Short Stories

Adeline's Goldfish

Adeline was a smoker. She smoked exactly one pack a day, every day, and she had done so for as long as she could remember. The faded floral wallpaper in her apartment was so saturated in cigarette smoke that the landowner, who never said a word to anyone about anything, had told Adeline that she would need to buy new wallpaper when she moved out. After a brief moment of paralyzing shock (which was much like that of a person whose long-dead relative has appeared on their doorstep), Adeline had promised to do so, if only because she could think of nothing else to say. Upon his departure, Adeline decided that the only solution to this conundrum was to simply never find a new apartment, since Adeline was a woman of her word (and a woman who didn't even know where on earth wallpaper could be found).

Adeline didn't get out much. The gas station where she bought all of her cigarettes was on the way to the Waffle House where she worked, and that was the only trip she made, back and forth, back and forth. The only time that she left the small town that she lived in was to go to some family event, and even then, she only went if it was incredibly important. "Incredibly important" had only consisted of three things so far: her sister's wedding, her sister's divorce party, and her sister's wedding (again). The second wedding, which Adeline was sure was going to devolve to a divorce party sometime soon, hadn't been nearly as bad as the first. Her sister sent her home with a little goldfish, who had been a table centerpiece. Adeline found it in herself to stop at PetSmart, where she picked up the most generic, inexpensive fish food that she could find. She stationed the goldfish and its plastic plant on her grimy side table (after clearing it of unopened mail from the Mesozoic Era).

The goldfish became a part of her routine. Eight fish pellets before her leftover pizza breakfast and morning smoke, eight fish pellets after her fresh pizza dinner and evening smoke. Adeline didn't give the little fish a name, but it seemed plenty happy to her, and she rather liked the little flash of gold, nibbling at the surface of the water every morning. It was a little glint of sunshine in her sky of suffocating gray clouds.

Adeline was sorry for the poor thing, though; it had a tiny bowl, and all it did was swim lap after lap. Nothing for the goldfish's life ever changed. Sometimes it got to sit in a plastic baggie for a while so that Adeline could change its water, but she remembered to do so sporadically (at best). That little monogrammed centerpiece bowl from her sister's wedding was the fish's whole world. It had its plastic plant and its glass pebbles and sixteen pellets a day.

It was a soggy summer evening. Adeline sat at the cluttered table, rocking gently back and forth on uneven chair legs. She pulled out her omnipresent lighter and lit a cigarette, staring through her grimy window at the array of unattractive cement buildings. In the distance, she could spot the yellow sign of the Waffle House where she worked.

She turned her attention to her goldfish. It swam in its loop. Adeline shook her head and furrowed her brow. How miserable that poor fish must be, swimming its laps in its never-changing world. Adeline sucked in a lungful of smoke, holding it for a moment before exhaling with a deep sigh. How miserable that life must be.