The Plums
Nothing About the Summer Sticks
Article by Katie Rowley, art by Isabella Hageman
I bite into the flesh of the plum. Its purple skin breaking. Its sweet juices spitting onto my cheeks, stickiness slipping down the two fingers that hold it up to my mouth. They will dry in seconds in the summer sun. I will forget about the carnage from the plum not consumed.
We are sitting outside. My mom, my dad and I. Faded, sea-foam blue cushions separate us from the hot black metal of our deck chairs. The 11:00 a.m. sun beats down on us. We’ve put the umbrella away for the summer already. The plums sit on the sea-glass table; it matches the chairs. They’re still in the brown paper-weaved basket from the farmer’s market. My mom decided she wanted some, even though the intention of our trip had been to buy me food to take down to college. She drifted through the stands away from me and my dad, who allowed me to slow down. We had stopped to grab vegetables, and when I looked up my mom was gone. We caught up with her at the stand with plums and apples and peaches. For some reason, the plums had caught her eye. Now, they sit on our deck table, our hands reaching to steal them away.
My fingers have dried from the stickiness of the first bite. I take another. The yellow flesh ripping away from the pit, splitting from the tissue it sat next to and soaking my skin. I leave for school tomorrow. I will steal five of the plums to stock in my own fridge. I will not eat them. Their skin will wrinkle and split, constricting the golden flesh, drawing out its juices that will pile at the bottom of the climate-controlled drawer in my fridge. By the time I notice them, it will have been too late. Their stickiness will have settled into the pores of the plastic drawers and it will not come out.
But right now, the stickiness from the plums does come out of my skin. With hand soap and warm water, my hands are free. I have nothing to stick to this summer. They are clean enough to comb through dog fur without pause. They are clean enough to graze the tooth marks just above my right knee. The bruise, once as purple as the skin of the plums, has faded but the puncture wounds still remain, slightly raised. My mom tells me not to pick at them. To let them heal and fade so we can forget.
Two weeks ago, July broke into August with chilled morning air. The walk, the one I had been taking every morning with my parents and dogs, felt normal. Normal enough except my dad had left for work already, and the dobermans were at the park when we got there. So, we went a different route. Maybe that’s where it went wrong. A change in route. A change in air temperature. A change that led to our neighbor's dog escaping from their backyard as we walked by. Our neighbor ran after it.
He’s friendly! Don’t worry! He won’t do anything!
Our dogs, still puppies in a sense, were not friendly. This approach of an unknown threat elicited a discordance of barking and whining and growling. I was holding Oliver, his blue leash taut, wrapped around my hand several times over. In an effort to de-escalate the situation, I stepped in between Oliver and the neighbor’s dog. A flurry of movement between my legs. Teeth bared. White fur brushing against my skin. I got caught in the crossfire. There’s no way to know who was responsible. But it was probably Oliver. His teeth, aiming for the strange dog, sunk into my lower thigh. A bite. Hot, shooting, red pain. A bite that immediately conceived a plum-sized bruise. The skin swelling, hard underneath the surface.
I hoisted Oliver up, his 40 pound body fitting snug in between my arms as I limped away. My mom followed me with our other dog, who would never bite. We went around the block. A small trace of blood dripped down my leg, staining the hem of my white sock. My parents hired a dog trainer that evening. I don’t think they bite anymore.
The rest of my last morning at home passes by quickly. I grab another plum on my way out the door to see him: the boy I have been hooking up with all summer. My summer fling. My friend who I sleep with every time I’m home, even if it’s just for a weekend. My boy from home.
Hesitancy fills me as I drive to his place. The last time I left for school, two years ago, he got a girlfriend while I was gone. We didn’t talk forever. And I won’t be back home for three months. Anything could happen. He could leave me again.
I take bites from the sticky fruit, one hand gripping the steering wheel, the other squeezing the plum pit between two fingers. The juice drips down my fingers, settling into the creases of my palm. When I’m bored and TikTok videos of palm readings show up on my For You page, I analyze the lines. According to these marks, I will get married once. It will be unhappy and we will split. I am going to live a long and healthy life, but I will not have many stable job prospects. And, I am a selfish individual. I want to read his palm. But I never think about picking up his hand and trying to distinguish all of the lines in his dimly lit bedroom. I know he would bug me about it. When I finally broke and told him what I was doing, he would make fun of me.
