STATE OF TORPOR
ALM No.95, November 2026
ESSAYS
The year the guys appeared we were not doing well. When I say guys, I mean eleven fish, and when I say we, I mean my boyfriend and me. And when I say not doing well, I mean we were barely speaking and I was sleeping in the guest room.
I’d been there a week and a half after a big blow-up, the subject of which I can no longer recall. It wasn’t the first time words like selfish and insensitive were spat by him and negative attitude and black cloud were lobbed by me, but I do know it coincided with Cooper’s worry over the guys, i.e. how they could survive the upcoming winter in the puddle of dirty, frozen water the previous homeowners called the pond, which was a joke since it was just a two foot by four foot black plastic tub, approximately one foot deep, surrounded by small rocks to create a faux grotto-like setting.
Now, I love animals, well, dogs, well, my dog, and I liked the fish all right, had stood over the pond their first summer quite often, trying to count them which wasn’t easy, what with the guys zipping around really fast and the water being so murky, but my worry was whether Cooper and I could survive the winter. Sorry, I thought, but fuck the fish.
When I first met him, Cooper was in the middle of a divorce; I was in the middle of a protracted single girl period, 40 plus years that were interspersed with a series of bad boyfriends: smart, creative men (a playwright, a musician, a journalist, an indie film producer) who couldn’t commit, or rather, wouldn’t commit...to me.
Unlike the bad boyfriends, Cooper wasn’t afraid of commitment. But we were so different. Me: a sensible, highly independent, former city-loving, movie exec turned small-town book editor with a dash of culture, sophistication and calm; him: a talented, edgy sound engineer city-hater with a side of snark, grump and darkness. I plotted and planned ahead; he winged it. I cleaned and pared down; he collected and saved. I wrote and read and read. He didn’t. But he was very persistent in his pursuit of me and he made me laugh. I went against my initial impulse and gave him a shot. Turned out he was affectionate, trustworthy, punctual, and a safe driver. He replaced kitchen faucets, toilets, and light fixtures. This guy had tools. And he was a real animal lover. He had just rescued, in the dead of night, a dog in his neighborhood who’d been beaten and chained outside 24/7. In other words, he was a good boy scout.
We were attracted to each other; it was romantic and I felt taken care of. It seemed to work, this odd coupling.
I felt lucky I’d finally found a good boyfriend, a real partner. Those first years were fun as we kept going up another level, what Cooper called it when we learned something new about each other and got closer. There was so much to learn. He wrote me sweet love notes I’d find all over: under my coffee mug, in my purse. He called me his babe girlfriend sexy fantasy date which pumped up my self-confidence. More levels accumulated until we decided to move in together. We would have liked to have stayed in my house, but it was simply too small and the house perched on a hillside making expansion nearly impossible. His house wasn’t big enough for both of us either, nor did I want to live way out in the bucolic but remote farmland where he resided, so far from a decent latte. We began looking at houses to co-mingle our lives.
The on-line listing described the white cape: three bedrooms, large sunroom, bonus room above the garage, a barn, 3.4 acres, close to civilization with cafes, and that ‘pond’ which we didn’t see the first time the realtor showed us the place.
We went back a second time and after touring the property again, I said, “Wait. Where’s the pond?” I envisioned one where you could skip rocks and swim. Maybe a wooden raft in the middle for sunbathing.
Cooper nodded to the paltry, manmade water feature off the patio. “I think this is it.”
“No,” I said in disbelief. “It can’t be.” You could barely get your big toe in let alone swim a lap.
He nodded again and we both laughed.
We sat in the car across the street from the white cape, just gazing at it. We saw lots of potential. A space for a recording studio for him. A big office overlooking the pretty yard for me. A dedicated guest-room. A basement for his workshop. The land he coveted and a nearby trail to walk for me. In other words, something for both of us. We got excited envisioning our future together and put in an offer. But a niggling worry about upsetting the apple cart of my comfortable single-girl financial life, the one I had total control over, surfaced. Like the time I talked to my dad and he asked how much the new house cost. When I told him, he seemed shocked. “Are you sure you can afford that?” He and Mom were financially conservative. Growing up, my two brothers and I didn’t know from luxury but we certainly didn’t suffer. We went on family vacations, out to dinner. We got new clothes. But my parents were savers.
