The Weight of Waiting

The hotel pool shimmered like liquid mercury beneath the desert stars, its surface broken only by the solitary figure cutting through the water with precise, rhythmic strokes. Elena sat at the edge, her legs submerged to the calves, watching him. David. Her husband of twelve years, who had packed his suitcase last Tuesday while she was at work and left nothing but a note on the kitchen counter: I can't bear this anymore. Not us. Just everything.

Now here they were, three days later, at a marriage retreat in Tucson that her therapist had insisted might save them. Or at least provide clarity. The clarity so far was that David spent every free moment with his face illuminated by the blue glow of his iPhone, scrolling through news headlines and work emails like a man drowning reaching for driftwood.

"The water's nice," he said, surfacing near her edge. He didn't meet her eyes.

"I bet."

"You should come in."

"I don't have my suit."

"You could wear your underwear. Like that time in Cancún."

Elena felt something tighten in her chest. Cancún had been seven years ago, before his father died, before the promotion that turned him into someone who checked his phone during sex. Before everything.

"David," she said. "Why are we here?"

He treaded water, his expression unreadable in the shadows. "You wanted to come."

"I wanted you to want to come. There's a difference."

His iPhone buzzed on the table behind her. They both ignored it.

"I keep thinking about that day," David said quietly. "When I found my dad. He was in his chair, just sitting there. Like he was waiting for something."

Elena had never heard him say this much about it. Not in three years.

"He was waiting for you, David. You'd missed Christmas, remember?"

"I remember." He swam to the pool's edge and rested his arms on the concrete. "I think about that a lot. How I was answering emails when he died alone. What kind of person does that?"

"The same kind who sits at a pool in Tucson with his wife and won't look at her."

David was silent for a long moment. Then he pulled himself up and sat beside her, dripping wet, his phone still buzzing insistently on the table. He picked it up, looked at the screen, and then—deliberately—set it down screen-first on the concrete.

"My boss," he said. "Wondering why I'm not in the meeting."

"And?"

"And I'm not in the meeting. I'm here." He turned to her finally, really looked at her, and she saw how tired he was. How exhausted by the weight he'd been carrying. "I don't want to be that person anymore, El. The one who bears everything alone until it crushes him."

The phone buzzed again, vibrating against the stone.

"Leave it," she said.

"Yeah." He took her hand. His palm was cool from the pool water, his grip uncertain, like someone learning a language he'd once known fluently. "Yeah."