Riddles by the Pool

The gray hair glinted in the harsh sunlight as Elena smoothed her ponytail. Forty-one, and here she was at the Ritz-Carlton with Richard, playing marriage counselor's suggestion: reconnect. Six months after the affair, this was the prescription. A weekend away. Talk. Swim. Remember who you were.

She stood at the edge of the infinity pool, turquoise water spilling toward an artificial horizon. The air smelled of chlorine and coconut sunscreen. Richard was already in the shallow end, floating on his back like something dead, eyes closed against the sky.

"Coming in?" he called, without opening his eyes.

"In a minute."

She turned away from the pool and there it was—the sphinx. Some pretentious statue the hotel had imported, Egyptian revival kitsch with perfect marble breasts and the face of a cat. The riddle-maker. What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening. She'd always hated that riddle. The answer was man, but the real answer was loss, was time eating you piece by piece.

What walks on four legs? A child crawling. Two legs? You, young and whole. Three legs? You, old and leaning. Four legs?

You, when you've forgiven him.

Because then you're crawling back to something that broke you.

Richard had climbed out of the pool. Water ran down his chest, dripping from the hair she used to run her fingers through in bed. He toweled off, approached her, dripping onto the hot stone deck.

"You're overthinking again," he said, reading her perfectly. He always could. Even through the worst of it, he'd known what she was feeling. That was the terrible part—still being known by the person who'd shattered you.

"Just admiring the sphinx," she said.

He laughed. "It's hideous."

"It's asking us something."

"Elena."

"What is it, Richard? What's the riddle? What does the woman do when the man who promised forever needed something else for six months?"

"I'm trying. I'm here trying."

"I feel like a zombie," she said, the words falling out like something dead. "Just going through motions. The motions of forgiveness. The motions of us."

He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. His palm was warm, wet. Familiar.

"Then let's be alive," he said. "Whatever that means. Even if it's messy."

Behind them, the sphinx stared out over the pool with its enigmatic cat smile, holding secrets in stone. Elena looked at Richard, really looked at him, and saw the gray in his own hair now, matching hers. Time had marked them both.

"Okay," she said. "Let's try alive."

She didn't know if alive meant staying. She didn't know if alive meant leaving. She just knew she was tired of being the answer to someone else's riddle.