What We Keep

The cardboard boxes stacked in the hallway formed a papier-mâché monument to thirty years of marriage. Martin sat on the floor, not because he wanted to, but because his knees had given out somewhere around box seven.

Barnaby—the elderly golden retriever who'd once caught a frisbee mid-air but now mostly slept in patches of sunlight—nudged Martin's hand with a wet nose. The dog's cataracts had turned his eyes a milky blue, like marbles left too long in a glass jar.

"You too, buddy," Martin said. "You too."

Sarah had left explicit instructions. She was keeping the house. She was keeping the daughter, at least for the school year. Martin was taking the retirement account—such as it was after the market's latest tantrum—and whatever he could fit in the Honda.

He lifted a ceramic bowl from the box. Inside, a single goldfish darted in circles, its scales catching the afternoon light through the window. Sarah's goldfish. The one she'd won at a carnival during their first date, back when such things seemed charming rather than pathetic. The fish had outlasted three cars, two promotions, and now, apparently, the marriage itself.

"Barnaby," he called out. "Who gets the fish?"

The dog didn't respond. Dogs rarely answered rhetorical questions.

Martin set the bowl on the floor. The goldfish pressed its mouth against the glass, opening and closing in a silent scream or maybe just breathing. He couldn't remember which.

From the closet, he retrieved a shoebox tied with twine. Inside: a baseball, scuffed and grass-stained, signed by some minor-league players from a game they'd attended in 1998. He'd caught it when it fouled into the stands. Sarah had taken a picture. They'd framed it. They'd been so proud of that small, random piece of luck.

The baseball felt heavy in his hand, heavier than a ball should be. He held it up, squinting at the faded signatures. One of them might have been real.

Barnaby whimpered from the doorway.

"I know," Martin said. "I know."

He placed the baseball on top of the goldfish bowl, where it rolled to a stop against the ceramic rim. A universe contained in two feet of floor space: a fish that wouldn't die, a ball that represented something he couldn't quite remember, and a dog who loved him anyway.

"Sarah can keep the house," he whispered to the empty room. "But I'm taking the damn fish."

Barnaby thumped his tail against the doorframe. Martin packed the bowl carefully between two sweaters and wondered which of them had actually caught that baseball, or whether it mattered anymore. The fish continued its endless circles, oblivious to being the prize in a custody battle it had never asked for.