Eden Close (20 page)

He ponders this.

"I can be careful if you can," he says.

She doesn't answer him.

"I have to go to T.J.'s tonight," he says. "And I don't want to go."

"You don't like T.J.," she says.

The suggestion surprises him. "I don't know. He and I are different now."

"So are we," she says. She turns in the path. She refuses his hand and holds her arms out instead, letting the cornstalks guide her.

 

O
N THE RADIO
, in the car, on the way to the mall, Andrew hears that the heat wave, expected to last for most of the coming week, will break records for this part of the state. This evening and through the night, says the announcer, the temperature will remain in the high nineties. The announcer segues into a follow-up on the lead story, which Andrew has missed. The thirteen-year-old girl who was found raped, sodomized and beaten in her father's barn earlier this morning has died of her injuries at the county hospital. Andrew stares at the digital readout on his radio. The police, says the announcer, have made no arrests, but the girl's sixteen-year-old boyfriend, who appears to have been the last person to have seen her alive, has been taken in for questioning.

The announcer, in a more lively voice, an advertising voice Andrew knows well, reads an ad for an end-of-season sale on pool and garden accessories. Andrew puts his foot on the gas, takes the car up to seventy. Before he knows it, Billy will be thirteen. Eden was fourteen. Just. But she didn't die of her injuries. A line swims up to him through the years from a book he liked when he was a junior in high school. He can't remember the line exactly. He has never been very good at precise recall of quotations. But it was something about there not being much difference between the ones at the farm and the ones in the graveyard, and how the ones in the graveyard were the lucky ones. The book was
Ethan Frome,
and he read it by his bedroom window for English homework one Sunday afternoon in January. He remembers vividly the way the world looked outside that window—a snow cover made bleak by the thin winter light of a January day—and how in keeping the earth was with the book he was reading. He imagines with an unwelcome clarity the face of the mother this morning as she was told the fate of her daughter. In New York, in the papers and on the radio, he has become accustomed, if not inured, to reports of the killing of children, the stealing of children and the sexual abuse of children, and these reports have sickened him and made him wary, and have caused him to be more protective of Billy than hi:; own parents had to be of him. But it is this report, heard in his BMW on the way to the mall, heard not ten miles from the barn where the girl was found, heard nineteen years after Eden was raped and shot, that is the most difficult to absorb. Though he has an understanding of differing sexual proclivities, and a tolerance for tastes he does not himself share, he cannot conceive of a desire that would cause a man to sexually batter a child and then kill her. Nor can he entirely fathom though a similar act might be said to
have shaped many of his adult dreams and visions, how such a violence could take place here. It is the locale, he thinks, this deceptively inoffensive locale, that makes such a news report so incomprehensible. He turns up the volume of his radio so that the sound of a rock song—a piece of music he has never heard before, a loud atonal piece of music with lyrics he cannot decipher—fills his ears.

 

A
LL THE WOMEN
of the county without access to a pool or to air-conditioning appear to have converged upon the mall. Inside, the temperature is regulated so that within minutes it is possible to forget the weather. Teenage girls in threes and fours, carrying packages, move en masse from one store to the next, lightly fingering merchandise, using it somehow as material for jokes, creating the mall anew as an activity to while away the long afternoon. Babies in strollers keep watch over their mothers, as the mothers sit on concrete benches along the center of the mall, eating ice cream cones and smoking cigarettes, idly giving the stroller a push now and then, thinking of what to bring home for supper so as to avoid cooking in the heat. There are almost no men in the mall, Andrew observes, and those he does see are in short-sleeved dress shirts and ties, managers, he supposes, of the various shops, or else plainclothes security personnel. He himself is still wearing his sweat-stained T-shirt and his grass-stained jeans, and his appearance seems out of place among all the clean women and babies and girls.

The mall is a long rectangle, with trees lining the center strip. On either side are the stores. He walks the length of the mall and back. There are four stores that sell shoes, not including the Sears at one end and the Caldor's at the other. There is also a store that sells greeting cards, a store that sells books, a store that sells video games and a store that sells fake country antiques. Most of the other stores sell women's clothing but not shoes.

