The Legacy of Eden (16 page)

If you were passing by the red pickup truck, you would have seen through the semi-opaqueness of the window the flailing arms and stabbing fingers of two people in the heat of an argument. If you were of an inquisitive, prying mind and had stayed, you would have seen that this tug-of-war took over half an hour before it was resolved. Then you would have seen a tall woman with graying brown hair get out of the car and slam the door before going toward the motel and knocking on the door of one of the rooms. You would have seen the door pull back, but whoever opened it would have been obscured as they stood behind it. You would have seen the woman enter and the man in the pickup truck go still, staring straight ahead at the window, on which its lace curtains would be pulled over by a female hand.

By now you would have thought, whatever the drama there was, was over and you may have gone on, but if you were to wait just ten minutes more, you would have seen the lumbering gait of the man as he stepped out of the pickup truck, walked to the door his companion had just entered through, before he paused and then began to pound his fist against the wood.

Lavinia was a woman who did not like secrets in her house. At least not those kept by other people. She knew when a secret was being kept from her and whenever she discovered this she would do her best to root it out. Secrets were weeds and she would not permit them to flourish unless they were guided by her hand and hers alone.

So when she observed Ethan’s solitary walks in the afternoon, his quietness afterward, his susceptibility to dreaming, she did her best to coax the truth from him. The business of Julia had meant that for a long time her energies had been spent elsewhere and she admitted she had allowed her grasp on her eldest son to slip, so busy was she in dealing with Cal. But now that things had begun to settle, she could concentrate on her next battle—regaining neglected territory.

So one day when Ethan was late back from school she asked Theo where he was.

“Dunno. He doesn’t tell me this stuff,” said Theo with a shrug.

“Hmm,” she said and, carrying a basketful of laundry, she went up to Ethan’s room.

There she closed the door and carefully but methodically began to go through her son’s things. She checked his drawers, she ran through his closet but she found nothing. She placed his folded clothes on the edge of his bed and went out of the room.

The next evening when once again Ethan came home late, Lavinia said to her son, “What’s keeping you after school?”

Ethan had practiced this in his mind many times. He spun her a story of an after-school science club that he had been afraid of telling anyone about, because people who went there were generally considered nerds and were beaten up.

“You think your father and I would beat you for joining a science club?” his mother asked, her eyes narrowing.

“No, it’s just that…well, you might mention it to one of your friends and if they mention it to their kids then they’ll tell everyone at school and then well…” He tailed off with an emotional flourish. Lavinia could not suppress her feeling of pride and then irritation that he should dare use the instruments she had taught him against her.

“Very well then,” she said. “I won’t tell your father.”

Ethan practically beamed at her before dashing off. She looked after him and it was then she began to worry about exactly how her son had managed to acquire a secret this important, of which she still had no clue.

She watched him, biding her time until one day, as she went down to the barn before dinner to call after Cal, she found that not only had her husband gone out without telling her, but that her eldest son was walking out of the barn, his arms swinging.

“What were you doing in there?” his mother asked.

“Oh.” Ethan saw his mother and colored. She observed this with icy disdain.

“I…uh…I just, I was doing some chores for Pa before I came in. I don’t want to fall behind what with the club after school and then he might start asking questions about why I’m not keeping up with things at home, which wouldn’t be good. Anyway,” he added cheerfully, “I’m done now. You coming back?”

Lavinia looked over the top of his head to the barn. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him fidget.

“Of course,” she replied, and they walked back together.

Half an hour later, she, Theo and Ethan were gathered at the table. The food was laid and the places set but neither Piper nor Cal were there.

“Well, really,” she said after ten minutes. “They might have telephoned if they were going to be late. Did any of them say anything to either of you about something keeping them tonight?”

“No, Ma,” chirped the boys simultaneously. “Not a thing.”

Just then the front door opened. Lavinia could hear a crowd of footsteps.

“My God, about time. Food’s getting cold, not that I guess that mattered to you or you would have had the decency to…”

Cal came in first followed by Piper. My grandmother stared from one face to another. Their expressions were alien to her in a way that made her fingers clasp the edge of the table. And then Piper moved aside and at first all she saw was a halo of cropped blond hair.

For a moment no one could speak, but then quite unexpectedly Theo leapt from his seat and threw himself into the arms of his sister.

“Julia!” he exclaimed.

Ethan got up and went to his sister, who smiled and put a hand on his shoulder.

“You’re so tall,” she said to him.

Lavinia looked at each of them. She saw her husband and sister-in-law gaze at her sons in happiness; she saw her stepdaughter standing in the doorway and then finally she saw the suitcases by her feet.

“Aren’t you going to say anything, honey?” asked Cal, staring at his wife. But she was not looking at him, she was staring hard into the face of a ghost.

“You’re back then?” she somehow managed to ask.

“Of course—” and the ghost became flesh and laughed “—I’m home.”

After I telephoned the lawyers to let them know I was in town I borrowed Jane’s car and went for a drive. I knew where I was going, as did she, because she paused before dropping the car keys into my hand.

“Be safe,” she called after me.

