What the Goldfish Remembered

Elena stood before the bathroom mirror, pulling strands of gray hair from her temples. Each pluck was a small betrayal, a denial of the forty-two years she'd earned. Behind her, the television droned—cable news she wasn't watching, filling the apartment with voices that didn't belong to either of them.

Marcus's hat hung on the doorhook, a fedora he'd bought on some foolish impulse last spring. He wore it when he wanted to feel like someone else, someone who hadn't mortgage-refinanced his dreams into something unrecognizable. Tonight, he was wearing it at the kitchen table, watching their goldfish circle its bowl in endless, stupid loops.

"You're pulling again," he said, not turning around.

"It's just hair, Marcus."

"It's you disappearing."

She dropped the hairs into the trash can. They landed like dead things. In the kitchen, she found him still watching the fish, its orange scales flashing in the low light. He'd bought it after his mother died, said it was easier than a dog. The goldfish swam the same path, hour after hour, trapped in its six-second memory, forever surprised by its own reflection.

"Dinner's ready," she said, placing a wilted spinach salad between them. The spinach looked like surrender, like everything green that had given up.

Marcus picked at his salad, spinach leaves clinging to his fork like wreckage. "I saw her today."

Elena's fork stopped. "Who?"

"Sarah. From the office. She was wearing that blue dress."

The unspoken thing between them had a name now. Sarah, with her laugh like breaking glass, her hair that never seemed to know its own mind. The other woman. The one who made Marcus feel like the goldfish—swimming in circles, forgetting everything every six seconds, starting fresh.

"And?" Elena said, her voice flat.

"And nothing." He finally looked at her. "I came home."

The goldfish bumped against the glass, its tiny mouth opening and closing, remembering nothing, experiencing everything for the first time, forever.

"Marcus," she said, "do you ever wish you could just forget everything? Start over? Be someone who doesn't know how we got here?"

He reached across the table, his fingers brushing hers. "Some days," he said. "But then I'd forget how you look when you're angry. How you hum when you think no one's listening. How you saved me from myself three years ago when I was ready to crawl out of my skin."

The spinach salad sat between them, untouched. The television murmured about a world ending somewhere else. The goldfish swam another loop.

"Your hat," she said, "it makes you look like you're hiding."

"Maybe I am." He took it off. "Maybe we both are."

Outside, the city hummed, millions of people tangled in their own cables, their own small aquariams, forgetting and remembering, swimming in circles while calling it forward motion. Elena took Marcus's hand and held it, feeling the pulse that refused to stop, that carried them both into tomorrow, whatever it might forget or remember.