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Apple

by Allie Kleber
Begun 11/10/04
This Version: 12/5/04

It’s been awhile since I’ve had an apple. Not the most dire of all possible deprivations, true, but still: my life holds a noticeable lack of that particular fruit. Anyway, I woke up this morning with a distinct craving.

Since it seemed a like a silly thing to obsess over, I try to ignore the feeling for most of the day. However, during a cigarette break with a couple of ladies who can only talk about what they had for lunch, I give up. No reason to resist, really: fruit’s good for you, or so they say. May as well indulge. It’s easy enough for me to head down to the store after work, hopping out of my car just after dusk and heading in to have a look at the selection.

I like my apples uncomplicated. I avoid the sweet, soft Galas and the quirky, sour Granny Smiths; don’t even get me started on the cuttingly crisp Red Deliciouses with their mildly bitter tang. Those varieties can linger on the tastebuds for hours after you’d like to be done with them. A plain, simple Macintosh is more my speed: I don’t need anything fancy. As long as it tastes like an apple, it will do. I just pick it up, roll on through checkout, and take it home. Casual. Easy.

Finally, I have my apple. I don’t stand much on ceremony once I get home. Oh, maybe I try the old cafeteria gamble—twisting the stem, reciting each letter of the alphabet along with each turn ‘til the fibers finally snap—but it’s never the right letter. Maybe I’m waiting for the twenty-seventh: I don’t know. It’s a meaningless ritual. Anyway, I’m hungry, and I have this apple all ready to be eaten. It’s an opportunity I can’t resist squandering as soon as possible.

I rarely bother with careful peeling. I just sink my teeth into it: piercing the shiny skin with an audible crunch, tasting the first explosion of juices on my tongue. The smell of it fills the air.

For all the anticipation that has gone into this moment, it’s really a very automatic, efficient act. I eat purposefully, messily. Sticky fluid dribbles out the corner of my mouth, over chin and neck and hand.

It’s over quickly.

Abruptly, too, just like that. I could rhapsodize about the experience, but what’s the point? True, some fruit can be life-changing. Eve’s apple, once eaten, was its own punishment; revealing to her a world stripped of the romantic sugar-coatings of Eden. One bite, and suddenly all her fantastical illusions were replaced by the disappointment of reality. Snow White’s, after her own stepmother slipped her the mickey, was so good that she just up and passed out after the first tender bite. Persephone had a pomegranate, but that’s another story. Mine is sweet, messy, and ultimately insignificant: just another apple. Now that I’ve eaten it, it isn’t even that.

Idly picking bits of white flesh from my teeth with one fingernail, I toss the core into the compost bucket in my kitchen, irreverent. My hunger sated, I move on into the rest of my night.

The flavor, fleeting, has almost left my mouth. The apple is forgotten. I have lost nothing by eating it.