In Search of Eden (25 page)

“Could you tell her?” Sarah's voice, hesitant, tentative.

He nodded. Sarah passed the phone to him. He dialed.

Eden answered. She was expecting their call tonight, the same time it always came. But tonight she sounded more eager than usual.

“Hi, Dad!”

“Hi, baby. How are you tonight?”

“Good. Uncle Joseph let me off restriction today. And there's some people that are gonna let me ride their daughter's horse if it's okay with you.”

“What do Grandma and Uncle Joseph say?”

“Grandma says I need to wear a helmet. Uncle Joseph said I
shouldn't have asked Grandma. Next time ask him first.”

David smiled. It felt odd to do so. “Uncle Joseph is right,” he said. It had always given him quiet joy that his brother loved his child. It was a gesture, however small, a thin thread of hope across a wide chasm.

“When are you coming to get me, Dad?”

He sighed. He silently prayed. “Not quite yet, Eden.”

“I thought you were coming in a week or two.”

“No. I'm afraid not, sweetheart.”

She was silent.

“When?”

“Maybe by the end of the summer.”

“Why-y?” A slight, quiet wail. Not a petulant whine, but a genuine cry of grief.

What should he say? That he needed two more surgeries to close wounds in his abdomen and graft skin over them? That he was still learning to move himself from his bed to his chair? That he needed to learn to change his own ostomy bags? To move around town in his power chair? To drive a car and ride an elevator? To do the things a normal three-year-old could do?

“I'm not quite well yet, Eden. There were a lot of things broken and hurt.”

She was silent now, probably remembering the horrific sight of him, and he wondered if it had been right to bring her here, yet he couldn't judge his brother's decision. Joseph loved her. He had done what he thought best for her.

“Can I come there, then?”

There it was, the question Sarah couldn't bear, and it skidded into his own heart and tore open another wound as it hit.

“Oh, baby, I wish you could.”

“Why can't I?” He could hear tears in her voice now.

“There's nothing to do here, Eden. You'd be cooped up in the hospital room all day long every day.”

“I could help you. Please!”

“No, honey. I'm sorry. I wish you could.”

A clunk. Silence. After a moment his mother's voice came on the line. “Hello, sweetheart.”

“Hi, Mom. I'm afraid we've upset Eden.”

“I heard some of her end, David.” Her voice was low.

“I'm so sorry. I wish things were different.” He took a deep breath.

“You mustn't worry about this now, David,” his mother said in her calm way. “Of course she can't come there. You just concentrate on getting well. She's doing fine here. Really. She's very happy.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“I love you, David.”

“I love you, too.”

He hung up the phone.

Sarah was chewing on her fingernails. “How did she take it?”

The weariness returned. “About like you'd expect.”

Silence. Tears. Then the doubt he expected. A hesitant question. “Do you think we did the right thing?”

He could have gotten angry if he'd had the energy. “Yes.”

He turned his eyes toward the television and turned on the sound. After a moment Sarah left the room.

Eden went into the closet of her room. She always used to hide here when she was a little girl. She went there today because she didn't want Grandma to hear her cry. She wasn't sure why, but having Mom and Dad not want her would seem even worse if Grandma felt all sorry for her. And Grandma would tell her,
Oh, they love you, Eden, they really want you,
but they didn't. And Eden knew it. Grandma probably knew it, too. They were probably sorry they'd adopted her. She grabbed the extra quilt from the shelf, threw it on the floor, and piled herself onto it. And cried.

She cried for quite a while. When she heard Grandma open
the bedroom door and walk toward the door of the closet, she quit crying and held her breath. She tried to be quiet, but finally she let out her breath and took another one in, but it was
uh-uh-uh-uh
sounding, and then she kind of coughed and cried again. She heard the doorknob turn and held her breath again; then she heard Grandma walk away and the bedroom door close softly. So she let her breath out and cried some more, and finally she was too tired to cry. She felt like a party balloon she found one time behind the couch, all wrinkly and saggy. She just rested her head on the blanket and wished she had Wallace Lovelace, a stuffed sock monkey she used to have. But she thought he was up in Grandma's attic. Grandma had made him, and even though Eden knew she was too old for stuffed animals, she wished she had something to hug, but she didn't, so she opened her eyes and looked into the dark, and she could see colors against the black. Little blots of pink and green and purple, and when she looked down, she could see a thin line of light at the bottom of the door.

She thought about Dad. And it bothered her that she could barely remember his face. She tried to remember something about him, and she saw his hands teaching her how to drive. She was sitting on his lap and looking out and aiming the little circle on the hood of Grandpa's big car for the middle of the dirt road. Dad's hands were resting lightly on top of hers, but she was driving, and she could feel the car moving wherever she turned it. Then he had taken away his hands, and she had almost gone into the ditch, but she had called out,
“Dad!!”
and he had laughed and put his hands back over hers and made a tiny little move of the wheel, and things had been all right. She had driven all the way to the highway, and then Dad turned the car around, and she drove all the way back. Grandma had smiled and shaken her head; Mom had shaken her head and hadn't smiled. But Dad had just winked at Eden, and they had gone driving every day of their visit, and on the last day Dad hadn't put his hands over hers at all. She had done it all herself, and she had said,
“What about the pedals?”
and he said,
“Maybe next year when your legs get longer.”

