The End of the World

As a boy, summer Sundays, I lived on apricots, plucking them from my grandmother's backyard tree. I remember their skin's light down and their unpredictable little squirts of sweet juice—so tender they'd fall apart sometimes in my hand—and spitting the seeds casually into the weeds. I would eat them over the course of a day by the fistful.

So this morning I gave my son Zachary his first apricot—incomprehensible but true.

At least I think it was an apricot. It was advertised as an apricot. It was hairless, a dull yellow, and as firm as an unripe peach.

He took a bite, chewed for a moment, looked up at me and said: "It tastes like an apple."