The Legacy of Eden (19 page)

My father did not know when his moment would come, but he knew that it would be soon. As the days went on he became restless. He did his chores around the farm and he went through the routines of his day as before, but he was not like before. Though the sky was clear, he could smell rain, he would later say. Something was coming, and back then he still believed that it was to do with him.

But Lavinia was making plans. She looked up at the clearing and saw the paleness of the sky and thought how splendid it would look against an array of black and gray.

And then one day my father woke up and realized he was leaving. He woke earlier than usual, showered and dressed, and went down to the kitchen, where he made himself a cup of coffee. He was soon joined by his father and his brother, who sat at the table while his aunt fried eggs, bacon and mushrooms in a large pan.

His hands clasped around his mug as he sat and he was overcome with the feeling that all this—the plate with the blue swallow pattern set down before him with breakfast, his father talking over their chores as he scanned his paper and his brother silent as ever beside him—was for the last time. It would not leave him, this notion, and so he walked through his morning as if in a dream, as if it was the lie and he would soon wake up and face the truth.

Which he did, around lunchtime. He came into the house to find a circle of women facing him. Their faces were blank, but then his mother came forward and handed him an envelope. He knew what it was before he opened it and suddenly he felt light, almost heady as he gripped the paper, his fingers playing at the corners.

“What’s the matter?” asked Ethan as he came in behind my father.

“I’ve been drafted,” he said.

Everyone was somber after that. They had known it was coming, it was happening everywhere else. Though they had never talked about it, now that the news was not just on the TV sets or in their papers but in their home, it finally came to roost with them that death could once again come to Aurelia and come for the young.

But my father did not think of these things. He was scared and he was nervous, but most of all he was relieved. Here was his chance, he thought, here was his chance to see the world, to escape and go somewhere, do something other than farming, live a little. Yes, it was war, but what did he know of war? What did he know of how it would be like—what he would see, what he would do, what he would let happen? There was never any question in his mind that he wouldn’t come back, and though he had no idea about army life, he wasn’t afraid of hard work and he would just muck in like all the others.

But now that her son was going away, possibly to die, something happened to my grandmother that rarely ever happened to her. She lost her patience.

For months now she had collected information on her stepdaughter. The detective she had hired had been instructed to get the names, descriptions and if possible, photos of all Julia’s activities, evidence that my grandmother now kept in a large brown envelope and which she documented in the early hours of each morning before the house awoke, so she could pore over them. Yet still she did not expose her. She had been waiting for the opportunity to present itself to her, for despite her hatred for Julia, this was one task in which she did not wish to appear to be directly involved. She knew that whoever came to my grandfather and laid the photographs and accounts under his nose, would incur not only his wrath, but also his hatred for destroying the love and belief in his daughter he had once been convinced was unconditional. It would not just be Julia’s weakness that came to light, but Cal’s, and that was a dangerous mission. But when she learned of her youngest son going to war and looked out onto the farm to see Jess talking to the foreman, or Cal Jr. toddling through her house with Julia’s voice calling after him, she saw her hopes fade and the visage of Julia triumph over her. At this point my grandmother believed that should my father go to war he would undoubtedly die. Theo was too good; she had always known this. She had not taught him the art of self-preservation because she was sure he would never stoop to the lengths that it required. And the notion that one of her children would die in some godforsaken place abroad, while her stepdaughter continued to pollute their farm with her brats and all their claims, stood on the boards of her self-control and broke them.

So she scoured the names of the men whom her stepdaughter had been with, looking, searching, for inspiration.

“I was looking for something new, something I hadn’t seen or thought of, something different. And then I realized, why teach a dog new tricks when the old ones work just fine?”

And that was how my grandmother came to find herself at the house of Betsy Turner for the second time.

It was a gamble, irrational even, and far beneath her usual careful handling of such things, but Theo was due to leave for boot camp in a week and my grandmother was resolved that he would not be alone when he went.

So she found out the address of Betsy’s apartment, which she shared with another girl, and caught Betsy just as she was on her way out. She didn’t say much, she simply pulled out the brown envelope and handed it to her.

“I believe this is more to your taste than mine,” she said. Betsy took the package from her, bewildered, and as my grandmother turned to leave, she heard the girl open the flap to peer inside before letting out a moan of horror.

“Mrs. Hathaway, Mrs. Hathaway, please!” she called out after her in desperation, already running after her and coming to stand in front to block her path, her arms flung wide.

“Just ripe for a crucifixion.”

Even though years had passed since Lavinia had sat on the couch of Betsy’s mother, nothing had changed. Cowering in fear, if anything, Betsy was even more pliant, even more willing. To her surprise and disappointment, the girl was far less of a challenge than before. And much more cowardly: she immediately blamed Julia.

“And where would she have had the chance to do these…these disgusting things if it hadn’t been for you?” my grandmother shouted, holding up the photographs to Betsy’s whimpering face.

“She would never have even thought to go to these places, be around these people, if you hadn’t introduced her to it.”

“No, I never, I never introduced her to anything. It was Julia she…she just—”

“My God, look at this filth!” my grandmother said as she rifled through the photographs like a deck of obscene cards. “Can you imagine what people will say when this comes out? Your poor mother has no idea the rotted thing she has given life to. Admit it, you made Julia do these things, you led her on, didn’t you?” She crouched low and craned her neck up into Betsy’s face, her eyes serving as a flashlight of accusation under Betsy’s chin. “She never showed any signs of this sort of depravity before she resumed her friendship with you—and God, look what happened the last time? Ran away from home to get married to a man we’d never even met!”

