Still Water

The pool had been draining for three days when Marcus finally decided to cut the cable. Sarah had been the one who arranged the service call, scribbling it on a calendar magnet she'd stuck to the refrigerator—calendar magnets being the currency of their shared domestic life. Now the appointment had come and gone, and the technician's note on the door felt like a final judgment: SERVICE TERMINATED PER REQUEST.

He stood in the living room where the coaxial cable curled like a dead snake across the floorboards, coiled and indifferent. Sarah had loved her shows—those reality competitions where people voted each other off islands, out of kitchens, out of love. She'd said they were stupid, but she watched them anyway, and Marcus had watched her watching them, finding something tender in how she'd pull her knees to her chest during the elimination rounds.

In the backyard, the pool was a concrete wound in the earth, its blue surface now cracked and revealed beneath the receding water. They'd bought the house because of it—because Sarah had dreams of summer parties, of floating on inflatable rafts with something rosé in hand, of teaching the children they didn't have yet how to swim. But life had filled with other things. Late nights at the firm. Arguments about money. The IVF treatments that failed three times before she said she couldn't do it anymore, couldn't keep hoping against the evidence of her own body.

She'd left two months ago. Just packed a suitcase and taken her car, leaving behind the house and the mortgage and the goldfish.

The goldfish—named, ironically, Lucky—swam in endless circles in his bowl on the kitchen counter. Sarah had won him at a carnival, seven years ago, and they'd both joked about how he wasn't supposed to survive the week. Now he was their longest shared accomplishment. Marcus fed him each morning, watching the orange scales flash in the kitchen light, thinking about survival. About how some things kept swimming even when the water around them grew stale.

He walked outside to the pool's edge. The water was low enough now that he could see the leaves gathered at the bottom, decaying into something that might have been soil if given enough time. He thought about draining it completely, about calling someone to fill it in, plant grass over it. But that would require energy he didn't have, decisions he wasn't ready to make.

The cable company would send a final bill. The pool would eventually become a breeding ground for mosquitoes. The goldfish would probably outlive them both.

Marcus went back inside and sprinkled flakes into the bowl. Lucky surfaced, mouth opening and closing in that perpetual hunger, and Marcus watched, realizing he was doing the same thing—showing up for another day, opening and closing, swimming in circles because what else was there to do.