Chlorine Twilight

The pool was empty at 2 AM, the water still and glass-black under the security lights. I'd been coming here every night for three weeks since the diagnosis. Vitamin D deficiency, they'd said, but we both knew what that meant—years of office work, of hiding from the sun, from life, from anything that might require feeling too much.

She'd left me six months ago. Took the baseball cards my father gave me—the 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie card I'd kept in a safe deposit box since college. "You don't even like baseball," she'd said, which was true. But my father had loved it, and I'd loved that he loved it. The cards were my palm pressed against his memory.

Now I floated on my back, staring at the ceiling where a palm frond shadow swayed from the decorative tree outside the fence. The chlorine stung my eyes, or maybe I was crying. It was hard to tell anymore.

The corporate wellness program had sent me home with supplements and a pamphlet about sunlight exposure. Vitamin this, vitamin that. As if a pill could fix what three marriages and countless failed promotions had broken.

My phone buzzed on the patio chair. Her number. I let it ring.

The water held me, buoyant and suffocating. I thought about diving to the bottom and staying there, seeing how long I could hold my breath. Not to die—just to know where my limit was. Where anyone's limit really is.

Instead I swam to the ladder, hauled my dripping body out, and answered the phone.

"I still have the cards," she said.

"I know," I said. "I don't want them back."

"Then what do you want?"

The palm frond cast its shadow across my feet. The pool water lapped against the concrete like a heartbeat.

"I want to know why we ever thought we could save each other," I said, and hung up before she could answer.

The vitamin supplements sat on the patio table, untouched. Tomorrow, I'd take them. Tomorrow, I'd call my mother. Tomorrow, I'd start over. But tonight, I just watched the water move, and let myself be nothing at all.