Eden Close (19 page)

He crouches in front of the herb garden and tries to read it. It is a tangled mass of differing shades of green fading to brown: some herbs, like the sage and the rosemary, are immediately recognizable: others could be oregano or summer savory or winter savory or thyme. He decides that regardless of variety, each needs the same care—a weeding, a pruning and a watering—and so he begins, working fast, hoping to get the job done quickly so that he can move on to the flower bed and the painting.

He is trimming a small plant that could conceivably be
a weed, though he thinks not, when he feels a light tap between his shoulder blades. The touch is so unexpected that he starts, whirling around in a crouch, with the hoe in his hand.

"She pretends she washed it herself, which she is perfectly capable of doing, but I know you did it."

Edith Close towers over him. Ungracefully, his left knee cracking, he stands to confront her. She has on a summer sundress, with a beige cardigan thrown over her shoulders.

He can think of no reply. It
was
a presumptuous act, and he cannot, for the moment, think of how to justify it.

"And sneaking behind my back," she says.

"I didn't sneak behind your back," he protests.

"You went when I wasn't there."

"Well, yes, but..."

"Well, then."

"She seemed fine to me," he says, trying to change the subject.

She has a purse on her arm. One hand is folded over the other at her waist. It is a gesture, common in older women, that he has never seen in a younger woman, a woman, say, of Martha's generation. He wonders, irrelevantly, if it is a gesture women grow into as they age.

"I'd have thought your mother would have told you more," she says.

"Told me what?"

"You know that Eden was away?"

"Yes. At a hospital, and then at a home for the blind."

She shakes her head. "Eden was badly hurt by the ... incident."

She looks down at the strap of her pocketbook, as if contemplating it. "At first we thought it was physical," she says. "She had numerous operations. She wouldn't talk—to me or to anyone. We thought it was related to the injuries. But the injuries were ... deeper than that."

He watches as she touches her purse—a talisman. "The injury to her head made her very sick," she says. "The place she was in wasn't, strictly speaking, a home for the blind." She looks sharply up at him, wanting to see his reaction. "It was a mental hospital."

He recalls Eden saying yesterday, apropos of nothing,
Jim died here.
He remembers thinking at the time that it was an odd thing to say.

"She did recover," Edith continues. "Not fast, but after a time. She reached a point where I felt she could come home. It was felt,
I
felt, I could care for her just as well here.

"But she needs
quiet?
Edith says forcefully, contracting her brow. "She needs not to be disturbed, not to be reminded of the past. We never speak of it. I would prefer that you not speak of it. I would prefer that you not visit her at all. You remind her of the past. You may even raise her expectations, her hopes," she says, her voice rising, as if to emphasize her point. "And then you will go away. And where will she be then?"

He again feels the heat seeping into his face. He wants to find her ludicrous, preposterous, but he cannot. Indeed, her speech is to him uncomfortably moving and embarrassingly accurate. For he
has
hoped to raise Eden's expectations, even if subconsciously, and he cannot deny that he will go away. And why should he have assumed that Edith cannot have changed in nineteen years? Rendered helpless, perhaps Eden immediately became more appealing to Edith. Or possibly it was the hole that Jim's death left in her life that allowed her finally to focus on her daughter. And yet, despite these sudden epiphanies, he wants to believe that visiting Eden is good for her.

"Don't you think you're overreacting?" he says, surprising himself not only with his rudeness but also with the word itself, for it is a term he associates with psychobabble, one Martha liked to use on him, a word he normally despises.
But he has never been precise in arguments. The words that come to mind in a tense exchange are not accurate enough, and thus he is often rendered inarticulate, like a child cornered by an adult.

"She is
my
daughter," Edith says, the words stapling the air around them.

The sudden flash of anger is surprising in the quiet backyard.

But in a moment it is gone. She gathers herself together in a deft sequence of subtle movements, gaining an inch as she stands more erect, and recomposing her face until it is the one he saw in her kitchen—calm, cooler and, if wary, then more in control. He watches her, fascinated.

