Poolside Lies

I stand in the humid evening air, chlorine stinging my nostrils. The pool I can no longer afford but refuse to fill in glimmers with that deceptive, artificial blue. It's all such utter bull—the notion that maintaining this facade will somehow preserve what's already dead.

My golden retriever, Cooper, hobbles toward me on arthritic legs. He's thirteen now, his muzzle white like snow, and in his warm brown eyes I see the only unconditional love I've ever known. He rests his chin on my knee, and I scratch behind his ears, realizing this creature has witnessed my entire unraveling without judgment.

Inside, Sarah's packing. The basement holds boxes of my father's baseball card collection from when America still manufactured things and families watched games together on transistor radios. Dad believed in the sanctity of promises and the healing power of baseball metaphors. He'd call life a "curveball," though he never mentioned how you might swing and miss anyway.

The pool installer comes tomorrow. A man named Reynolds with large hands and a quiet voice. I hadn't told him about the deposit being my daughter's college fund—just another deception in the series that's characterized my marriage.

Cooper sighs against my leg. The pool pump hums, circulating water we no longer use. I fill it every spring from habit, some desperate belief that she'll come back. She called it "bullshit," a cruel echo of our first date—when she laughed at my terrible jokes about astrology.

Tomorrow I'll drain it. I've been chasing memories and trying to rebuild something that only exists in my selective nostalgia. This time, I won't tell myself stories about second chances.

I kneel beside Cooper, burying my face in his fur. The dog licks my cheek, his tongue rough and warm. Some things, he seems to say, some things remain true. I stand slowly, joints stiff in the cooling air. The pool's fake blue shimmers under the rising moon. Inside, the baseball cards wait in their boxes, artifacts of a belief system I can no longer sustain. But Cooper—Cooper is still here, and that's something.