Falling Fruit

He kept picking up apples from the scrubby grass, taking a single bite, and then tossing them back into the dirt under the trees.

“That’s rotting fruit,” she reminded him for the millionth time.

“They’re fallen apples,” he said for the millionth time. “No one is going to eat them just because they touched the ground. But they tugged themselves off the branches because they’re ripe.”

She shrugged with absolute neutrality. This was meant to be a fun day out, not a fight or a nag.

“I’m going to pay for whatever we actually pick, Alana.”

She scanned her eyes down the rows and rows of short, squat trees they could easily pick apples from. Alana wondered if the reason apple picking in the autumn was such a thing was so non-farmers could experience what it felt like to be farmers in the least stressful way possible. She and Peter didn’t have to water the trees, spray the trees with pesticide, cover the trees with tarps or blankets to make sure their fruit didn’t freeze. They didn’t have to make an effort. They just got to pay ten bucks and experience the fruits of other people’s labor, walking along neat rows of crooked trees that only required a mere reach to grab a treasure.

Peter was taking a second bite of the reddish apple he had scooped from the ground. She couldn’t tell what type of apple it was because his hand was covering the whole thing. It was small and mealy-looking and probably tasted sour. But hey, it was free. He could get the taste of a grimy apple without having to deal with small talk at the cash register.

“They told us not to take stuff from the ground,” she said for only the one hundredth time.

Peter raised an eyebrow as he chucked the chomped-on apple behind him. “Well, I live dangerously.” He really didn’t, but he looked so good in his red and black flannel jacket that she decided not to say anything.

Alana pulled her scarf tighter in the early morning light. She had dragged them away from their breakfast table into a planned forest to find … something. When she woke up and looked at her bowl of cereal, she couldn’t take another October day of staying indoors, going through the same weekend routines. They were a couple, they needed to do something exciting once in a while.

That was how she’d put it to Peter. He’d pointed out that if it wasn’t broken, they shouldn’t fix it. She said she didn’t want to fix anything, she wanted to prove they could still be fun, could still be sweet.

“What are you looking for?” he asked her now, and she snapped her eyes away from the horizon of trees to see the golden light play on his brown eyes. He had the richest brown eyes she’d ever seen. They reminded her of fall, always had: they changed color in different lights, becoming almost golden if you were looking for the change.

“I want to find the perfect apple,” she said, the words coming out so solemn they made him laugh. “I’m serious! I can’t let you keep eating dirt apples in order to prove some sort of point about how being free-gan is the way to go.”

Peter had once spent a summer digging for bagels in the trash behind the local Trader Joe’s. He had been that poor out of college. He only stopped because he got caught by one of the Hawaiian-shirted clerks. But every once in a while, he still tried to get away with a steal, just on the principle of the thing, proving no one would miss what they didn’t see.

“You’ve never spent any time in an orchard, you told me that yourself. I want to find you the best apple ever.” She wound her arms around his waist. He kept his hand shoved in his pockets and she leaned into his flannel smell. It felt comfortable, like home, even when the day wasn’t going so great.

But they couldn’t find the perfect apple. Half the trees were picked clean, even in mid-October, and Alana was looking for something special, something that would make the day memorable. Peter suggested looking at the half-pecks laid out so enticingly in the store at the front of the barn by the dusty parking lot.

They looked at baskets of braeburns, which always seemed half-ripened. They looked at bags of cameos, which didn’t spark joy. They looked at heaps of jubilees and granny smiths, but Alana never liked green apples – too cloying, too sweet. Peter was examining a pack of pink ladies with a promising look, when he practically shouted across the pile of pecks that this was the type of apple he’d been eating while they walked through the trees.

“Let’s just go,” Alana hissed.

“But we didn’t find what you wanted,” he said, sounding like he finally cared.

She grabbed a plastic shell filled with apple cider donuts and walked past him towards the register.

The older woman ringing them up had such a chipper attitude, there was no way she’d been up since four am spraying pesticides.

“Did you find everything you wanted?” she asked.

“No, she was looking for the perfect apple,” Peter blurted over Alana’s shaken head.

“Oh,” the clerk smiled. “I have just the thing.” She reached behind her into one of the other piles of apples nearby, and came back with one giant yellow-gold-red apple in her hand. It was the size of her fist. “This is a honeycrisp,” she said. “Have you ever had one before?”

The couple shook their heads no.

“You’re in for a treat. It was genetically engineered in a lab to be the crispiest, sweetest apple ever created. I guarantee this is the perfect apple.”

Alana was confused. “You’re selling us something synthetic?”

“Well, we grow them here now.”

“Sold,” Peter said, handing over cash for the one apple.

Outside, they stood in the parking lot, and Peter tried to gin up excitement.

“All right, let’s rock this bad boy!” he cried, as he took a giant hunk out of the apple with his teeth, destroying its colorful skin. “Oh, man, that’s really good. Take a bite.”

Alana looked at the half-eaten honeycrisp and nipped a little off the untouched side.

It should have been refreshing, but in Alana’s mouth, it tasted too sweet, like it was trying too hard. She looked at Peter, and forced a smile in the growing morning light. This afternoon was going to be hard.