“Please, please, you have to believe me—I never did any of this. I mean I was there, but…but I didn’t—”

“Who? Who will believe you?” my grandmother interrupted. “She’s a mother and wife. If this comes out who will believe that she would willingly jeopardize all this without your influence?”

It was a bold lie. Everyone knew Betsy had no will of her own; the idea that she could have manipulated Julia into doing anything was a laughable concept, but struck by terror and shock, Betsy was in no fit state for rational thought.

“Couldn’t—couldn’t you just…if I make it stop, if I don’t see her again…?”

My grandmother scoffed in righteous indignation.

“You think I can keep this from my husband? Her father? You think when he finds this out there won’t be an uproar? He’ll be looking for someone to blame and since you were the one providing her with—”

“I did not—”

“—opportunity and God knows what else, you’ll be the first one he’ll blame. There’s no way of escaping that.”

Betsy looked at my grandmother, stricken; the photographs lay on the coffee table underneath her shaking hands.

My grandmother gave a sigh and her shoulders slackened.

“I know what my stepdaughter is like. I’ve seen the way she is around Jess, those clothes, that attitude.... I could sense things were wrong but she’d never come to me about it. If only you, her friend, had come forward and told me what she was getting herself involved in. Then I could have saved her, stopped her. I would be able to say to anyone if they’d asked that you had come to me as a friend in an effort to save her from herself. Or even to Cal if you didn’t feel you could talk to me. He’d have listened to you under those terms. All what must now happen would have been prevented. Foolish Betsy, you were so foolish. I don’t understand it.”

There was a silence. Betsy’s red-rimmed eyes were darting around the photos.

“Are there any of…of me?”

“No, none actually.” My grandmother picked them up and put them back in the envelope. “It could all have been avoided,” she said wistfully.

“What about now?”

“It’s too late for Julia, she has sunk to such depths. No, I’ll have to tell Cal, though God knows I wish I didn’t. I don’t want to be the one to bring this to him, but what choice do I have?”

There was a silence.

“Well, why don’t I tell him?” asked Betsy hesitantly.

My grandmother looked up at her, feigning surprise.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

Betsy wrung her hands in her lap. “I could—I should have come to you before, I see that now. I made a mistake but I want to correct it. I can make it right. I’ll go to him and I’ll tell him everything, like a friend would, just like you said. I do care about Julia,” she added. “I don’t want to see her doing these things anymore. Not with her boy and everything. But she won’t listen to me and I went with her to keep her safe, make sure she wasn’t hurt. Stuff can really get out of hand at those places.”

“So I’ve seen,” said my grandmother softly.

“And you know how stubborn she is. She would have gone anyway, so—so I went to try and keep an eye on her but…there was only so much I could do, you know?”

“Of course I do. It must have been awful there.”

“It was… Jesus—” her voice broke “—it’s been driving me mad keeping all this in.” She licked her lips, her mascara-laced tears pooling at the top. “Do you think if I spoke up now it would be too late?”

My grandmother regarded the girl for a few moments and then reached out a hand and smoothed it over her wrist.

“You know I believe you, Betsy,” she said gently. “You tell it just like that and there isn’t anyone who won’t believe you. Besides—” she gave her a little smile “—I always think it’s never too late.”

Betsy came to Aurelia on a Tuesday at lunchtime. Julia was out shopping. Betsy knew this because she had asked her to meet her in the food court of the mall to ensure she would not be at home when she called. So while Julia waited there for her to arrive, Betsy knocked on the large door of the great white house on the mound and shattered the man called Cal Hathaway Sr. who opened it to her.

He was home for lunch. My uncle and father watched as the two went into the study and raised an eyebrow to each other.

To see Betsy turn up at the house and ask for their father was odd enough. But neither of them in their wildest dreams would have expected the shouts and screams of their father that started up in the study, swiftly followed by the sound of crashing furniture bleeding through the walls.

Their mother was down in the study before they were, and though they hovered outside the door and could hear the muffled shouts of their father and the placating tones of their mother, as yet they still had not learned the truth.

Betsy came running out and slammed straight into my father, who attempted to hold her shoulders to steady himself.

“Is everything okay?” he had asked.

Betsy was flushed, her eyes darting wildly, her breath erratic.

“I done my duty, don’t anyone say anything different. I done my duty,” she repeated before fleeing.

My father and uncle looked into the study and saw that it was a mess. The chair was overturned and books and papers were strewn across the carpet, on top of which was an array of small photographs. My father picked the one up near his foot. When he saw it he covered his mouth with his hands.

“Is that…?” Ethan asked over his shoulder, but just then my grandfather let out a scream so loud, that even though they were adult men, my uncle and father both jumped back. Cal’s face had turned red with the strain, his fists raised up against his hips. He looked unlike anything they’d ever seen before, wiped clean of memory and association.

And then he stalked past them. Their mother followed him as far as the door, but she stopped at the threshold. He was in his car and was gone.

He would go to the house of one of the men who had been with his daughter. He had needed to know it wasn’t true; that it was a lie, a false rumor started in a bar when drunk under the need to perform some kind of act of bravado with his friends. Not his girl, not his child, who had been ripped from the bloody car of her mother in a cherry-patterned dress. Not Julia.

“Yes, Julia,” the man had said.

“You are sure?” Cal could not believe a man would uphold that sort of lie to a father’s face. He would quail, his eyes would flicker, his body would betray him even if his tongue did not. But he was a rod, giving nothing away, because there was nothing
to
give away.