Drowning in Goldfish Pond

The pool had gone green, same as her eyes when she looked at me lately. I sat on the concrete edge, iphone glowing against my thigh, while Maya floated on her back in the center, hair fanned out like mermaid seawater-dark.

"You got the message," she said, not a question. The water lapped at her shoulders.

"Your lawyer's secretary called while I was replacing the cable box. Something about asset division."

"Asset," Maya repeated, testing the word. "That's what we are now."

The goldfish pond had been her anniversary gift three years back—a ceramic bowl with two tiny carp, Comet and Flash. I'd dug the hole myself, laid the stones, installed the pump that hummed beneath the water lilies. Now Flash floated belly-up among the fallen leaves, and I couldn't remember when I'd last fed them.

"The house," I said. "The pool. The retirement fund. Those are assets."

"You didn't want the pool." She treaded water now, facing me. "You said it was suburban performative nonsense. That we were too old for—"

"I was thirty-three, Maya. I thought I was too old for everything."

My iphone buzzed again. Another reminder from my calendar app: Marriage Counseling, 7pm Tuesday. Like it could fix what seven years had quietly extinguished, one unpaid bill and cold shoulder at a time.

"You know what's funny?" She swam to the edge and pulled herself up, water sheeting off her body like gold scales in the afternoon light. "I stopped loving you somewhere between installing the cable and buying the goldfish. But I couldn't tell you, because you were already drowning, and I didn't want to be the one who let you sink."

The pool filter clicked on, filling the silence with mechanical breathing.

"So now?"

"Now," she said, wrapping a towel around herself, "I'm throwing you a lifeline. Whether you grab it is up to you."

I looked at my phone, at the text I'd been avoiding all morning. Not from a lawyer. From my father, asking if I'd been swimming lately, if I still remembered how to float.

I stood up. The water looked different now—not green, but alive.

"Teach me," I said.