Produce Section

Martin stood in the grocery store at 11 PM on a Tuesday, holding a papaya like it might detonate. Ellen always bought them. Said they reminded her of their honeymoon in Costa Rica, though he suspected she just liked saying the word—papaya, rolling it around her mouth like a marble. Now she was three weeks gone, and he'd finally broken down to buy things she used to love, as if accumulating the correct ingredients could conjure her back.

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, the same aggressive hum that had permeated their kitchen that last night. You're hollow, she'd said. You fill yourself with baseball statistics and craft beer and call it a personality, but there's nothing inside. She'd thrown her spinach salad at him—the plastic container shattering, greens scattering like confetti across the linoleum. He'd watched a leaf land in his open beer bottle and thought about how much he hated spinach anyway, how he'd only pretended to like it because she'd called him noble for eating things that made him gag.

His phone vibrated. A reminder: Maya's swimming lesson, 5:30 PM Saturday. His daughter from his first marriage, now fifteen and mostly absent, texting him only when she needed money or rides. He'd taught her to swim when she was six, standing in the shallow end as she'd clung to his neck like a frightened otter. You've got me, he'd promised. I won't let go. But he had, gradually, through promotions and relocations and Ellen and the comfortable fiction that he'd see Maya next weekend, always next weekend.

The papaya was softening in his grip, overripe and weeping juice. He thought about his father, dead six years now, how they'd watched baseball together every Sunday, how his dad had never learned to swim and nearly drowned at a company picnic when Martin was twelve. His father had laughed it off afterward—said he'd dog-paddled like a champion—but Martin had seen the terror in his eyes, the recognition that some depths couldn't be faked.

He dropped the papaya into his cart. It hit the plastic with a wet thud. He'd buy it. He'd cut it open, scoop out the seeds, eat it standing over the sink like he used to do with Ellen's leftover takeout. He'd pretend it was delicious. He'd pretend he wasn't learning to dog-paddle in the deep end of his own life, that he wasn't hollow, that the grocery store at midnight wasn't the only place he felt real anymore.

The cashier would ask how he was doing. He'd say fine. That was the word that had ruined everything—fine, fine, everything's fine—while Ellen packed her bags and he adjusted his fantasy baseball lineup and the whole rotting structure of his life groaned around him.

Fine. He pushed his cart toward checkout, papaya rolling against a bag of spinach like two old friends who couldn't save each other.