How They May Be: After the Fall

Afterward, at home, I was fortunate enough to have a minor project to keep me busy. The cushion of one of our dining room chairs had come loose some weeks ago, and while I might have simply replaced it entirely, I left it instead as a task for some otherwise lazy afternoon. Or, as it happened, evening. I was worried about the weekend, about the prospect of forty-eight uninterrupted hours together; the work made for a distraction, as well as a way to make myself feel useful. Alas that it was a relatively easy fix. It was barely ten when I screwed the base of the chair back in place, and I thought wryly that I might need to break something else so that I could keep my hands occupied.

Late enough to retire for the night, in any case. Upstairs, I returned to my bedroom only to be hit with a trace of frustration, as I was immediately met with the sight of Emily perched upon the side of my bed, staring into her hands. This hardly seemed fair. If I was to contain my desires, I needed to have a place apart from her, a sanctuary into which I could disappear when my self-control began to teeter. In the past, it was true, both of our bedrooms had been effectively common property, open to the other's impulsive wanderings - but now that had to change.

I stepped forward, intending to suggest as much to her. But when I came close enough to see just what she had in her hands that occupied her attention, I stopped, and the irritation I felt evaporated away as quickly as it had arrived. It was her mother's wedding band, taken from the jewelry box atop my dresser in which I had it stored, and there was a desolate ache to Emily's pose as she sat there, her thumb running across its rim.

"Pumpkin," I announced my presence quietly as I sat gently down beside her on the bed, perhaps a foot away. "Are you thinking about your mom?"

"Kind of." She turned to me briefly, sorrow etched upon her features. "Yeah."

Respectful silence for a few moments. "Do you think about her very often?"

"Not really." A ghost of a smile flickered upon her face, died away again. "I kind of feel bad sometimes, that I don't. She just feels so far away now." Her gaze turned away from me, back to her hand. "I can't even really remember what she looked like. Except for in pictures, I mean."

Silence grew for some seconds as I composed my thoughts, trying to find the perfect words. Finally, I spoke. "I was away so much. You probably knew her better than I did. But honey, I do know that she wanted you to be happy." My voice was soft, reassuring. "I think she'd be glad that you've been able to move on, that you don't spend all day crying for her."

"Maybe." Her eyes touched mine, and they were Irene's eyes again, deep and soulful. "You really loved her though, huh?"

"I did," I admitted quietly. "I still do, in a way. Your mom . . . she was special."

Another few seconds of silence. Then, "Do you think you could tell me about how the two of you got together?"

A soft smile brushed upon my lips. "I'm pretty sure I've already told you that, sweetie."

"I know." Her slim fingers turned over the ring in her palm. "I'd like to hear it again."

"Well." I settled back on the bed, thinking where to begin. "It actually started with someone else altogether. Mary Everson - I'd met her in grad school, became closer after that, while we were each trying to settle into our careers. Me with the company, her working as an intern at a law firm. You could say that we just managed to fall into a relationship together." Emily's gaze was attentive on me, and I gave her a small smile. "I was quite sweet on her at the time, though now it's a bit difficult to see why. I suppose . . . she was very driven, very intelligent. Ambitious. She impressed me with her capabilities, with the force of her mind."

"But, Irene." I took a long breath. "I met her because I was trying to buy something for Mary. It was coming up on a year that we had been together, and I wanted to get her a gift - a necklace, maybe, or earrings. I hardly knew what. Your mother, you know, worked at the department store then. I wandered into the jewelry department, and there she was, looking at me from behind the counter. Perky little smile and all."

A quiet chuckle. "I wish I could say that I fell instantly in love with her. But no, she was just a saleslady then. Attractive, but..." I shrugged. "I explained what I was looking for, asked her what she thought would be appropriate. After looking around a bit, she brought out this one particular necklace. A subtle thing, really, with a silver chain and a single diamond pendant. But beautiful, and not so crazy that it was outside my budget. It was perfect."

