Fruit of Forgotten Summers

The hat sat on the edge of the bathtub like a dead thing. Marcus's hat—that ridiculous wool fedora he'd worn through three winters of our marriage, through job losses and promotions, through dinners where we'd stopped speaking to each other entirely. Now it was just wool and abandonment, gathering steam from my shower.

I dressed for the gallery opening, my hands moving through rituals that felt newly hollow. Marcus would be there. His new show. His breakthrough. The invitation had arrived in my mailbox three weeks after he moved out, as if the universe had decided I hadn't suffered enough.

The gallery hummed with the pretentious energy of Brooklyn's art world. I spotted him immediately—thinner, happier, surrounded by people who didn't know he still forgot to replace the toilet paper roll. And there, dominating the center of the room, hung his masterpiece: a massive canvas of a bear, its mouth open in something between a roar and a sob, rendered in violent slashes of red and black.

"It's about grief," Marcus said, appearing beside me with a glass of white wine. "About what we carry."

I stared at the bear. I'd seen him that way—hurt and lashing out. I'd loved him through it. "It's beautiful," I said, and it wasn't a lie. "You look good, Marcus."

"Elena—"

"Don't. Please."

I fled to the terrace, where the caterers had arranged fruit on silver platters. My hand found a slice of papaya, its flesh the same impossible pink as our bedroom walls that first year together. We'd bought the paint on a whim, high on new love and cheaper rent. We'd eaten papaya for breakfast the morning after our wedding, sticky juice running down our chins, laughing like we'd invented joy.

The taste hit me like violence—all the sweetness I'd swallowed, all the mornings I'd woken up hoping today would be different. I spat it into a potted plant.

When I got back to our apartment—just my apartment now—Barnaby waited by the door. My cat, the divorce settlement I'd actually wanted. He wound around my ankles, purring like forgiveness was the easiest thing in the world.

I picked up Marcus's hat from the bathroom. I'd meant to return it tonight. Instead, I dropped it in the trash bin on the corner.

Some things you keep. Some things you compost. The rest, you simply leave behind.