Chlorine and Silence

The pool at the Ramada Inn had seen better decades. Its turquoise paint was peeling in patches, revealing the concrete beneath like wounds that wouldn't heal. Elena sat on the plastic lounge chair, her magazine unread in her lap, watching Marcus tread water in the center.

He'd been swimming laps for forty-five minutes. This was what he did now instead of talking.

"You're going to turn into a prune," she called out, her voice thin in the humid evening air.

Marcus didn't respond. Just kept pulling himself through water that was probably too warm, his strokes mechanical and precise. He'd been like this since the doctor's appointment three weeks ago. Since the word "infertility" had entered their apartment and stayed, like an unwanted roommate who paid no rent but ate all their food.

Elena's phone buzzed. Her sister: "Did you try the spinach smoothie recipe? The fertility specialist on TikTok swears by it."

She typed back: "Not yet." Then deleted it. Then: "We're taking a break."

Marcus finally stopped swimming and pulled himself up the ladder. Water streamed off him as he walked toward her, dripping onto the concrete in steady rhythms. He reached into their cooler and pulled out an orange, began peeling it with methodical slowness. The citrus scent cut through the smell of chlorine.

"My mother called," he said, not looking at her. "She wants to know if we've thought about adoption."

"And?"

"I told her we're not ready to discuss it."

He handed her a section of the orange. His fingers were wrinkled from the water.

"Marcus," she said, the word catching in her throat. "Are we? Ready, I mean. To discuss anything?"

He sat on the adjacent lounge chair, staring at the pool's still surface. A single leaf from the neglected palm tree drifted on the water, brown and solitary.

"I keep thinking," he said finally, "about how we used to come here on our anniversary. Before we started trying. Before everything became about timing and temperatures and" — he gestured at her phone — "spinach smoothies."

"We can still come here," Elena said. "We can still—"

"No we can't." His voice wasn't angry. Just tired. "Everything is different now. Even this pool. Look at it. It's the same water, but it's not the same."

He stood up and walked toward their room, the wet towel over his shoulder. The orange section in Elena's hand had grown warm in the evening air. She ate it anyway, the sweet juice sharp against her tongue, and watched the pool's surface grow dark as the sun set behind the motel office, wondering when exactly they had stopped knowing how to be two people who loved each other, and started being just two people who wanted something they couldn't have together.