What We Keep

The goldfish circled its bowl in Margaret's hospital room—orange, oblivious, trailing that long, melancholy fin like a wedding veil left too long in the water. I'd brought it yesterday because she'd asked for something alive, and I couldn't bear to bring her the dog. The dog would know. The dog would mourn, and there was already enough mourning in room 412.

"Remember," she whispered, her voice dry as autumn leaves. "The summer you hit that home run?"

"I was twelve, Mom. It was lucky."

"No luck," she said, and her hand found my wrist, her grip suddenly fierce. "You watched that ball. You watched it all the way out of the park. That's not luck. That's knowing what you want."

I wanted to tell her that knowing what you want doesn't mean you get to keep it. I wanted to tell her about Sarah leaving last Tuesday, taking the nice bowls and leaving me with the chipped ones. About how I'd found myself in the kitchen Wednesday night, standing in front of the open refrigerator, eating cold lasagna with my hands because I couldn't bear to dirty another dish she'd chosen.

Outside, someone's radio played baseball—the crack of the bat, the crowd rising like a tide. Spring again. Always spring, when women die and marriages end and children stop visiting.

"Your father," she said, and I could hear the capital letter, "your father bought me a goldfish once. First year we were married. He won it at a carnival. He was so proud, like he'd won me something precious."

I waited. I knew this story. I knew its shape.

"It died in two days," she said. "He buried it in a cereal box behind the apartment building. Cried like a baby. I thought—if he can love something that small that much, maybe he can learn to love me right."

She turned her face to the window. The machinery breathed for her now, a rhythm more patient than any lover's.

"You're like him," she said. "You love things that can't love you back."

The goldfish rose to the surface, mouth opening and closing in silent testimony.

"I'm scared," I said, and it came out small, shameful. I was forty-six years old, and I wanted my mother to tell me she'd fixed everything, that she'd made it right, that the goldfish would live forever and the dog would stop crying and Sarah would come back with the nice bowls and learn to love me right.

"Baby," she said, and she was somewhere else already, somewhere with the goldfish and the home runs and all the things we'd watched leave us anyway. "You just have to keep swinging."