The Art of Drowning

Marcus found the bottle in her medicine cabinet—orange vitamins shaped like cartoon bears. Sarah had been taking them since before the miscarriage, back when they still believed in preventative measures, back when they thought two glasses of wine and a dozen supplements could keep the darkness at bay. Now they just floated in his stomach like little promises she'd never get to keep.

He flushed them.

Sarah was at her sister's again, swimming laps in that outdoor pool she loved even in November. Marcus imagined her cutting through the cold water, her blonde hair plastered to her skull, emerging from the chlorine blue like something reborn. She always looked so alive when she'd been swimming, skin flushed, eyes bright, smelling of salt and exhaustion. It was the only time she didn't look like she was waiting for something else to go wrong.

He sat on the edge of the tub and thought about the email he'd received that morning—his former assistant, now working at a competitor, asking if he was happy. Not professionally happy. Actually, truly happy. The question had sat in his inbox like a stone.

The bathroom mirror showed him a man whose hair was thinning at thirty-six, whose wife cried in the shower, who'd stopped writing poetry three years ago because he'd run out of things that didn't sound bitter. He'd become the kind of person who flushed his wife's vitamins because he couldn't stand one more reminder of the life they'd planned together—the one where they'd have a nursery, where she'd glow with pregnancy instead of fading by degrees.

Sarah came home smelling of chlorine, wet hair dripping onto her shirt. She found him in the bathroom and stopped in the doorway. The space between them felt vast, filled with things unsaid.

"Marcus?"

He couldn't speak. He just pulled her close, smelling the pool water on her skin, feeling her heartbeat against his chest. Some moments, love was the only thing keeping them from going under entirely. Others, it felt like the weight that would finally pull them down.

"Let's go somewhere warm," she whispered. "Somewhere with an orange sun that actually warms you."

He nodded against her wet hair. They'd keep swimming together, for now.