Ripe for the Leaving

Margaret stood in the kitchen, slicing into a papaya that had sat on the counter for three days too long. The flesh was soft, bordering on bruised—much like she felt after twenty-seven years of marriage to David, who had left last Tuesday with nothing but a suitcase and his baseball card collection. She'd found the note on the fridge: 'I can't do this anymore.' Not 'I'm sorry' or 'I love you,' just a statement of fact, dry as the desert air that seeped through their bedroom window.

Their cat, Barnaby, wound around her ankles, miaowing for breakfast. He was David's cat, really—a rescue from the shelter where David had volunteered during his midlife crisis. Barnaby had outlasted three affairs and two promotions. Now he'd outlasted the marriage too.

Margaret spooned the papaya into a bowl, remembering the dinner party where David had held court about the perfect ripeness of tropical fruit, holding court like the baseball pitcher he'd never been, always throwing, always missing what mattered. She'd sat there nodding, drinking too much wine, feeling herself softening like overripe fruit in the heat of his performance.

The phone rang. It was her sister, calling to ask if she'd heard about David—seen in a bar with someone half his age, wearing a baseball cap to hide his thinning hair. Margaret watched Barnaby lick the last of the papaya from his bowl and thought about how love rots from the inside out, how you can't always see it happening until you cut it open and find the decay.

She poured the rest of the papaya into the trash. Tomorrow she'd buy fresh fruit. Tomorrow she'd adopt the cat out to someone who'd love him properly. Tomorrow she'd start being the woman she'd been before she became someone's wife, before she became soft and sweet and easily bruised.

Tonight, she stood in the kitchen alone, and for the first time in twenty-seven years, the silence tasted exactly like freedom.