"Andy," she says, as if weary of the effort to teach good manners to the neighbor's boy, "you must see it from my point of view. Eden and I
are family.
" She exaggerates the last word. It sounds furry, her voice deep with patience. "She's all I've got now, and I'm all she has. There are aspects to this you can't possibly understand. You've been gone for nearly
twenty
years...."

He is deprived (or relieved) of an opportunity to reply. The sound of a car slowing to turn into the driveway makes them both look up. A small white Toyota rolls over the gravel. DeSalvo hoists himself from the low driver's seat. Some cars, Andrew thinks, are just too small for some men.

DeSalvo waves and makes his way toward Andrew.

"You make your conference?" asks DeSalvo, short of breath, advancing slowly in the heat. "You left your checkbook on the counter."

"Jesus," says Andrew. He turns. "You know Mrs. Close."

DeSalvo casts a canny eye on Edith Close, nods. "How are you?" he asks.

"Fine. Thank you," she says.

"So all I can say is it musta been one hell of a conference
call," DeSalvo says, turning to Andrew and handing him the checkbook. "You got a lotta cash in that account."

"Oh," says Andrew, embarrassed. "You looked."

"Yeah, what the hell," says DeSalvo. "I always look. I called you right away, but there was no answer. I woulda brought it by yesterday, but I hadda take my wife to the hospital. Problems with her hip. And I been tied up there with her all night. I told the luncheonette to tell you I had it, if you called."

"I hope your wife is all right," says Andrew.

DeSalvo scratches his chest. "They're gonna put a pin in, but the doctor says she'll be OK in a month or so."

"I must be getting back," says Edith Close, moving past the two men, giving them a wide berth. She walks slowly down the gravel drive toward her front door. She walks as though she knows they are watching her back.

"Piece a work," says DeSalvo.

Andrew looks at the retreating figure and nods.

 

B
Y TEN FORTY-FIVE
, he has been circling his kitchen floor for nearly an hour. The half-empty beer in his hand is warm; an empty is on the table. His T-shirt is damp at the back and under the armpits. Already the humidity has weight to it. His face feels gritty from lack of sleep. A shower would help, he knows, but he is reluctant to leave the kitchen, as though remaining in the kitchen for a long enough time will finally deliver an answer.

The list of chores now feels more burdensome than it did earlier this morning, but he cannot focus on it. The things of the kitchen, except for the framed collage of snapshots, which he'll keep, and the Hoosier cabinet, which will be sold at auction, are all going to the Salvation Army. A family finally dismantled. It must happen all the time, he thinks, every day, in every town and city in America.

And then who will live in this house? he wonders. A couple looking for an affordable starter home, a couple who will imagine this house to have more charm than it does, a couple who will furnish it with inauthentic country antiques? He envisions the new wife, her brown hair streaked with blond highlights, her lithe, athletic form dressed in khaki shorts and an oversized T-shirt, as she repapers the walls—as if this gesture will secure her dreams.

I should get back to work,
he says aloud. He plays the phrase like an old tape that doesn't really interest him anymore but he nevertheless wants to hear again, just in case. Each day away from work makes the thought of returning there more and more foreign. He cannot this moment conceive of ever again having the inclination or the stamina to survive a ten-hour day in a thirty-story building, though he knows he must. Must return, and soon.

It's the heat and fatigue, he says to himself, though not entirely convincingly. This will pass.

He leans against the fridge, finishes the beer, moves away again. He needs a shower, needs a shave, needs a hair wash. A hair wash. His fingernails are black with soil. The knees of his jeans are green with grass stains. Grass stains don't come out, Martha said a hundred times, holding up a pair of Billy's overalls.

There's the wine to get, he reminds himself, trying to refocus on his list of chores. The south wall to paint.

I said to Eden I would be back, but what if Edith is right?
he asks himself again. And then again.

He opens the back door, with no clear destination.

