The Weight of Goldfish

The aquarium sat in the corner of his study, a glass rectangle containing two goldfish that circled each other in an endless, mute ballet. Nora had bought them the week before the accident, laughing about how they'd outlive us both. Three years later, they were still swimming, while she was gone.

"You bear this weight like it's a badge of honor," his sister had said during her last visit, gesturing at the dusty study, the unopened boxes, the way he'd preserved Nora's side of the bedroom like a museum exhibit. "It's been three years, Marcus."

He'd walked away to feed the cat, a tabby named Ruth who'd been Nora's companion through graduate school. Ruth was seventeen now, her movements slow and deliberate. Sometimes Marcus looked at her and wondered if she remembered Nora at all, or if he'd just become the person who filled her bowl.

The baseball sat on his desk, a rawhide sphere he'd found in their glove compartment. They'd never played; he'd bought it during a fleeting phase where he'd imagined himself the kind of father who'd teach his sons to throw a perfect spiral. But they'd never had children, and now he never would. The ball had sat there for three years, gathering dust in the shape of his thumbprint where he'd occasionally pick it up and squeeze, hard, until the rawhide bit into his skin.

Tonight was different. Tonight he stood before the aquarium with a small plastic bag. The goldfish watched him through bent light, their mouths opening and closing in tiny gasps. He'd read somewhere that goldfish didn't actually have three-second memories—that was a myth. They could remember things for months. Years, maybe.

"You remember," he said to them, his voice cracking. "Don't you?"

Ruth wound around his ankles, purring rumbling against his shins. He picked her up, her light weight familiar and devastating. She smelled like dust and sunlight and the particular warmth of old creatures who have witnessed everything.

He didn't flush the goldfish. Instead, he carried them—bag and all—to the bathtub, where he'd filled it with water from the kitchen tap. The water was cold against his hands as he released them, watching the bag dissolve like tissue paper in water. They swam in confused circles at first, then settled into the far corner, their orange scales bright against the white porcelain.

Marcus sat on the edge of the tub, Ruth still in his arms, and watched them swim in the unfamiliar vastness. He picked up the baseball from where he'd brought it, and threw it against the opposite wall. It bounced back, and he caught it. Again. And again.

"I'm learning," he said to the empty room, to the goldfish, to Ruth who was now sleeping against his chest. "I'm learning how to swim again."