The Papaya Summer

The papaya sat on the kitchen counter, overripe and weeping orange juice onto the marble. Elena had bought it three days ago, back when they still believed they could make things work. Now it rotted alongside their marriage.

"You're leaving, then?" Marco stood in the doorway, his baseball cap backward—the way he wore it when they'd first met at that Dodgers game five years ago. He looked younger suddenly, or maybe she just looked older.

"I can't do this anymore." Elena packed her swimsuit into the same duffel bag she'd used when she moved in. She'd go to the club later, swim laps until her arms burned, until the water washed away his scent.

"It's the traveling," he said, not a question. "You're never here."

"I'm here right now."

"Barely." He picked up the papaya, weighed it in his palm. "Remember Costa Rica? When we got food poisoning from that papaya smoothie and spent two days in that hotel room, just us and the bathroom?"

Elena remembered. They'd lain in bed, sticky and miserable, making plans about the house they'd buy, the kids they'd have, the life they'd build. The palm tree outside their window had cast shadow-dancers on the wall every night.

"We were happy," she said.

"We were sick. There's a difference."

"God, Marco." Elena zipped the bag shut. "You think I don't know that? You think I don't remember you telling me you wanted to try for a baby while we were hugging the toilet bowl?"

"I still want that."

"And I still want to be somewhere else. Anywhere else."

He set the papaya down gently, like handling something fragile. Like handling her.

"When did we become this?" he asked.

"When we stopped swimming together. When you started watching baseball alone. When breakfast became papaya for one."

Elena slung her bag over her shoulder. She'd drive to the coast, swim in the ocean instead of the club pool. Let the salt water sting her eyes, make them tear for reasons she couldn't explain.

"Don't," Marco said.

"I have to."

"Don't go without trying."

"We've been trying for six months. That's the problem—we're trying so hard we've forgotten how to just be."

She paused at the door, hand on the frame where they'd measured their heights drunk that first anniversary. Marco hadn't grown since college. She had.

"The papaya," she said. "You should eat it before it goes completely."

"I don't like papaya."

"I know. That's why I bought it. Because you'd never choose it yourself, and I thought maybe if you tried something you hated, you might understand why I need to go."

The silence stretched between them, filled with five years of breakfasts and ball games, swimming lessons and arguments, love and the slow erosion of it.

"I'm not eating the damn papaya, Elena."

"I know." She opened the door. "That's why I'm leaving."