What We Fed the Fish

The goldfish died three days before Marcus told me about the papaya farm in Belize. I found it floating at the top of the bowl, that ancient carnival-won creature we'd named Neil despite neither of us particularly liking Neil Young. It had survived our entire marriage—five years, three apartments, and one disastrous attempt at couples counseling—but it couldn't survive whatever was happening between us now.

I flushed Neil without calling Marcus at work. This was new behavior for me; historically, I would have sent a photo, maybe made a dark joke about how the fish had better timing than we did. But I'd stopped sharing things with him months ago, somewhere around the time he started coming home smelling of office air and other people's microwaved lunches.

When Marcus finally mentioned Belize—over dinner, pushing cubes of papaya around his plate with his fork—I thought he was joking. A papaya farm. He wanted to quit his software engineering job and move to Belize to grow papayas with Sarah, his coworker who always wore those linen blouses and smelled like expensive sunscreen and poor decisions.

"It's not just about the fruit," he said, and I almost laughed. "It's about authenticity. About living intentionally."

"Neil died," I said, which wasn't a response but felt like one.

"Who's Neil?"

"Our fish. The one I won at that carnival in Jersey when we were dating. The one that lived through every apartment we've ever had together."

He stared at me. "We have a fish?"

That was when I understood: some versions of us had died long before the fish did. Marcus had been ghosting our marriage for months, showing up to meals and bed but leaving his actual self somewhere else—somewhere that apparently involved tropical fruit and a woman who probably knew his Starbucks order by heart.

"You're a fox," he said once, early on, impressed by my sharp tongue and quicker edges. But foxes don't make good pets; they're wild, and they'll eventually chew through the leash you forgot you were holding.

I packed my bags while he slept. Left the papaya on the counter. Found myself wondering, somewhere between the Jersey Turnpike and anywhere else, what goldfish dream about while they're circling those same small walls, thinking they're going somewhere when they're really just swimming through their own reflected lives.