howard outgrew his fish tank, so Ron bought him a bigger one. When Howard outgrew that, Ron installed a pond in the backyard, complete with lush reeds, artful stones and fat lily pads. All the accoutrements of good fish living.

When Howard spouted arms and hands, a pair of legs and feet, Ron invited him inside and offered him his clothes. Grey slacks and brown shoes, a white pressed shirt and slim, periwinkle tie. A hat to shade his eyes from the sun.

“Thank you,” said Howard, words no longer muffled by water.

“You’re welcome,” said Ron.

Howard stayed in Ron Jr.’s room during the week while the boy was at his mother’s house. On weekends, to spare Ron Jr. some awkwardness and confusion, Howard returned to his pond. Its shimmering waters certainly did look so welcoming, so perfect, glimpsed from the back porch where Ron often stood, bidding Howard a farewell, for now, good buddy. 

Always farewell. Never goodbye.

“Just for now,” said Ron.

“Daddy is that you?” asked Ron Jr. sleepily, dressed in his superhero pajamas.

Ron held out his arms. “I’m right here, pal.” 

“Okay,” replied the boy, eyeing the pond, no longer quite so sleepy.

†

“Are you my daddy’s brother?” asked Ron Jr. 

Moths flitted around the porch light’s faltering glow.

Howard, still waving, shook his head. “I’m your daddy’s twin. His alter.”

The boy peered at him. “Other?”

“That also,” said Howard. “Significant other.”

“Oh,” answered Ron Jr. “Okay.”

†

No one noticed when Ron was Howard, or when Howard was Ron. They’d switch off here and there, when Howard felt like doing the shopping, or when Ron wanted a good, long soak in the pond. It was great fun.

“Who are you?” Ron asked Howard.

“Who are you? Howard asked Ron.

They laughed. Neither one had an answer for the other, but that was more than fine. The things that separated Ron and Howard were nothing they cared all that much to compare. 

After a time, they stopped trying. 

†

Life was big and life was small for Howard and Ron, until one day it was so prim and perfect and pact it could easily fit inside the comforts of a square plexiglass aquarium.

“Only the best for you, my pet.” 

It was a nice life, peaceful, when Ron remembered to think about it. 

Still, they called him ugly. 

But he was only as ugly as Howard was handsome.

© 2025 Cindy Phan

About the Author

Cindy Phan writes about the everyday fantastic, in which the boundaries between the tragic and the absurd shift, transform and misbehave. Her fiction has appeared in Augur Magazine, Luna Station Quarterly, khōréō magazine and others. You can find her online: cindyphanauthor.com, and on Bluesky: @cindyphanauthor.com