The Bear in the Deep End

The cable guy arrived at 7 AM, his van chirping as he pulled into the driveway of the modern glass house where Elena's life had apparently gone to die. Three weeks since David walked out, and the cable still wasn't working—a fitting metaphor, really. The television just stared at her with its dead black eye, refusing to deliver the numbing comfort of reality TV.

"Just needs a new line from the pole," the cable guy said, though she barely heard him. She was already in the backyard, staring at the pool. The previous owners had put it in, though she and David had rarely used it. Too busy, always too busy. Now the water sat there, a still blue mirror reflecting a sky that seemed unfairly bright.

She dipped her foot in. Cold—shockingly so. But she kept going. One leg, then the other, until she was fully submerged, swimming laps with a desperation that frightened her. The water bore her weight, pressed against her skin, filled her ears until the world became muffled and distant. This was what she needed—silence, weightlessness, the illusion that gravity had temporarily loosened its grip.

When she finally pulled herself out, gasping, she found the cable guy standing at the edge of the pool. He was older than she'd first thought, maybe fifty, with a kind face and eyes that had seen too many backyards and too many marriages in various states of decay.

"All fixed," he said, not looking at her in her wet swimsuit but somewhere just past her shoulder. "Though you might want to know—there's a bear been seen in these parts. Got into someone's trash just down the road last night."

Elena laughed, a sharp surprised sound. "A bear? Here?"

"Nature's got a way of showing up where you least expect it." He handed her a receipt. "Have a good day, ma'am."

That night, Elena sat in front of her newly functioning television, flipping through channels without watching anything. Outside, beyond the glass doors, the pool waited, its surface rippling in the wind. Somewhere in the dark woods beyond her backyard, a bear was moving through the underbrush, wild and untamed and utterly indifferent to human heartbreak. She turned off the TV and walked out into the cool air, toward the water, toward the deep end where she could finally stop pretending she wasn't drowning.