Goldfish in the Sink

Margaret stood before the bathroom mirror, pulling strands of gray hair from her brush. Fifty-three years old, and still she performed this morning ritual with the same grim fascination, counting each fallen soldier like a war widow tallying casualties.

The goldfish — Ronald, named for her ex-husband — floated listlessly in his bowl on the windowsill. She'd won him at a carnival three years ago, a cruel joke from a coworker who'd found her post-divorce weeping in the breakroom. 'He's small, he's quiet, and he won't leave you for a twenty-three-year-old,' Susan had said, handing over the plastic bag.

Now Ronald was dying too. His scales had dulled from orange to something approaching the color of week-old cream.

Margaret turned on the faucet. Water rushed into the sink, swirling in a familiar pattern she'd watched a thousand times while brushing teeth, removing makeup, crying quietly after dates that went nowhere. The plumber had told her last week that the pipes were corroding, that everything needed replacing. 'Your whole system is backing up,' he'd said, and she'd nodded, thinking not of plumbing but of the way grief accumulated in the body like sediment.

She reached for the spinach in the refrigerator — she'd started eating it for lunch, some attempt at health that felt more like penance. The package was slimy with condensation. Everything in her apartment seemed to be decomposing simultaneously.

At the office, her boss had called her 'institutional memory' during the merger meeting, which was corporate speak for 'too expensive to fire but too expensive to keep.' She'd felt herself becoming invisible, like the spinach wilting in the crisper drawer, like Ronald hovering near the water's surface, waiting for something that wouldn't come.

Margaret scooped Ronald from his bowl with a net. His gills barely moved. She carried him to the bathroom and lowered him into the sink, where the water was cooler, aerated by the faucet's flow. Perhaps he'd revive. Perhaps this was what it meant to hope in your fifties — not expecting miracles, but making small adjustments to the inevitable.

'Maybe I'll call the plumber tomorrow,' she said aloud to the silent apartment. 'Maybe I'll replace everything.'

Ronald's fins flickered once, a tiny rebellion against gravity.

Margaret turned off the water and sat on the edge of the bathtub, watching.