Then he has it. He will take the car for a spin, head north for an hour or two, return after two o'clock. He will get in the: car and move, stay away. Stop by for a quick goodbye tomorrow or the next day. Leave it alone, forget about it.

Relieved to be moving forward, he hustles down the
steps, walks briskly to the BMW. He puts his hand on the door. He stretches as he reaches for his keys in the front pocket cf his jeans. The keys aren't there. They're on the counter in the kitchen.

I
knew that,
he says to himself.

 

"I
THOUGHT
you wouldn't come."

"I nearly didn't."

"She's warned you off."

"She's very concerned about you."

"You think so."

"Yes, I do."

"Then why are you here?"

"Well, I think she's concerned, but I'm not convinced she's right."

"I told her I washed it myself, but she didn't believe me. It's the part. I never get it right."

Her hair is freshly brushed, the part he made yesterday still straight.

"I want to ask you something," he says.

"What is it?" she says after a time.

"Was it very bad?" he says. "In the beginning, I mean. I never knew until today what happened, where you were."

She hesitates. "There are things about the beginning I don't remember," she says. "And what is bad? Worse than before? Worse than now?"

"You must have loved Jim very much," he says.

"He was my father."

"I know."

"No you don't."

It seems to him that she has taken some care with her appearance today. She is wearing a blue sundress with white buttons down the front, and a belt. Her feet, he observes, are still bare. When he entered the kitchen, she was sitting at the table, her body facing the door. There is a blush of
pink along the bridge of her nose, across her cheekbones and on her forehead. From the sun yesterday. It wasn't the part that gave away his presence. It was the sun.

"You've been drinking," she says.

"A couple of beers."

"I haven't smelled that in a long time."

"I'm afraid I didn't have any time to clean up," he lies. "I was working in the garden."

"I know. I heard her speak to you."

"I apologize if I..."

"Smell like you've been working hard? I don't mind. It's interesting."

He wonders if he should offer to make her lunch. He wonders what she eats. Yesterday neither of them mentioned food.

"I think we should take a walk," he says.

"No." She smooths the fabric of her dress along her thighs.

"It'll be good. Through the cornfields. Like old times."

"There are no old times."

"Well, then, just for now."

"I almost never go outside."

"You said that yesterday. Why?"

"What is there to go outside for?"

"You don't have to be afraid. I'll hold on to you, lead you."

"I won't," she says.

"She never takes you out, does she?"

She shrugs. "When it's necessary."

"Listen," he says.

"What?"

"We're going to do this."

 

O
NCE OUTSIDE
, it is as though, in the few short minutes he has been in the kitchen, some unseen hand turned up the
heat a few notches, leaving it just this side of unbearable. Or perhaps it is that the gloomy kitchen, with its drawn shades and green paint, has had the unexpected benefit of providing a natural air-conditioning. Whatever the cause, Andrew is assaulted by both the glare and the heat as soon as he opens the door, a double assault that makes him wonder seriously if he should take her out.

Almost instantly beads of sweat form along his brow, on his upper lip and under his nipples. It is real heat, the kind that soaks a man only moments after he has put on a clean T-shirt, that drives children to seek relief under lawn sprinklers. In the luncheonette, the men will be sweating under the laboring ceiling fan. The town pool will be a mass of color and bodies, and in the backyards of the houses closer to town, old women will forfeit their dignity, choosing instead to sprawl in green and white plastic lawn chairs, their white legs, nearly entirely bare, white with purple veins, offered up to a stray breeze in the shade.

The heat makes him want to go to the pond—the body needing to slake its thirst—and this desire pushes aside caution. He holds open the screen door and reaches for her elbow, leading her out onto the stoop. Of course, he sees at once, the glare is nothing to her. Indeed, she keeps her eyes open wide, a stare into the white heat that unnerves him, with his own eyes narrowed into tight painful slits against the sun. He wishes he had a pair of sunglasses with which to cover her eyes. It is as if her gaze, so unaffected by this light, had rendered her naked, too exposed, and he is moved to shield her.

"I'm going to pick you up and lift you over the step," he says.