Secret Lives (2 page)

“What's next for you, Eden?”

She knew Nina's ears would prick up at that
question. Nina was fed up with her. She'd turned down one offer
after another. She told Nina none of them were right for her. The
roles were too earthy; they would cost her her fans. But the truth
was that since Wayne left she'd had no motivation. No steam. No
energy.

She looked at Monika's carefully made-up
eyes. “I don't want to dive into something I'm not sure of,” she
said. “The next thing I work on will have to be a project I can
throw myself into whole…” The image of her mother slipped into her
mind: Katherine Swift sitting at her desk, bending over her
typewriter in the candlelit blackness of the Lynch Hollow
cavern.

“Eden?” Monika raised her eyebrows.

Eden leaned forward. “You mentioned my
mother. I've been thinking of doing something on her life,
perhaps.” She sounded as though the idea had been percolating in
her mind for months rather than seconds. She could actually sense
Nina at the side of the room, standing straighter, tilting forward.
What the hell? Nina would be thinking. “I could make her more
understandable,” Eden said. Her palms pressed against the mug in
her hands. “More sympathetic.”

“You mean you would make a movie about your
mother?”

“Yes. I'd like to write the script myself.
And play her as well.” The words were flowing and she had no idea
of their source. She felt a dampness under her arms, a prickling at
the nape of her neck.

Monika grinned. “What a terrific idea!” She
continued her questioning with new enthusiasm, and Eden offered
answers, but her brain burned now with the images—the cave, the
lush green valley of the Shenandoah, the clapboard house of her
childhood in Lynch Hollow. Her aunt and uncle lived in that house
now. Lou and Kyle. Would they see this interview? What on earth
would they think? She imagined them turning to each other with
incredulous eyes.

She would have to film in summer, when the
heavy, breath-stealing greenness would fill the screen. But she
knew next to nothing about her mother. It would take an enormous
amount of research, and she would have to spend time in Lynch
Hollow. Could she do it? Her heartbeat pounded in her ears with
excitement. And with fear. Because Lynch Hollow was real; as real
as the cave, as real as the river. She would not be able to pretend
there. She would not be able to make believe.

–
2–

Eden parked the car on the shoulder of the
road and set out on foot through the woods. Although more than two
decades had passed since she last walked through this forest, and
although it was dusk and the woods were thick with shadow, she knew
the way.

Fireflies hovered in the damp June air, and
her blouse was stuck to her back by the time she reached the
cavern. It looked just as it had the last time she saw it, when she
was eleven years old and knew no home other than this hollow in
Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. The mouth of the cave was still
blocked by the two enormous boulders Uncle Kyle and some of the
neighbor men had rolled into place. But above the pale gray
boulders was a black triangular opening. Eden stepped closer. She
didn't remember that opening. Perhaps a rock had broken loose from
it sometime in the last twenty-four years. She wondered if Kyle
knew the cave was open to bats and field mice. She wondered if
children ever tried to squeeze through that space, if they dared
each other.

“This is the cave where Katherine Swift wrote
her stories,” they'd say. “This is the cave where she died.”

And perhaps they heard the staccato clicking
of the typewriter keys on the cool draft of air that slipped
through the opening, just as Eden heard it now, as if her mother
were still inside, writing, oblivious to the darkness.

Eden walked back to the car, slowly, arms
crossed in front of her. One month had passed since the Monika Lane
interview and in that month the idea of making a film about her
mother had consumed her. Two studios were interested, but she was
holding everyone off, much to Nina's chagrin. She could not be
rushed in this. She needed to be in complete control.

“This is fantastic,” Nina had said when she
saw the enthusiasm Eden's idea had generated. “Who could make a
better film about Katherine Swift than you?”

But Eden had been barely four years old when
her mother died. Her memories were wispy and thin. The sketchy
biographical material that existed on Katherine Swift portrayed her
eccentricities as something close to insanity and perpetuated the
myth that she was a cold woman who chose to live the life of a
hermit.

The articles on her mother always began with
“the peculiar Katherine Swift” or “the eccentric Katherine Swift,”
or, as in the review of her latest rerelease: “It is remarkable
that Katherine Swift wrote of her young characters with such warmth
when it is well known she scorned the company of others throughout
much of her short life.”

