What We Bear at Sunset

The papaya sat untouched on the white ceramic plate, its orange flesh glistening like something that should have been beautiful. Mara watched condensation slide down the mimosa glass she'd ordered because vacation rules applied even when your life was falling apart.

"You should eat," Thomas said, not looking at her. His eyes fixed on the pool where guests were swimming languid strokes through turquoise water. They looked like people who didn't know their marriages had expiration dates.

"I'm not hungry."

"You haven't eaten since we got here."

"Since yesterday, Thomas. We've been here since yesterday."

He turned then, and she saw it again—that flattened expression, the way he was trying to bear this without breaking, the same way he'd borne his father's death and her miscarriage and every other catastrophe that had befallen them in twelve years. Thomas was good at bearing things. It was his particular talent.

She'd always loved his hands. Strong, square, with life lines that promised longevity. Now she couldn't remember the last time he'd touched her with those hands, really touched her. Not perfunctory sex, not the utilitarian massage when her back spasmed. None of it counted anymore.

"I don't want you to bear this alone," she said quietly.

"I'm not alone. You're sitting right there."

"That's not what I mean."

A woman in a red bikini walked past their table, laughing with a man who couldn't take his eyes off her. They looked like people who still believed in happiness. Mara wondered if they'd still look like that in three years, or if the slow erosion would get them too.

"What do you want me to say?" Thomas's voice cracked. "That I'm angry? Scared? That I don't know how we're supposed to fix something that's been broken for so long I can't remember when it wasn't?"

"You could start by not bearing it. By letting it break you."

"If I let it break me," he said, "then there's nothing left to put back together."

The sun began to set, painting everything in that impossible tropical gold that made even despair look like paradise. Somewhere, a resort employee began cutting fresh fruit for the evening buffet. The papaya on Mara's plate had grown warm.

"I don't know if there's anything to put back together," she said.

Thomas reached across the table. His palm covered hers, warm and calloused and familiar. For the first time in months, his grip tightened almost to the point of pain.

"Then we swim," he said. "Or we drown. But we do it together."