Dead Things Don't Float

The papaya sat between us on the kitchen table, split open like a wound, its black seeds scattered like dead things. Mark didn't look up from his phone. The baseball game he'd played yesterday was still on his mind, though I couldn't tell if his team had won or lost. He'd been at the field by seven AM, leaving me to wake alone in our bed that already felt too large for two.

'I'm going swimming,' I said, though it came out like a question.

'Mm.' He was already somewhere else, his thumb scrolling through someone else's life.

The pool at the YMCA was quiet at 10 AM on a Tuesday. I slipped into the water and let it close over my head, holding my breath until my lungs burned. Down there, everything was muffled and blue. No papaya. No baseball statistics. No Mark moving through our apartment like a ghost, appearing in doorways, disappearing rooms without speaking, performing the motions of a husband without the substance. We'd both been dead for months.

I surfaced gasping. The lifeguard wasn't watching. No one was watching.

That night, I found Mark in the garage, cleaning his baseball glove with an intensity that frightened me. The way he worked the leather was almost loving.

'We need to talk,' I said.

He set down the glove. 'I know.' His voice cracked. 'I don't know who I am anymore. I don't know who we are.'

'We're zombies,' I said, and the word hung between us, ugly and true. 'Walking around eating papaya and going to work and playing softball, but we're not really here.'

He cried then, really cried, and I realized neither of us had cried since his mother died two years ago. We'd been holding our breath ever since.

'I want to come swimming with you tomorrow,' he said.

It wasn't a fix. But it was something real in a house full of props.