The cape was more money than I wanted us to spend. But my own house sold quickly and Cooper’s was sure to sell soon. I plotted out the monthly costs of the new place. After six months living together as ‘domestic partners,’ I’d be able to get on Cooper’s health insurance and that would save a bundle. And with his tools and skills, we could turn the large, bright space above the barn into an artist studio and the bottom into a garage, rent them both out and easily afford the house. “We’ll be fine,” I told Dad.
Some haggling took place, our offer was accepted, and after a few months we moved in.
We jokingly started calling the little water feature the pond. It had a very small fountain with a pump that made the water spritz out then cascade gently over the rocks creating a miniscule waterfall. It was cheesy yet produced a pleasant tinkling sound we liked so we let it run all summer. A frog appeared and sunbathed on the rocks but plunked into the pond if we got too close. Sometimes a blue jay or robin would use it as a bird bath. Squirrels showed up, too, and they drank from it. A family of deer came each evening. The pond became a popular critter hangout.
Co-habitating was fun. I decorated, cooked, and was our social director. Cooper was content doing various fix-it chores, co-hosting my friends and making me laugh.
At the end of summer, the water in the pond got murky from fallen leaves. Some of them sunk to the bottom making the whole pond slime up. Cooper diligently scooped out the leaves, emptied the filthy water, scrubbed the plastic container, then refilled it with fresh water. I watched him work from my office window, impressed that he’d taken on the messy chore.
But soon things seemed to shift with our easy co-existence. Hidden problems our house inspector failed to discover began to appear, one more expensive than the next. Raccoons and squirrels inside the barn walls. Hidden ancient faulty septic. Mold. And those were just in the first couple of years. The house had become one of those laughable money pits you see in movies. After spending thousands to remedy these issues, we thought we were finally getting a breather, a much-needed moment to spend on our relationship, actually enjoy the house together, but then more repairs cropped up. Cracks in the garage floor revealed that nothing was actually holding it up other than flimsy cardboard tubes from inside carpet rolls. The floor had to be jack-hammered, the broken cement pieces left behind to fill in the vast hole.
“It’s not fair,” Cooper and I moaned to each other as our bank accounts dwindled along with the spark of romance we’d felt for the cape and each other.
No, I couldn’t blame it all on the house. But it did feel like the place was jinxed. None of my income-producing ideas panned out. Nor did the health insurance from Cooper’s job. Turned out they’d only accept same-sex co-habitating couples. And Cooper’s house still hadn’t sold. How had I been so stupid? Dad’s words, “Are you sure you can afford that?” echoed in my head.
***
Despite a continuing onslaught of repairs -- frozen pipes, mysterious smells, and a huge clog in a pipe leading to the septic -- we stuck with the white cape. The latter turned out to be a long, disgusting, solid white crusty thing that Cooper christened the giant white snake. He had to chop, stab, and prod it with an iron rod until finally, it broke up and released.
We adopted an older chocolate lab, named Honey. She became my shadow and her unwavering sweetness helped to balance out Cooper’s glass-half-empty attitude. Even though I loved feeling like a little family of three, there was something between Cooper and me preventing us from going up more levels. I wasn’t sure if his intermittent emotional dips, which had become more pronounced once we moved in together, were the real Cooper or if the house stresses brought them on. Both, I surmised.
***
One day Cooper said, “There are fish in the pond.”
