The Vitamin Deficiency

Margaret stood in the produce aisle, staring at the papaya as if it might explain everything. Three weeks since David left, and she was still doing things like buying papaya because he liked it, even though she couldn't stand the taste. The fruit sat in her bowl, softening into an accusation.

"You need more iron," the doctor had said, pushing her toward supplements. "And vitamin D. You're depleted."

Depleted. The word felt like a verdict on her marriage.

She dropped the spinach into her cart — the bagged stuff, pre-washed, efficient. David would have bought fresh, would have spent twenty minutes examining each bunch for wilting. He was meticulous like that. His hats arranged by season on the shelf in the closet. His vitamins sorted into those plastic organizers, Monday through Sunday.

She'd found herself sleeping in his old hockey jersey, the one he'd worn in college. It smelled like cedar and stale cologne, like someone who used to exist in her bed. Her friends said she should throw it out. They said she should date. They said she needed to get back out there.

"You have to bear it," her sister had said over lukewarm coffee. "The grieving part. You can't skip it."

But what was there to grieve? A man who organized his life into convenient compartments? A marriage that had been slowly eroding like a coastline in a storm? Or just the habit of having someone there?

She stood in her kitchen that night, making a salad of spinach and papaya, forcing herself to eat the combination he'd loved. The taste was wrong — too sweet, too bitter together. She took a vitamin from the bottle he'd left behind. Her body would absorb what it needed. The rest would pass through her system, unused.

Some things, she realized, you couldn't supplement. Some deficiencies weren't about nutrients at all.

She threw the rest of the papaya in the trash. Washed the hockey jersey and put it in a donation bag. It wasn't closure. It wasn't some grand gesture. It was just Tuesday.

She'd buy her own hats now. The kinds she actually liked.