The Goldfish at the End of the Line

The spinach from dinner was still stuck between your teeth when you told me you were leaving. I watched it catch the light from the television, that little green fragment waving like a flag of surrender. Outside, the wind snapped the cable line against the siding—*thwack, thwack*—keeping time with the silence stretching between us on the couch.

"I'm not happy," you said, and the words hung there, small and terrible.

On the bookshelf behind you, the goldfish darted to the surface of its bowl, mouth opening and closing in that perpetual, silent oh of surprise. We'd bought him on a whim three years ago, that weekend we drove up the coast and stopped at a roadside carnival because you'd never won anything before. I spent twenty dollars trying to win you a goldfish, and when I finally did, you named him Lucky and cried a little, said it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for you.

Now Lucky swam in endless circles, three inches of orange memory in ten gallons of water.

I thought about saying something profound. Something about how we'd promised each other forever on that beach, how we'd planted spinach in the garden last spring because you wanted to cook like your grandmother, how I'd finally called the cable company last week because you hated the static on channel 7. But the truth was, I'd been swimming underwater for months, holding my breath, waiting for you to notice I was drowning.

"I know," I said instead.

You reached for your keys. The cable box flickered—weather advisory, ten miles out—and for a second, the room went blue with screenlight. You looked at me like you wanted me to ask you to stay, like you needed me to fight for us. But I just sat there, feeling the spinach between my own teeth now, feeling everything I hadn't said curdling in my throat.

The goldfish rose to the top, gulped at nothing, sank back down.

"I'll come back for my stuff," you said.

"Okay."

When the door clicked shut, the cable line stopped hitting the house. The room got very quiet. Lucky swam another circle. I sat there a long time, listening to the silence where your breathing used to be, wondering if I'd just let you go or if I'd finally let myself surface for air.