What We Keep in Water

The vitamin supplements sat on her nightstand - a chaotic rainbow of promises. Vitamin D for bones she didn't break anymore, folic acid for a pregnancy that wasn't happening, B-complex for energy she couldn't summon. Three years of trying, and her body had become a chemistry experiment conducted in the dark.

Mark's goldfish, a stubborn comet named Lazarus, had outlived three apartments and their marriage counseling sessions. She'd bought it as a joke during their first year together - a symbol of how something so fragile could survive in the wrong environment. Now it swam in its illuminated bowl on the kitchen counter, its orange scales flashing like trapped sunset.

The summer storm broke at 2 AM. Lightning fractured the bedroom, turning the vitamin bottles into silhouettes of tiny skyscrapers. Mark didn't wake. He never did anymore - not since the second miscarriage, not since she'd started marking time in ovulation cycles and negative pregnancy tests.

She found herself at the kitchen counter, watching Lazarus navigate his artificial currents. The lightning flashed again, illuminating the condensation on the window where she'd traced their names with her finger three months ago, before wiping them clean.

"What are we doing?" she whispered to the fish.

Lazarus rose to the surface, mouth opening and closing in silent testimony. She thought about how they'd kept this creature alive through cross-state moves and marital breakdowns, how they remembered to feed it even when they forgot to feed themselves or their marriage. The goldfish was the only thing that still required care from both of them.

The vitamin regimen was due. She dry-swallowed the pills - that bitter explosion of synthetic hope. Down the hatch, the promise that next month could be different, that some combination of chemicals and prayers might finally work.

Mark appeared in the doorway, shirtless, backlit by another lightning strike.

"Can't sleep?"

"The storm."

He moved beside her, staring into the bowl. "He's getting bigger."

"Lazarus."

"I know what I named him." He turned, and for the first time in months, he really looked at her. "I cancelled the vasectomy consultation."

The lightning chose that moment to strike somewhere close. The kitchen flooded with stark, terrible illumination. She saw the dark circles under his eyes, the way his shoulders had begun to curve inward, the exhaustion she'd been too self-absorbed to notice.

"Why?"

"Because," he said, voice cracking, "because I keep thinking about what happens if we wake up in five years and it's just us. And the goldfish."

She pressed her hand against her lower abdomen, where hope and despair had waged their silent war. The vitamins dissolved inside her, useless and necessary all at once. Outside, the rain fell harder, washing the world clean.