The Uninnocent by Bradford Morrow Page B

wonderful babies, my joys, bounty of my loins. They, I assured myself, had not veered from the path of righteousness like their mother. Persisting with my charade the next morning, I once more entered the main house. Rather than loiter in the garish living room, I joined Martita in the kitchen, which was also extensively renovated—shiny chrome, glass, and granite everywhere, and a tile-work splashback depicting urns choked with flowers and saccharine French farm scenes. Though she was at first surprised by my appearing in her domain, Martita helped me to a chair at the long table and got me my morning tea. It was quite early, I saw by the wall clock, too early for Sarah, but maybe not for the kids, who, I assumed, would come down first, on their way to class. Becca was in her last year of high school, and Luke, a junior. As Martita busied herself, chatting amiably about this and that, I furtively studied her, wondering just how much she knew about the goings-on around here. Her black hair combed into a chignon, her handsome, concise form moving lithely in her uniform, her dark eyes, her pretty hands—she cut a finer figure than I had imagined. Some obvious questions came to mind to ask her, but I thought the better of it. Ease up, I reminded myself. As St. Paul advised in his Epistle to the Hebrews, Let us run with patience the race that is set before us .
    Luke entered the kitchen first. That is, a young man whom Martita referred to as Luke. Rather than coming downstairs, however, to have his breakfast, he ducked in through the back door, having apparently spent the night elsewhere. Abstracted, with eyes glazed, he noticed me as he opened the refrigerator door and drank long and hard from an orange juice carton, but said nothing. His hair was every bit as orange as the juice he consumed, and rose in numerous spikes off the top of his head. His mascara was smudged—little Luke wore mascara? Great chunks of silver graced each of his fingers. He was skinny as a broomstick and looked the warlock part he affected. I sat in stunned silence, maintaining my own vacant, glazed-over stare, which matched my son’s. I didn’t know they made boots that big.
    â€œWhat’s he doing here?” Luke asked Martita.
    I interrupted, “How are you this morning, Luke?”
    â€œAwright, I guess,” he answered.
    â€œYou’re up with the roosters,” I pressed, at the same time wondering if he oughtn’t be nervous that the coffin lids were all supposed to be down by this time, and then saw him give Martita a look that could only be described as threatening.
    â€œWhatever,” he said, taking a fat green apple from the bowl of fruit on the table and politely excusing himself with a sneer.
    After he left the kitchen, I said, “Luke’s a fine young man, isn’t he.”
    If both Sarah and Luke had gone the way of Judas, and Harrison with them, it seemed improbable Rebecca had managed to resist the tide of treachery. For having betrayed my credulous innocence with vizor’d falsehood, and base forgery , as blind Milton himself once wrote, the pillared firmament is rottenness, and the earth’s base is built on stubble . I fled to my cave.
    A pestilence had swept through my household, like the very dogday locusts that had prophesied the onset of my blindness that summer night a decade ago. I lay on my cot, hands over my forehead and face, unable to move, loath to think, as sweat broke out across the length of my body and a range of black emotions chased through me. Above all, I wanted never to leave my room again. They could bring me my filthy barley soup and vile cinnamon tea whenever they found time between the commission of sins, and to hell with the rest of it. Indeed, when Sarah ventured by later, reeking of sage and roses, and found me prostrate, she let out a little cry of fear. Perhaps I should be ashamed to admit it, but that cry was like sweet music to me—even better