The Pool Where We Drowned

The cat appeared three days after Julian left — a scrawny, calico thing with one ear missing, watching me from the deck railing like it knew something I didn't. I left out a saucer of milk, then scraps of salmon, then finally bought proper cat food.

"You're pathetic," I told it, watching it eat from the expensive bowl I'd picked out at Anthropologie.

The pool hadn't been drained yet. It sat there in the backyard like a wound, blue water turning green with neglect. Julian had fought so hard for that pool. Two summers of Saturday afternoon arguments with contractors, of writing checks that made my stomach clench. "It's an investment," he'd said, but it turned out to be the place where our marriage finally went under.

I was making dinner when he told me. Sautéing spinach — organic, pre-washed, the kind he insisted on buying even though we couldn't really afford it. The smell of it cooking, that particular green perfume, still made my stomach turn.

"There's someone else," he said, and I kept stirring the spinach like it mattered, like if I cooked it perfectly the sentence would unmake itself.

Now I sat on the pool's edge at midnight, feet dangling in water that had grown murky with algae and dead leaves. The cat crept closer, finally brushing against my leg. Its purr sounded like a small engine struggling to turn over.

I thought about draining the pool. I thought about selling the house. I thought about all the things I'd done to become the woman Julian wanted, and how none of them had mattered in the end. The spinach. The yoga. The uncomfortable dinner parties with his colleagues.

The cat jumped onto my lap, settled there like it owned me. I stroked its uneven ear and realized I didn't even know if it was male or female.

"Well," I said to the empty yard, to the cat, to the algae-choked water reflecting a fractured moon. "At least one of us got to stay."

The cat purred like forgiveness, like something beginning, and for the first time in three weeks, I didn't feel like I was drowning at all.