The Goldfish's Last Inning

The goldfish had been floating sideways for three days. Sarah watched it from the kitchen counter, her iphone buzzing with messages she wouldn't answer. Another vitamin D supplement sat beside her phone, the childproof cap mocking her inability to open anything anymore.

Mark had bought the goldfish at a carnival. "His name is Bull," he'd said, grinning like he'd just hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth. That was the summer they'd played baseball in the park every Sunday, before the promotion, before the commute, before everything got.

Now Mark was gone — left last month with nothing but a note and his baseball card collection. The apartment echoed with the things he hadn't said.

Sarah finally opened the vitamin bottle. She swallowed three pills without water, wishing they were something stronger. Her phone lit up again: her mother asking if she'd eaten. Her sister asking if she'd cried. Her boss asking if she'd finish the presentation.

She didn't answer.

Bull the goldfish drifted to the surface, belly-up. Sarah stared at him, remembering Mark's laugh when he'd won the fish. How he'd carried it home in a plastic bag, swinging it like a prize. How they'd set up the bowl on the windowsill, arguing about whether goldfish really had three-second memories.

"They remember everything," Sarah had insisted. "They just pretend they don't."

Mark had kissed her forehead. "Like us, you mean?"

The notification on her iphone was from Mark now: a single photo of a baseball field at sunset, sent from somewhere in Colorado. No caption. No explanation. Just the dirt path he'd promised they'd walk together someday.

Sarah flushed Bull down the toilet. She watched him spiral away into the pipes, another thing she couldn't hold onto. Then she opened the baseball card app on her phone, found the 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie card Mark had always wanted, and charged it to his credit card — the one they'd forgotten to close.

The vitamin bottle was empty. Her phone was dying. And somewhere in Colorado, Mark was probably watching baseball, pretending he didn't remember a damn thing about goldfish or promises or the way she looked at him across the breakfast table every morning for three years.

Some memories, Sarah decided, were better left forgotten. She deleted his photo without saving it, then called her mother back.