What We Couldn't Keep Alive

The papaya sat between us like a small, soft accusation. Martin had brought it home yesterday from that ethnic grocery on 5th Street, the one where the clerk always asked about my mother. Now he was cutting it into wedges, the juice staining his fingers like guilt.

"You're not eating," he said.

"Not hungry."

The orange slices looked like sections of some dissected thing. I watched the pulp catch the light, thinking how much easier it would be if we could just slice open our problems and examine them piece by piece, instead of letting them rot inside us.

"The fish tank looks empty," I said.

Martin glanced toward the corner where the bowl had sat. "It's been two weeks, Elena."

"I know. I just—sometimes I still see him there. That flash of orange when the light hits right."

He didn't mention that the goldfish had been mine, a birthday gift from three years ago when we were still trying. Before the doctors started using words like "unexplained infertility" and "consider other options." Before we became people who bought tropical fruit on Sundays and pretended life was normal.

"Papaya's supposed to be good for conception," he said, his voice terrible with hope.

I wanted to scream. Instead I ate a slice. It tasted like sweet decay.

"Martin," I said, and he waited, knife hovering over the fruit. "I went to the clinic yesterday. Alone."

He lowered the knife. Something in his face shifted, like furniture being rearranged in a dark room.

"And?"

"I'm stopping the treatments."

The silence was thick, suffocating. Outside, a car alarm wailed.

"We could keep trying," he said, but there was no conviction in it. Just exhaustion, same as mine.

"We could," I agreed. "Or we could remember who we were before we became people who measure everything in cycles and temperatures and hope."

He pushed the papaya away. I thought he would argue, but instead he started to cry. Not the dignified tears of movies, but the ugly kind that comes from somewhere deep and hollow. I reached across the table and took his sticky, juice-stained hand.

The goldfish had lived for three years in its small bowl, swimming the same circles day after day. We had done the same thing, only we'd called it trying. Now the bowl sat empty in the corner, catching dust motes in the afternoon light.

"I miss him too," Martin said, and for a moment I thought he meant the fish.

"I know," I said, squeezing his hand. "We'll get another one. A cat. Something that can actually love us back."

"Yeah," he said, wiping his face with the back of his hand. "But first—" he gestured at the fruit, "—are you going to finish that papaya?"

I ate another slice. It was still sweet, still terrible, still the only thing we had.