The Art of Forgetting

The plastic bag sat between them on the hotel bed, bloated with water and containing three orange goldfish—two comatose, one swimming erratic circles near the surface. Dave had won them at the carnival booth, one of those translucent nylon hammer games where men in their forties proved something to themselves by striking a pad with maximum force.

'What are we going to do with them?' Elena asked, not looking up from her laptop. The pool terrace below their balcony was dotted with palm trees, their fronds rattling in the evening wind. Somewhere in the distance, the crack of a baseball bat echoed from the park where the local team played Friday night games.

Dave felt something thick and suffocating rise in his throat—the same feeling he'd had when the fertility specialist said 'unexplained infertility' with the clinical detachment of someone reading a grocery list. They'd stopped trying after three years. They'd stopped talking about it after five. Now they came to places like this, all-inclusive resorts where couples who still liked each other went to drink overpriced cocktails by the pool.

'They'll probably die,' Dave said. 'Goldfish have that thing, right? That three-second memory? Every time they swim around the bowl, it's all new.'

Elena finally looked at him. 'That's a myth. They remember fine. They just choose to keep swimming.'

She stood and walked to the balcony, Dave's following her. The pool below twinkled with underwater lights, a childless woman in a white swimsuit moving through the water with deliberate strokes. The baseball game continued somewhere beyond, the sound traveling across the dark.

'I can't keep doing this,' Dave said softly. 'This pretending we're okay with how things turned out.'

Elena turned. In the glow from the room, her face was unreadable. 'You think I wanted it to be like this? You think I don't feel like I'm suffocating every time I see someone with a stroller?' She gestured toward the bag. 'Those fish are going to die, Dave. Just like everything else we thought we'd have.'

They stood in silence as the goldfish continued their pointless revolutions in their plastic prison. The wind shifted, bringing the smell of chlorine and cut grass. Dave wanted to reach for her hand, wanted to feel her palm against his like it used to be—easy, automatic, necessary. But the distance between them had grown by millimeters over ten years, until now it felt uncrossable.

'They die anyway,' Dave said finally. 'Even if you take care of them. Even if you do everything right.'

Elena's expression softened, something breaking in her eyes. 'But they keep swimming.' She moved toward him, hesitated, then took his hand. 'We keep swimming.'

Below them, the pool lights flickered. The baseball game's final crack carried across the night. The goldfish swam on, and somewhere in the darkness, something began to bear the weight of living anyway.