The Apple That Rotted

The apples at the Walmart on West Maple Street were never good. They were the kind of apples that had been on the shelf too long, or that had been stacked too high and bruised against their neighbors, or that had simply been destined for the discount pile from the moment they were harvested. They were slightly soft in places, and the color was wrong -- not the bright, confident red of the apples in the nice pile, but a muted, uncertain red that suggested the apple was not sure about itself.

Maggie O'Brien knew this. She had been buying these apples for three months, and she knew them the way you come to know the objects in a place you spend a lot of time in even if you would never choose to spend a lot of time there. She knew which ones were still okay to eat and which ones were past the point of recovery. She knew that if you bought a bag on a Wednesday they would last until Friday, but if you bought them on a Saturday they were probably already starting to turn by Monday.

Ray Kowalski knew this too. He worked at the distribution warehouse eight miles away, and on his days off he sometimes came to the Walmart and stood in the produce section and looked at things he would not buy. It was not boredom. It was something quieter -- the habit of looking at things that were available, even if you could not or would not take them.

They met in the produce section at 9:17 PM on a Wednesday in November. Maggie was reaching for an apple from the discount pile. Ray was already there. His hand was on the same apple, or a different apple in the same pile, and when she reached for it he withdrew. Not quickly -- just enough to let her have it.

Thank you, she said.

He said something that might have been you are welcome. It was hard to tell. Ray was not a man who invested much in words. Words were expensive. Apples were not.

She put the apple in her bag and moved on. He stayed at the produce section and continued looking at apples. He picked up one that was mostly good, held it in his palm for a moment -- feeling the weight of it, the way the skin was cool and slightly waxy under his thumb -- and then put it back.

This became a routine, though neither of them would have called it that. Routine implies intention. What happened between them was more like gravity -- a slow, inevitable pulling together of two objects that occupied the same space.

Once a week, sometimes twice, Ray would be at the Walmart produce section when Maggie was there, and he would quietly select one good apple from the discounted pile and leave it where she would find it. Not on the counter where she would have to come to him. Not in a bag where it would look like a gift. Just on the edge of the pile, where it would look like it had always been there, and like anyone could have taken it.

She took it. She always took it. Sometimes she said thank you. Sometimes she did not. There was a difference between the two that neither of them needed to name.

The woman at the gas station where Ray worked part-time knew about the apples. She did not ask questions, but her eyes said: you spend a lot of time at that Walmart for a man who does not seem to have much to buy.

Ray did not explain. Explanation implies that the other person deserves the truth, and Ray had learned, over thirty years of living in a city that the world had forgotten, that most people do not deserve the truth. They deserve what they can handle.

Maggie's past caught up to her on a Saturday morning in the form of a man named Trevor, who was part of the situation she had escaped and who had a talent for finding things that had been hidden. He showed up at Brenda's trailer with a quiet persistence that was worse than violence because violence at least had an ending. Trevor did not end. He just continued, like a machine that had been turned on and could not be turned off.

Ray was there by coincidence. He was delivering something for Frank the landlord -- a new lock for the back door, because Brenda had stopped trusting any door to be locked -- and he found himself standing in the doorway of the trailer watching a scene he recognized because he had seen it before in other places with other people. The pattern was always the same: a person trying to hold a line, and a person trying to cross it, and the space between them growing narrower with every word.

He offered to call the police. Brenda said no. It would only make it worse. Ray understood. In this part of the country, the police were not people you called for help. They were people you called when you had already decided that help was not coming from anywhere else.

That night, Maggie drove Ray home in her old Corolla because it was raining and the road to the trailer park was worse after rain. The Corolla made a sound like a cat being stepped on whenever it went over forty miles per hour, but it was hers, and it was warm, and it was moving, which was more than most things in Youngstown could say on a November night.

They sat in his parking lot in the car. Neither of them said anything for a long time. The rain hit the windshield in a rhythm that was almost music. Maggie's hands were on the steering wheel. Ray's hands were in his pockets. Somewhere inside him, there was a feeling that he could not name and did not have the energy to find.

You do not have to drive me home, Maggie said.

I know, Ray said.

He drove her home anyway.

Six months later, Maggie had found a new apartment. Not great. Not a trailer. An apartment with a door that locked and a kitchen where she could keep apples that did not rot in two days. Lily was in a new daycare. Trevor had moved to Indiana. Brenda had stopped checking her locks every night.

Ray was still at the warehouse. He still went to the Walmart produce section sometimes. The discounted apples were still there. He picked one up. He held it. He put it back.

The apple he picked up and put back slowly turned brown in the cold air of the produce section, and nobody noticed.

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