Riddle of the Sphinx

Maya stood at the kitchen counter, slicing a papaya with surgical precision. The fruit's bright orange flesh glistened in the morning light, its seeds like black pearls waiting to be discarded. She'd started eating it daily after the fertility specialist recommended it—something about enzymes, about hope. About the way the body could sometimes betray you and sometimes, if you fed it the right things, could surprise you with miracles.

On the table, her iphone lit up again. Another message from work. She didn't pick it up.

'You're taking your vitamins, right?' David called from the living room. He sounded far away even though he was only fifteen feet distant.

'Yes, David.' She scraped the papaya seeds into the trash. Her phone buzzed once more.

They'd bought the statue in Egypt three years ago, during that last trip when they still laughed together. A miniature sphinx, weathered stone, sat on the windowsill above the sink. Its missing nose had become a running joke between them—the riddle they couldn't solve, the mystery they'd stopped trying to unravel. In Greek mythology, the sphinx asked: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? Man. But the real question was: How do you hold onto something that keeps changing shape?

Maya swallowed her prenatal vitamin with a glass of water, watched the sphinx's weathered face stare back at her impassively.

David appeared in the doorway, holding his own phone like a weapon. 'We need to talk about the appointment.'

'The papaya's ready,' she said instead. 'Eat it with me.'

He hesitated, then lowered his phone. The sphinx watched them both, its ancient silence heavier than all the words they weren't saying. Some riddles, Maya realized, weren't meant to be solved. They were meant to be survived.