What We Keep

The apartment smelled of boiled spinach and something else—something that had been there so long she'd stopped noticing it. Decay, maybe. Or just time.

"You loved this," Elena said, pushing the bowl toward him. "Remember? When we were first married, you'd eat spinach every night. Said it made you strong."

Arthur stared at his hands. They were older than she remembered, liver-spotted and trembling. "I don't..."

"It's okay."

She'd found the bear in his closet yesterday—a massive, moth-eaten head mounted on a plaque. He'd shot it in his twenties, back when he was a different man. A man who believed that killing something beautiful made you powerful. She'd wanted to throw it out, but something stopped her. Maybe because he'd cried when she'd suggested it once, tears tracking through the dust on his face. The bear was all he had left of the person he'd been.

In the bathroom, the goldfish circled its bowl, orange and silent. Their daughter had won it at a carnival seven years ago, the summer before the accident. Elena had cleaned the bowl religiously for months, waiting for Sarah to come home and ask about it. Sarah never had. The fish kept swimming.

"There's a cat," Arthur said suddenly.

Elena's heart jumped. "What?"

"Outside. Under the window."

She followed his gaze. A stray cat sat on the fire escape, watching them through greasy glass. Its fur was matted, one ear notched from old fights.

"It's been coming for weeks," he said. "I feed it when you're at work."

"You do?"

"Don't tell me to stop."

His voice was so clear, so present, that she felt herself cracking. This was what dementia did—not just taking the past, but giving her these flashes of the husband she'd lost. Moments of terrifying clarity.

"I won't tell you," she said softly.

The cat licked its paw, deliberate and slow. Like it had all the time in the world.

"I don't want to be here anymore," Arthur said.

He meant the apartment. Or maybe he meant himself. Either way, she couldn't blame him.

"I know," she said. "Me neither."

The spinach grew cold between them. Somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed. The goldfish swam another perfect circle. The bear watched from its closet. And underneath it all, the terrible, ordinary love that had brought them here, and kept them here, and would someday be the only thing left when everything else was gone.