"I gave it to Mary after what I'd hoped to be a romantic dinner together. We went out to a nice, expensive restaurant. Soft music playing, candlelight, all of it." I grimaced faintly, a memory of old pain worn smooth by time. "Really, I ought to have realized that something was wrong almost from the start. She didn't seem to want to look me in the eye that night. But I was invested in the evening, and I didn't notice her mood until she opened her gift - and then just closed it up again, pushed it away from her on the table. Said that she couldn't accept it."

"She told me then that she'd gotten an offer for a job out on the East coast. Something real, something lucrative, with a chance to become a full partner. I couldn't follow, not realistically - I was already set up here, and didn't have the seniority or experience yet to push for a particular reassignment. She said she liked me quite a bit, and that deciding to accept the offer had been incredibly difficult for her. But if I know her, it wasn't." A slightly sardonic smile. "She might have liked me, but I was just a meantime thing. Put against the chance for real advancement, I couldn't measure up."

"Jeez." Emily shook her head, disbelieving. "She really dumped you on your anniversary, in the middle of a restaurant? Just for a job?"

"I can't blame her," I answered philosophically. "It was either that, or accept an expensive gift, knowing that I would never take it back once it was given. By that point, she'd already taken the job; she just hadn't told me yet."

"She must have been crazy." Intensity in Emily's eyes, in her voice.

"Anyway." I moved on quickly. "I found myself rather heartbroken, at the time. We hadn't made any real long-term plans, but I suppose I'd imagined that we had a future together. Suddenly finding that it was not to be . . . well. It was a few days before I went back to the department store. Your mother was there again when I showed up, and she recognized me from our brief interaction of days before. Seeing me trying to return the necklace, she asked me what had happened."

I paused a moment, contemplatively. "Normally, I would have just brushed off a question like that, or given a quick and empty answer. People who ask such things don't really want to know. But Irene, your mom - I was startled by the sheer sincerity in her eyes. Even though I was just some random customer to her, somehow I felt as though she was genuinely concerned. I found myself telling her the whole story, start to finish, from being introduced to Mary by a mutual friend in the law program, to leaving the restaurant by myself after everything was suddenly over."

Another chuckle, distantly amused. "Anyone else, I think, would have been making excuses to leave by the second minute, if not having me forcibly escorted from the premises. But she found us a place to sit down, and listened attentively, asked questions the whole way through. We must have been there twenty minutes, while I talked about what I felt like I'd lost, and the sometimes emptiness of modern relationships. And when I was finally done, she looked at me thoughtfully for a few moments, and she said something I don't think I could ever forget."

"That you were a good man," Emily spoke, with a warming smile.

"That she thought I was a good man," I corrected her slightly. "And that if she was right, everything would work out for me in the end." Touched by the memory, I shook my head. "Such a simple, powerful thing for her to say. And such a faith she had; in me, a stranger, and in an ultimately just world."

"I imagine it was mostly a sense of rebound, then," I said softly. "But I suddenly saw how beautiful she was, sitting there calm and self-possessed, like an angel come to earth. I wanted to know her better, to find out who this woman really was - even though it was hardly like me to be so forward, I abruptly asked her if she wanted to have dinner with me that evening."

"Years later, she told me that at that moment she was split about fifty-fifty between saying yes and calling for a security guard." I couldn't hide my smile. "So I suppose I was lucky. She looked me over for a moment or two, and then laughed and told me that she got off work at six. And that, just by the way, her name was Irene." Another chuckle. "By then, another customer had shown up to look at the jewelry cases, so she had to get back to her station. But she gave me a smile as she walked away, a little wave, and I found myself walking on air on my way out of the store. Mary, suddenly, was all but forgotten."

"In any case," I moved to wrap up, "that's how we met. And soon enough, I almost wondered if there wasn't some element of fate to it, running into her so close to the end of my relationship with Mary. All the pieces just seemed to fall into place; we liked the same music, read the same books, laughed at each other's jokes. And shared the same faith - that was important to her." I paused a moment, and when I continued, it was in a softer tone. "It was love, stronger than any I'd felt before. I ended up proposing something like six months after we'd met. At our wedding, she reminded me of what she'd said that day - that everything would work out in the end. And I had to admit to her that she had been right."