Maybe Eden could alter the tiresome view the
public held of her mother. She herself was living proof that her
mother had had at least one loving relationship. Eden's father,
Matthew Riley, died shortly before she was born. Yet Eden liked to
imagine his brief marriage to her mother as vibrant and passionate.
It would have taken a special sort of man to pull Katherine from
her shell.

On the flight from Los Angeles to
Philadelphia that morning, Eden had come up with a title for the
film: A Solitary Life. The word “solitary” had no particular
negative connotation attached to it. It didn't indict her mother
for the choices she'd made. That would be her theme for the
movie—that the world was wrong in its analysis of this woman who
was both writer and archaeologist. She was not cold. She was not
crazy.

Eden had rented a car in Philadelphia and
driven with Cassie the thirty miles to Wayne and Pam's house.
Cassie still did not seem to understand, despite lengthy
discussions on the subject, that she would be spending a month with
her daddy and his new wife—and without Eden. Eden had been relieved
to find Wayne alone at his new suburban home when she and Cassie
pulled up. She knew immediately that he was in his element. He was
pruning the rosebushes, dirty-kneed, his hands callused from the
clippers. There were tears in his eyes when he bent down to embrace
his daughter. Then he squeezed Eden's hand.

“Two months with Lou and Kyle, huh?” He
smiled. “I can't believe you're doing this, Eden. But I think it's
good. And we'll be fine here.” He looked down at Cassie, who was
still clutching Eden's hand.

As she pulled out of Wayne's long driveway,
she allowed herself just one look back at her daughter. That was a
mistake. Cassie stared after the car, her eyes wide and glassy with
disbelief, and Eden felt a fresh pulse of guilt surface in her
chest.

The drive from Philadelphia to Washington was
a blur, but then Virginia's rolling wooded hills cradled the road
and brought her back to the purpose of this trip. Maybe the film
should open with an aerial view of these hills. Or, she thought now
as she stepped from the forest onto the road, maybe the camera
should slip through the woods during the opening credits, smoothly,
silently, until it reached the mouth of the cave. Relax, she told
herself. She would come up with hundreds of ideas for the opening
of the film over the next few weeks. She didn't need to make any
decisions now.

She got back into the car and drove carefully
along the narrow road, hunting in the darkness for the turn that
would take her through the forest to Lynch Hollow and the house of
her childhood, the house where Kyle, Katherine's brother, had
retired after leaving New York. She had initially recoiled at
Kyle's suggestion that she spend the summer with him and Lou while
she did her research. She had seen them as little as she could get
away with since leaving home at the age of nineteen, and those
visits were always strained and awkward. The thought of spending an
entire summer with them overwhelmed her, but she felt as though she
had no choice. Kyle knew more than anyone about Katherine. So for
the next couple of months she would live in the house of her early
childhood, awakening memories buried deep and wisely.

She spotted the boulder marking the driveway
to the house and the little carved wooden sign above it. Lynch
Hollow. She turned onto the driveway and was surprised to see it
was now macadam. The last time she'd been on this driveway she'd
been eleven years old, riding in the back of a black car with her
step-grandmother, Susanna. She remembered how her eyes burned as
the orange dust from the driveway seeped through the car windows.
Who was driving that car? She couldn't remember. A relative of
Susanna's, most likely. She'd had no idea as they drove away from
the small white house that day that she would not see it again for
twenty-four years. “Just a ride,” Susanna had said. “We're just
going for a little ride.” That had struck Eden as odd. Spontaneity
was not in Susanna's nature, and Susanna was still coughing badly,
her face pale from weeks in bed. The ride dragged on and on and
Eden grew bored. When they pulled up in front of the square brick
building that stood alone in a field, she was relieved that they
had finally arrived someplace. It was another hour before she
realized Susanna intended to leave her there, with the
black-cloaked nuns and children she didn't know. And it was days
before she realized that Susanna meant to leave her there
forever.

The two years Eden lived at the orphanage did
indeed seem like forever. But when she was thirteen Kyle and Lou
tracked her down and took her home with them to New York City,
where she spent the rest of her teenage years. Since then she had
avoided New York as resolutely as she avoided Lynch Hollow.

