The Art of Treading Water

The baseball drifted through the humid August air, a white sphere against bruising twilight. Marcus watched from the cheap seats, alone, nursing a warm beer. Three years ago, Julie would have been beside him, stealing peanuts and making terrible predictions about the next pitch. Now the seat beside him held only the ghost of her perfume—something with vanilla and jasmine that still haunted him in department stores.

He remembered their last summer together, the swimming hole where they'd escape the city heat. She'd dive in first, always fearless, while he dipped toes into murky water, calculating risks he'd eventually take for her sake. The river had claimed her the following spring—not swimming, but driving on wet roads, the kind of cruel irony that made Marcus hate the universe sometimes.

The crowd erupted. Home run. Marcus stood mechanically, clapped without really feeling it. This was what his life had become: going through motions, bearing the weight of days that meant nothing. He'd sold their shared house last month. The new owners were probably repainting the dining room that awful yellow she'd loved, scrubbing away the last traces of them.

"You gonna finish that?" The woman next to him gestured at his untouched popcorn. She was maybe fifty, with silver-streaked hair and eyes that had seen things.

"Take it." Marcus passed the bucket. "I'm not hungry anyway."

She studied him between handfuls. "You've got that look. Like you're swimming upstream without getting anywhere."

"Is it that obvious?"

"Honey, I've been divorced twice. I know the face." She pointed at the field. "You know why I love baseball? It's the only place where you can fail seven times out of ten and still be an All-Star."

Marcus smiled—really smiled, for the first time in months. "You think I need to fail more?"

"I think you need to forgive yourself for not saving her. Whatever happened, wherever you were—some things just are. Like this game." She gestured at the diamond, where players moved in patterns as old as time. "The bear doesn't ask permission to hibernate. The river doesn't apologize for flowing. You're still here. That's not nothing."

The seventh-inning stretch began. Marcus stood with the crowd, sang along badly, and for once, didn't feel like he was underwater. The game would end, summer would end, everything ended eventually. But tomorrow, he'd go swimming again—really swimming, not just treading water in the shallow end of his own life. And maybe, eventually, he'd learn to breathe above the surface.