The Ninth Inning

Margaret watched as her grandson Tommy shuffled across the living room, arms outstretched, making low groaning noises. 'I'm a zombie, Grandma!' he announced with delight. She smiled, thinking how children embrace what adults fear.

'You know,' she said, 'your Great-Uncle Arthur used to say the same thing about himself.'

Tommy paused, dropping the act. 'Really?'

'Every Sunday morning for sixty years. We'd meet at the diner, and he'd drag himself in, muttering about his aching back, complaining about getting old. 'Just walking dead, Mags,' he'd say. 'Just a zombie with a pension.' Then he'd order the special and talk for three hours about life, baseball, and everything in between.'

Arthur had been her oldest friend, the boy who'd taught her to hit a baseball with a broomstick in the vacant lot behind their houses. They'd played endless games, calling bases in tree roots and imaginary fly balls that soared past the skyscrapers they'd build together someday.

'What happened to him?' Tommy asked, settling beside her chair.

Margaret's fingers found the small sphinx paperweight on her side table—a souvenir from their trip to Egypt when they'd both finally retired. Arthur had joked that the sphinx, with its ancient weathered face, was just like them: full of riddles, watching generations pass, still standing.

'He died last spring,' she said softly. 'But not before we tried papaya for the first time.'

'Papawa?'

'Papaya. We were eighty years old, had never touched the stuff. Arthur read it was good for digestion—his eternal quest—and brought one to our weekly breakfast. We sat there, two old friends, neither knowing how to cut into the strange fruit, making a mess of it, laughing so hard the waitress asked if we needed water.'

She remembered Arthur's face, orange papaya juice running down his chin, his eyes bright with mischief despite his frail frame. They'd never be young again, but they could still try new things. They could still laugh.

'Why did you stay friends so long?' Tommy asked.

Margaret looked at the sphinx, at Arthur's empty chair across from hers in her mind. 'Because life is the riddle, not the answer. Arthur and I, we never solved aging. We never figured out why we're here. But we showed up for each other. That's the game, you see—keeping your bat on your shoulder, staying in the lineup, taking your cuts even when the pitcher throws nothing but curves.'

She squeezed Tommy's hand. 'Now, this zombie grandma is hungry. What do you say we go find some papaya?'