What She Left Behind

The dog stopped eating three days after Martha disappeared. A golden retriever named Barnaby who'd once torn through life like a comet through space, now lay motionless on the Persian rug. His water bowl remained full. His eyes tracked me with something too human—accusation, maybe. Or maybe I was projecting.

I found Martha's hat first. A wide-brimmed thing she'd worn to our daughter's wedding last spring, perched absurdly on top of the refrigerator like a dark bird. I'd forgotten she could look at me with such disdain. The marriage counselor had called it "emotional detachment." I'd called it survival. What had she called it?

That's when the cable guy knocked.

He was replacing the lines in the building—something about fiber optics and the future. He moved through our apartment with efficient disinterest until he paused at the bookshelf. A fox sat there: a bronze figurine we'd bought in Santa Fe twelve years ago, back when we still touched without flinching.

"Nice piece," he said. "Art deco?"

"Contemporary actually," I said.

"Wife like it?"

"She's dead," I said. It was easier than explaining she'd moved to Portland with a yoga instructor named Sky.

He nodded, eyes on the floor. "Sorry."

The goldfish bubbled in its bowl on the windowsill. Martha had won it at a carnival during our second year of marriage—during the phase when we were still trying to be people who went to carnivals. The fish should have died years ago. Everything else had.

"She left me," I said, the truth escaping like water from a cracked vessel. "The fish though—that one's still here."

The cable guy looked at me then, really looked. "My first wife left last year. Took everything. Even the damn dog."

We stood there in our half-empty apartment, two men surrounded by things that meant something once. The dog lifted its head, watching us.

"Fish need feeding," the cable guy said finally. "Even the ones that won't die."

He finished the installation. I tipped him too much. When he was gone, I sprinkled flakes into the bowl. The goldfish rose, mouth opening and closing in the silent water. Barnaby thumped his tail once against the floor. The fox gleamed on its shelf. Martha's hat watched from the refrigerator.

Tomorrow I'd pack. Today I fed the living things.