The Last Papaya

Marina stood in the fluorescent-lit grocery aisle at 11 PM, clutching a papaya like it was a newborn. The cashier—some teenager with dead eyes and an acne map across his chin—scanned it with the enthusiasm of someone counting down the seconds to a shift that would never end.

"That'll be eight dollars," he said. He didn't look up.

"Eight dollars for a papaya," she repeated, more to herself than him. "What is this, the recession?"

She'd come for the papaya because Carlos loved them. Because three years ago, when they were still pretending their marriage wasn't a slowly collapsing building, he'd said, "I could eat papaya every day for the rest of my life." She'd thought it was romantic then. Now she recognized it for what it was: another thing she'd cataloged and carried, another data point in the exhaustive archive of a man who hadn't touched her in seven months.

At home, the dog—a golden retriever named Baxter who Carlos had brought home drunk from some coworker's farewell party—met her at the door with the same desperate enthusiasm he'd shown every night for nine years. Some creatures, she thought, were built to forgive. Others were built to leave.

She cut the papaya in the kitchen. The orange flesh glistened under the pendant light, impossibly vibrant against the gray countertops she'd picked out alone. She squeezed a lime over it, the way Carlos liked. Then she sat at the table and ate the whole thing, seeds and all, feeling like she was consuming their history one spoonful at a time.

Her phone buzzed. A text from her mother: "Have you taken your vitamin D? It's winter, Marina. Your bones will turn to chalk."

She typed back: "Yes."

She hadn't.

The papaya sat heavy in her stomach, sweet and cloying, like rotting optimism. Tomorrow, she told herself. Tomorrow she'd file the paperwork. Tomorrow she'd call the therapist her sister kept recommending. Tomorrow she'd start becoming the woman her dog already thought she was—someone worthy of that kind of devotion.

Baxter rested his head on her knee. She scratched behind his ears, the way he liked, and thought about how some nutrients can only be absorbed in the presence of others. How the body sometimes rejects what it needs most. How love, like a vitamin, accumulates in the system until suddenly—you're either deficient or toxic, and there's no healthy middle ground.

"You're a good boy," she whispered. "You're such a good boy."

He thumped his tail against the chair leg, a steady, hopeful rhythm. In the morning, she would buy another papaya. In the morning, she would do a lot of things.