The Goldfish in the Palm

The palm fronds outside the window were the only things that moved in the stagnant heat of his third-floor walk-up. Marcus, forty-five and suddenly single again, watched them sway against a sky the color of old television static.

"She took the good blender," he said to the fishbowl on the counter. The goldfish — Carol's parting gift, not his choice — swam in endless circles, its orange scales catching light that refused to enter the apartment. "She also took the will to live, but we don't talk about that."

The fish didn't respond. It never did.

Marcus popped a vitamin D supplement from the drugstore — the cheap kind, Carol would have said — and swallowed it dry. His therapist insisted on the vitamins. Said depression was physical too. Marcus said depression was finding yourself at forty-five learning to parallel park again because you'd never done it in the ten years you were married.

"She left you the fish," his sister had pointed out. "That's something."

"It's not a fish," Marcus had said. "It's a cold, unblinking reminder that I once had a two-bedroom condo with actual plants."

The palm trees outside bent in the wind, indifferent to his downward spiral.

Three weeks later, Marcus came home to find the goldfish floating. He stood over the bowl, something vast and terrifying opening in his chest. Not grief — something older, more fundamental. The recognition that everything ended. Jobs. Marriages. Even fish named Carl.

He flushed Carl down the toilet with the solemnity of a man sending off a fallen soldier. Then he called Carol.

"The fish died," he said.

"Oh." Her voice was distant. "Well. That's life, right?"

"Yeah. That's life."

He hung up and walked to the window. The palm trees were still there, still swaying, utterly unconcerned with the small deaths that occurred in apartments everywhere. Marcus took another vitamin. He didn't know if it would help. But the palm trees would be there tomorrow, and the day after. For now, that was enough.