Electric Current

The pool had been his idea, of course. Marcus always needed something to show off to the neighbors. Now it was just a chlorine-filled monument to our fifteen-year mistake, its surface still and opaque in the August heat. I'd drained it twice since he left, but the water kept coming back, collecting leaves and sadness with equal persistence.

The dog — Buster, a neurotic terrier with abandonment issues that rivaled my own — paced the perimeter, barking at nothing. At least someone was still guarding the perimeter of this suburban fortress we'd built together. I'd given Marcus the house. I kept the dog. Some would call it a foolish trade.

A severed cable lay coiled near the patio where the cable guy had cut it last week when I finally cancelled the premium package. We hadn't watched anything together in years anyway. The severed end of the cable reminded me of how things end: not with explosions or dramatic gestures, but with administrative phone calls and technicians in dusty trucks, cutting connections that had been dead for years.

I'd come out here intending to start swimming again. I used to swim competitively in college, back when my body was something I honed rather than something I just carted around. But looking at the pool now, all I could see was the diving board where Marcus's brother had drunkenly fallen and broken his wrist at our Fourth of July party three years ago. The concrete where his sister had cornered me and whispered, You know he's seeing someone, right?

Thunder rumbled in the distance. The sky was turning that particular shade of purple-gray that means something's about to break.

Then it came — lightning, forking down to strike the oak tree in the yard beyond the pool. For a split second, everything was illuminated: the cracks in the pool deck, Buster's concerned face, the abandoned float half-deflated near the deep end, the severed cable glistening in the sudden brightness.

The air pressure dropped. Rain began to fall, hot and heavy, flattening my hair against my skull. Buster scrambled toward the back door. But I stood there, letting myself be soaked, feeling something crack open inside me that had been closed for a very long time.

The storm had finally arrived. I wasn't drowning anymore. I was just beginning to swim.