Memory's Glass Bowl

The storm crackled outside our window, framing the baseball game flickering on the television. You sat in your father's old baseball hat, pulled low over your eyes, watching plays you couldn't possibly care about. I watched you instead, wondering when we'd become strangers who shared a bed.

On the shelf above, our goldfish swam endless circles—three seconds of memory, the myth went, though biologists said that wasn't true. Sometimes I envied it. The simplicity of forgetting. Every lap a fresh start.

"You're staring," you said, not turning from the television.

"I'm thinking."

Lightning flashed, sudden and brilliant, illuminating the dust motes floating between us. For a split second, the room's corners were laid bare—the accumulated artifacts of seven years together. The framed photos. The books we'd each chosen separately, then shelved together. The coffee mug I'd bought you in Barcelona, chipped now, because you'd dropped it during the fight about the promotion you took without discussing it first.

"We still talk," you said. "We're talking now."

"We exchange information. We coordinate schedules. We don't talk."

The baseball game roared to life—somebody hit something, the crowd screamed—but you didn't react. Your hand went to the brim of the hat, a nervous gesture I'd watched a thousand times. You'd been wearing it the night we met, at a dive bar where the television showed some meaningless game we'd both been pretending to watch.

"I'm sorry about the job," you said, finally turning to me. "I should have talked to you first."

The goldfish rose to the surface, mouth opening and closing in silent repetition.

"Why didn't you?"

You took off the hat, ran your hand through your hair. "Because I knew you'd see the problems. The commute. The hours. You'd have the practical arguments, and I'd have gone anyway, but I'd have felt guilty. Or worse—I wouldn't have gone, and I'd have resented you for stopping me."

Thunder rattled the windowpane. Outside, the storm had reached its crescendo.

"So what happens?" I asked. "We keep swimming in circles? Forget and rediscover the same arguments?"

The goldfish turned, its orange scales catching the light from the television. Another lightning flash, and for a moment, everything was clear: the architecture of our unhappiness, the blueprint of something we could build instead.

"I don't want to forget," you said. "But I don't know how to move forward with you either."

"Start with the hat," I said. "Take it off. Look at me."

You did. And in the next flash of lightning, I saw it too: the exhaustion, the love that hadn't died but had simply been buried under layers of disappointment and unsaid things. The possibility, however faint, of something new.

"Okay," you said. "Okay."

The goldfish swam on, eternal and oblivious. The baseball game faded to commercials. We were still strangers, perhaps, but strangers who had decided, finally, to truly meet.