What the Dog Knows

Margaret stood in the doorway, watching David sleep. The morning light caught the grey in his temples, the same grey that had been spreading through their marriage for years. He looked peaceful. She felt nothing.

The dog, Buster, slept at the foot of the bed — the only being in the house who still seemed to give a damn about anything. He lifted his head, fixed Margaret with those too-knowing eyes, then dropped back onto his paws. Even he'd given up on her.

She walked to the kitchen, bypassing the photographs on the wall. Their wedding day. Paris. The cottage in Maine. All artifacts of a version of herself she'd buried somewhere between her father's funeral and her fortieth birthday. She'd become a zombie in her own life, moving through the motions of marriage and career and dinner parties, hungry for nothing.

The goldfish bowl sat on the counter, its single orange inhabitant circling in endless loops. Margaret watched it, remembering David's voice from seven years ago: "Its memory lasts three seconds, Marge. Imagine that kind of freedom." She'd wanted children then. He'd wanted a fish they wouldn't have to send to college.

Now she envied the creature's three-second reset button. What she wouldn't give to forget the way David had looked at her last Christmas when she'd miscarried — not with sorrow, but with something terrifyingly close to relief. That was when she'd died inside. The zombie had taken over.

"You're staring at the fish again," David said from the doorway. His voice was gentle, the voice he used with Buster when the dog got confused.

"Just thinking about memory," she said, not turning around.

"What about it?"

She pressed her hand against the cool glass of the bowl. "Some things are harder to forget than others."

Silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating. Then: "I filed the divorce papers yesterday."

Margaret turned. David wasn't looking at her. He was watching the dog, who'd lifted his head again, tail thumping once against the duvet.

"I know," she said. "I signed them."

His head snapped up. "You—"

"Three weeks ago." She felt something then — not pain, not relief, but something waking up in her chest after a long hibernation. "I think I've been dead for years, David. I'm just now figuring out how to be alive again."

The goldfish continued its circles, remembering nothing, forgetting nothing. Buster trotted into the kitchen and pressed his warm side against Margaret's leg. Outside, the world kept ending and beginning, over and over, with every rotation of the earth.

"Coffee?" she asked.

"Please," David said.

And for the first time in forever, they meant it.