The Aquarium

The leak started when they were sitting on the couch: Frank reading the paper, Martha knitting, the radio playing a song they had danced to once, though neither could quite remember where. The ceiling opened and spilled right onto the cushion between them, and they turned to watch it pour.

But Frank wasn’t much of a fixer, nor was Martha, so they put the large stew pot under the stream and listened as the metallic plunk turned into a patter. And Martha finished their granddaughter’s hat, and George finished the Arts and Leisure section, and the weather outside was a perfect, cozy gray.

It didn’t take long for the pot to fill to the brim a few times over, upon which Frank and Martha would grasp a handle each and, walking in tandem, totter to the sink to empty it. After several rounds of this, Martha went to the garage and returned with a large plastic tub. They had bathed their son in it, once, when he was very, very small.

The next morning, they woke to find the tub nearly full and struggled together to take it outside. Frank replaced it with a trash can which, periodically, the two of them would wheel to the garden to empty.

But it was difficult to maintain—the can filled faster and faster each time, it seemed. After not very long at all, Frank and Martha returned to find it had overflowed, water pooling around the legs of the couch and coffee table like attentive dogs. But Martha wasn’t much of a fixer, nor was Frank, and neither seemed to mind much, so they donned their galoshes and splashed on through the living room. When the water spread to the kitchen, they splashed there too.

In no time at all the water rose to their ankles, then their knees, and soon the galoshes were filling with each step. So Frank and Martha abandoned them and waded barefoot on the mossy carpet, Martha’s skirt billowing behind her like seaweed, Frank’s pockets ballooning like fins. The water wasn’t cold at all, but perfectly pleasant, and as it approached the ceiling, Frank found his knees pained him less in a gentle flutter kick, and Martha took to floating on the surface by the crown molding, a position far kinder to her back than sitting.

The water rose up the stairs and onto the landing, into their bedroom and the rooms that had been their children’s, catching shoes and magazines on the meniscus. Martha and Frank swam together through the dining room, down the halls, pointing out framed photos on side tables and knit sweaters on chair backs in the depths below. The floor lamps glowed, and the house was soft and blurred as a memory. The two of them held hands as they paddled from room to room, and sometimes, buoyed by cross currents, they danced, each hearing the song from who-knows-where playing dreamlike in their heads, for the radio had stopped working long ago.