Sunday's Hollow Fruit

The papaya sat between them like a small, silent animal. Martha had spent ten minutes carving it into perfect crescent moons, her thumbnail stained with the orange-black juice. David hadn't noticed. His thumb moved across his iPhone screen in that familiar, hypnotic rhythm, the blue light washing out the Sunday morning warmth of their kitchen.

"You're missing it," she said, not looking up. "The papaya's perfect today."

"Hmm?" David didn't look up either. "Just one more email. Johnson's riding my ass about the quarterly projections."

Johnson. The man was a human embodiment of everything David claimed to hate: aggressive, posturing, full of bullish certainty about markets that no one could predict. Yet here David was, tethered to the man's demands on a weekend that was supposed to be theirs. Martha felt something hollow open inside her, something that had been widening for months now.

She remembered when David had proposed, three years ago in a rainstorm in Paris. He'd gotten down on one knee in a puddle, ruining his jeans, and she'd laughed until she cried. They'd talked about building something real, something that mattered. Now he spent his days helping a conglomerate optimize their vitamin supplement supply chain, finding ways to convince people they were deficient in things they'd never heard of.

"The thing is," David said, finally looking up, "Johnson wants me to come in tomorrow. There's this whole thing about—"

"Tomorrow's your birthday, David."

The silence that followed was heavy, expectant. The papaya between them grew warm, its flesh glistening with tiny beads of sweet moisture. A fruit fly landed on the edge of Martha's plate, rubbing its legs together in what looked like prayer.

"Right," David said. "I know. I just—"

"You just what?"

He ran a hand through hair that was thinning at the temples. She noticed suddenly how tired he looked, how the vitamin D supplements on the counter—the expensive ones from his own company's premium line—sat next to a bottle of prescription sleeping pills. The juxtaposition struck her as funny, somehow. The way we patch ourselves together.

"I don't know," he said finally, and something in his voice cracked. "I think I've forgotten how to be here. Actually here. Not mentally in some meeting about profit margins on organic compounds."

Martha reached across the table and took his hand. His palm was warm, his fingers rough from where he'd been nervously picking at his cuticles. She'd forgotten that too—the way his hands felt.

"Turn it off," she said gently. "The phone. Just for an hour. Let's eat this papaya before it goes warm, and then let's figure out how to be here again. Together."

David looked at his iPhone, then at her, then at the fruit between them. Slowly, deliberately, he powered down the device. The screen went black, reflecting both their faces, slightly distorted, looking back at them.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. Let's start over."