Comfort Me With Apples(6)

“After a fashion,” Mr. Semengelof says at last. “You might call me that. Among other names.” But the peculiar way he says you makes Sophia quite certain he means her alone. Mrs. F and Mrs. L and Mrs. M might call him by his other names. But for Sophia and for her alone, he has claimed his title.

Mrs. Lyon hurries on past such unpleasant talk. “In any event, Mr. Semengelof has come to stay with us awhile and tutor my little ones in the musical arts. Impossible wee things, not a spot of talent between them, but what can you do? No matter, he’ll have them choiring to the heavens in no time, won’t you, Maestro?”

The maestro finally ducks under the doorframe and stands awkwardly in the sitting room. His body seems to take up more space than all the four of them put together. But his movements are so graceful and delicate Sophia feels tears needling the backs of her eyes. Tears, not at his twisting neck, but at the utterly usual movements of this strange man with his strange name. Tears, because the act of sitting on the sofa, when performed by Mr. Semengelof, is more beautiful than roses. Her husband does not move like that. He thuds when he walks. He thuds when he sits. He thuds when he eats and when he drinks and even when he sleeps. Sophia likes his thudding, she always has. When he thuds, the world listens and gets out of his way. That is her whole understanding of men.

Sophia does not think Mr. Semengelof even knows how to thud. He almost seems as though he could fly.

“At your service, Mrs. Lyon. Good afternoon, Mrs. Minke, Mrs. Fische.” The music teacher inclines his head. “Hello, Sophia,” he says. Her tears spill finally down her face. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

“Me?” Sophia whispers. Her throat’s gone so dry. She longs for Mrs. Lyon’s tea back again.

“Yes,” the stranger says, and the other ladies sigh with excitement. “A very great honor. I think we shall be seeing much of each other, now that we are to be neighbors. For a time.”

“Oh, I doubt it. I’m such a bore, really.” Sophia blushes and waves her hand. “I’m certainly not anything to be honored about.” She does not like to blush; it makes her feel exposed. She hates her face for doing it to her.

“Won’t you give us a little recital, Mr. S?” Mrs. Lyon purrs, coaxing. “There is nothing better in the afternoon than a meal and a bit of music.”

The music teacher glides across the living room to a piano with a framed picture of Mr. Lyon on its lid. He sits at the bench and settles his extraordinarily long fingers on the keys, yellowed as old teeth. His back looms long and dark. But something about it almost glows. Something lovely against his shoulder blades Sophia cannot quite see, even as she stares into his spine.

Without looking round, he says, with a gentleness like a feather falling:

“Are you happy, Sophia?”

She blinks. She forgets instantly the scream shoving at her bones.

Is she happy?

She doesn’t understand. She has never considered it. It is possible to be so entirely happy you never ask the question. She is a full glass submerged in water. Neither nor both full and empty. The inquiry, though kind, has no meaning for her.

“Oh, certainly she is, Mr. Semengelof!” Mrs. Fische interrupts quickly, her voice floating up through the stuffy parlor air. “Terribly so!”

“Of course she’s happy,” Mrs. Minke snaps, dropping her spoon onto her saucer with finality.

“We’re all happy, Maestro,” Mrs. Lyon pronounces brightly, but Sophia watches her dig her long nails like claws deep into the pale yellow arm of her sofa. “Positively blissful. Don’t you worry about us.”

Sophia says nothing. They have answered for her. She does not need to speak. It is always a blessing and a relief to be spoken for. But they all stare at her, waiting, until the quiet mounts to such a roar that she can hear time crawl.

“I am happy, Mr. Semengelof. How could I be otherwise? I am fed, I am housed, I am busy, I am loved.”

Her voice catches on the last word. She thinks of the bone hairbrush. The stiff, stinking pig bristles. The black marks. The shaft of reeking hair.

She falls back on the familiar. She wraps herself in its comfort.

“I was made for him,” she finishes, the quaver in her voice infinitesimally small.

“Do you lack for anything, Sophia? Or perhaps instead there is some small displeasing item in whose removal you would rejoice?”

Sophia could tell him now. About the brush and the hair and the smell and the dust on the ammonites in the stone knob on her dressing table drawer. It almost seems as though he already knows, that he’s given her this and only this chance to have it all done with.

She does not know why she lies. She only knows she cannot tell the truth. They are hers. Her house. Her dressing table. Her ammonites. Her hideous boar-brush. Her secrets to keep.

“No,” Sophia says smoothly. “Nothing.”

The music teacher sighs, a long exhale of sadness. But he seems satisfied. He begins to play, and for a moment Sophia fully and truly thinks she will die. The sound of it is a knife, if a knife could kiss, and the kiss could turn the color of morning. There is no sense to the song. It crashes and whispers and cajoles and weeps and admonishes and commands all at once, without progression from one feeling to the next. Yet it contains a perfection that is twin to pain.

Sophia does not die. The kiss and the knife and the color go on and on. The man does not play music. The man is music.