Goldfish in the Deep End

Mara watched her husband across the pool, already on his third papaya cocktail before noon. His hair—that thick, salt-and-pepper sweep she'd once run her fingers through every morning—was thinning at the crown, much like their marriage. She'd cut hers yesterday. Eight inches gone, pixie-short and defiant. He hadn't noticed yet.

The resort's infinity pool blurred into the Pacific, endless blue meeting endless blue. Below, in the ornamental pond, dozens of goldfish flashed orange and white in the sunlight, swimming in mindless circles. That's us, she thought. Beautiful from a distance, going nowhere.

'Steve,' she said, when he finally waded over, drink in hand. 'I want a divorce.'

He set his papaya on the mosaic tiles. 'Can it wait until after dinner? They have that torchlit place by the palms.'

The palm fronds rustled above them, twenty feet of tropical indifference. 'No. It can't.'

He looked at her then, really looked. 'You cut your hair.'

'I did.'

'It makes you look... hard.' Like someone else, he didn't say.

Mara thought about the goldfish again—how they'd eat each other if you didn't feed them enough. How they'd keep swimming until they died, not knowing they were trapped in a pond too small for their survival. 'We're eating at each other, Steve. That's what happens when you put two things in a space that can't sustain them anymore.'

He finished his papaya cocktail, crushing the little paper umbrella. 'You said you wanted kids, that first night. By the pool in college.'

'That was twelve years ago.'

'You still want them?'

The goldfish surfaced, gasping. 'No. But I want to want them. I want to want you.'

Steve nodded slowly, understanding settling over him like the heat rising off the pool deck. 'So what now?'

'Now you finish your drink. Then we go pack.'

'And the goldfish?' he asked, something like grief in his voice.

'They swim. Until they don't.'

She left him there by the infinity edge, papaya melting on ice, palm shadows stretching long across the water. In the pond below, the fish kept swimming, and she finally stopped waiting for them to grow legs and walk away.