I followed him outside. Sure enough, there were fish...lots of them. Tiny minnow-like things swimming around. We counted ten; recounted and got twelve. But maybe there were eleven, give or take one or two. They kept darting under the dark water and back up making it really hard to get an accurate number. But we thought there were six gold colored fish, two orange striped ones, two or three all black ones. The whole thing was both mysterious and fun. How did they get there? When did they arrive? So many fish where there had been none before. Our theories: A bird dropped something with fish eggs on it. Or one of our frogs brought something over from another pond. From then on, we discussed it often. We watched the guys, as we started calling them, counting them over and over, following them move in pairs, dive deep and disappear, come up and circle round and round.
Some days later, I saw Cooper tapping flakes from a small round container into the pond. The fishies poked their fish heads out of the water, their eyes bugging out, mouths agape, desperately, as if they were starving. He’d bought fish food, the kind you feed to goldfish.
Cooper began to feed them...often. “Twice a day,” he said. “They need nutrients.” The fish gobbled up the food. We observed them daily, morning and evening, as they grew. It was like a weird science experiment. The guys literally becoming big fish in a little pond.
***
“I figured it out,” Cooper said one afternoon.
I looked at him with raised eyebrows. I knew he was referring to the guys because they’d become our main topic of conversation. That obstacle between us, I realized, was much like the giant white snake. It was hard and stubborn and would require some strong outside force to dislodge in order for us to go up more levels. Our communication, or lack thereof, left something to be desired. We habitually avoided conflict holding in our grudges until we exploded, yelled about them, had sex, then finally discussed things calmly. Life would be okay for a bit, the real issues swept neatly under the proverbial rug until the cycle began again. In any case, the guys had taken on another role, much like Honey. A distraction from our real issues.
“What did you figure out?” I asked.
“Veronica’s.” At Cooper’s suggestion, the previous summer I’d bought water hyacinths at Veronica’s, a local nursery. Cooper had done some research to find something that would naturally clean a slimy pond like ours. These aquatic plants had broad, thick, glossy leaves and produced beautiful lavender-colored flowers in late summer. Veronica, a warm, friendly woman, had taken me to her large pond which held lilies and other aquatic plants, And fish! Big ones, I recalled, fat goldfish swimming around. She’d bent down and pulled out a couple of water hyacinths, their roots dripping water. “These will keep your pond sparkly clean. They won’t survive the winter. Just toss them into the compost at the end of the summer.”
Cooper’s theory made perfect sense. The fish from Veronica’s pond must have laid eggs and those eggs must have ended up on the water hyacinth leaves. I bought the plants and brought them home to our pond. The eggs hatched and Bingo! eleven or so fishies.
It felt satisfying solving the mystery of how the guys got to our pond but that feeling didn’t last long for Cooper. “How will they survive the winter?” he said one morning over breakfast. He’d obviously been thinking about this for a while.
“What?” I couldn’t keep up with his fish obsession.
“The pond is so shallow, there can’t be enough oxygen in there. Plus the pond will freeze. They’ll freeze.” He sat back and shook his head. “They’re doomed!”
As Cooper worried over the fate of the fish, trying to come up with ways to move them and places to move them to, I felt oddly removed from the plight of the guys, or more accurately, Cooper’s plight. I can honestly say that I didn’t worry one iota about those fish.
I did, however, worry about everything else. Money: the lack of it. Work: the scary dips in my freelance book-editing career. Honey: she was now a senior with bad hips and lungs. Cooper and my relationship: The more Cooper slipped into his dark periods, the more I retreated. We were drifting apart, and we seemed, more and more, to live our lives separately, not as the team we once were.
And my parents. Oh, my parents. They were in Florida. My mom had Alzheimer’s and my dad was valiantly caring for her but as the years went on and her illness progressed, she clearly became too much for him. He was sweet and kind to her, patient beyond words, but uselessly repeated explanations of everything over and over, ones that she’d forget seconds later. A trip to the grocery store could take them hours. At restaurants, Mom would pilfer silverware, slipping the pieces into her purse along with food she hadn’t finished which would remain there for days.
