The Weight of Empty Things

Martha stood in the produce aisle, holding a papaya like it was something precious. Her husband David had loved them—would cut them open with surgical precision, sprinkle lime juice across the orange flesh like he was conducting some private ritual. That had been six months ago. Now the papaya sat in her basket next to a bottle of vitamin D supplements the doctor said she needed, as if sunlight in pill form could compensate for the gray winter that had taken up residence in her chest.

She turned down the cereal aisle and stopped. There he was—the man she'd seen every Tuesday for three weeks, always wearing the same crushed fedora, like a character who'd wandered out of a noir film and couldn't find his way back. Today he was crying silently over a box of bear-shaped cookies.

Martha approached him, compelled by something she couldn't name. 'Rough day?'

He jumped, then laughed—it was a rusty sound, like something unused. 'My daughter. She's seven now, lives in Seattle with her mother. These were her favorite.' He gestured with the box. 'I haven't seen her in eight months. Court order says every other weekend, but Seattle's expensive, you know?'

'My husband died,' Martha said, and immediately wondered why she'd told him. Maybe because grief was a club, and this man with his ridiculous hat was holding his membership card sideways.

'I'm sorry,' he said. And he didn't say it like people usually did—like they were apologizing for the weather. He said it like he meant it.

'I bought a papaya,' she said. 'He loved papayas. I don't even like them.'

'My daughter loves those cookies. I think they taste like cardboard.'

They stood there in the cereal aisle, two people hollowed out by different kinds of absence, holding things they didn't want for people they couldn't reach.

'My name's Arthur,' he said.

'Martha.'

'Would you,' he started, then stopped. 'Would you want to get coffee? I know that's—we don't know each other, and you're probably not—'

'Yes,' she said.

Arthur looked surprised. 'Oh. Good. Good.' He adjusted his hat like it was a crown. 'There's a place around the corner.'

Martha looked at the papaya in her basket, then at the cookies in his hand. 'I should put this back,' she said. 'I don't even like papayas.'

'And I don't need these cookies,' Arthur said, placing them gently on the shelf.

They walked out of the store together, leaving behind the things they carried for other people, stepping into the grey afternoon light like they were learning how to be in the world again. For the first time in six months, Martha's chest felt a little less gray.