Things We Couldn't Bear to Say

The bear had been dead three weeks, but in David's garage, it was still breathing. He'd been taxidermy-ing the grizzly since the accident—since it had charged them on that Montana trail. David had pushed me out of the way. The bear had swiped him across the chest, but he kept talking all the way to the hospital, kept making jokes like he always did. Even when his lungs started filling with blood.

Now his mother wanted me to collect his things. She'd cleaned out most of it, but the bear remained—a half-finished monument to whatever joke he'd been trying to tell with his life.

"You're still here," Sarah said from the doorway. She'd been my friend since college, until she'd slept with David sophomore year. Until she'd done it again last spring, two months before our wedding. I hadn't spoken to her since the ceremony. Now here she was, in David's garage, wearing the black dress she'd worn to his funeral.

"His mother asked me to take whatever I wanted," I said.

Sarah nodded toward the workbench. "He kept that goldfish bowl in his office. The one you gave him for his birthday."

The fish was still alive somehow, swimming in lazy circles, its orange scales catching afternoon light. I'd given it to him as a joke—about how people said goldfish had three-second memories, but really they could remember things for years. David had laughed and said he preferred the three-second version. Said there were plenty of things he'd rather forget.

Now the fish would outlive us both.

"His laptop's in the house," Sarah said. "His emails. His documents. His mother hasn't looked through them yet."

I looked at the bear, at its glass eye staring at nothing, at its mouth caught in a permanent, silent roar. David had never been able to keep a secret. He'd told me everything eventually—about his childhood, his fears, the time he'd wet his pants in third grade. The only thing he'd never mentioned was Sarah.

"Did you love him?" I asked.

Sarah looked at the fish, then at the bear, then finally at me. "That's the wrong question."

"What's the right one?"

"Did we deserve him?" She stepped closer to the workbench. "He was going to tell you, you know. About us. He came to my place the night before the hike. Said he couldn't marry you without being honest first."

The garage went very quiet. The fish swam on.

"Then why didn't he?" I whispered.

"Because I asked him not to." Sarah's voice cracked. "Because I was scared. Because I thought maybe if he never told you, I could still have him. Even if it was just once in a while. Even if it was—" She stopped. "Some riddles don't have answers. Some sphinxes just keep asking."

David had loved Greek myths. Orpheus and Eurydice, Icarus and the sun. He'd said the tragedies were the ones that made sense—the ones where people destroyed themselves trying to hold onto things they couldn't keep.

I looked at the bear one last time. David had stuffed it mid-charge, claws extended, mouth open in something that wasn't quite a roar and wasn't quite a scream. It would have terrified a child. It would have made a grown man laugh.

"Take the fish," I said. "David would want someone to remember it."

"What about you?" Sarah asked.

"I'll take the bear," I said. "Some things deserve to stay unfinished."

I carried the bear out to my car, its claws scraping against my thigh, its glass eye catching the dying light. Behind me, Sarah watched from the doorway, and somewhere inside the house, the fish swam on in circles, forgetting nothing, waiting for someone who would never come home again.