“Toby.”
“But couldn’t we—”
“Don’t, Toby.”
I couldn’t hold back my tears. “But I’ll do everything differently.”
“You weren’t the one who had to do things differently.”
“I can’t handle this alone.”
“Sure you can.”
“But I love you.”
Remember how you looked away then, like you always used to? Your eyes too heavy, a bottomless depth inside them. I was torn away from you; I fell and I fell, and then splash into a bottle full of fizzing tears. A whirling vortex sucked me deeper and deeper below the water, propelled by the force of you looking away. In a panic, I kicked my legs and vainly groped for purchase on smooth, plastic walls.
“I love you!” I tried to scream, but my love rose in bubbles to the surface and burst apart. Weakened, I wheeled my arms, pounding on the plastic. And behind the label you looked away; you didn’t see that I was drowning. I sank down in a slow spiral, hitting the bottom of the 7-Up bottle with a muffled thump.
My lungs filled up with tears as I whispered, “Please . . .”
And you said, “I need time.”
I came up then, spluttering and gasping for breath. Soaked and flabbergasted, I let the lie of those words descend on me. As soon as I was able, I clambered up and staggered out of the living room.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll get you some aspirin,” I mumbled stupidly.
“Wait!”
But I had already gone through the kitchen and didn’t hear you. Hanging from the banister, I lowered myself to the upstairs floor. After everything I had been through, after the countless times I had risked my life to take Bubbles to you, trying in vain to still my love for you with my love for you, and scrambling up from the pounding surf of a dying Earth . . . you need time? How much more time do you think the world will give you, Sophie?
I crashed into the bulging ceiling, and it groaned beneath my weight. If the house had given way right then, I wouldn’t have cared. But I wasn’t even granted that much mercy—I was predestined to go down in your cold reality, not in my own illusion.
The bedroom. My picture wasn’t on your wall. I wanted to believe it had fallen and splintered, I wanted to believe that more than anything in the world. Other photo frames lay broken on the ceiling: holiday snapshots, family, your friends. I knew them all intimately. Bunched-up sweater, the one I bought you in Paris. Open backgammon board. Dented candles. Upside-down bed. Broken glass. Buddha figurine. Not a trace of my picture.
The Earth turned away in shame.
Bubbles rolled on his stomach and floated to the surface.
On what had been my side of the bed I saw someone else’s sneakers, someone else’s watch, and how can I describe what comes next, how can I continue, I wonder how so much of my life could have occurred outside of me, and I hadn’t known, or had I known after all, didn’t that only make it worse, on to the bathroom, trendy jeans, trendy shirt, blood between the tiles, he must have been taking a shower, the cast iron bathtub had broken off and crushed him, his wallet in his pocket, student ID, Tom was his name, Tom something, fair-haired kid, longish hair, completely your type, the bathroom window was open, what have you done to him, dammit that same fucking night you spread your legs for him, what have you done to me?
Back downstairs you were leaning out of the kitchen window, stooped beneath the weight of missed opportunities. You were crying. Below me, on the gangway leading away from you, the ID cards with his picture on them slowly fluttered down. I gazed at you cold-faced. Yes, you needed time for yourself, and yes, I understood you needed to discover who you wanted to be. I understood your desire for a quieter place without promises and confessions. I would even have forgiven you your mistakes. You were my world. But the world had repelled everything. More logic than any human being could comprehend and more human beings than was comprehensibly logical . . . anything but the revolting image of you crying for someone else and the dawning realization that there was no longer any room for me in this reality you had created.
And the goldfish?
He deserved something better.
It was like a dream at the bottom of the world: I was sitting on a tree branch stretched out low beneath the shore of the hanging lake. My legs were dangling over nothing and above me I could see my own reflection in the water, burning in the sun dipping up behind the horizon. When I tapped the 7-Up bottle, a shiver ran through Bubbles’s delicate fins and he turned his face toward me.
“Go on, boy,” I said, twisting the cap from the bottle. “You’re free.”
I held the bottle up and poked the top through the water surface. Air bubbles gurgled down and stayed afloat on the scales of gravity. Bubbles watched it all skeptically. Then I reached further, pushing the bottle all the way under and turning it over.
And Bubbles flipped over as well. Suddenly he was swimming upside-down, slithering skittishly from one end of the bottle to the other. The air bubbles escaped and I gently rocked the bottle back and forth until Bubbles discovered the opening of the screw cap and peeked curiously through it.
“Go on,” I whispered, shaking the drops of falling water from my hair. “You’re free.”
For one more moment, the goldfish lingered. Then he swam out of the bottleneck. He looked around, wary. Suddenly his fins whirled and bristled, and he darted away into the deep.
So that was it. Bye, Bubbles. I smiled, feeling a bit melancholy. But my melancholy was soon washed away in a sense of fulfillment when I pulled the 7-Up bottle from the lake and finally, after such a long journey, let it go. I watched as the bottle tumbled down and disappeared from view. Then I straightened up. I was surprised to see Bubbles gazing at me from behind the reflection of my face. He had come back to the surface and pursed his lips over the water, as if he was telling me a secret, causing a minute ripple. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the image. Why did it evoke so much love inside me? And then I understood. Of course: Bubbles wasn’t the one who was upside-down . . . I was upside-down.
It was all just a matter of perspective.
Looking at it from the other side, the world was still right-side up.
I stripped naked and took a deep breath. I dunked my head through the surface of the water, enjoying the sudden sensation of coldness and fizzing air bubbles coming down and rinsing my face clean. Wobbly, I rose up on the branch, groping into the water with my arms, now submerged to the waist. And when I pushed off, gravity took a hold of me and I slipped like a diver into Bubbles’s world.
I came up. Treading water, I started laughing. I had forgotten what normal looked like. Or normal . . . even though I was on the right side of up and down, my hair stood up in wet strands and made it rain in the universe. That made me laugh even harder. On the shore, trees lifted their arms like children being dressed in sweaters by their mothers. Somewhere a branch snapped, falling straight up into the sky.
Bubbles darted playfully around me, a streak of orange in the deep green waters. I dove under and we tumbled and somersaulted until my lungs felt fit to burst. Every time I resurfaced I felt a little lighter. Finally we swam out toward the middle of the lake in our newly acquired normality, side by side, the goldfish and me.
There, in my own little place in the world, I let go.
I don’t know whether my sleep was dreamless because there were no falling stars or because a teasing twig in the crown of the tree was poking my back, but when I woke up the next morning a dreary fog was clinging to the Earth’s surface. All around me, no matter where I looked, was gray. I wondered where the fog had come from. A muted silence hung over everything, and any sound I made stayed suspended inside it and made me more aware of myself.