The Last Time I Saw Clara

The water in the vase had turned murky, the stems of roses Clara had bought three days ago already slumping toward the glass like tired dancers. I should have changed it. I should have done a lot of things.

"She's not coming back," Mark said, leaning against my doorframe with that practiced sympathy he'd been deploying since the funeral. He held out a paper cup of coffee. "Drink this. You look like you haven't slept."

I took the cup without meeting his eyes. Somewhere in the apartment, her cat—now my cat, apparently—was yowling, a sound that had become the soundtrack to my widowhood. I'd named him Bubbles, which Clara had found hilarious because he was the most serious creature she'd ever met. He refused to eat the expensive food she bought, preferring to knock the bowl onto the floor and stare at us with judgment.

"There's a goldfish in the bathroom," I said suddenly.

Mark blinked. "What?"

"A goldfish. In a bowl on the sink. Clara won it at that carnival in June, remember? She made me carry it home because she didn't want to spill the water." I pressed my palms against my eyes. "I haven't fed it in days. I don't even know if goldfish eat every day, or if I'm slowly murdering the last living thing that still connects me to her."

Mark set his coffee down and crossed the room, wrapping me in a hug that smelled too much like workplace cologne and not enough like her vanilla shampoo. "I'll help you feed the fish," he said. "We'll figure out the cat. We'll change the water in those roses. But Elena, you have to stop waiting for her to walk through that door."

I pulled away and reached for the hat rack by the door. Her favorite fedora still hung there, a charcoal wool thing she'd worn even in summer because she claimed it made her look like a film noir detective. I'd meant to donate it, along with her clothes, her books, the half-finished canvas in her studio.

Instead, I put it on.

The cat chose that moment to weave between my legs, purring like a small engine. Behind me, Mark made a soft sound—pity, maybe, or understanding.

"She'd hate seeing you like this," he said quietly.

"I know," I said. "That's the worst part."

The goldfish was still swimming, I discovered later, doing slow laps in its cloudy kingdom. I sprinkled flakes into the water and watched it rise, breaking the surface again and again. Survival, I thought. It looks like gracelessness, really—just a creature Keep going up for air because it doesn't know how to stop.

I fed the cat. I changed the water in the vase. I left the hat on the rack, where it belonged, where she'd left it. Some things you carry forward. Some things you leave behind. And some things, I'm learning, you simply learn to live beside.