The Art of Holding Still

The bull stood at the edge of the pasture, massive and indifferent, chewing cud with a slow mechanical rhythm that Elena found herself envying. Three months since the layoff, and she'd stopped running every morning somewhere around week six. Now she mostly just watched things—neighborhood dogs, rain against glass, the way her husband Michael's jaw clenched when he thought she wasn't looking.

"We should talk about the goldfish," Michael said from the doorway, not entering the bedroom. He never entered anymore.

Elena turned from the window. The fish bowl sat on her nightstand, murky despite recent cleanings. "Barnaby's fine."

"He's not fine. He's been floating on his side for two days." Michael's voice held that careful neutral tone he'd developed since her mother died, since she stopped speaking at dinners, since she'd started sleeping in the guest room. "It's okay to let things go, El."

The bull in the pasture had been there since she was twelve. Old man Henderson's prize breeding stock, now just another creature waiting out its days. Elena wondered if the bull remembered when he was something people noticed, or if he simply existed moment to moment in that animal way of being complete unto itself. She felt hollowed out, a house with all the furniture removed but the shapes still ghosting the carpet.

"I'm not ready to let him go," she said, and didn't mean the fish.

Michael's shoulders dropped. He came and sat beside her on the bed, the first time in weeks. Outside, the bull lifted its head, perhaps sensing something in the air—the pressure change of coming rain, or the smaller deaths that accumulate in a life. Michael took her hand, his palm warm and unfamiliar against her cold fingers.

"Tomorrow," he said softly. "We'll figure it out tomorrow."

But tomorrow was just another thing running away from her, always ahead, never arriving. The goldfish twitched once, a small convulsion in its cloudy kingdom, and Elena finally began to cry—the first genuine thing she'd done in months.