The Sphinx of Sunday Mornings

The cat sat on the windowsill, watching David pack with that sphinx-like inscrutability only felines can summon. Bandit had been David's idea—David who now, six years later, was leaving.

"You can keep the iPhone," David said, not looking at her. "I got the upgrade. It's got all our photos anyway."

Sarah stared at the device on the counter, sleek black rectangle holding six years of breakfasts, vacations, arguments that seemed meaningless now. The sphinx had asked its riddle and they'd failed: what do you do when love becomes a habit you forgot you were performing?

She remembered their first date, drunken baseball game in July, him explaining rules she didn't care about while she watched his hands. They'd ended up at his apartment, eating papaya in bed at 3 AM because it was the only food in his kitchen. The sweetness on his fingers. The way he laughed when she spit out a seed.

"The papaya tree in the backyard," she said. "Who remembers to water it?"

David zipped his suitcase. "It was your idea to plant it."

"You planted it."

"Because you wanted one."

The cat meowed, finally breaking the silence.

They'd bought the house together two years ago. The papaya tree was supposed to be their symbol—something they'd grow together, something that would fruit in time. Now it stood eight feet tall in the backyard, and she couldn't remember the last time either of them had checked it for fruit.

She thought about the baseball game they'd attended last month, sat through nine innings without speaking. He'd checked his phone between pitches. She'd watched the vendor call out peanuts and Cracker Jack and felt nothing.

"I'm taking Bandit," she heard herself say.

David looked up, finally. "Really? You hate cats."

"He's more mine than yours now."

They both knew it wasn't about the cat.

The sphinx's riddle wasn't about staying or leaving. It was about how long you could pretend you weren't already gone.

"Okay," he said. "Yeah. Okay."

He lifted his suitcase. She waited for him to say something else. To break. To acknowledge that their whole life was being divided like household objects, like a papaya split down the middle, one half for each of them.

He didn't.

The door clicked shut. The cat jumped down from the windowsill and walked to her, tail high. Outside, the papaya tree continued growing, indifferent to the ending of things.