Riddles in the Sand

The baseball cracked against the bat—a sound like the world splitting open. Mark turned to me, grinning, with that boyish enthusiasm I'd fallen for seven years ago. Behind him, the palm trees swayed in the San Diego heat, their fronds like beckoning fingers against an indigo sky. We were pretending to be strangers again, our fifth anniversary trip supposed to rekindle something that had been slowly extinguishing for months.

'What are you thinking?' he asked, his palm warm against mine. That was his question—the one he always asked, expecting an answer he could parse, a riddle with a solution.

I was thinking of our honeymoon in Egypt, of standing before the Sphinx at dawn, how we'd marveled at its weathered face half-buried in sand. Mark had called it a miracle of survival. I'd thought it looked lonely—half-lion, half-human, caught between worlds, belonging to none. We'd made a pact then: we would never become one of those couples who ran out of words. But somewhere between mortgages and miscarriages, between his late nights at the firm and my stalled dissertation, we had.

The baseball game roared around us. I pulled my hand from his grasp.

'I'm thinking about riddles,' I said. 'How the Sphinx asked hers, but never stayed for the answer.'

His smile faltered. The crowd erupted as someone scored. In that moment, I realized I didn't want to rekindle anything. Some things burn out because they're supposed to.

'The answer,' I said, standing up, 'is that we stopped asking the right questions.'

I walked toward the exit, past the palm trees and toward the Pacific, leaving Mark in the stands. Behind me, the baseball game continued—innings stretching out, endlessly beginning again.