He begins with the most promising store, one that sells athletic footgear, and at once realizes he does not know Eden's foot size. He picks up a sneaker that looks as though it had been designed for an astronaut or by an astronaut and reads the size inside: 6½. The size looks right to him. He is drawn to a rack of plain canvas sneakers in white and pink and blue, but a wiry-haired salesgirl, plucked from her afternoon stupor by the sight of a reasonably young male, steers Andrew away from the simple sneakers to an array of high-tech running shoes along the left wall.

"Jogging? No, I don't think so," says Andrew, who cannot picture the subtly toned blue and gray running shoes, with thick soles and puffy sides, on Eden. On Martha, yes, they would be perfect. His eyes stray covetously to the rack of plain canvas sneakers, but the salesgirl, piqued by his momentary inattention, launches into a discussion of the technology behind (or rather inside) a pair of white and silver "walking shoes." Lest he offend the salesgirl, who has actually stepped between him and the rack of canvas sneakers, he mumbles something about just looking and backs out of the store.

Andrew visits all of the shoe stores and the shoe departments of Sears and Caldor's. He visits some of the stores twice. He lingers over the selections, unable to come to a decision, unable to settle upon what he thinks is the perfect shoe. For he wants the shoes to be right, and he examines each display with the kind of scrutiny hitherto reserved for forays into toy stores in order to buy birthday presents for Billy. He fingers canvas shoes that have no ties, deliberates as to whether they might be a more sensible choice. He thinks of boat shoes as perhaps being more practical. He realizes, in Caldor's, throwing his head back in a gesture of disbelief at his own stupidity, that color is irrelevant. He is, for a time, seduced, despite his natural antipathy, by the endless shelves of sixty-dollar running shoes and lets himself be taught
the intricacies of arch support. He passes several times by the first shoe store he entered, hoping the salesgirl there will have gone on a break. Finally, after an undetermined amount of time has passed, and after he has eaten a hamburger and a vanilla shake at Burger King, he walks purposefully into the first shoe store and makes for the rack of plain canvas sneakers. He allows the ambitious salesgirl no time to intercept him, picks out a pair of blue sneakers and says,
Size six and a half please,
in a voice normally reserved for giving taxi drivers directions. He suspects she will outwit him by coming out of the storeroom with a smile to say they are out of stock, but perhaps she is less interested in him than he thought, for she returns in a minute with a box. He checks to see if they are indeed blue and size 6½, which they are. He pays for the sneakers and walks out with the box under his arm.

Then he begins on the sunglasses.

The quest for the sunglasses takes not quite as long, but standing in line at the register, listening to one teenage girl tell another, enigmatically, that she has burned her blue silk blouse, he looks at his watch and sees that it is already quarter to seven. He is due at T.J.'s at seven. He doesn't even have the wine. He will have to bolt, buy the wine, drop by the house, throw on a clean shirt. No time for a shower and a shave. And even so, he will be late.

He pays for the sunglasses and heads for the exit door. As soon as he opens it, the heat hits him like a thick wall. Nearly seven o'clock, and it still feels like a hundred.

He walks unhurriedly to his car. He is humming a song heard overhead in a store. He has the sneakers and the sunglasses, and tomorrow he will give them to her.

 

H
E RINGS
the bell beside T.J.'s front door, turns and glances down the street. Each house is, in its construction, identical
to the one beside it. Any individuality, to the extent that characteristic exists at all, is created only by the paint or the trim or the false panes in this window or that. The sign at the entrance to the subdivision reads: "Water's Edge—Center-Hall Colonials," but the houses have little in common with the colonials Andrew knew in Massachusetts years ago. Even the driveways and the lawns and the redwood decks at the backs are clones of each other. What is to prevent a man, he wonders idly, from coming home drunk late one night, swerving into the wrong driveway and fumbling at the wrong door with his keys? Or opening an unlocked door and slipping into the wrong bed beside the wrong wife?

"Andy-boy. Pal," says T.J., opening the door and letting out clouds of frigid air. "Come in quick, before the heat gets in."

