The Storm We Made

The papaya sat untouched on the white ceramic plate, its flesh the color of a bruised sunset. Outside our bungalow, the first lightning streaked across the St. Lucia sky, illuminating Richard's face as he scrolled through his phone, not bothering to look up.

"You're going to swim? Now?" he asked, finally glancing at where I stood in my swimsuit, towel draped over one arm.

"It's just rain, Richard."

"It's a storm, Elena. Come back to bed."

The thing was, we hadn't been in bed together—not really—in months. Not since the miscarriage that neither of us knew how to talk about. The papaya had been my peace offering at breakfast. He hadn't touched it.

I walked out into the warm Caribbean rain, letting it plaster my hair to my skull, and kept walking until the sand turned to mush beneath my feet. The ocean was black ink churning with foam. I'd been a competitive swimmer in college; the water had always been the place I could think, could breathe, could be something other than whatever version of myself everyone needed.

Now I waded in, the shock of cold against my skin sharp and necessary. I swam until my muscles burned, until the lightning became a strobe light overhead, each flash a photograph of the empty beach, the deserted resort, the marriage I was drowning in.

Back in our room, Richard was asleep. The papaya had oxidized to brown. I stood on the balcony watching the storm, salt water still slick on my skin, and understood something about the difference between drowning and deciding not to come up for air.

I woke him at 4 AM. "We need to talk about February."

He rubbed his eyes, looked at me really looked at me for the first time in forever. The lightning flashed again, and in that split second of white light, I saw him break.

"I thought you didn't want to," he whispered.

"I didn't want to disappear," I said. "But I think we already have."

The storm broke at dawn. We ate the bruised papaya with our fingers, sticky and sweet, and started making lists of everything we'd stopped saying out loud.