It had been a warm memory. But as reality asserted itself around me again, I breathed a long sigh, my expression weighted down by my years and my sins. "I suppose, with retrospect, that didn't actually end up being true. A good man..." I could feel Emily there next to me, soft and desirable, and the awareness filled me with a pounding shame. I shook my head, laden with slow self-loathing. "She would hate me, for what I've done to you."

"Daddy, come on." Emily protested quietly beside me, little force in her voice. "She wouldn't hate you."

"No?" I rested my gaze on hers, dull and heavy. "Princess, your mother was very . . . proper, very upright. As I'm sure you know. She and I did not even, ah - consummate our relationship, until our wedding night, by her wishes. This, what I've done . . . she would never accept it. Never."

She tried to demur, her tone still struggling with uncertainty. "Maybe she wouldn't understand. But she wouldn't hate you." Her hand crossed over the space between us, resting reassuringly on my knee. "She really loved you, daddy. She - I asked her once, when I was a kid, about why she would marry someone who was basically never there. You know what she told me?" And she stared at me a moment, her mouth small and serious, eyes haunting in their concern. "She said that one day with you was better than a year with anyone else she knew. And that you - that a hug from you could take away all of her worries, that a kiss from you could make her feel like she was in heaven." Emily gently bit at her lower lip, and I saw the faintest sheen of wetness in her eyes. "I wasn't really sure I believed her, you know? Until she . . . she died, and you came home, and I found out that it was all true."

Looking at her, my heart wrenched violently in my chest, the pang of a love and a desire that would not go away no matter how I screamed that it was sin. Her hand still sat on my knee, its gentle weight a junction through which the electric tingle of her touch could flow. I was tired - tired of resisting, tired of fighting this endless slog of a battle with my feelings. Tired of having to look away whenever my eyes fell on Emily's body, of sleeping alone while my soul yearned for her touch. To stop, to give in . . . it would be the sweetest surrender I could conceive.

But the memory of Irene touched me, her honest virtue giving me a kind of second wind. There was right, and there was wrong, and want could not make the one into the other. So after long seconds of silence, in which I collected my thoughts and found my voice, I finally spoke. "I think we should go to church again this Sunday. To confess."

She pulled back at that, her hand sliding off my leg to a mingled relief and disappointment. "To confess what?" A faint archness to her voice, a note of frustration. It was no legitimate question.

"Emily, don't play games." Mild irritation. "You know very well what."

She shook her head minutely, her jaw setting for argument. "Daddy, we didn't do anything wrong."

"Yes, well," I snorted dismissively, "I think God might disagree with you on that."

"Why?" she cried out suddenly in frustration. "Why do you think that? Because some guy in a white collar said so? How do you know it's wrong?"

"None of you," I quoted flatly, struggling to remember the exact wording. "Shall approach any that is near to him in kin, to uncover their nakedness." Some days earlier, in a bid to buttress my self-control, I'd looked up what it was exactly that the bible said about incest. The words, in truth, hardly helped, but I was glad now that I'd made the effort. "Leviticus 18:6."

"Oh, Leviticus." With a roll of her eyes, she laughed once, contemptuously. "I guess I should go and throw out all my cotton blend shirts then, too."

I took explosively to my feet, irritation rising again within me. "Damn it, Emily, this isn't a joke." Looking at the wall, away from her. I couldn't sit calmly for this. It was hard enough merely to enforce these restrictions on myself - to have to defend them in argument as well was maddening.

"I'm not-!" Almost shouting, she suddenly clamped down, and took a long, slow breath before speaking again. This time she used gentler tones, trying for my attention. "I'm not joking. Please, daddy." And an imploring silence, until I finally turned round to look at her again. Her eyes carried a quiet plea. "I just - you've always told me that God doesn't care about these old lists of fiddly rules. That what He wants is for us to treat each other with kindness. That all the real evil in the world comes from not loving one another enough." Her gaze on me now had an almost painful sincerity. "Even if there is a verse somewhere that says it's forbidden . . . does that really matter?"

