What the Water Knows

Claire swam through the hotel pool at 2 AM, the water chlorinated and bright and completely unlike the ocean she'd grown up near. Her iphone lay on a lounge chair, its screen cracked from where she'd thrown it against her ex-husband's wall three nights ago. The crack pattern looked like lightning, or maybe a river branching toward nowhere.

She'd come to Mexico City for a conference but spent most sessions scrolling through old photos of Tom. There they were in Portugal, both grinning after swimming in the Atlantic. There she was in their Seattle kitchen, laughing as she segmented an orange he'd brought home from the market.

The morning he'd left, he'd said: "You think happiness is something you find in fruit."

She hadn't understood then. She did now.

She surfaced at the pool's edge, breathless, and watched a staff member place a fresh fruit basket on a nearby table. Oranges rolled bright against the dark stone—blood orange, cara cara, navel. The kind of abundance Tom would've called excessive and she would've called necessary.

Her cracked iphone buzzed. Tom's sister, probably. She'd been calling for days.

"Claire, please, we need you to—"

Claire didn't know what came next. Didn't want to.

She climbed out of the pool, water streaming off her like something being shed. She peeled an orange from the basket, the spray of citrus sharp against the recycled air of the courtyard. She ate it standing there, dripping wet, juice running down her arms and dripping onto the pavement.

The iphone buzzed again. Claire looked at it, then at the orange half in her hand. The flesh was sectioned, each piece separate but connected to the same center.

She understood Tom differently now. Not as someone who'd left, but as someone who'd never really arrived.

She finished the orange, wiped her sticky hands on her dress, and picked up the phone.

"I'm listening," she said, and dove back into the water alone.