What the Animals Remember

The papaya sat on the counter for three days before Marcus finally noticed it had gone soft, its skin freckled with brown spots that looked like age spots on the hands of the woman who'd bought it. Elena had loved papaya—said it tasted like summers she'd never actually had, growing up gray and cold in Chicago. She'd left two weeks ago, taking her clothes and her mother's china and leaving behind the house they'd renovated together, the mortgage, and custody of the pets they'd adopted during what Marcus now thought of as the Decade of False Optimism.

The cat, Luna, had taken to sleeping on Elena's pillow, as if her scent might somehow summon her back. She was a creature of habit, much like Elena—meticulous, particular, offended by disorder. The dog, Buster, had responded differently: drinking from the toilet, chewing the baseboards, staring at Marcus with wounded eyes that seemed to ask what he'd done to make the woman leave. Animals knew, Marcus thought. They sensed the terrible atmospheric pressure that had built between them over the last two years—the silent dinners, the sex that had become functional as a handshake, the way Elena had started flinching when he reached for her.

He cut into the papaya now, its flesh shocking orange against the gray dawn. The smell hit him immediately—sweet, musky, overwhelmingly familiar. He and Elena had eaten this on their honeymoon in Belize, sitting on a balcony while she told him she wanted three children, a house with a garden, a life that looked like something from a magazine she'd read once. He'd promised her everything. He'd meant it, too. That was the terrible part.

Luna wound around his legs, purring, while Buster whined at the back door. They needed to be fed, walked, loved—all the things that had become harder to do as his career had swallowed him whole, as Elena's questions about when they'd start trying for a baby had become accusations he couldn't bear to face. The papaya's seeds spilled dark and slick across his cutting board. He took a bite. It tasted like guilt, like memory, like something rotting from the inside out.

"I know," he said to the animals, to the empty kitchen, to the woman who would never hear him. "I know."