Comfort Me With Apples(9)

Give it to me, rasps the heron. It is impossible, impossible, and yet the eyes of the creature are the every-colored eyes of Mr. Semengelof. It speaks with the voice of the music teacher. Pure song. Pure pity. Give it to me and I will take it away forever.

Sophia’s muscles thicken with the rigor of horror. She cannot move. She cannot get away. She cannot understand. She tries to obey, but she is so afraid.

Give it to me and I will take it not only from your house but from your mind. It will not trouble you again. You will not even remember that it troubled you at all.

The field mouse blinks its beautiful eyes. It’s okay, it whispers. It’s best this way. You don’t deserve it.

The bird stops. It jerks its sleek head toward the door and flies away in one long fluid unfurling of wing and intent. Enough. But it has shown it can get to me, Sophia thinks. It can get to me whenever it wants.

The mouse has fled just the same.

Her husband enters the house without knocking, as he always does. Drops his things on the foyer floor without a care.

“I am home! I am here! Where is my wife?”

Sophia is on her feet and in his arms in the same fluid unfurling movement as the heron’s ascent. It is him, it is him, and there can be nothing wrong now, how stupid she’s been, how young and small and reckless with herself. Her husband holds her so tight. His arms dwarf her, envelop her, the most exquisite suffocation. He smells of growing greens and blackberries and ripe hops and deep, tilled, tended earth. And a little of blood and milk and musk, always, yes, of the animals he works with, their bodies and their breath and their hot, quick life. No smell excites Sophia more than this.

“My love, my love,” she whispers.

His big hand cups her head, strokes her long hair, and then he wants her, of course he does, and she wants him too, his kisses and his strength and his warmth and his need.

Your Needs Are Our Wants.

“Are you happy, Sophia?” he whispers urgently as he devours her.

He says her name over and over, until it no longer sounds like her name at all, but someone else’s, and for a moment, Sophia could swear it is someone else’s name. Other vowels and other consonants, strangers in the halls of her ears. But she shakes her head against his chest and the moment floats away. The world is Sophia again. Sophia, Sophia, Sophia. The tickle of his breath in the curve of her neck; the tickle of the field mouse’s fur on the curve of her foot; the tickle of the glass breaking beneath the heron’s beak.

“You are happy, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

“Yes, my darling,” Sophia sighs, and she is not lying. Not yet. The mingling of their breath is a biome in which only the truth can thrive. “Yes.”

She serves him an early breakfast in the easing dark, as light on her feet as dancing. All sins forgotten in the slicing of toast, all foolishness in the hot, real grounded smell of good cheese, and won’t they have a day, the two of them, strolling the parks, checking on their squash blossoms and snap peas and olives in the Community Garden, carefully helping the pollen along with paintbrushes if need be, poor lazy squashes. And then they’ll go to the show. Mrs. Palfrey and Mrs. Moray and Mrs. Wolfe’s summer spectacular! How considerate of him to come home in time. Sophia will sit in the amphitheater as a cool silvery evening breeze relieves the heat and the fireflies begin to click on in the trees, snuggled into the safety of him, treasured as gold, waiting for the lights to go down and the music to start.

I was made for him, she thinks, and that is all that matters.

Sophia reaches for the little paring knife to slice off last night’s still-moist chicken to crosshatch over the toast. Her hand stops all on its own. It hovers.

Yes, there is a show tonight, and ice cream and dancing and a million fireflies like wishes, but there is also a bone in the knife block. There is a bone in the knife block because Sophia put it back where she found it, not knowing what else to do. There is a bone in the knife block and someone’s hair in the upstairs drawer. The egg yolks wriggle wetly on the half-prepared plate. She will not ask him. She will not. She trusts him. She is happy. Sophia is happy.

He roars for his breakfast and she hurries. Sticks the carving knife back in where it will not fit because someone’s fingertip is in there, leaves the blade jutting halfway out, trembling slightly in its slot even after she’s gone.

Sophia watches her man eat. His appetite is as enormous as their bed, their table, their chairs, their candlesticks. It gratifies her deepest being. She would rather watch him eat than eat herself, in perfect honesty.

“Your work has gone well, my love?” she asks warmly.

“Very well! It always does. It is hard going but I never give up. My supervisor is very pleased with me. I may even get a bonus soon.”

“Oh, how wonderful!” Sophia exclaims, and claps her hands.

“Yes, it is,” he agrees between mouthfuls of chicken and toast.

She kisses his forehead. “You are wonderful,” she whispers.

“Yes, I am!” he laughs. “But you’re only buttering me up like an ear of corn because you want to go to the pantomime tonight.”

Sophia frowns. Her brow furrows. She does not understand.

“No, I’m not. You are wonderful. You are my whole heart.”

“Yes, yes.” He rolls his eyes. “But you do want to go to the amphitheater, don’t you? See all your friends, dance and applaud and all that sort of nonsense?”