My brothers and I finally got them to move to an assisted living facility, but their lives were skidding off the rails. Mom became more difficult to deal with. She’d either be all lovey-dovey with Dad or suspicious and rageful. Meanwhile, Dad, who was frail and terribly unsteady on his feet despite finally using a much-needed walker, still fell a lot. And he wouldn’t stop driving, claiming “my driving is better than my walking,” which wasn’t saying much. My stress level was at an all time high. It was like watching an accident in slow motion.
***
Winter approached and Cooper became more anxious about the fish. He had turned off the bubbly fountain; afraid the mechanism might hurt the guys. So the pond wasn’t getting any circulated air. The water was back to its earlier brown, scummy appearance since we had tossed out the wilted water hyacinths. Cooper called Veronica to see if she would take the fish into her pond and she agreed. He just had to arrange the retrieval and transport on a day she’d be there. He plotted and planned and fretted.
A few weekends later, Cooper headed outside with an old fishing net and a bucket of water. I followed him to the pond and watched while he dropped in the net. But the guys would have none of it. They raced away, disappearing into the dark water. As Cooper scooped the net out, he’d snagged only two fish but lots of leaves and muck. A third fish fell through what we saw was a big hole in the net, onto one of the rocks on the edge of the pond. He picked up the slippery, wounded escapee with great difficulty and dropped him into the bucket. I stood by helplessly as he then tried to release the two guys who were tangled up in the netting, their tails flapping desperately. He couldn’t do it and became more frantic. And there was no way to snare the remaining fish in the pond. They were too quick and the net was useless anyway. Cooper was near tears as he paced back and forth, swearing and hyper-ventilating. As I watched the debacle, I felt worse for him than the fish and powerless to help.
***
Depressed over the aborted rescue mission, Cooper took to our bed. For days. I tiptoed around him. “Sweetie, can I get you something to eat? Some soup?” “NO,” he barked. “I don’t feel well.” I let some days go by and tried again, “Can I do anything? What can I do?” “Nothing! I’m sick!” There was no talking to him. He watched TV. I stayed out of the bedroom until it was time for sleep. The dark cloud hovered. I fed Honey, walked her, paid the bills, did all the shopping, errands and cleaning of the house. Maybe I was being insensitive, but I could no longer deal with a non-communicative boyfriend who refused therapy or anti-depressants, consumed with the well-being of a batch of scavenger fish over our relationship. What happened to the guy who could take care of things and make me feel safe? And this was when the aforementioned blow-up occurred, the hurtful words spewed. The giant white snake had become too much for me. I had to escape the stifling fog of negativity. I grabbed my pillow, journal, a stack of books, and Honey’s enormous doggie bed, followed by her senior, arthritic, chocolate labness herself and we decamped to the small, downstairs guest room. It had no TV, just a bed and a dresser and no visible floor space after placement of said dog bed, but it felt to me like a safe cocoon. I could breathe.
***
Weeks later, things were still strained when some mornings we’d run into each other in the kitchen. Cooper, who had finally made it out of bed, literally bumped backsides with me near the fridge and coffee bean grinder with an awkward “sorry.” We’d become roommates who barely saw each other, but when we did, we were cordial and polite: “I bought more coffee,” “Your father called.” “The phone bill is due.”
One night, I sat up in bed with my iPad Googling: how do you keep pond fish alive in winter? Fish are cold blooded, I read. Their body temperature’s regulated by the temps of the water surrounding them. In winter, they go to the bottom of the pond to the warmest pocket of water they can find and enter a state of torpor. A blogger named Mike Gannon said this in his article “What Happens to Pond Fish In Winter?”
Torpor is not quite full hibernation, because it is of a shorter duration...but otherwise it is a very similar state of being: reduced body temperature, slowed metabolism, slow reaction times, reduced breathing rate and primary body functions. Torpor allows the animal to save the energy that would otherwise be needed for higher levels of activity. Because of the state of being in torpor it is a very good idea to keep things as calm as possible around the pond.
