I looked at him in surprise. “Happy?”
“Yes, happy,” Mr. Smith said, emphasizing the word as strongly as he had hapless. “I’m sure it all seems very romantic and thrilling, having a strapping young man like John drag you off to the Underworld. Who wouldn’t love it? But his good intentions aside — wanting to save you from the Furies and all of that — you must see that what John did was wrong … very, very wrong.”
I thought about waking up that morning in John’s arms, after my horrible nightmare about losing him, and how his kisses had made me feel as if I were melting into him, almost as if we were one person. Then later how I’d determined to take care of him, the same way he’d tried over the years to take care of me, even when I’d kept pushing him away … and how later still, I’d seen the great pains he’d gone to in order to incorporate my suggestions on how to better serve the needs of the dead….
“Being with him doesn’t feel wrong,” I said to him, my eyes filling with tears. “The only thing that feels wrong is when I try to imagine living in a world without him in it.”
Mr. Smith’s own eyes widened slightly behind the lenses of his glasses.
“I suppose it’s just as well, then,” he said, “that you apparently must remain in his world. Which I was surprised to hear, since I was quite sure you knew all about what happened to Persephone when she ate in the Underworld. In fact, hearing that you ate while in the realm of the dead almost made me think that you did it on purpose so you’d be forced to stay with him, since you knew full well —”
“I thought it was only pomegranates,” I interrupted. “That’s what they taught us in school. Persephone ate the seeds of a pomegranate, the fruit of the dead.”
Mr. Smith raised his eyebrows. “Ah, yes, of course. That’s the most common retelling. The safe, watered-down version one would expect … wouldn’t want to frighten the children, or cause them actually to think too much. Poor Persephone ate the wrong thing, that’s all.”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“And John, of course, didn’t stop you. Well, he wouldn’t, would he?” The cemetery sexton’s tone was arch. “That would hardly be in his best interests.”
“He thought I knew,” I said. The tears filling my eyes began to spill over. “Why are you so against us being together? Why does it feel as if everyone wants us to break up? Not only the Furies or my grandmother, but everyone, even you?”
“I’m not suggesting you break up,” he said, appearing startled by my tears. He reached into his pocket, then produced a neatly folded handkerchief, which he handed to me. It was pink, of course, to match his socks and tie. “But when you visited me here the other night and I said you might want to try being a little sweeter to him, I wasn’t saying you should move in with him and then spend the rest of eternity in the Underworld. At least, not the next day. My God, your poor parents. Supposing they find out I had a hand in encouraging you?”
“You said what we do with our lives is our own responsibility, Mr. Smith,” I reminded him as I dried my tears. “You’re not responsible for what I did. I am, for falling in love with him. That happened way before I met you. So you can let yourself off the hook.” I passed his handkerchief back to him. “As for my mother … well, I don’t know what I’m going to do about her. Right now, I’m mostly worried about Alex.”
“I am sorry for what you’re going through,” he said, with a sympathetic smile at me. “Tell you what, I’ll do some research about this food and drink rule in the Underworld. Who knows, maybe John is wrong? It’s possible it’s been misinterpreted over the years. It wouldn’t be the first time. There are many scholars who staunchly believe your pomegranate theory, which is why it was the one you were taught … though in most cultures, including Judaism, Hinduism, and ancient China, the pomegranate, because of all its seeds, has always been associated with fertility and reproduction, not death. But that’s an exciting thought.” He raised his eyebrows. “What if the narrative of Persephone’s tale has been taken too literally, and the pomegranate is actually symbolic of —”
I held up a hand to stem the tide of his words, fearing I was about to hear a lecture on the cultural history of the pomegranate. Mr. Smith was as bad as my mom in some ways. He could go on for hours about the minutiae of death deity lore the same way she could go on for hours about roseate spoonbills.
“All I want to know is what the deal is with babies in the Underworld,” I said tiredly. “Can people get pregnant there, or what?”
Mr. Smith suddenly looked as if he might be stroking out again. A sheen of sweat broke out across his forehead, and he seemed to go a little gray. I found the heat a relief after the chill of the Underworld and the air-conditioning of his office. He apparently did not. He used the handkerchief I’d passed back to him to wipe his face.
“This is exactly why Patrick and I chose not to have children,” he muttered. “So we would never have to have conversations like this. And yet … here I am.”
“If you could answer the question,” I said as politely as I could, “that would be great. I really don’t want to have a freaky demon baby, and I can’t imagine John wants one, either.”
“Yes, well,” Mr. Smith said, removing his glasses and beginning to polish them, his fallback gesture whenever he felt uncomfortable, I’d noticed. “I can only imagine having a freaky demon baby would be unpleasant for all concerned. So you’ll be happy to know in my study of psychopomps, I’ve never come across a death deity capable of siring children at all, even freaky demons … I suppose because life is the very opposite of death. Hades and Persephone certainly had no children together.”