“Did you give her a name?”
“Sure did. I really thought she was the one. Lilith. My Lilith. But none of that matters now. She doesn’t matter. This is about us.” Adam reaches out and squeezes her knee. “I always like this part. It feels so honest, right before the end. Like a real marriage.”
Sophia scrambles for other questions, other answers, anything to extend this moment when she is alive and he is interested in her and possibilities still exist. “What about the lace cap? It’s too small for a woman. And the bottle with the rubber tip.”
Adam flushes an ugly color. His lip curls up in disgust. He leans in toward her. “Sometimes, after they talk to the thing in the garden,” he whispers, “they have babies.”
Sophia frowns. “What’s a baby?” She looks around the great table. The six empty chairs. She cannot understand what he could possibly mean.
“Nothing,” Adam says sharply. “A mistake.” He peers at her. “You’ve talked to the thing in the garden, haven’t you? The snake. Cascavel.”
Sophia nods.
“I suppose you’re mad at me now.” Adam pouts into his plate. He is still so beautiful to her. Despite everything she knows, she wants to forgive him. Longs for it like food to nourish herself. They built her this way, that boy and his Father, so that she wouldn’t bother him too much. And she is still faulty. He is an empty hole hungry to swallow her up, no different than the one in the cellar.
Sophia draws a long, ragged breath. She takes her husband’s cheeks in her hands, then wraps his bulk in her slender arms. She buries her face in him, breathes in his smell. Thinks of Mrs. Lyon and all her kittens. Of Mrs. Fische’s silver hair. Of Mrs. Palfrey dancing on the stage. Of life, and long grass, and the sun rising and falling on Arcadia.
“I love you,” she whispers. Her very cells rejoice and stretch toward him. Yes, they sigh. This is right. We were made for him. Without him, we are nothing. Let him save us. He will always save us. “I forgive you. It’s all right. It’s all right. Just let me stay. I’ll be good. I’ll be happy.”
“I’d like to, Soph, I really would. But it’s better like this. A fresh start is always best. Believe me, I know. I’m an experienced guy. You’d always judge me for it. Make me suffer all those little teensy cuts only a wife knows. It would never really be the same. This way, I get what I want and you … darling, you get what you want! To never be apart from me. To be with your friends forever. I’ll come and visit you, I promise. Every night. She never has to know. The next one, whoever she’s going to be. No one will ever know. This is the beginning of the universe and I make the rules. I am the seed of all that comes after and I will never tell a soul you existed. And next time will be perfect. She’ll be perfect. I know it. Because you forgive me. They’ve never forgiven me before. But you do. That’s how close we were. You said so and you can’t take it back. I am free. I can truly start again.” His eyes shine up at her. “Say it again. So I can remember. Say you forgive me.”
Sophia curls her nails into the back of his neck. She tries. She tries so hard. The apples shimmer cruelly on the pie plate and she tries to force herself to say what she wants to say.
Eat it, you fucking pig, eat it.
But she cannot. The atoms of her will not allow it. She was not built to allow it. She grimaces. His blood wells up under her nails. It will leave a scar. It will leave a scar and maybe that will be enough. For the next one. To make her understand. The way the last one made her understand. She will see a wound shaped like a woman’s nails in her husband’s neck and she will wonder. A neck that should be smooth and kind because the world knows no suffering yet.
Does he feel it? Does he see? Her breath comes quick and fractured.
“Eat, darling,” she says through a frozen, devoted, perfect smile. “Your pie is getting cold.”
Adam closes his hands on her throat. He kicks the plate away. It bursts into pieces against the door.
“I love you,” Sophia wheezes, and she does. She loves him so much and she keeps loving him right up until the moment when her pupils blow out and it all burns away, the parks and the pools and the roses in the window boxes and the animals and the wide, generous streets and the amphitheater and the lions yawning on the grass next door beside the silvery fish and the clever minks and the lazy lambs and the busy bees in the market and the roof shingles in Gevurah Grey and the walls of the house that was hers in Innocence. The long stark gate and the desert beyond and that lone and lonely tree bending so low its fruits touch the hungry, waiting earth. Her great soft bed like an inland sea, her great grand mirror like a quiet friend, her sad little soap molds and half-empty pie plate and the bowl of wilted orange roses, white chrysanthemums, and three bright fuchsia hibiscus branches teetering on the edge of the table, frozen in space, about to tumble, about to fall.