The Color of Goodbye

David stood in the center of what used to be his living room, surrounded by cardboard boxes and the skeletal remains of twelve years of marriage. His iphone buzzed in his pocket — a text from Sarah asking if he'd remembered to take the dog. He didn't respond. Some questions didn't deserve answers.

He reached for an orange from the fruit bowl, something Sarah had always kept full. As he peeled it, the citrus spray stung his eyes, or maybe that was just everything else catching up to him. The segments were perfect, geometric, unlike the mess his life had become.

His father's old baseball glove sat on top of a box marked "DONATE." David picked it up, the leather still smelling of summer afternoons and cheap hot dogs, of a time when his biggest worry was whether he could make the varsity team. He'd promised to teach their son, but they never had one. That was the first crack, wasn't it? The silence where a child's laughter should have been.

The bull market crash had taken his job, his portfolio, and apparently, his marriage's foundation. Sarah's announcement last Tuesday — she'd met someone else, someone with prospects, someone not drowning in red ink and missed opportunities — still felt surreal. She'd called it "growing apart." He called it survival of the fittest.

He squeezed the orange until juice ran down his wrist, sticky and sweet. The baseball was somewhere in the garage, beside the lawnmower they'd bought together, back when they believed in forever. Back when they believed that love could outlast bad quarterly reports and shriveling 401(k)s.

David's iphone lit up again. Sarah this time: "Please respond. I'm worried about you."

He typed back, fingers clumsy: "I'm fine. Just saying goodbye to things."

The orange rind lay in ruins on the packing paper. David placed his father's glove in the "KEEP" box. Some things survived the crashes. Some things you carried with you, bull markets and bear markets be damned.