Chlorine and Regret

The apartment was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the rhythmic scratching of Barnaby, her elderly cat, against the scratching post in the corner. Elena stared at the supplement organizer on her kitchen counter—rows of pills and capsules, the prescribed vitamin D regiment yellow against the white plastic. Forty-two years old and suddenly fragile, bones porous as her marriage had become.

She dropped a handful of spinach into the pan, watching it wilt into nothingness, much like she felt most days since David moved out three months ago. The smell of garlic and olive oil filled the small kitchen, but it was the memory of chlorine that caught in her throat.

The community pool downstairs. Where she'd sat last night at 2 AM, legs dangling in the water, listening to the distant echo of a baseball game from the sports bar two blocks over. She and David had met at a baseball game—Giants versus Dodgers, 2014. He'd bought her a overpriced beer and explained the intricacies of the infield fly rule. She'd pretended to care because his eyes crinkled when he was passionate about something.

Now the pool was just another place she couldn't bring herself to visit during normal hours, when normal people swam laps and children shrieked with the joy she couldn't seem to access anymore.

Barnaby wound around her ankles, purring loudly, demanding breakfast. The only male in her life who hadn't left, though he was mostly interested in the tuna she was opening.

"You're lucky," she told him, scratching behind his ears. "You don't have to rebuild yourself at forty-two. You just sleep and eat and sometimes knock things off shelves."

The spinach was ready. She plated it with two eggs—protein for bone health, the doctor had said. Everything was about maintenance now. Maintenance of a body that felt unfamiliar, maintenance of a life that had been halved.

Outside, someone laughed. She glanced through the window to see a young couple walking hand in hand, the woman wearing a baseball cap, both of them glowing with that particular optimism of people who hadn't yet been hollowed out by loss.

Elena turned away, sat at her small kitchen table, and ate her breakfast while Barnaby watched with yellow eyes, patient as the tide. The vitamins could wait. Some things, you had to swallow on an empty stomach.