Surface Tension

The chlorinated water lapped against the pool's edge, a metronome marking the slow erosion of Elena's patience. She sat on a lounge chair in her neighbor's backyard, nursing a lukewarm rosé, watching the sunset turn the water the color of a bruise.

"How's your summer been?" Greg asked, dropping into the chair beside her. His khaki shorts were still wet from his recent dip.

Elena's husband, Marcus, was across the yard, deep in conversation with Greg's wife about their sons' travel baseball league. The older boy had pitched a no-hitter yesterday. Everyone was supposed to care.

"Fine," Elena said. "Just fine."

Her phone buzzed in her bag. A reminder: Vitamin D supplement, 7:00 PM. She'd been taking them since her doctor appointment last month, since the blood work showed she was deficient in everything except exhaustion and resentment.

"You should have brought Buster," Greg said. "Dogs are allowed. We have the fence up and everything."

Buster was at home, probably sleeping on Elena's side of the bed, the only creature who seemed to notice she'd been pulling away from Marcus for months. She'd stopped bringing him anywhere. She'd stopped doing a lot of things.

"He doesn't like the water," she lied.

Greg's wife appeared with a platter of something green. "Spinach salad! Fresh from the farmer's market, nothing but good things for you."

Elena took a bowl and picked at it, the chlorinated air suddenly too thick to breathe. The baseball conversation had shifted to fall travel teams and whose kid had the better arm. Marcus laughed at something—the right kind of laugh, the performative kind he used at office parties. The kind that made Elena wonder what other parts of him were rehearsed.

She remembered standing in the vitamin aisle at CVS last week, crying over a bottle of Omega-3s. The clerk had asked if she was okay, and she'd nodded, unable to explain that she didn't know what was wrong, exactly, only that something had been wrong for a long time.

Marcus caught her eye from across the yard and raised his eyebrows: You okay? The old code.

Elena nodded back, automatic.

"The pool's nice this time of day," Greg said, standing up. "Water's still warm from the sun."

Elena set down her spinach salad, untouched. She thought about Buster waiting at home, about the baseball games she'd sat through for years, about the vitamins she took to stay healthy in a life that didn't feel like hers anymore.

"You're right," she said, standing up too. "I think I'll go in."

Marcus was still watching her. She could feel it as she walked toward the pool's edge, the surface tension holding her up until she didn't want it to anymore.