The Art of Drowning

The padel court smelled of rubber and sweat, of Thursday evenings that used to mean something. Marco served hard, the ball cracking against the back wall—angry, precise, everything our marriage hadn't been. I returned it lazily, watching condensation slick the glass walls that enclosed us. We were playing at the club where we'd met, three years and a lifetime ago.

'You're not even trying,' he said, retrieving the ball from the corner.

'I'm trying to decide if I want to win or lose,' I replied, which was both true and not true.

The real conversation we needed to have kept dissolving into meaningless volleys. We'd sold our apartment last week. The buyers wanted to move in before the baby came. Our baby. Except there was no baby anymore—there'd been complications at twenty weeks, silent and catastrophic, and now there was just paperwork and apologies nobody wanted to voice.

After the match, we sat by the club's fountain. Goldfish—scarlet and impossibly bright—darted through the dark water, mouth-gaping at the surface. I'd once thought they looked like they were laughing. Now I knew they were just drowning, over and over, in the only world they'd ever know.

'My mother says we should try again,' Marco said, watching the fish.

'Your mother says we should sell the club and move to Buenos Aires.'

'She means well.' He touched my hand, then pulled away. 'So do we try again?'

I watched a goldfish flash through the water, bright as a wound, beautiful and entirely insufficient. The padel racket leaned against my chair. The fountain burbled its artificial song. somewhere nearby, someone laughed.

'No,' I said. 'I don't think we do.'

Marco nodded. We watched the fish a while longer. Then we packed up our things, and I walked home alone through the gathering dusk, feeling like I'd finally, after all this time, learned to breathe underwater.