“And the new one?” Sophia urges him on.
“Well … my Father thought I ought to learn a lesson about how much effort it takes to make a living being out of clay and spit and nothingness, so that I wouldn’t be so careless next time. You can’t imagine it, Sophie. He built her right in front of me. Blood and sinew and bone and mucus and clots and tissue and eyeballs and it was just so … wet and horrible. She loved me and she sang so nice and she cleaned the house and cooked everything just the way I like it but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. I tried to touch her and all I could feel was that wetness sloshing around inside her. It was disgusting.”
“But it’s inside you too,” Sophia insists. He knows that, doesn’t he? He must know that.
“But I never saw myself get … assembled. Like a thing. I’m not a thing, not like them. Not like you. So I told my Father it was no use, give us a thousand years and I could still never bear to be in a room with her. Start over clean, from scratch. We’d work on the problem together. A little Father-Son time would do us both good. I kept a little vial of her blood, which was all she really ever was in the first place, when you think about it. Don’t look at me like that, Sophia. I deserve to be happy. I am the only man in the world and Eden was built for me. If I do not deserve happiness, who does?”
“What was her name?” Sophia asks.
“Never gave her one.” Adam shrugs.
“But … you name things. That is your great work that keeps you out all hours. You give everything that exists their names. The animals and the plants and the clouds and the sky. Even the bugs. Even the worms.”
Adam rolls his eyes. “The animals and the plants and the clouds and the sky stuck around a lot longer than she was ever gonna.”
“And the others? And the rest?”
The first man heaves a giant’s sigh. “We tried everything. I did try. I always tried! You don’t think I tried? We made a woman out of light, out of seawater, out of grapevines, out of wheat. Out of sky, out of song, out of feathers. Then, after a million years or so, we reasoned that since I had been such a success, the only logical solution was to make her out of me. So my Father would tuck me in and put me to sleep and remove some little part of me to make a woman out of. My hair, my teeth, my lip, my spleen. I have a lot of parts! And the moment they opened their eyes, every single one of them, I fell in love. You gotta believe me. Completely in love. I never held anything back. I believed this time it would work. But they were never happy. Sooner or later, they all went sour, like old milk. And when they did, my Father in his Wisdom and Grace destroyed them. Just made them go away and brought the new one. What is inside them went away without a fuss and the rest vanished.” Adam grimaces bitterly. “But then Father thought I needed to be taught a lesson, and he stopped taking them away, which was not at all fair of Him. So, I had to take care of it. It made me feel sick at first, all the wetness and bits and pieces. But now I time myself to see how fast I can do it! It’s not much different than the roasts you eat for dinner. Nothing wasted. And they go…” Adam makes a whistling sound and whirls his finger in a circle. “In the walls. In the drawers. In the floor. In the basement. Where I can still visit, if I want. Sometimes I go down in the middle of the night and sleep there. It’s comforting, to be surrounded by loved ones. By my girls.”
“Your Father is my Father too. He made me too.”
“So what?”
“Why…” Sophia raises her eyes to the ceiling, searching for a divinity that is not there, not for her. Her eyes fill up with hopelessness. She asks a question older than day and night. “Why doesn’t He love me like He loves you?” Tears fall down her perfect face. “Why does He let you do this? Why won’t He tell you to stop?”
Adam picks awkwardly at the piecrust. “I was made in His image,” the primordial man says softly. Then he giggles. “You were made from my eye!” He passes one hand over his right eye and reveals a puckered, sunken gouge beneath it. He passes his hand back the other way and his face is whole again. Two blue eyes watching her with boyish interest. “Did you know that? I don’t expect you could. Father said he made you incapable of unhappiness. That you were my last chance. He always says that though. And then I always get more chances! In retrospect, it hardly mattered what He made you from. Doomed from the start. You saw too clearly and too far ahead. We’ll know better next time. No more eyeballs! He owes me this time.” Sophia’s husband points accusingly at her. “You’re as unhappy as anybody I’ve ever seen! You’re broken. At least you lasted longer than the last one. What a misery she was. Wouldn’t stay where I put her. Wouldn’t do what I told her. It’s her fault. All she had to be was mine and she refused. I didn’t even keep anything from her. She ran away, can you believe it? I had to send the police after her. I had to, Soph. She hurt me. She had to be punished. Nobody’s allowed to hurt me.”