What Remains in the Water

The papaya sat on the counter, its yellow-orange flesh already softening in the humidity. Elena had bought it on impulse at the corner market, something about the tropical color promising a different life. That was three days ago, before David moved his belongings into boxes and himself onto a couch in Williamsburg.

Now the fruit ripened alone on the counter, much like everything else in this apartment.

Her sister's cat — a morbidly obese tabby named Pickles who had been foisted upon Elena during Sarah's semester abroad — wound himself around her ankles, mewing for breakfast. The cat was the one living thing that still needed her.

Outside, the sound of a baseball hitting leather carried through the open window. Little League practice at the park. Elena remembered sitting in those same metal bleachers with David last summer, both of them sweating through their shirts, sharing a cold beer, talking about whether they should try to have a baby. The conversation had circled for hours like the children running bases, never quite crossing home plate.

Now it was May and the answer was no, they would not.

The papaya had gone soft at the center. Elena sliced it open with a knife that still felt too large in her hand, something she and David had registered for at Crate & Barrel during that brief, luminous period when marriage felt like possibility rather than erosion. The seeds scooped out easily, dark and slick as secrets.

She ate half standing over the sink, juices running down her wrists, the sweetness almost overwhelming. Then she changed into her swimsuit.

The community center pool opened at six. Elena swam laps while the fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, moving through water that smelled faintly of chlorine and other people's skin. Breaststroke, backstroke, crawl, again and again. Her body remembered what her mind kept forgetting — how to keep moving, how to breathe, how to surface.

An older man in the next lane watched her sometimes. He had kind eyes and a wedding ring pressed into his finger by decades of wear. Yesterday, he'd nodded at her while towel-drying his hair.

"You're getting better," he'd said. "At letting yourself go under."

Elena hadn't known how to respond. She still didn't.

Back at the apartment, Pickles was asleep on David's favorite chair. The papaya bowl sat in the sink, a few drops of juice dried to sticky gold on the ceramic. Elena washed it carefully, watching the soap bubbles rise and break against the porcelain.

Tomorrow she would buy groceries. Real groceries: milk and bread and eggs. Things that lasted. The papaya had been a mistake — it rotted too quickly, demanded to be consumed before she was ready. Some things were like that.

But the pool opened at six again. And the cat still needed feeding. And somewhere in the city, perhaps sitting on another set of bleachers, David was eating dinner from a takeout container, possibly thinking about her, possibly not.

Elena turned out the kitchen light and walked toward the bedroom, trailing wet footprints on the floorboards that would be gone by morning.