Undaunted by the threat of rising water breaking over the levee and walls, Isla peered at the swelling river over the water-filled Jersey barriers. Water accumulated against the plastic blockades in pools. Isla lifted her leg over the orange hurdle, watching the toe of her brown leather boots sink into the rivulets plashing on the ground and up around her ankle. She overcame the impediment, sloshing her smooth leather boots through the gurgling aqua pura. The feeling of falling subsided when she studied the water licking at the empty bridge. Elation, welling from her feet up to her legs, sloshing ungraciously in her stomach and pushing into her chest, expanded. Isla rocked in motion with the water coursing beneath her.

She was escaping at the edges and the containment walls. Isla let the feeling mount and press against the barriers that had kept her standing until now. The rising sensation strained at Isla’s boundaries and limits. She took the shape of water, pressing down on everything around her until it crumbled, destroying without exception, leaving the landscape razed and unrecognizable. The inundation erased the buildings amassed and infrastructure constructed. She washed over the terrain, levelling it. Isla cascaded over the Jersey barriers, overflowed into the streets, rushed into the houses, carrying off the details of the lives into obscurity. She engulfed the land outside the city, leaving flotsam in the wake as she spilt buoyantly out to sea.

For Rose, it was neither here, nor there. Josh could sit in his car in front of the house, staring at his feet. She wanted to destroy everything and was not sure why. Josh had had an affair ten years ago and had spent the time since then trying to make it up to Rose, but it was bullshit. He had insisted they go to counselling. One more thing that Josh had decided for her. She was appalled that he would open his mouth after what he had done. Their marriage had tethered her to the present, so she could forget a family that did not want her.

Rose's mother had sent her, with her brother, far from the family in South Korea, to live with an American who had been serving in the army there. In Korea, he had met a house-girl who was Rose's neighbour. He came to the girl’s house in the evenings when she finished cleaning homes of the families in the wealthy neighbourhood. The man stayed the night and left in the morning. He was not drunk and gave the girl gifts and money for her family. Rose’s father had left her mother and the family, not one of the children remembered his face. Her older brother went to work on ships and was away for years at a time. When he came back, he brought gifts, slept all day in the best bedroom, ate their food, and spent his money drinking with new friends at night. Then he, too, disappeared without warning. Rose's mother said she was doing it for their future when she sent Rose and her younger brother to be adopted by the fat man from the army in the United States. Rose was responsible for her eleven-year-old brother. It was pointless for her mother to tell her to take care of him as they left. Rose would take care of him. He was the only one left to keep her from being completely alone in the world.

That was what brought her to Josh. He had been serving on the base near the shabby white house where she and her brother lived with the army man and his girlfriend, the house girl, who he had brought back with him as well. It was an instant family for the army man that was short-lived. The house girl found a new boyfriend, then stopped coming home. No word, no note. Stealthily packing up one morning while the others were out as school and work, the girl was gone with the air. Yun, Rose's brother, wanted to be called Nick. He lashed out at the new life. The army man responded with the discipline he had learned in the military. It was a volatile mix. Mr Army man investigated sending the trouble-maker back to Korea. Rose started waitressing after school when she turned 16 the next year. She gave Army Man enough money to pay for board for her and Nick, the new income prevented him from pursuing the deportation request he had launched for Nick. Nick stayed in his room for the next two years, when Rose turned 18, they moved out. Two years later, she met Josh. His service in the Air Force had just ended when they met in the parking lot of the restaurant where Rose worked. He was tall, thin, had light brown hair that was cropped short as per Air Force protocol. Josh was polite and had enrolled at the local college. He had the ambition to go to medical school on his G.I. bill.

