The Other Side of the Glass

Maggie pressed her forehead against the cool surface of the tank, watching the goldfish—she'd named him Saul, after her father—drift through the water like a memory she couldn't quite hold. He'd survived three boyfriends, two apartments, and now whatever this marriage had become.

"You hungry, Saul?" she whispered. His mouth opened and closed in silent repetition, a prayer she couldn't hear.

In the living room, the television hummed. A baseball game—some team against some other team, the details didn't matter anymore. The crowd's roar swelled and faded like the tide. This was Ben's third season of watching. Not baseball specifically. Just watching. Since the layoff, he'd become something else. Not quite her husband anymore, not quite a stranger. A kind of emotional zombie, moving through rooms she vacuumed, eating dinners she cooked, responding to questions she'd stopped asking.

She'd ordered the cable package as an anniversary gift, back when they still marked such things. Five hundred channels of distraction. Now it was just light and noise filling the spaces between them.

The goldfish swam to the surface, gulping at the false reflection of the room. Maggie shook flakes into the tank. At least someone still needed her.

"Mags?" Ben called from the couch. His voice sounded different lately—thinner, like the threadbare sweater he refused to throw away. "You coming to bed?"

She glanced at the clock. 11:47. Too late for the conversation they'd been having for six months. The one that never happened.

"In a minute," she said. She pressed her palm to the glass one last time, as if she could reach through and touch something that would still feel something back. The goldfish turned, flashing silver in the aquarium light, and sank into the deep water where the light couldn't follow.

Maggie turned off the light. Some things, she was learning, you had to let swim into darkness alone.