I had no immediate answer, and as I silently paced around the room, I lamented her insight. Yes, all those ancient rules - the animals that may not be eaten, the seeds that may not be mixed, the days on which you may not work. Laws from the superstitious beginnings of the faith, with no particular connection to morality. And mixed in amongst them, the prohibition on what might be between us. She was right; I could not sensibly say that this one law was sacred while ignoring all those which surrounded it. Past the frustration of the moment, I was proud of her intelligence - but right then, the more sense she made, the harder it was for me.

Finally stopping on the opposite side of the bed, I could offer only a slapdash defense, while she watched me over her shoulder. "By itself, maybe it doesn't matter much. But it's not just the bible that says it. No one accepts this, Emily. You remember how your friends reacted when you told them. When society and the bible agree, it's..." I struggled to find words of import with which to end the sentence, and eventually just finished lamely. "They're probably right."

Unconvinced, she shook her head and turned around on the bed to face me. "Daddy, I don't care what they think. You told me that if two people really love each other, it isn't up to society to say that it's right or wrong." Her lips grew tight and narrow with emphasis. "And that if someone else quotes the bible to try to deny their love, it's just bigotry pretending to be religion."

Groaning to myself, I sat heavily back upon the bed. I'd said as much to her some years back, after we passed by a Gay Pride parade and I'd had to explain what was going on; I'd never felt justice in the moral condemnation heaped on such people, and was too aware that the Church often led the charge in attacks upon them. I hadn't wanted Emily to grow up as short-sighted as that. But I never expected to find my words turned against me like this. "It's not the same thing." Though I tried for strength, my voice came out almost pleading.

As though sensing weakness, she moved in for the kill. "It is the same thing." Crawling towards me on the bed, closer, until she was just an arm's length away - her body built of soft skin and gentle curves, begging for my touch. "Daddy, I know what it feels like to do something I shouldn't. I've cheated on tests, I've shoplifted, I've talked about people behind their back. It feels . . . it's a twisty ache in the pit of my stomach, a tiny sickness deep inside." She laid her hand upon my leg, just above the knee, a contact warm and electrifying through my slacks. "I don't feel that with you."

"Maybe you don't," I muttered desperately, "but I do." If only I could escape. If only I wanted to. Every part of me was drawn to her, my sinews stretched tight, my arms longing to reach out and hold her against me. I felt as though I would vibrate like a guitar string, if I were plucked.

"Do you, really?" She persisted, her brow heavy with supplication. "Or do you just think you should?" Creeping closer still, until she straddled my legs as they lay outstretched on the bed, until I could feel her weight upon me through the warm cushioning of her bottom and her thighs. My hands sat limp before me, paralyzed with want - she reached forward and took hold of my right, lifted it up in the narrow space between us, clasping it gently between her hands. "Tell me honestly, daddy, does it feel wrong when you touch me?" A trembling in her voice, as she laid my palm upon her breast and clutched it close.

So mad a thing, sensation. It pulsed up my arm in electric waves, pounding like artillery upon my mind. Each barrage tore at what remained of my self-control, sent my heartbeat racing to greater heights. If this was a battle, I was losing. My muscles twitched with the current of delight which flowed through me, fingers squeezing of their own accord at the firm but yielding teardrop in my hand. She had just that barely-handful, hidden underneath her modest grey tank top and the sports bra beneath it, but I could imagine no more perfect a shape than hers, warm and pliant in my grasp. I could not find the strength to pull my hand away. I tried to speak instead, to deny my feelings, and got only as far as "I can't..." before thought failed me. My lips continued moving silently, mouthing words I did not know and could not say.

Her heart beat faster under my hand, and her cheeks flushed pink at my slow, instinctive caress. But I had given her no answer, and her gaze held little satisfaction - carried, instead, that injured yearning which cut so savagely at my will. Closer again, sliding warmly forward upon me, until she rested in my lap with her legs outside my hips. Her face hovered inches from mine, angelically beautiful, with skin white as fresh-fallen snow. I stared helplessly into the liquid depths of her eyes, my breath coming slow and shallow. Still holding my hand to her breast, she reached forward with fingers outstretched, laying their tips lightly upon the side of my neck and jaw. She spoke in almost a whisper. "Does it feel wrong when you kiss me?" And in a seeming instant the space between us vanished, and her lips were pressed to mine.