It Used to Be a Big Bath
They make them smaller now. That's a real thing. That happens.
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"Don't just stand there."
She said it without turning around. You had been in the doorway maybe four seconds. Long enough. The room was full of steam. She was testing the water with two fingers, and the purple bikini was the one she had bought in a size she was proud of.
"I can still do this part myself, thank you."
You told her nobody had said otherwise.
"Mm."
She got in. It took one step.
Eleven months. You stopped counting the pounds around the time she stopped weighing them.
"It's the tub," she said, in June, with one leg over the side. "They make them smaller now. That's a real thing. That happens."
You agreed that it was a real thing. You did not say the other thing.
Her knees came up higher every month. That was the measurement, in the end. Not a number — just how much of her showed above the waterline, and how early it started showing.
By August the bottoms went on before the top, because she needed both hands free for the sitting down.
"Okay. Okay, wait — "
She had one hand on the rim and one on your arm, and neither of you was pretending this was the manoeuvre it used to be. The porcelain was cold. She was not.
Slosh.
"Don't laugh."
You were not laughing. There was heat sitting low in your gut and it had been there since the doorway, and she could feel your pulse where she was holding on.
"…Fine. Laugh a little."
The water went over the side and kept going.
She settled. The tub held her the way a shoe holds a foot — barely, and with complaint.
"You did this," she said, to the ceiling. She was smiling.
"So what does that make you?"
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