Expensive Fruit
We bought peaches with the intention of making pie. They cost $30 at the fancy little food store, an exorbitant amount that we were, nonetheless, too proud to balk at at the register.
I held the heavy bag of them in my palms so gently, like they were truly fragile, and arranged a nest for them at the top of my pannier so they wouldn’t bruise. I whispered to them like Smeagol admiring his treasure. My precious.
If I crash, please save the peaches, I said.
At home, I made a crust, wrapped up the two disks of dough, and put them in the fridge, ready for when the peaches were ripe. Tomorrow, I said, thinking of the pie it would become.
But somehow, instead of ripening, my expensive peaches just moldered. I cut into one and then another, and they were brown all the way to the pit. We tasted them just in case—maybe the issue was solely aesthetic? But they were mealy and sour, simply bad through and through.
The crust can wait. I put it in the freezer for when we can get better fruit. The peaches went into the compost. No sense in saving what’s already rot, even what we once thought was gold.