The Year of Luminous Love (3 page)

“Where are you going?” she’d asked, standing in her mother’s bedroom doorway, mystified.

“Away. I have to go away.”

“Go where? Why?” Fear. Confusion.

“I can’t say. Just away. For a little while.”

Eden had thought she was accustomed to her mother’s weirdness and had adapted to it, her “ups” of all-night activity
and “downs” of days of retreating under her bedcovers, unable to function, but Gwen had never packed and left before. “I’ll go with you.”

“No! You have school.”

She watched Gwen zip the duffel closed, hardly able to breathe. “But … but when will you be back?”

“Um … a few days.”

“What about me?”

Gwen had dropped to her knees and taken hold of Eden’s small shoulders. “You’re such a big girl. I left money for you in the kitchen drawer for lunches. You can get ready for school all by yourself. You’ll be fine, honey. Just fine.”

“But … but I’ll be alone. I don’t want to be alone.”

“I’ll be back soon,” Gwen promised. She stood and picked up the duffel bag, then started to the door.

Eden ran and grabbed the handles of the duffel bag, trying to rip it from her mother’s hands. “Don’t go, Mama!”

Gwen won the fight, pushing Eden onto the bed and stroking her black curly hair. “You’ll be fine,” she said. “If I leave, the bad things will follow me and not bother you.”

“What bad things?”

“Shhh. If I hurry, I can sneak past them.” She ran out the door, heaving the duffel bag over her shoulder.

“Mama!” Eden screamed. All she’d heard was the slamming of the front door and the start of the car motor, and then silence descended in a blanket of desolation.

That first time Eden cried, afraid of being left alone. She’d never known a father, a subject that would set Gwen off if mentioned. Over time, Eden stopped asking. Gwen was gone nine days and had returned looking dirty and disheveled, emotionally empty, almost robotic. No explanations. No apologies. Life resumed. It happened many times over the years,
this leaving. Eden learned to cope. To cut. To endure. But she never cried again.

This was Eden’s life with a bipolar mother. Manic-depressive. An illness. A disorder. Lifelong. Life-altering. Not Eden’s fault. Except … it always
felt
like her fault.

Eden kicked the pile of her mother’s clothing deeper into the closet and slammed the door. She crossed to the tiny bathroom, saw that the floor was littered with a colorful array of pills scattered like tiny petals from a bouquet of pharm flowers. When had Gwen stopped taking them this time? She’d been stable at Eden’s graduation, two weeks before. But it only took a day or so for her mother’s demons to arrive when she stopped her meds. Eden never understood why Gwen would stop the pills that kept the lid on her illness. What was wrong with normal?

On the meds. Off the meds. Sometimes Gwen stayed on the meds for months. Day-to-day life was smoother then. Gwen was never abusive to Eden. She turned inward, neglectful, heard whispers from voices Eden couldn’t hear. The voices always told her to stop her meds. Or did she stop taking her meds and then hear the voices? Eden never knew. However, Eden took the blame, telling herself that if she were a better daughter or a different daughter, prettier or more lovable, her mother would have had no reason to run away. During that time, Eden had taken up cutting, and watching the blood seep from the cut gave her release and a sense of control. Over time, the scars multiplied, on her arms, torso, and inside her thighs—relief for a while.

As Eden stared at the scattered pills, she felt the familiar tightening sensation grip her belly. The pressure was building, closing her inside a dark cloud. If she didn’t leave now, she wouldn’t be able to stop from slicing open her skin. She
thought of Tony, of her promise to him made at sixteen to stop her cutting and to come to him instead, to burn away one desire with another—his bed, his body becoming a substitute for her blood sacrifice. She should go to him now before she cut.

Reluctantly she reached for her cell phone and punched in Ciana’s number. When her friend answered, she put great effort into sounding breezy. “Bad news, girlfriend. The boss wants me to stay and do an inventory.”

“No!”

“ ’Fraid so. I hate inventories. Takes forever and is
b-o-r-i-n-g
. You and Arie have fun tonight.”

“Shouldn’t you call her?”

“Please handle it for me, okay? This weekend we’ll do something spectacular, just the three of us.”

“I’ll tell her.” Ciana paused. “You all right? You sound out of breath.”

“Fine. Just bummed about missing tonight. Please tell her I’m kicked about her remission.” She turned off her phone and headed down the stairs, thinking back to the summer before ninth grade when she turned fourteen and everything changed. That was the summer she had first met twenty-one-year-old Tony Cicero. And two years later traded one compulsion for another.

“What do you mean you can’t come with us?” Eden asked Arie.

“We’ve planned this. It’s your celebration,” Ciana added.

Arie gestured to the mob scene of relatives and well-wishers in her backyard. “I’m stuck,” she said. “I promised Mom I’d stay. They’ve got some big surprise planned.”

Eden looked out onto the patio and lawn, at the crowds around the tables and grill. “Just how many relatives do you have?”

“A bunch,” Arie said with a sigh.

“But this dance hall is brand-new and really hot,” Eden argued. “Best band in Nashville.”

Ciana wasn’t thrilled about Eden’s plan either. She’d have opted for dinner at Chili’s and a movie, but when Eden set her mind to something, it was hard to weasel out of it.

Arie shrugged helplessly. “Can’t help it. Plus, Eric is bringing home his latest girlfriend.” Arie leaned closer and with an
exaggerated lift of her newly regrown eyebrows added, “This is ‘the One.’ ”

“What happened to his other two ‘Ones’?” Eden deadpanned.

“Good one!” Ciana said, turning to Eden for a high five.

