STILL, LIFE

I don’t know how to forget, not on purpose, I just don’t. This is the thought pushing its way up from my subconscious when the early morning sun wakes me, and no amount of tossing and turning will settle me back to sleep. Eventually, I surrender. I decide that today is the day I will begin to forget. Stumbling out of bed, I throw cold water on my face, pull on shorts and a T-shirt, and shuffle to the kitchen, where I take a nectarine from the fridge.

A ripe nectarine, freckled with sugar spots, like little fireworks against a ruby and topaz sky. When I squeeze it, the fruit gives, but only a little, a playful tease, not a defeated resignation. Holding the nectarine to my nose, the jasmine-and-honeysuckle fragrance conjures other summer mornings, back when I was seven or maybe nineteen, or even just last year, back when everything, at least from this vantage point, was luxuriantly effortless.

When I was seven, I wanted to be a dragon breeder. When I was nineteen, I wanted to run away to the city––any city. And just last year, I gave a little to your gentle squeeze and thought I smelled something rich and savory, something like love. But that was an age ago, too far away to justify its constant pulling me back in time.

I observe the fruit that’s cooling my fingertips. Am I foolish to expect this innocent nectarine to propel me forward to the now? Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know any better way to forget you.

I stand at my kitchen counter, the plump fruit sitting in one hand, my favorite paring knife, the one with the pearly handle, in the other. While the sun sends dusty shafts through the window blinds, I bring my hands together and let the blade kiss the dewy fruit. It’s a chaste kiss, a barely-there touch of metal to skin, an exploration.

The first time our lips brushed, I was standing in your office, not my kitchen, and it was dusk, not dawn. Neither of us was sure about this, even though we both wanted it, so we leaned in, then held back, then started shuffling paper. I wanted to laugh at how nervous I was, but I was too nervous to laugh.

I pierce the nectarine with the knife tip, and the taut skin pops, releasing a single drop of sparkling juice. This is a watershed moment. The nectarine is still whole, but it’s irreversibly changed: the wall sheltering the supple flesh from the cold world has been punctured. The secret stash of gold is revealed.

When I finally took our secreted relationship public, you said meeting my roommate, Lydia, was hardly screaming it from the rooftops. But it was a big deal to me. It was the first step outside our snow globe, the first time we exposed ourselves to other people’s questions and expectations and judgments, the first time we lost control of the conversation.

Poor Lydia. Try as she might, she couldn’t mask her surprise (her horror?) at the age difference between us. That repulsed look on her face made an impact on me. I decided to hold off on telling my friends, my office mates, my parents. I shut everyone out and dared hope this could work. So I didn’t have any of those people around to point out the things I wouldn’t let myself see.

Because I really, really wanted us to work.

The skin snaps when I cut the first slice. The saffron pulp glides slickly over my fingers as I drop the wedge into a small porcelain bowl. I cut another slice. This is such an intimate act, this laying bare of the flesh, I think maybe I should whisper a prayer.

You and I grew intimate fast. At least, I thought we were becoming intimate. I thought we saw ourselves through each other’s eyes, thought we recognized ourselves in every beautiful thing the world had to offer, thought we pictured ourselves in the future, together.

Now I sit on the Adirondack chair on my back stoop, the porcelain bowl balanced on my bare knees. The sun is squinting through the branches of the weeping willow to dapple the wet crabgrass. Nearby, a lawn mower hums, a child squeals, a crow caws. I breathe in. It’s time.

Hungrily, I pop the first slice whole between my lips. Then I torture myself a little, forcing myself to wait while the dripping morsel drenches my tongue, begging to be taken. When I can wait no longer, I bite down, triggering a cascade of ambrosial juices.

The day we took that walking chocolatier tour, that was the day I couldn’t wait any longer to say I loved you. It was both a huge relief and a massive terror to get the words out. The fraction of a second before you burst into the world’s biggest grin, that moment lasted forever. The kiss that followed wiped out every other sensation in my body. We held hands for the rest of the afternoon.

I eat the second slice more slowly, paying closer attention to its nuances. The sweetness distills into shades of honey. The juice matures from sugar water to wine. The textures prove richer, more complex than on first encounter. And is that a hint of tartness I taste? So much here to explore before it’s gone.

Our first fight happened when I said something in the spirit of exploration but that you took for belligerence. I asked what you were like when you were my age, and you, well, I’d seen tartness in you before, but never bitterness, and it stunned me. I wonder if the dismay on my face, the ache in my response scared you. I wonder if that’s why you slept with your arm around me that night.

Three more slices to go––almost half done. I eat the next one with my eyes closed, listening to the muted crunch, like a muffled drumbeat in my mouth. Now I’m hit with a grating sound, a jarring vibration of my teeth. A sliver of pit must have clung to this slice. The shard feels large and foreign in my mouth––how could I have missed it earlier?

I suppose it’s easy to miss something when you’re not really looking, or when you’re purposefully looking away. I missed so many things. Like how our lighthearted verbal jousts increasingly turned into quarrels. How our goodnight kisses deteriorated into pecks, not even always on the lips. How, come to think of it, you didn’t say you loved me back that day of the walking tour.

I should have seen. I would have seen, if it weren’t so scary to look at.

I feel sorry for the penultimate slice. It knows it won’t be savored as much as the final one. It’s the Cinderella of slices, underappreciated no matter how hard it tries.

When did I realize that I wasn’t going to be your last love, your forever-after love? I don’t know. What I do know is that I found myself cooking ever more elaborate dinners for us, complimenting you more, wearing the colors and styles that the magazines promised would turn you on. And the more these efforts failed to bring us back together, the harder I tried.

I decide to eat the last slice as deliberately as possible, a small nibble at a time. It’s sweeter and silkier than all the others, at once a delight and a sorrow to consume. I don’t want the nectarine to be gone, but I have to finish it. At this point, it’s inevitable.

I spent a long time finishing things with you, much too long. I kept thinking that maybe this latest rough patch would blow over, that we’d emerge even stronger together. But no, that was never going to happen, and I should have called it out long before I did. I just needed some time to come to grips with how empty I knew I’d feel once we parted, as empty as the porcelain bowl now sitting between my knees, the bowl that used to hold a perfect nectarine, but now only contains the memories of it.

I place a hand on my belly, sensing the fruit feed fresh life into me. So the nectarine isn’t gone, after all. It’s right here inside me, reminding me that I need to nourish myself in ways I didn’t with you. I understand that need, but it’s so easy, too easy, to let things like a decent meal slide when you’re busy mourning what you’ve lost or maybe never had. I need a new plan, a better way.

And maybe that better way is this: maybe I don’t need to forget you. Maybe I need to remember not exactly you, but how I was with you. Which will remind me to be better to myself. To eat fruit and watch the sun come up. To see that the memories of our time together constitute the cure, not the disease.

I lick the stickiness off my fingers, then haul myself up and carry the bowl to the sink. I want to do my errands before it gets too hot out, but while I’m in the kitchen, I take a minute to check the fridge and make sure there’s another nectarine waiting for tomorrow morning. Just in case I’m in the mood. Just in case I need another reminder.

Shirley Vernick is the author of five novels, whose recognitions include starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and a Library Guild selection. Her essays have appeared in Salon, Cosmopolitan, and numerous literary journals. She is a graduate of Cornell University and an alumna of the Radcliffe Writing Seminars.