Following Fish

tell me

Waking time is analog. Most often it plods on reliably, but sometimes it bends and stretches, or skips like a record or tangles like a worn-out cassette tape. Memory works this way too. We can't just access memories like a digital file. We dig them up, or find them in the hanging threads of other thoughts, mixing with the molecules of smell, or splashing in the waves of a song. When I was young, making memories was born of continued exposure to a thing, but as I get older, disorientation is the main ingredient of something indelible. Davis' "I know" loosened me of my bearings in this way. Time and I froze, the sound of his voice clanging around in my echoic memory before burrowing in and making the moment inexpugnable.

Davis is thin, but he is not boney. The mattress gives way under the weight of his body causing me to roll into him until he settles. I am fatter than he is, but he is so tall that, square-inch for square-inch, the ratio feels even. I feel somehow more naked in this bathrobe than I did when I was actually naked in front of him.

We kissed earlier, at the door. First, he gently moved my hand from the doorknob to his waist and repeated the action with my other hand. Then, he smoothed my shoulders down away from my ears and smiled at me. He leaned down and I rose up on my toes to meet him. The kiss was all lip, soft and slow. It went on long enough that my hands had risen from his hips to his head, my fingers raking in piles of his hair.

It was not gross.

Now, we are barely touching. Tracing the outline of his chest, experiencing the electric millimeter between my fingertips and his skin, I realize this is how I would like to spend my time. But when I reach his heart, my hand gets heavy. I let it get drawn in and rest there. He exhales.

"Tell me." I say. It's more question than statement.

He covers my hand with both of his.

"I'm married too," he says. It is devoid of expression. I want to look at his face and see if this dead sentence reaches his eyes, but I know that I am meant to continue to hold his heart, adding pressure, dressing an invisible wound.

"My wife, Sarah. She...we...it's complicated. She left. I woke up one morning and she was gone. I thought she went to the store or for a run. After an hour, when she wasn't back, I tried calling. It rang from the bedside table. That's when I realized she was gone. She left behind everything. Her keys, her wallet, her meds."

"You," I offer.

"Me," he concedes.

He had been delivering the information about his wife dispassionately, almost monotone. But when he says "me," the tiny word gets caught in Davis's throat. It finally emerged as a rasp stuffed with the whole of his suffering.

"I called her friends for information. Finally, someone told me she had posted something on Instagram, a selfie she had taken that morning, with me sleeping in the background. She captioned it, "Don't worry, I'm fine."

He pauses for a long while. "I convinced myself it was an elaborate puzzle. Delusional, I know, but I searched for clues everywhere. I scrutinized that last photo she took, rummaged our apartment, read and re-read her journal. I went through her phone, looking for crumbs. I kept fantasizing this was a game she was playing with me, but it wasn't. It isn't. It's been over a year and she doesn't want to be found. Honestly, I can't say whether or not I believe she's alive. As a result, I'm not available, or even whole."

"I'm not a whole person either." I offer. " Living with someone who's mentally ill, it chips away at your personhood." With my free hand, I raise myself up to sitting. "Did you know she had a mood disorder when you married her?" I know that's a big assumption, but after spending the last decade looking for answers about my husband's behavior, I had a detective's eye for clues. Plus, people with heart disease or diabetes rarely leave their meds behind.

"Yes. Bipolar. Untreated when we met." He says this to the beams in the ceiling. Quiet fills the room up.

Our hands are still a neat pile on his bare chest. My other hand tucks a wild tuft of hair behind his ear. I trace the genius lines of his forehead and ride the wave of his neck until it comes to rest atop the other stacked hands.

"Are you sure you want me here? It's not too late to change your mind."

Davis rises to sit, returning my hands to me in the process. His index finger traces small concentric circles on the knee that's poking out of my robe. It should tickle.

"I'm tired of nursing this old wound. I need to feel something else. A new pain would be welcome."

"I know," I echo the agreement he made with me. Then, an odd feeling comes over me. It's the closest thing I can imagine to an epiphany. I suddenly feel like I have to do something. Not should do, not even want to do, it's a have to do feeling. It prods me to jump up and disappear to the kitchen.

I yell to him, "Don't worry, I'm coming back."

I hear him laugh through the wall. When I return, I'm holding a pen and a large journal that I found on the kitchen table. I return the bed with a bounce, arranging my legs in a cross-legged position.

Holding the journal up I ask, "May I take a page from the back?" He nods. I turn to the last page and set it open in my lap. I look from the page to Davis and from Davis to the page. I get up close to him and examine his hair, the assembly of lines that have been invited in by the smile spreading across his face. I lift up his lips to check his teeth -- like he's a horse.

"What are you doing?" He laughs. I would grab his tongue and look at that too if I had a cloth that would give me some purchase.

"I'm going to make a portrait of you."

"Can you draw?"

"I cannot!"