What We Keep

The lightning strike that took the oak tree also took the kitchen window, and in the weeks after David left, I woke to the smell of rain on sheetrock. Some mornings I'd find myself staring at the empty frame, waiting for something to come through—clarity, maybe, or at least the mail truck.

I inherited the goldfish in the split. A memorial service for a relationship, conducted in a five-gallon tank on the counter. David had bought it on impulse during that bleak February when his mother died, naming it Bernice after her. The fish floated to the surface whenever I approached the glass, its orange scales dulling in the kitchen's fluorescent light. I fed it daily with the grim determination of someone performing a ritual whose meaning had been lost to time.

The dog, elderly now, had been David's running companion. Barnaby still waited by the door each evening at six, thumping his tail against the baseboard with increasingly desperate rhythm. I started taking him on walks myself, though I lacked David's endurance. We'd make it to the park before my breath gave out, sitting together on the bench while he watched squirrels with appetite he could no longer pursue. Some days I talked to him. Some days we just watched the neighborhood perform its ordinary motions.

I made dinner for one that night, sautéing spinach in garlic and olive oil until it collapsed into something soft and dark. David had always hated the way spinach clung to his teeth, the iron taste he said reminded him of swallowing pennies. I ate it standing over the sink, letting the oil stain my chin, not caring. I'd stopped wearing makeup. Stopped dyeing the gray from my hair. Stopped performing the careful maintenance of being the woman David had married.

The storm began while I washed dishes—another summer evening, another spectacular display from the gods. Lightning crackled against the dark like veins in marble, and the goldfish tank glowed with each flash. Barnaby whined from the bedroom, and I dried my hands on my thighs, going to sit with him on the floor.

'You know,' I said to the dog, whose muzzle had gone white as snow, 'I think he loved us. I just think he was finished with being the person who loved us.'

Barnaby rested his head on my knee, sighing. The fish swam in slow circles. The spinach sat heavy in my stomach. I stayed there on the bedroom floor, listening to the rain finally find its way through the kitchen window, and realized I wasn't waiting for David to come back anymore. I was waiting for something else—for the weight of him to lift from the rooms, for the life I'd made to finally feel like mine.

Some mornings, the kitchen still smelled like someone else's marriage. But the coffee I made was strong enough, the dog was warm against my leg, and the fish—God help me—kept swimming through its small, illuminated ordinary days. I supposed that was enough. For now, that would have to be enough.