Memory's Small Bowl

Mara stood at the kitchen counter, counting out vitamins. One for calcium, one for iron, one for that ambiguous thing the doctor called 'vitality.' She swallowed them dry, a small daily ritual of keeping herself intact.

The goldfish swam in endless circles in its bowl on the windowsill. Marcus had bought it for her third anniversary, or maybe fourth. She couldn't remember anymore. The fish had better memory than she gave it credit for - it knew when she approached the bowl, knew which corner held the food.

"You're staring at him again," Marcus said, coming up behind her. His hands settled on her shoulders, familiar and yet somehow not.

"Just thinking."

"About what?"

"About how goldfish are supposed to have three-second memories, but I think that's a myth. I think he remembers."

Marcus kissed her neck. "You think too much."

She thought about the pool at his gym, where she'd gone that Tuesday morning to surprise him with coffee. How she'd seen them - Marcus and some woman she didn't recognize, laughing near the lockers. His hand on her arm, lingering too long. Not quite affair territory, but somewhere in the vast territory between friendship and something else.

The goldfish pressed its mouth to the glass, bubbles rising.

"Marcus?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you remember what you said to me when you bought this fish?"

He paused. "Something about how we'd watch it grow old together."

"No. You said, 'At least something in this house will still be swimming in five years.'"

The silence stretched between them, thin and taut as water tension. She turned around and looked at him - really looked at him, as if for the first time.

"That was cruel," she said softly.

"I was joking."

"Were you?"

The goldfish swam on, oblivious, its small life contained within glass walls, fed and watched and ultimately free of the weight of what wasn't said. Mara thought about vitamins and marriages, about how some things you took to survive, and some things just slowly dissolved in water until you couldn't tell if they'd ever been there at all.

"I'm going to the pool," she said, not knowing which one she meant.