Oh, how I could relate. I yearned for quiet and calm and in the snipe-free sanctuary of the guest room, had found it. I didn’t know how long I’d be there or what would happen with Cooper and me but Mike Gannon’s words gave me hope. Maybe the fish didn’t have to be moved after all. Although the pond really was too shallow for overwintering, maybe once winter hit and it froze over, the fish would find a warm enough spot on the bottom and slip into their torpor state. Maybe without the interference of humans, the guys would be okay.
I told Cooper about my torpor discovery but he just gave a shrug. He seemed to have given up. On himself or me, or the guys, I wasn’t sure. We had tried couples therapy over the years but Cooper would never stick with it. I wanted to shake him. Why couldn’t he work on saving us the way he did with animals in need? Veronica’s words about the water hyacinth came back to me: “They won’t survive the winter...” Could she also have been referring to the fish? To Cooper and me? Was I over-thinking it all? But the survival of the fish took on special meaning to me. If the guys survived, maybe, just maybe, Cooper and I would pull through, too.
Without Cooper in my immediate sphere, my troubled relationship was side-tabled and I threw myself into my parents’ lives, speaking to them daily, going down to Florida often. My dad developed a MRSA infection that landed him in the hospital where he had to be quarantined. At least, I rationalized, I knew where he was and he wouldn’t be driving.
But then I thought about Mom and panicked. I had visions of her alone in their apartment, not knowing where anything was, the bathroom, the lights. I feared for her as if she were an infant. She needed a babysitter immediately! I jumped into action, arranging for an agency to provide caregivers 24/7 until she could be placed into Memory Care, the locked unit just one floor below their apartment.
Even though caretaking Mom had become physically and mentally exhausting for Dad, he hadn’t been ready to let her go. They’d been married 62 years, and they’d rarely been apart since Dad had retired. They even walked as a unit. It had been Mom’s job to hoist Dad’s walker into the trunk of the car, an action that would make him lose his balance and fall if he did it himself. Meanwhile, Dad had kept track of all of Mom’s appointments, medications, ordered for her at restaurants, drove her everywhere, and took over her bill paying. They needed each other and for a long time their precarious partnership worked. Until it didn’t. Moving Mom to the second floor was a turning point, a huge but necessary change. I flew down as soon as I could and, surprisingly, Mom’s transition to her own studio apartment was fairly smooth. The space was smaller and easier for her to maneuver. She’d sometimes become agitated and confused, sundowning, the staff called these common early evening bouts. But like an afternoon rain shower these spells would pass and she’d have no memory of them.
When I got back home, exhausted, after that last Florida visit, Cooper was there. “How did it go? How are your parents?” he asked. He loved my parents, but the gulf between us had grown. I wanted to touch him, tell him so many things but the giant snake prevented it. We quietly retreated to our separate rooms.
The next day I was about to run some errands and take Honey with me in the car, something she loved to do. But this time she stood outside the car, unable to jump in. She looked up at me with her big, soulful eyes that seemed to say, I wish I could. It was a moment I had both anticipated and dreaded. I had to heave her ample butt up and into the back seat. I broke down as I started to drive. Aging, arthritic Honey; our jinxed house; Cooper and me; and my parents. I was grieving the loss of things I hadn’t yet lost. Why did I feel this overwhelming need to protect Mom and Dad? I suspected that my parents had become an excuse to avoid my own relationship issues, but nonetheless, they were a ticking time bomb. Their world might explode anytime, so their problems had taken precedence.
The rope of control I thought I had been holding onto had slipped away. But really, it occurred to me, I had no control. I never did. My dad could fall whether or not he used the walker. He might continue to drive and have an accident or not. My mom’s memory would continue to fail, her disease progress. Both my parents would die at some point. Honey would die one day, too. I couldn’t turn Cooper into a glass half-full kind of guy. I couldn’t solve his fears or anger towards himself.
Why did I think I could fix or control everything, everyone? Why would I want to? Why was I unable to have a healthy relationship, still, after all these years? What was wrong with me? All these questions and thoughts swirled round my mind. As I drove down Route 32, sobbing, I reached behind me and petted Honey and said, “Don’t you leave me, girl.”
