What the Water Remembers

The goldfish hasn't moved in three weeks, but Elena keeps feeding it anyway.

'Look, Marcus, he's swimming toward the flakes,' she says, her voice trembling with the delicate hope of someone who's already lost too much. 'See? He knows me.'

I want to tell her the truth - that the fish has been floating belly-up since before Thanksgiving, that the water's grown cloudy with decay, that what she's watching swim is nothing but the current from her own trembling hand scattering food across stagnant water. But Elena doesn't want the truth anymore. She wants the version of reality where her mind is still sharp, where our friend Sarah hasn't been dead for six months, where she isn't trapped in this apartment that smells like peppermint tea and denial.

Instead, I sit beside her and watch her thin, papery hand hover over the bowl. 'He's getting so big,' she whispers.

I look at the fish - grotesque, bloated, its scales dulling in the murky water - and think about the morning Sarah died, how we'd stood in the hospital hallway and Elena had gripped my arm so hard she left bruises, her hair wild and static-charged from hours of running her hands through it.

'She was my best friend,' Elena had said then, the words razor-sharp with fresh grief. 'How am I supposed to—'

She'd never finished the sentence. That was the week she stopped finishing sentences.

Now, each evening, I come over and brush Elena's hair while she watches the dead goldfish swim. Her hair used to be the color of autumn leaves, but now it's the fragile silver of something that's survived too many winters. I work through the tangles gently, the way she used to brush mine when I was small, before my mother died and she became the mother I needed.

'Marcus,' she says suddenly, turning to face me, and for a terrible, hopeful moment I think she recognizes me. 'Did you know Sarah had a goldfish?'

'I know,' I say, and keep brushing.