The Uninnocent by Bradford Morrow

big plush sofas.
    â€œYou all right?” asked Harrison.
    Instinctively, I stared forward and said I was. “What did I break?” I wanted to know.
    Out of the corner of my eye I saw him inspecting the damage, dressed to the nines in a deep blue silk robe, the same color I remembered Sarah’s irises as being. His hair, which I’d always pictured black and short, was silver and stylishly long. His unshaven face was taut and handsome. Averting my eyes when he glanced at me, I noticed that he, like Sarah, had a little mole, though his was on the cheek. What bothered me most was that his robe was open in the front. If my wife or children were to walk into the room just then, what an eyeful they’d get. Think how embarrassed everyone would be.
    Taking me by the arm, he sat me down by the gold wall in a chair appointed with fine overstuffed upholstery. “Stay right here,” he calmly requested, his voice sweet but the look on his suntanned face as annoyed as a pet owner scolding a naughty puppy. I could have sworn he cursed under his breath as he left, but at that moment I didn’t trust my ears any more than my eyes. At least while he retreated toward the kitchen he tied his dressing gown. I had caught a subtle glimpse of what hung there, haloed by white hair. It was nothing anyone should want to see, let alone someone who’d been denied the privilege of seeing anything whatever for a decade.
    Other astonishments soon appeared. The more I saw, the more I understood it was important, somehow, that those around me thought I saw nothing. Conspicuous among my discoveries was how wrong I’d pictured everyone and everything. I who had begun truly to believe my fervent homilies, urging my followers to keep the faith first by trusting themselves, their convictions, their own views— be thee blind or seeing with lucid eyes —now began to understand how utterly I’d erred. If that morning returned to me my sight, the rest of the day brought my insights, as I have come to think of them.
    Harrison in his baronial robe waltzing through our kinky nouveau riche living room was merely the first verse in my New Apocrypha. Martita, who came to clean up the broken lamp, was someone whose voice, again, I recognized but whose appearance struck me as incongruous with the life I’d believed my family was leading. Not that she, poor Cayman immigrant and clearly a good if very illegal girl, behaved in any way that could be perceived as unchristian. No, it was that they had her in a black uniform with white starched trim and in a state of what might well be deemed quasi-penal subservience. Harrison wondered if I wouldn’t like to go back to my room, said I looked exhausted, Lord knows no one would blame me for wanting a little more rest, given the grueling schedule I had just endured. Again I asked what I’d broken and he answered it was nothing, just a glass one of the kids had left on an end table, not to worry. The maid crossed herself and, having finished cleaning, left the room.
    â€œWhere’s Sarah?” My hands were shaking although I anchored them between my thighs.
    â€œOut,” he said, “shopping.”
    When I inquired when she was expected back, he muttered something and, excusing himself, flew upstairs, ever silently, no doubt to change into some clothes.
    Time passed—twenty-three minutes to be exact, now that I could watch the clock—then Sarah unlocked the grand front door. Making her way to the kitchen, she failed to notice her husband seated in an unwonted corner, escapee from his holy cage. The years had not been kind. My once-wholesome Sarah had acquired, I must admit, a gaunt sophistication. Though elegant and drily beautiful, her face was as if invaded by knives—angular, hewn, deblooded. It was all I could do to maintain on my own face the blankest possible expression. This was only the beginning. What I saw next I wouldn’t wish on the