What the Goldfish Knew

Arthur sat on the back porch watching his granddaughter Emma splash in the above-ground pool, her laughter floating through the humid afternoon air like the music he'd danced to with Margaret forty years ago. The plastic pool shimmered in the sunlight, and something about the way the water caught the light transported him back to that summer of 1962.

They'd been courting then, young and flush with the certainty of first love. Margaret had convinced him to buy two goldfish from the carnival—she named them Romeo and Juliet, though Arthur suspected she'd simply wanted an excuse to visit his apartment twice a week to feed them. Those fish lived in a glass bowl on his windowsill, their orange scales turning molten in the afternoon sun, swimming in endless circles while Margaret and Arthur sat talking about everything and nothing until the sun went down.

"You know," she'd told him one evening, watching the fish, "goldfish only grow to the size of their container. Give them a pond, and they become magnificent."

He'd laughed then, not understanding she was talking about them too.

Margaret changed everything in his life. She made him try spinach, that first time in his tiny kitchen, her fingers green from washing the leaves she'd bought at the farmer's market. "It'll make you strong," she'd said, and though he'd wrinkled his nose, he'd eaten it because she was watching him with those eyes that made him want to be better. After fifty years of marriage, he'd grown to love the bitter leaves, especially when she cooked them with garlic and cream—her Sunday tradition.

Now Margaret was gone two years, and spinach grew in the garden she'd planted, the plants coming back each spring like her laughter returning in memory. Emma climbed out of the pool, dripping water on the concrete, and trotted over to where Arthur sat.

"Grandpa, can we get goldfish?" she asked, wrapping her wet arms around his neck. "For a pond in the yard?"

Arthur's throat tightened. He looked at the empty patch of garden where the pond might go, where Margaret had wanted one for decades. "Maybe," he said, "in the spring. Your grandmother always said goldfish need room to grow."

He kissed Emma's salty forehead and thought: some things, like love, only get bigger when you give them space.