***
It was winter; snow on the ground, the pond solidly frozen over. Every day Honey and I would walk on our nearby trail. One morning as we headed out, I looked at the pond as I did each day, searching for what, I’m not sure; I imagined the guys, huddled together on the bottom like sardines, sleeping or nodding off or doing whatever they do in their torpor state.
Out on the trail, I let Honey off the leash. She stayed close to me and always came when I called her, never letting me out of her sight. She’d rush up to any dogs or people, her tail wagging double-time, her joyful mood oozing out of her every pore. She was the bright spot in my world.
***
That night I called my mom. I spoke to her a couple of times a week. She didn’t exactly know who I was, although she seemed to recognize my name and perk up at hearing my voice. She definitely liked me and seemed comfortable talking to me. She would prattle on happily. “What’s going on, dear? Where are you? How’s everyone there?” Her stock phrases. I’d babble on about my work, Honey, the weather. But the conversation would always come round to her same dialogue. “Did you do anything fun?” Or “Why don’t you go dancing!” She’d repeat her simple advice each time I’d call. How was my dementia-addled mom able to tap into the exact thing I was missing? Cooper and I hadn’t had fun in ages. Not like the early years when things felt so much lighter. “Where’s the joy?” I had said to him recently. “Where did it go?” Mom’s words always moved me as if she magically, intuitively knew something. Before hanging up, I said, “I love you” and blew her kisses over the phone and she repeated both back to me.
Maybe I had been taking everything too seriously. I looked over at Honey, her tail doing acrobatic circles and thumps, a language all its own.
***
I hauled Honey’s bed and my pillow upstairs into the bedroom. Cooper seemed surprised, cautious. “You’re back?” he said but his voice sounded relieved. We talked about nothing important. Then tentatively, we moved closer, we touched. We made love. It was a huge relief to feel close. We clung to each other. Honey tapped her snout at the closed bedroom door and whined. She didn’t like to be separated from her people but we needed some privacy. When we finally let her in, she rolled on her back, kicking her legs skyward as if happy we were all together again. We laughed and Cooper rubbed her belly.
“I don’t want to break up,” I said.
“I don’t either,” he said.
We promised to work on our issues. I believed it at that moment. I brushed aside the fact that we were replaying a scene we’d lived before, more than once. More than twice. Unable to deal with our unhealthy patterns, I ignored their familiar grip. The relief of finally talking was enormous. Why couldn’t we do this all the time. Why was it so hard to communicate? Why couldn’t we crush the snake? I brought small bowls of ice cream to bed, and we ate it while watching The Golden Girls, something we used to do. Familiar. Easy. Such a comfort. Keep things as calm as possible around the pond.
***
A month or so later, the sun was out. The snow had melted. Buds on the trees had opened. The crocuses were poking through the dirt. Cooper was at the kitchen sink, looking out the window.
“They’re back,” he said and at first I thought he meant the family of deer that traipsed daily through our yard eating all our plants. But then I looked out the window. There were no deer. My eyes went to the pond. That slick sheen of ice was gone. The water had thawed. And then I saw it. Movement. A flash of orange. Spring had arrived.
Marlene Adelstein’s debut novel is the USA Today Bestseller, Sophie Last Seen. She has had personal essays published on Longreads, Manifestation, Talkingwriting, and Rewireme and short stories published in various literary journals. Marlene has been awarded writing fellowships to: Yaddo, MacDowell, Millay Arts, The Wurlitzer Foundation among other artist residencies. She is a former feature film development executive for Wind Dancer Films, The Zanuck Company and The Samuel Goldwyn. Currently she works as a freelance book editor specializing in novels, memoirs, and screenplays and has worked with bestselling authors. She has recently completed her second novel, Nora Dunbar's Apology Tour. Marlene can be found at www.marleneadelstein.com.
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