Goldfish in the Inning

David came home to find Julia crying at the kitchen table, staring into the fishbowl. Again.

"He's gone, David. Goldie didn't make it."

He stood in the doorway feeling like a zombie—sleepwalking through a marriage that had died three years ago, neither of them willing to call time of death. The goldfish were Julia's thing. She bought them, named them, watched them swim in frantic little circles, and then they died. Every six weeks like clockwork.

"I'll stop at the pet store tomorrow," he said, hearing his own voice flatten into that hollow corporate tone he used with clients he despised.

"It's not about the fish, David."

"Then what is it?"

She looked up with red-rimmed eyes. "It's that you're already gone. You're here, but you're not. You're like—something animated but not alive."

A zombie. She didn't say it, but the word hung between them like bad air.

His phone buzzed—work, always work. He ignored it. Instead he found himself saying, "My father used to take me to baseball games. Every Sunday, until I was fourteen."

Julia blinked. "You've never mentioned him."

"He left after that. Just—gone. But those baseball games..." David pulled out a chair and sat for the first time in months, really sat. "The last game we went to, I caught a foul ball. I was so proud. He didn't even look up from his phone."

"David—"

"I'm doing the same thing," he said. "I'm here with you, and I'm somewhere else. These goldfish—they live their whole lives in circles, and they die, and we get new ones. What are we doing?"

Julia reached across the table and took his hand. Her palm was warm. Alive.

"Tomorrow," she said, "instead of replacing the fish, maybe we could go to a game."

"Baseball?"

"Unless you'd rather be a zombie forever."

The goldfish floated belly-up in the bowl, gone and not gone, but David's heart gave a startled little kick against his ribs. For the first time in years, he felt something like hope swimming through the dead water.