not that sort of woman,” I said. “I don’t want a man to take care of me. I take care of myself.”
In the weeks that followed, delusion and daze haunted my mind. I seemed always to be awakening, and always to be wondering if what I remembered was a dream or reality. Wonder seemed the best state of mind. It was less irritating than certainty, less taxing than the process of deciding—anything.
I knew I was growing stronger.
The morning after the first fish, I awoke to see a broken basket filled with squash—long striped green zucchini squash and yellow bulbous goose-necked squash. Vegetables. They were decorated with a gorgeous star-shaped golden yellow squash blossom of bodacious size and two not-quite-open red roses, big as fists.
“You were right,” he said. “Near the rose garden, there was a rectangle of vegetable garden. And an abandoned basket.”
He was sitting beside the basket but a short distance away, in the attitude I had assumed the night before—on his buttocks, his knees cocked and his hands clasped around his knees. I could not remember when I had left that posture. I had sat sideways, with my legs crossed to eat, but then—I must have slumped over. He must have carried me to my bed.
“We need something like a skillet,” I said. “So we can sauté things.” The squash bodies looked clean and healthy.
“I could take a piece of metal from the plane,” he said.
I thought of the painted fabric wings, the struts over which the cloth was stretched.
“The fuselage was metal,” I said as much to myself as to him.
“Yes. I could wrench out a flat piece, batter up its edges for a skillet.”
“‘Batter my heart, three-person’d God,’” I quoted.
“John Donne,” he answered, and murmured in an echo, “‘Batter my heart.’ That poem used to puzzle me when I was a freshman in college. Now I understand. John Donne meant he was willing to learn from God, even if he had to suffer to learn.”
He stood up—a gesture that usually meant conversation was over, and he was off on some errand.
“I never understood the concept of the Trinity,” I said petulantly. “‘Three-person’d God’? What sense does that make? If there’s a guy on the cross and another one up in the sky, and the first one’s talking to the second one, that’s two gods. And then the bird—that’s a third.”
Adam just stared at me.
“Christians don’t really believe in one God,” I went on. “The Muslims do, but the Christians don’t. The Muslims say ‘There is no God but God,’ and they say Muhammad is his prophet—only his prophet.” I stopped, then added, “Not his only prophet.”
“The Holy Trinity is like an egg,” Adam answered, but I saw he was shocked and amused at my tirade. “An egg has three parts—the yolk, the white, and the shell—but it’s just one egg.”
“God is not a chicken egg,” I snorted with laughter.
“But He resembles a chicken egg,” Adam calmly suggested.
I felt I was watching him make what he considered to be a daring move on the chessboard of the conversation. “Not literally,” he added.
“Not literally!” I exploded. “I can’t believe you’re saying ‘not literally.’ Who do you think you are? Adam!—that’s who you think you are! Adam! And you think I’m Eve.”
“I’m going,” he said. “I’ve got to go now.”
“You don’t want to face the truth,” I said.
“The truth?” Now he was amused. “Your truth.”
“Then why do you have to go right now, at a crucial point in our discussion?” I suddenly hated myself for sounding as bossy and rude as a preteen girl. He was corrupting me. He was robbing me of my maturity. Over and over, he was making me feel like a kid. A spoiled-rotten kid.
“I want to take some of the fire to the overhang now and keep it there,” he explained. “Like putting money in the bank.”
“If it rains? If the wind blows it out?” I asked. “Why not just start another fire?”
“I … I … I …” Now he was stammering for real. Suddenly confessional. “I destroyed the mirror. I drowned it in the ocean last night.” He bent, picked up a stick of fire, and began to walk away.
“Where did you go to college?” I yelled.
“Boise State,” he answered.
“For how long?” Something just told me to ask that question, to get the dates, the facts.
“I dropped out after my freshman year.” He was walking so fast, his gait seemed more like a running walk, and then he broke into a slow run—leaving