Vitamin Deficiencies

The papaya sat on her kitchen counter like an accusation. Three weeks since David moved out, and the fruit he'd bought — always buying exotic produce with the optimism of someone who believed in the future — had finally ripened into something sweet and terrible.

She ate it standing up, juice dripping onto her work blouse, orange stains that would never wash out. The flavor was everything he'd wanted: vibrant, complicated, impossible to simplify into convenient categories. Like their marriage.

Her phone buzzed. A text from her boss about the Henderson account, another baseball metaphor about swinging for the fences. She'd once found his sports aphorisms charming in their earnestness. Now she imagined him in his office, middle-aged and repeatedly striking out, and felt something like pity.

At lunch, she stared at her vitamin regimen — the little organized pills that represented her belief that if she just optimized everything, her life would cohere into something sustainable. Vitamin D for the Seattle winters. Omega-3s because an article said they helped with focus. A daily performance of control.

The office aquarium bubbled in the corner. Two goldfish circled each other in the small illuminated tank, their three-second memories a blessing she couldn't access. They swam through the same water, encountering each other anew each time, perpetually surprised by each other's existence. No baggage. No accumulated disappointments. Just presence.

'What are you thinking about?' asked Marcus, the new hire from accounting, leaning against her cubicle.

She looked at his hopeful face, the way he stood like someone waiting for a pitch he could actually hit. 'Memory,' she said. 'And how sometimes not having any would be a kindness.'

He laughed, nervously, not understanding. Later she'd wonder what she'd meant by it — whether she wanted to forget David completely, or remember him differently, or become someone who encountered the world without the weight of everything that had happened before.

The papaya was gone when she got home. She'd eaten all of it, standing in her kitchen, while the August light turned the walls orange and gold. For three seconds, she allowed herself to miss him. Then she took her vitamins and washed the dishes and did not think about goldfish at all.