“That’s mean,” Arie said with a wry grin. “My brother’s had a bad year and you both know it.”

As if you didn’t have a worse one
, Ciana thought, but didn’t say it. Ciana thought Arie looked tired, not long enough out of chemo to be going with them to Nashville, but Eden seemed oblivious.

A gaggle of running children burst between the three of them, with girls screaming and boys peppering them with water pistols.

“You two go on. No use missing out on fun for the two of you. If you like it, we’ll all go next time. Promise,” Arie said.

“Oh, I don’t think we should—” Ciana started.

“We’re going!” Eden said emphatically, looping her arm through Ciana’s and dragging her backward. She waved cheerfully to Arie. “Hugs and kisses.”

“Call me tomorrow,” Arie shouted as they went through the side gate.

“But I don’t want—” Ciana started to say.

“Hush up,” Eden interrupted her. “It’s a forty-five-mile drive to the dance saloon, a chance for us to have a good time, and you’re not going to whine about going for the entire drive. Hear me?” She stuffed Ciana into her car.

“I’m not a good dancer,” she groused as Eden headed toward the freeway.

“No one will notice. They’ll all be drunk. And before you tell me you don’t have an ID, look in my purse. I have doctored driver’s licenses for both of us.”

“How?”

“Tony, of course. I usually only flash it when I’m with him, but I begged him to make one for you, and he did!”

Ciana didn’t care much for Tony. She thought he was too old for Eden, too much of an unknown for her. There were rumors about him running in gangs that moved drugs, but he seemed to have some kind of hold on her friend. Eden didn’t do much to break his hold either. The one thing Tony had accomplished with Eden was to make her stop cutting herself. Ciana should be pleased, and she was, but she still didn’t like the guy.

Knowing that Eden spent every spare minute with the man, Ciana asked, “Where’s Tony this weekend?”

“He’s in Atlanta, so that’s why I planned for us to all go out together.”

“Sorry Arie couldn’t come.”

“Me too. I don’t know when I’ll be free to do this again.”

Ciana bit her tongue to keep from saying something sarcastic. She punched on the radio, aware that the car Eden was driving had been a gift from Tony too. “So I won’t be a prisoner every time Mom takes off,” Eden had explained when she proudly showed off her wheels to Ciana and Arie for the first time. Ciana was glad the car helped out Eden, but she didn’t like thinking about what Eden might have had to trade for it.

The dance saloon, Boot Steppers, was on the southwestern side of Nashville near the banks of a slow-moving creek. Eden parked in an open grassy field because both parking lots were full. So was most of the field. “Told you this place was hot,” Eden said, locking the car door.

A bright full moon lit their way to the freestanding
clapboard building that had been designed to look like an old Wild West saloon. Loud music poured from the front doors, and men and women were gathered outside to grab a smoke. Olivia would have pronounced the whole scene “unseemly,” her word of choice for anything that went against her standards of good manners. Good thing she’d never caught Ciana and her friends lighting up in high school.

Ciana wore a belly-skimming sleeveless top, a short tight denim skirt, and her sexiest aqua-colored Western boots with long suede fringe. Her thick cinnamon-colored hair was clipped upward at either side of her face and fell into a cascade past her shoulders.

They walked into a giant room where a greeter at the door asked for their IDs, and Eden whipped hers out. Ciana felt guilty about her fake ID—eighteen was a long way from twenty-one, but the bouncer stamped her hand and passed her through.

“Come on!” Eden shouted above the noise. She grabbed Ciana’s arm and pulled her to the bar where three bartenders worked frantically to fill orders. “Cold pitcher of beer,” she told one of them.

“I don’t like beer,” Ciana said.

“Don’t start with me. You’re
going
to have fun! And a little alcohol will loosen up that tight butt of yours.” Eden threw down some cash and scooped up the pitcher and two frosty mugs from the bartender. Together, she and Ciana wove their way around the sides of the huge, crammed dance floor in search of an empty table. Ciana found one way back against the wall away from the crush of bodies.

Eden never sat down. She poured Ciana a tall frosty glass and said, “Just for tonight, take some chances. Let go, girlfriend.” Eden glanced behind her. “Back in a jiff!”

Ciana watched Eden merge into a line dance out on the floor but lost sight of her as others crowded in. Colored spotlights spun over the dancers in bright red, green, and blue while glittering disco balls rained sparkles across every surface. Cheesy, she decided. No true saloon in the Old West spun disco balls. Ciana envied Eden in a way. She was uninhibited around people and had a good time and few regrets for hard partying.

Ciana, on the other hand, was always aware of who she was—a Beauchamp. Olivia’s doing. Her grandmother had drummed certain rules into Ciana’s head since she’d been a small child. Her mother never cared about them, but she did. Rule one: A Beauchamp must never sully the family name. Rule two: A Beauchamp lived by the motto
Do unto others as you’d have others do unto you
. Rule three: A Beauchamp never— She halted the recital in her head.
Stop!
What was the matter with her? No one in Nashville knew or cared who she was. Still, she missed Arie. This night was supposed to be about her. Arie was sweet and long-suffering and would have kept her company while Eden played.

She grabbed the filled frosted glass, which was already beginning to sweat and grow warm on the table. Eden was right. It would be easier to get it down cold. She put the oversized mug to her lips and chugged it. She set down the empty glass with a satisfied thud, burped loudly, and wiped foam from her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Dance?”

She looked up to see the most gorgeous guy she’d ever laid eyes on standing in front of her. Had he seen her guzzle the mug of beer? Belch like a redneck? She heard Olivia whisper,
Unseemly
.