The Art of Drowning

Mara stood at the edge of the community pool, chlorine stinging her nostrils, watching the evening swimming lessons. The children's kicks churned the water into froth. At forty-three, she was supposedly too old for this kind of nostalgia trip, but here she was anyway.

The bull of a man—her ex-husband's brother, David—lounged on a deck chair nearby, nursing a lukewarm beer. He'd cornered her at the worst possible moment, right after she'd spotted Elena across the pool deck. Elena, her former best friend, the woman who'd chosen David's side when everything fell apart.

"You remember that baseball game?" David asked, his voice like gravel. "When you were twenty-two?"

She did. Memorial Day weekend, a minor league stadium, cheap seats in the sun. They'd been a group then—Mara, Elena, David, Mara's soon-to-be-husband. Elena had worn that ridiculous baseball cap, the one with the oversized foam bull horns. They'd drunk overpriced beer and laughed until their ribs ached, their friendship stretched taut and golden between them like a telephone wire across a valley.

That was before Elena slept with her husband. Before Mara caught them. Before she learned that friendship could be as fragile as tissue paper in a hurricane.

"I remember," Mara said. She turned away from the pool, from the swimming children who knew nothing of betrayal. Elena caught her eye from across the deck, raised a hand in a tentative wave. Mara didn't wave back. Some things, once submerged, never resurface intact.

David cracked another beer. "She still asks about you, you know."

Mara walked toward the parking lot, leaving them both behind. The evening air felt heavy, like swimming through someone else's memory. She'd played the game, taken her cuts, and struck out looking. That was the thing about friendship: sometimes you got walked, and sometimes you just got hit by the pitch and limped away to the dugout, alone.