That was then. Now Rose wanted it all to disappear. She wanted Josh and his sleazy affair to disappear. Rose wanted his family possessions in their house to disappear; the writing desk from his grandmother, the china that had belonged to his mother and the hand-blown vases from France his sister had given them for their wedding. She wanted his new car to disappear. Rose did not want to see him coming home at night after work to chit-chat with her about his day. She hated driving in the city and hated parking. They had a two-car garage in the back of the house, but Rose insisted it was impossible to fit in the garage if there were another car, so Josh parked out front. When the kids parked in the driveway, leaving room for Rose to exit with her car, she made them move their cars as well. She was tired of taking care of everybody, when the oldest went away to college, moving out of state, Rose was relieved. Rose had called him at least once a day, she had always been an impeccable mother, but now she waited for the youngest to leave too. Tired of preparing meals, she made something in the morning before she went out, left it in the fridge or on the stovetop. Rose came back in the afternoon when Josh was still at work and Jason was at soccer practice. She went to the basement to do laundry, then stayed in the office on the computer until she went to bed. If Josh had not gotten the message that they were through, it was his problem. He had said the affair was a mistake. Rose did not care. What mattered was that he shattered her with it. She did not trust him and wanted the memory of everyone leaving her to recede from memory. Her mother started calling her after the initial years of silence. It made her sick to hear from her. Her mother asked her for money when Josh had graduated from medical school. That was another mistake, telling her family that she was married to a successful American doctor. She wanted them to know that abandoning her at 14 had not deterred her from the best in life, but it brought requests of loans and gifts of money for family members that left Josh slack jaw. She wished Josh had taken a position against her family. She wanted him to refuse, so she would not have to. He did not. He asked how much her family needed and proceeded to give her four thousand dollars. Safekeeping is what Rose's brother and mother had called it. They would keep it in an account for Rose when she came to visit. Maybe they could all get together and buy a small house for the family where Rose could stay when she came to visit, rather than sleeping on the couch at a friend’s house while her brother and mother navigated the poverty and joblessness of the economy in Korea after the war. The question of the money was mute after that. When Josh came with her on their next visit home when their oldest, Jake, was born, Josh wanted to know if they were planning on buying the phantasmatic house. Rose, her mother and brother, began to speak in Korean. Rose told Josh he did not understand that if you gave someone money, it was impolite to discuss it. Josh shrugged, but Rose knew that he judged her.

Now she could return the favour. She judged Josh's crappy affair with the new dark-haired doctor at the hospital where he was interning. When Josh left the hospital at the end of his internship and an extramarital-affair that lasted a month, he wanted to start over with Rose. He had dragged her to counselling, but she despised the therapist. The therapist was a woman, Josh thought that would put Rose at ease, but it was another woman competing for Josh's attention. The therapist was smart and smug. She suggested Rose consider anti-depressants. Rose did not need anti-depressants. The counsellor asked what they each wanted. God knew she wanted the life she had before the affair. She had never heard such pointless questions. For the duration of the counselling sessions, she lost weight and was in rageful fury when Josh came home. It gradually subsided, but Rose felt judged by Josh, the therapist, her mother, Mr Army Man. She wanted them to all go away. Rose looked out the window at Josh sitting in his car his head resting on his hand. She was glad that she had asked for a divorce. She was taking the house, half their retirement savings, and permanent spousal support. Spousal support was nearly half what Josh made as a surgeon. Now he would have to acknowledge her ability to take care of herself, as would her mother, and the kids would know that she had power in the relationship. She waited for Jason to leave for college. She did not need to cook or clean. Rose could go back to Korea to her mother, enjoy life. Rose felt the power of abandoning someone and watching them spiral into loneliness and worry over the future. Josh had never noticed how she kept that to herself and put up a cheerful front.

Josh finally opened the car door. Rose found her bag and looked for her shoes on her way out the back door so she would not have to see him. Josh put one leg out of the car door, his foot on the grass that had just frosted over that morning. He stood up slowly and put a hand on the car door when he turned to take his work bag and computer from the passenger seat. Rose checked to see if he was coming up the long ramp of steps to the front door. His left foot was invisible in the grass from where Rose stood looking out the giant latticed living room windows. Why did he wait to put down the other foot? Josh had, but Rose did not see it. He walked to the stairs, but his legs were disappearing from her sight. The elegant black briefcase disappeared too. Josh was melting into the air as Rose watched him come up the stairs. Rose was silently thrilled. She felt her head get warm, then her heart rate increased. He was slipping away, limb by limb. When he reached the door, Rose had inched away, fascinated by his dissolving image. She was by the back door with her hand on the doorknob. She heard his footsteps in the front hall.

Josh let out a long breath and put his briefcase on the floor to take off his shoes. Rose walked out the backdoor toward the garage and looked over her shoulder. The light went on in the kitchen. The chair at the breakfast counter moved, but no one was there. Josh was invisible. Rose was so excited she could hardly breathe.