Goldfish in the Dark

The goldfish had outlasted them all. Three marriages, two careers, and now, somehow, Richard. Elena watched it glide through the illuminated tank, its orange scales catching the blue LED light like embers in a hearth that had long since gone cold.

"It's been five years, El."

Richard's voice came from the bedroom. He was holding his iPhone, the screen casting a pale glow across his face. He'd been typing for twenty minutes, his thumb moving with the practiced rhythm of someone composing something they'd already composed in their head a thousand times.

"I know," she said.

She peeled an orange at the kitchen counter, the citrus scent sharp and clean against the stagnant air of their unfinished conversation. The spray of oil misted her wrists. She remembered her mother peeling oranges in just this way, the spiral of peel coming off in one long ribbon, a memory from before the silences became permanent.

"She wants to know if we're still coming for Christmas."

Elena didn't ask who she was. She knew.

"Tell her yes."

The goldfish surfaced, its mouth breaking the water's surface with a tiny pop. It had been Jonathan's idea to get it—a therapy fish, he'd called it, something alive in the apartment when everything else felt dead. That was seven years ago. Jonathan had been gone for five. The fish remained.

"You never talk about him anymore," Richard said, not looking up from his iPhone.

Eenia ate a segment of the orange. The burst of juice was sharp against her tongue. "Some things don't need talking about."

"But we're getting married, El. In three months."

"I know."

The goldfish turned, its body catching the light again—orange and blue, orange and blue. A pulse in the water. It had survived Jonathan's death, her breakdown, the year she couldn't get out of bed. It had survived Richard moving in, the gradual reshaping of their apartment into something that looked like a life.

She thought about what Richard didn't know: that she still checked Jonathan's old voicemail sometimes, that his phone number was still saved in her contacts under a name she couldn't bring herself to delete, that the goldfish had become the only thing that connected her to the version of herself who had loved someone so completely it nearly destroyed her.

"El?"

She looked at Richard, really looked at him, and saw the patience in his face. The way he'd learned to wait through her silences.

"The fish needs a new filter," she said. "Will you come with me to the pet store tomorrow?"

Richard set down his iPhone. He came into the kitchen, took the other half of the orange from her hand, and ate a segment.

"Yes," he said. "We'll go together."

The goldfish swam on, unaware that it was the keeper of histories, that in its silent way, it had become the thing that held them all—Jonathan, Richard, the woman she was and the woman she was becoming—together in the same small, illuminated world.