The little house looked different in the
darkness. The woods surrounding it seemed thicker, the trees
taller, bending to shelter the roof. The edges of the house were
more sharply defined than in the fuzzy one-dimensional image in her
memory.

The house was not the same and that filled
her with courage, but when she stepped from the car she flinched at
the overwhelmingly familiar scent of honeysuckle and boxwood,
sweetness and musk.

The front door opened and light streamed onto
the porch. The tall frame of her uncle filled the doorway and sent
a shadow that touched her toes.

“Eden!” Kyle stepped onto the porch, letting
the screen door slam shut behind him. He walked across the yard and
she worked at returning his smile. It had been a year and a half
since she'd last seen him, when he and Lou flew out to California
at Christmas to fuss over Cassie.

Kyle gave her a quick hug. “Luggage?”

She opened her trunk to expose two suitcases
and a portable word processor.

“Lou inside?” She heaved one of the suitcases
out of the trunk.

Kyle nodded, smiling as he set her word
processor on the ground. She thought as she had many times before
how warm this man was, how she wished she could return his
warmth.

Inside the house everything had been
transformed. Urbanized. The front door still opened awkwardly into
the kitchen, but that room had been gutted and updated. Eden would
never have recognized it. The counters and appliances were set low
to accommodate Lou's wheelchair, and a skylight was carved into the
ceiling above the table. The choppy little hallway between the
kitchen and the living room was gone, and the north wall of the
living room was now entirely made of glass.

Lou's easel stood in front of the glass wall,
and a Prokofiev piano concerto poured from the huge stereo speakers
standing in the corners of the living room.

“You've done wonderful things with the
house,” Eden said. She stood in the middle of the living room,
hands on hips, and looked around her. “You've brought New York to
Lynch Hollow.”

Lou wheeled toward her to hand her a glass of
iced tea. “Kyle had to make a few concessions to get me to move
down here,” she said. “I hope we haven't ruined it for your
re-search.”

“No.” Eden leaned down to kiss her aunt's
cheek. “I love it.” She watched as Lou slipped easily from her
wheelchair to the couch, making the fact that she had only one leg
look inconsequential. Lou was close to seventy and beautiful, her
skin dewy and smooth on her high cheekbones and across the sharp
line of her jaw. Her eyes were blue, huge and heavy-lidded under
expressive brows. She wore her hair, a dramatic blend of black and
white, pulled back in a bun, a style that on another woman might be
deadly, but that made Lou look aristocratic and proud. Wearing a
black scoop-neck jersey and a long green skirt, she could pass as a
retired ballerina, and it was true she had once loved to dance.
Every Saturday night when Eden was a teenager, Kyle took Lou
dancing. But thank God it had not been her profession. Eden
remembered Kyle's relief when, just weeks after losing her leg, Lou
was back at the easel.

Kyle set a chocolate cake down on the coffee
table, one burning pink candle jutting from the icing. “Happy
birthday, Eden. A few days late.”

“Thank you.” Eden sat down on the love seat.
She turned to Lou. “Did you make the cake? It's beautiful.”

Lou shook her head. “I don't do much baking
anymore, dear. There's a good bakery in Coolbrook. Go ahead.” She
motioned toward the cake. “Make a wish.”

Eden blew out the candle, guilty because the
first wish that came into her head was that her work here would go
quickly and she could escape from her aunt and uncle sooner than
planned.

Lou cut the cake and handed her a piece.

“We put you in your mother's old room
upstairs,” Kyle said. “It's barely been touched by the remodeling,
so hopefully you can still get a feel for her in there.”

Eden nodded. That was the most logical room
for her to have. The first floor had only the master bedroom and
one smaller bedroom which had originally belonged to her mother and
Kyle, and later to her. The second story, added on shortly before
Eden's birth, held one large bedroom and a smaller room across the
hall, where Katherine wrote when it was too cold in the cavern.
After Katherine died no one used the upstairs. There were no
boulders in front of the stairway, but Katherine's room had become
as sealed from the rest of the world as her cave.