I can’t believe you believe in all that. It’s like the astrology shit all over again.
I take another bite of the plum, soaking my fingers. The fluid seeping into every fingerprint. Tanginess settling into the skin he always says is so soft. But it’s not soft now. The plum has left it wrinkled, like when you’ve been swimming for too long. Or like when you can’t stop thinking about him in the shower and forget that you’re standing in water and you have to use extra lotion to smooth out fingertips again. I will have to clean them when I finish the drive. I’ll use my water bottle and white button up as a rag, rubbing off the stickiness. Or I’ll use my spit. Sticking each finger into my mouth, savoring what remains from the plum. But for now, I continue eating. And driving to him.
Two weeks ago, when I saw him, I pointed out the bruise from the dog bite. With his tender brown eyes, he examined it. Never touching. He felt sorry for me. Wanted to know the whole story.
I’ll be sure to be careful.
Be careful while he holds my legs up.
And he was careful. He didn’t touch it. His touch everywhere was soft. Caring. The same tenderness of his eyes rendered in his hands. Unlike the other boys I’ve slept with, he wouldn’t bite me. I don’t even think he would if I asked. If I begged.
Another bite. He won’t have to be careful today. But he still will be. The dog bite has disappeared, but the sting from his words at the end of June has not.
Yeah I think you’re hot, and I think my ex is hot and I think the other girl I’m hooking up with, Nikki, is hot; and you all look different.
Every letter in her name sinks into my skin. Five puncture marks: N. I. K. K. I. I know that’s how she spells it because I looked her up after I left. She’s in his stupid co-ed frat. She’s on his Instagram. They stand right next to each other, his roommate sits below. It looks like a family portrait. She has badly dyed blonde hair but my friends and I decided to let her be cute. She didn’t do anything wrong. No one did.
I take another bite. I can hear his voice moaning the two syllables. Their cacophony rattles in my ears. I tell my friends her name. We decide it’s not cute. It sounds clunky. Wrong. My mouth gets stuck on the ‘nik’ struggling to spit out the ‘ki.’ It is bitter. I wonder what Nikki sounds like in his mouth. If it is as sweet as the fresh farmers market plums. A smooth bite. The two syllables flowing like the juices, sliding down the back of his throat. I’m sure she loves the way her name sounds in his mouth.
I imagine every compliment he ever gave me whispered into her ear. I imagine his hands in her badly dyed blonde hair. I imagine him pressed against her. I imagine her naked body on the same sheets I have laid on all summer. I imagine how he greets her at his door, that stupid, cheesy smile and immediate hug. I imagine her in the passenger seat of his car, his right hand reaching over the console to grip her thigh, or maybe hold her hand. I imagine. I imagine. I imagine.
I take the last bite of the plum, sucking the remaining flesh off of the pit, and pull into his apartment complex visitor’s parking. I can feel the anxiety settling in my stomach. I clean off my fingers, opting to use my spit.The remaining sweetness lands on my tastebuds. The taste settles into my mouth, remaining there. I let it soak in before taking a drink of water. It is the same feeling as watching him lay on his bed in a post-sex glow, propped up by a bent elbow. I stared at him as he rambled on about how nice it is to just be truly comfortable with someone. The setting summer sun shone in through his shitty aluminum blind, creating an orange glow. I took it all in. I took him all in, every inch. I savored every moment with him this summer. Trying to soak in the sound of his voice saying my name, his tenderness, his desire to keep me safe, his precaution to not press too hard on my bruises.
I try my hardest to not think about how he could leave me for Nikki. I walk up to his door. Wipe my hands on my button up. Hoping my fingers are not too sticky.
They don’t stick to his bedsheets. Or to his skin. Nothing about me or this summer sticks. I leave him and I leave the city the next morning. A two hour car ride, unpacking all of my shit, and a lunch with my parents separate me from a simple summer.
In an apartment all alone, I don’t eat dinner. I am too tired to make it to the store. So all that’s in my fridge are the veggies I bought from the farmer’s market and the stolen plums. I don’t have the energy to open the fridge. I don’t have the energy to take bites from the sweet plums my mother bought. Hunger dwells in my throat, the saliva drains, a rough dryness coats every inch of my mouth. I wait for the boy from home to text me. I want his mouth to be dry in my absence. I want him to be hungry for me.
I take an edible the next night. I devour two of the plums, too high to pay attention to the juices dripping down my fingers.