Riddles at the Kitchen Table

The papaya sat between us like a tropical hostage, its seeds glistening in the harsh kitchen light. We'd bought it on impulse yesterday, when our marriage still felt capable of spontaneity.

'Eat your spinach,' David said, pushing the bowl toward me. His tone was flat—not a request, not quite an order. Just the sound of someone who had stopped trying to be charming somewhere around year seven.

I speared a leaf. It tasted like obligation. 'I ran into Marcus today.'

David's fork paused halfway to his mouth. The silence expanded, filling the room until I could hear the refrigerator humming its patient, electric song. We were like the sphinx I'd seen in Egypt years before him—stone creatures posed with eternal questions, stripped of their noses, their mysteries weathered down to something almost approachable. Almost.

'Marcus from the gallery?' David finally asked.

'He asked about us.' I set down my fork. 'I didn't know what to say.'

David reached across the table and cut himself a slice of papaya. The juice ran down his wrist. 'You could say we're happy. You could say we're figuring things out. You could say it's complicated.'

'I could say all those things,' I said. 'None of them would be true.'

He looked at me then, really looked at me, for the first time in months. His eyes were the same warm brown they'd been when we met, but something behind them had calcified. The spinach on my plate had gone cold. The papaya's sweetness hung in the air, cloying and innocent.

'What do you want me to say?' he asked, and for a moment, the sphinx's riddle seemed almost answerable. Not the solution, but the courage to speak the question aloud.

Outside, rain began to fall. Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm cut through the evening. We sat there, two people who had once chosen each other deliberately, now watching fruit grow warm on the table between us.