T.J. has on a white cotton sweater with the sleeves pushed' up to the elbows and a pair of khaki pants with a profusion of pockets. The pants look as though they are meant to be worn on safari. Andrew proffers the bottle of wine wrapped in a paper bag. He has thrown on a clean dress shirt over his sweat-stained back. His fingernails are still black, and he has not shaved. T.J. raises an eyebrow but says nothing. The icebox sting of the air-conditioning, an air-conditioning that makes the interior of the house feel like late November, creates along Andrew's spine an instant and deep shiver.

He is too disoriented, however, to focus immediately on the cold. The two side walls of the hallway into which T.J. has ushered him are mirrored. Andrew feels as though he were floating, not anchored to firm ground. Two black stairways (or is it only one reflected in a mirror?) appear to rise without supports to an upper floor. A chandelier, in black and gold, repeats itself dizzyingly hundreds of times in the play of mirrors reflecting mirrors. A highly polished black
chair is the sole item of furniture in the hallway, and even though it, too, has many copies, Andrew edges toward it for support.

"Andy-boy," says T.J.

"T.J.," says Andrew.

"So what'll you have to drink?" asks T.J. before they have even moved from the hallway.

"Drink?"

T.J. frowns. "Yeah, you know, a cocktail, a beer. You all right, pal? You look a little scruffy around the edges."

"I'm fine," says Andrew, reaching for the back of the chair. "Fine. I got waylaid, didn't have time for a shower. I didn't want to be any later than I am ... was." The sentence trails off as he catches sight of himself and T.J. in the opposite wall. He himself looks dazed, like a prisoner brought from a darkened cell to a room where the lights are too bright.

T.J. eyes him warily. "A strawberry daiquiri OK, Andy-boy? Didi's made up a batch."

"Fine," says Andrew. "Fine."

"OK. Well. Lemme show you around, and we'll make our way into the kitchen."

T.J. reaches for a black handle in the glass and passes through a mirrored wall into what appears to be a living room. Andrew follows and is relieved to see that only one wall is mirrored here. His orientation is momentary, however, as he realizes that the floor on which he is standing is black marble, or some material that resembles marble, and that most of the furniture in the room is also black, a black-on-black effect that causes him to miss a small end table, on which he barks his shin.

The unmirrored walls are covered with a gold-flecked wallpaper. On a solid-black coffee table is an outsized gold ashtray and a gold vase. On the wall opposite is a massive console with an enormous TV screen not unlike the one in the screening room at work, and below it, like the darkened
cockpit of an L-1011, an array of instruments and digital readouts.

"State of the art," says T.J., following Andrew's glance. "We got two VCRs just in here. The kids have their own, and we got one in the bedroom. Have to, really, to keep up with all the good movies on. Fantastic picture on the tube. Wanna see?"

T.J. picks up one of three remote-control channel switchers on the coffee table and presses a button. Nothing happens.

"Hold on a minute. Must be the other one."

He picks up the second remote control and presses a button on it. Nothing happens.

"Kids musta been screwing around with these," says T.J., looking mildly flustered as he picks up the third. He presses a button. A life-size image of an evening game-show host appears on the screen.

"Great, huh?" says T.J.

"Great," says Andrew. He ponders for a lucid moment the effort, technology and expense it has taken to bring a life-size image of an evening game-show host into T.J.'s living room.

T.J. passes through an open doorway in one of the gold-speckled walls, and when Andrew follows he finds himself inside a dining room, he guesses, touching the long black-lacquered table in the center. He cannot help but see his reflection again in yet another mirrored wall on the other side. A black and gold chandelier, like the one in the hallway, hangs from the ceiling.

"We're into black and gold," says T.J.

The statement seems to call for some reply. "And mirrors," says Andrew.

"Yeah, well, mirrors are great. Make the place look so much bigger."

"Absolutely," says Andrew.

T.J. opens yet another hidden door. "Here he is!" he announces to the other side.

Andrew hears the female voice even before he sees its owner.

"Andy!"

He steps into a room of black and stainless steel, a room he takes, owing to the especially large amount of stainless steel, to be the kitchen. Didi Hanson, now Jackson, embraces him. He is aware of a white cotton sweater identical to T.J.'s and a strong scent of perfume enveloping him. She stands back and holds him at arms' length.