What We Keep in the Bowl

The spinach had gone slimy in the crisper drawer, much like everything else between us. Elena moved through the kitchen with the precision of someone who'd already mourned this marriage, packing her life into boxes while I sat on the counter with a glass of wine that tasted like resignation.

"The cable's in your name," she said, not looking up from the tape gun. "You'll have to call and cancel."

"I might keep it."

"Why? You never watch anything. You just stare at the screen until you fall asleep."

She wasn't wrong. For six months, I'd been existing in the blue light of reality TV reruns, while she'd been existing somewhere else entirely. I didn't learn about her affair from her—I found out when she accidentally left her email open on the shared iPad. Some people get cheated on with passion. I got cheated on with a man who sold artisanal soap and described himself as 'spiritually awakened.'

"What about Roger?" I asked.

She paused, a box marked BOOKS between us. "He's not Roger. His name is Jack. And no, I'm not moving in with him. I need to figure out who I am without being someone's wife first."

The insult was that she needed to leave me to find herself. The comfort was that she wasn't choosing him over me—she was choosing herself over either of us.

"The goldfish stays," she said.

"Barnaby? You got him for my birthday."

"I bought him because you said you wanted something that wouldn't die if you forgot to feed it for a weekend. He's been alive for three years, Marcus. That's longer than we've been happy."

I looked at the bowl on the windowsill. Barnaby floated there, mouth opening and closing in that perpetual goldfish silence, memories resetting every seven seconds or something. Sometimes I envied him. Sometimes I wondered if we'd already had this conversation before, and we'd just forgotten.

"Take him."

"He's your fish now."

She sealed the last box and left without hugging me goodbye. The apartment was suddenly ours—mine and Barnaby's. I threw out the spinach, cancelled the cable, and watched the fish swim in endless circles, wondering if freedom was just another kind of bowl.