The Riddle of Leftovers

Margaret left on a Tuesday, which felt like a cruelty — Tuesdays were for baseball practice and leftovers, not for dismantling lives. Now I stand in the kitchen, staring at the papaya she'd bought two days before, its skin still mottled green and gold, mocking me with its unfinished ripening.

"It's like you're a sphinx," she'd said during our last argument, her voice weary rather than angry. "All these riddles about what you want, what you feel. I'm done guessing."

Buster, our elderly golden retriever, presses his warm weight against my leg. He'd been her dog originally, a wedding gift from her parents, but somewhere along the way, he'd become mine. Now he looks at me with those liquid-brown eyes, expecting dinner, expecting constancy. Poor bastard. Neither of us saw this coming.

I pick up the papaya. It's yielding now, fragrant. I cut it open, the flesh brilliant orange and seeded like some alien fruit. We were supposed to share this. That was the plan, the unspoken assumption.

The baseball field is visible from our backyard. I can hear the crack of bats, the distant cheers. Our son Toby is at his father's weekend place, spared from witnessing this unraveling. Thank God for small mercies. Toby lives for baseball — the precision, the rules, the clear-cut wins and losses. Nothing like marriage. Nothing like love.

Buster whines, nudging my hand. I give him a piece of papaya. He eats it gratefully, no judgments about ripeness or timing.

The riddle wasn't that complicated, I realize now. Margaret wanted certainty. She wanted me to say I loved her more than the job that was consuming me, more than the silence I'd mistaken for peace. But I'd stayed silent, guarded as any monument, and now she's gone, and I'm left with a ripening fruit and a dog who expects me to be predictable.

I finish the papaya standing at the sink. It's sweet, cloying, everything she'd hoped it would be. Outside, the baseball game continues, someone wins, someone loses. Inside, I learn too late that some riddles answer themselves only when the person asking has already walked away.