She thought about Dad's face, and she could see it perfectly now. He had lots of lines on his face, but they were happy lines and made him look kind, and when he smiled they creased into a smile, too. Dad said the lines came from too many years in the sun, and then Mom started talking about skin cancer. But Dad winked at Eden and said,
“Sarah, you worry too much.”
He had brown eyes, and his hair was longer than Uncle Joseph's. It brushed his shoulders. Suddenly she wanted very much to see a picture of her dad. She knew there were some downstairs in the photo albums, but then Grandma would see her and would try to get her to play cribbage, and she didn't want to talk to anybody right now. She knew there were some pictures upstairs in Grandma's attic. And she thought Wallace Lovelace was up there, too. She stood up and wiped her eyes and nose on the sleeve of her shirt. Not her favorite horse shirt, because she would never wipe her nose on that, but just a shirt that she wore today because her horse shirt was in the wash.

She stood up and pulled the rope that brought the attic ladder down. She was really glad the ladder was in her closet. The stairs came down and she climbed onto them. They were a little rickety, but it was okay. She thought for a minute, then came back down and opened the door and found her backpack and took out her flashlight, then went into the closet again and closed the door behind her. Somehow she didn't think Grandma would like it if she went up into the attic. She climbed up the stairs, and when she got to the top she turned on the flashlight. Everything was just the way she remembered it from when she had come up here last Christmas to help Grandma put away the Christmas decorations. She had wanted to look around then, but Grandma had said,
“Let's go make some cookies, Eden,”
so she had come down. And then Grandma said,
“There's nothing up there that's fun. Just a bunch of old papers and things,”
but Eden knew there were some pictures, because she'd seen a photo album in a box in the corner when she was putting away the Christmas lights. That's where she headed now.

She looked around slowly. There were piles of things, and it wasn't very neat. There were model airplanes that Grandma said had belonged to Uncle Joseph hanging from the ceiling in the corner. There were two big boxes of baseball cards, and Grandma said that someday she could bring them down and see if they were worth any money. There were skates and skateboards and baseball bats and gloves and a hockey mask and Uncle Joseph's baseball trophies. And his football trophies and his basketball trophies. One time she had asked Dad why he didn't have any trophies, and he had just laughed and said Uncle Joseph had gotten all of the talent in the family, but then he looked sort of sad like he always did whenever she asked about Uncle Joseph, so she hadn't asked anything else.

She sat down on the floor in front of the box she was looking for. There was a big pile of school papers on top. They were her dad's, and she read his name, David Williams, written in printing on some and in cursive on others. They always had checks or happy faces or stars or As on them. She set them aside and pushed past a bunch of report cards, and finally she found what she was looking for underneath a bunch of old bank papers and stuff.

She knew the pictures were there because she had seen Grandma putting them away, carrying them up from downstairs when she had come to stay. Grandma had tucked a whole photo album up here, and when Eden asked what it was, Grandma had just said some old pictures of the family.

She reached down now and took out the album and flipped it open, expecting to see her dad, but instead, there was her mom. She sighed. Mom was so pretty. Eden would never look like Mom. Mom had long, silky blond hair, not curly and stupid like hers. And her skin was so smooth and golden, not freckled like Eden's. She looked at the next picture and there was Mom again. With Uncle Joseph.

She frowned. Mom and Uncle Joseph were hugging each other. The next one was bad, too. Mom was standing beside Uncle Joseph, and she was wearing a pink dress and had a flower
on her wrist and Uncle Joseph was wearing a suit. But that wasn't the worst of it. Their arms were around each other, and Mom's head was up against Uncle Joseph's chest. Eden looked at their faces, and they both were smiling really happy-like, and she felt a little sick to her stomach. She glanced through the rest of the album. They were all of Mom and Uncle Joseph. She put the album back in the box and started down the stairs. She was sorry she'd come up here. At the last minute she remembered Wallace Lovelace, but she didn't want to take any more time to find him.

She climbed down and shoved the ladder back up into the attic. Then she just went and climbed into bed and pulled the covers up over her head, but inside she felt lonely and scared. It felt like there was a big wind blowing, and the house was going to fall down. And nobody could help her, because who could she trust? After a few minutes she got hot under the covers, so she went to the window and opened it up and looked outside. The air was cool and it was dark, but she could still see because there was a bright moon, and the branches of the big tree still brushed the window. She wished she had someone to talk to, but she couldn't think of anybody. Suddenly she remembered someone, so very quietly she went back to the bed and plumped up the covers, so it would look like someone was in there, and found an old doll with brown hair and made it so the edge of its curls stuck out from the edge of the bedspread. She repacked her backpack, went to the window, and climbed out onto the tree branch. It wasn't quite big enough to hold her, and it swooped down a little at first, but then she was able to climb down onto a thicker one below it, and she kept moving to lower branches until she could drop to the ground.

She pressed the button on her night ops watch, and the light came on. Eight o'clock. Not too late to go visiting. Quietly she took her bike from the garage, and in a few minutes she was pedaling down Greer Creek Road, heading for the Millers' pond.

chapter
26

E
den rode through town, then into the dark countryside and felt a little scared. She hadn't quite realized how dark it would be out here. There were no streetlights, of course, but she had the little searchlight on the front of her bike. She trained it on the road in front of her, but she still had to concentrate to keep from running into the ditch. A few cars swerved over to give her room as they passed her, and one person honked. She hoped nobody told Uncle Joseph. He had ways of finding out everything. She felt cold and angry when she thought of Uncle Joseph and Mom. Why did everyone lie to her? She was relieved when she came to the turnoff for the Millers' place. It was gravel, and she had to pay attention so she didn't slide. She couldn't do that and think about the other thing, too.