The Papaya Wire

Martha stood in her kitchen, phone to her ear, the old rotary she'd kept for forty-seven years. On the counter sat a papaya, improbably ripe and impossibly fragrant, sent by her friend Elena who'd moved to Hawaii five years ago. 'You'll never believe what this fruit reminded me of,' Elena's voice crackled through the line, faint but familiar.

Martha closed her eyes and she was twenty again, standing with Elena in that terrible lightning storm that had struck the old oak tree outside their dormitory. They'd huddled together in the dark, laughing as their hair stood on end with each flash, making promises about growing old together that they'd broken and kept and broken again across five decades.

'That storm,' Martha said softly. 'The night we decided nothing would ever separate us.'

'Except geography,' Elena replied, and Martha could hear her smile through the cable that connected them across an ocean. 'But Martha, that's not what I called about. Remember when you said you'd never had a papaya?'

The truth was, Martha had lied. She'd tasted one once, in 1963, with Arthur on their honeymoon in Puerto Rico. They'd stood on a balcony as lightning forked across a purple sky, and he'd fed her slices of papaya with his fingers, laughing as the juice ran down her chin. She'd told him she'd remember that moment forever.

She had, though she hadn't spoken of it in the thirty-two years since Arthur's passing. Some memories were too precious to share, too private to expose to the light of day.

'Martha?' Elena's voice broke through. 'I sent it because I thought it was time you tried something new. Even at seventy-three, don't you think?'

Martha opened her eyes and looked at the fruit on her counter, this improbable gift from an improbable friend who'd known her since she was still becoming herself. Outside, a summer storm was gathering. Lightning flickered in the distance, gentle as a heartbeat.

'Yes,' Martha said, reaching for a knife. 'Yes, I believe it is.' And as she sliced into the papaya's sunset flesh, she realized something she should have known all along: friendship, like love, like lightning, like papaya, arrives exactly when you need it, even if you didn't know you were waiting.