The Art of Treading Water

The resort brochure promised paradise, but Elena found only the air-conditioned sanctity of their suite and a bottle of prenatal vitamins that mocked her from the bathroom counter. Outside, David cut through the hotel pool with relentless precision, lap after lap, his body a machine executing the same motions while their marriage drowned in shallow water.

Three days ago, a woman with elaborate henna designs climbing her arms had grasped Elena's palm at the carnival-themed night event. "Your life line is fragmented," she'd said, pressing her thumb into the soft center of Elena's hand. "You're living three different lives, and none of them are yours."

Elena had pulled away, leaving twelve dollars on the table. But the words had nested somewhere deep and reproachful.

Now she watched David's swimming through the floor-to-ceiling windows. He'd been taking vitamin D supplements for months — the doctor said it helped with mood, with energy, with the peculiar malaise that had settled over him like Florida humidity. But what cured the soul's particular deficiencies?

"You're not happy," she'd told him yesterday, by the pool where palm trees cast elaborate shadows on the concrete. "You haven't been happy in years."

"I'm fine," he'd said, already turning away. "Just tired."

The fortune teller had seen what David refused to acknowledge: that they were both swimming in circles, that the vitamins and the vacations and the careful calibration of their lives were just elaborate forms of treading water. That sometimes, the thing that kept you afloat was the very thing that kept you from reaching shore.

Elena placed her hand against the glass, feeling her own palm lines press against the surface, watching her husband continue his endless laps, knowing that somewhere in the space between them was a shore they'd forgotten how to reach.