Enough

The morning in the Garden was perfect, as all mornings there were, and that was beginning to feel like a problem.

Adam had been thinking about it, though. He was always thinking about something. This was one of the things God had not fully anticipated.

They were sitting in the tall grass near the river, which ran clear over smooth stones and never flooded, because nothing here ever did anything it shouldn’t. Eve had been watching the water. Adam had been watching Eve watch the water, a habit he had developed early and saw no reason to abandon.

“You know,” Adam said, “I’ve been thinking.”

“I know,” Eve said.

“We’re at one with nature.” He gestured at the nature. It gestured back, gently, in the breeze. “At one with God.” He looked upward. Something warm and indefinable looked back.

“We’ll never age.” He examined his hand. It was the same hand it had always been. It would always be. “We’ll never die.” He paused on this one, because it was the most remarkable thing and deserved the pause. “And all our dreams come true the instant we have them.”

He waited.

This part always took a moment to settle.

Eve continued watching the water.

“Yeah,” she said finally.

Adam nodded. It was the nod of a man who had marshaled his evidence carefully and felt confident in his conclusion.

“It’s just not enough, is it,” Eve said.

It was not a question. That was the thing about it.

Adam opened his mouth. He closed it again. Somewhere nearby, a bird sang a short, perfect song and then stopped, apparently satisfied. Adam envied the bird this.

“No,” he said. “I suppose it isn’t.”

They sat with that for a while. The river ran. The garden grew. An apple tree on the hill caught the morning light and held it in a way that was, objectively, quite beautiful.

Eve looked at it.

Adam looked at Eve looking at it.

“There’s probably an explanation,” Adam said.

“Probably,” Eve said.

Neither of them moved.

This was, though neither of them knew it yet, the last quiet morning there would ever be. Not just in the Garden. Anywhere. The dissatisfaction that had settled over them like weather had a direction to it.

Eve stood up. Brushed the grass from her knees. Looked at the tree on the hill with the expression of someone who has already made a decision and is simply waiting for her body to agree.

“I’m going for a walk,” she said.

“All right,” Adam said.

She went.

He watched her go. Then he looked at the river, and the grass, and the bird, which had started up again with its same short, perfect song.

It really was enough.

It really, truly was.

He almost said so.