They were pink and green, the little tadpoles, and there was nothing that the scientist and his assistant who lived in the basement could do to save them. Born in the upstairs bathroom tub from a mother who endured months of a squirming belly and who labored silently, glad of the pain for children at last. The father, green and comforting, held her under the arms from outside the tub and was filled with love for his mate who had tried so hard to conceive these most wanted children. But in the end, as they had always known, the attempt was futile. Children were denied them, despite their mutual dedication and a Broadway marriage that was celebrated around the world.

Except for the shaggy piano player's mournful tunes, the house was silent for days. So unnaturally silent for a busy, happy boarding house full of friends and legendary fun. The mother was inconsolable and without her famous gregariousness, which muzzled the rest of the household. She slept, quietly sobbing, in the master bedroom once so open to everyone that was now even closed to her husband. On the fourth day, she looked out the window to see her other half and his nephew solemnly digging the backyard hole that would be the grave for the little things now dead in the tub. After that, she opened her door and trod down the hall to one of the other few women boarders, a singer and tambourine player who rarely slept in her own bed. The girl gladly gave up her room to the matriarch and moved into her boyfriend's band bus, so that the married couple became separated in their own house. She made her own room a palace of hot pink and chiffon in the coming days, and a little cheer returned as friends took this as a sign of her moving on.

The father was not so easily consoled. Denied his marriage bed, he spent the first two nights sleeping on the cold bathroom tile next to his dead children, and spent the days in dumb grief. They were so beautiful and precious to him, the little pink and green things, with their streamlined bodies showing all the signs of being capable of developing in the normal way. Normal, that is, save for their streaky-pink coloring and the slightest hint of what might have become their mother's nose. On the third day he was so weak that his best friend, heart-broken, simply came in and picked him off the floor and carried his weakened buddy downstairs in his burly orange arms.

The resident chef, an older immigrant man, presented the grieved with food, and he slowly ate to regain his strength. In the kitchen, friends sat with the bereaved and took long drinks, speaking of feathered lost loves and the pains of being unique, the only one of your kind. Just as well the children hadn't made it, hadn't kicked or swam their way into this world, destined to be showbiz freaks like the flippered, furry and bent creatures of this makeshift family. It was just as well.

Everyone knew about the failure in the upstairs tub. It was the wise piano player that suggested that the father help pick and dig the burial plot, a nice shady place between the backyard pond and the rose bed.

At the funeral, a distinguished patriot boarder fond of preaching gave the sermon, while the band and the tambourine girl played with ground out music that all the boarders sang to. The two old men who usually stayed glued to the front room couch heckling everyone younger than them put on their old tuxedos and conducted themselves with compassionate composure. Even the household rats came out of the woodwork and hovered graveside respectively -- still the mother did not come down from her room. The funeral attendants could see her watching from an upstairs window. Maybe if the band had played their song, an old show tune from the Manhattan days, she would have rejoined the group. But the band didn't play that melody, or any of the other numbers that the band was famous for. Instead they played a song of her husband's, a song of unity for all, which spoke nothing of his wife, for he had sung it in his swamp home before they had met. It was a fitting song for an early death, and as if on cue, a light rain sprinkled the odd grouping out in the mid-day sun, refracting light that arced colors overhead.

The father pointed his snubbed, bald head upward, glad of the cooling rain on his skin, and thought, yes, the rainbow dows connect us. His wife closed her upstairs window curtain, and once again began planning her new career.