It was easy, my hands were on autopilot. I followed the route, wondering at first if perhaps I may have forgotten, but it was like I was being led by an invisible thread that pulled me back along the streets and roads of my childhood through the familiar lanes, past the fences I would jump in my youth and along the fields I had driven past, run through, laughed in.

When I came to the fork in the road, the trees lining it either side were still just as tall and verdant in the flesh as they had been in memory. I stopped. Just a little farther, I thought. Just a little more. My foot hovered above the gas pedal, my fingers clutched the wheel. The minutes dissolved and then suddenly the clouds broke with rain.

Beside me something shifted, and out of the corner of my eye I saw him pull a cigarette from his mouth and blow a funnel of smoke from his lips.

“Miss me?” he asked. I started to shake.

“Always,” he answered for me and smiled.

No one noticed that my grandmother did not speak at dinner except for Piper, but she did not draw attention to it. Lavinia merely sat as the torrent of conversation and questions circled around her like a fog that would not lift.

Julia, the new Julia, thinner with blond frosted hair and pink lipstick, told them how she had lived with Jess in California and for a while things had been really good. He had even started playing gigs in bars in the evenings and they had thought it was only a matter of time before things improved.

But they did not. Jess’s uncle was arrested on charges of embezzlement from the studio: several bands were suing him individually. He was bankrupted and disgraced. As his relative, Jess immediately lost his job.

“So unfair,” said Julia, shaking her head. “I mean Jess had nothing to do with it. He isn’t smart enough to embezzle anybody. I guess he was just tainted by association. Well, that’s when things really started to go wrong.”

Jess went through a “black cloud,” as Julia described it. He couldn’t eat or sleep; he missed some gigs and was thrown out of a club for turning up drunk and throwing up on an audience member. He tried to hold down a series of jobs but he hated them. All he wanted was to be a musician but nothing seemed to be happening. And then one night he met a man in a bar who needed a bassist.

“Jess has always been a front man, but at that point anything musical would have done, so he thought why not? Thing was, they were going to go touring across the west coast in this guy’s van. It seemed like a great chance and we had Jess’s car so we could go with them.”

Except the places they played in were holes and the band members were on drugs or alcohol or both. One of them made a pass at Julia and Jess broke his nose. That was it: he was slung out of the band in Portland, Oregon, with only twenty-two dollars and half a tank of gas. They went to a motel and Jess had lain down on the bed and stared into space for six hours.

“He was so lost, he couldn’t see his way out and all I kept thinking was how much I wanted to come home.”

So Julia called home, and when Piper answered she convinced her to wire her some money for two plane tickets. Piper agreed. At first, Julia said, she was afraid that Cal wouldn’t forgive her, but then Piper talked to him and he came to see her at the motel she was staying in.

“And the second we saw each other it was like…it was just like at the hospital. You coming to save me all over again.” And she smiled at her father, who held her hand.

“I know it’s what your mother would have wanted had she lived,” he answered.

“So where’s Jess?” asked Theo.

“He’s with his parents for now,” said Julia airily. “He wasn’t sure about coming over until…well, he thought this should be a family thing and I agreed. It’s so good to be back in a nice house with everyone.” She smiled around the table until her eyes rested on Lavinia. Turning to her father she put a hand on his arm and said, “I know I was stupid and young but I’ve been through… We—Jess and me—have been through so much. We were so broke and things were really hard. We just want to be somewhere safe and happy. And I’ve told him so much about this place, so much, I know he’d love it here just as much as I do.”

“Well, we’ll talk on that later,” said Cal as he patted her hand. Julia’s mouth dropped, but she sighed and then rested her head on his shoulder.

“You’re right. We can deal with all of that later.”

And Cal bent down and kissed the top of her hair.

That night when everyone was asleep, Lavinia put on her shawl and went out of the house. She walked the trail of the land until she got to the barn and sat down heavily on one of the straw bales. She could not sleep, even though her body was weary and her mind would not stop, though she was sick of her thoughts.

She removed the shawl and rocked her body back and forth, clenching her fingers into her arms until from somewhere deep inside a howl of rage emerged. She started up and beat her fists against the wood of the barn walls, screaming and spitting as all her hate burst its banks and overwhelmed her. Her fingernails scraped splinters into the flesh of her cuticles but she felt no pain. Eventually she sank to the floor sobbing in outrage, until disgusted, she clamped a hand to her mouth and sat there curled like a stricken fetus waiting for her monsters to be shut up in their cages once more.

After a long time she became very still. She sat there, overwhelmed, looking without seeing until her eyes sharpened into focus. On the floor, peeking from under the straw in the corner that she had kicked and loosened in her fury, she saw a flurry of white. She moved the straw away with her hands and groped under it until she found herself pulling out a small stack of papers. In the dark she peered at it until she stood up and went outside and held them up to the light from the moon.

She recognized what they were at once and she drew the papers into her chest. She held on to them until she was home and in the light of the kitchen she read the declarations of love from Alison Lomax to her eldest son, her blood smearing across the sheets as she turned each page.

In the morning, the foreman saw the small streaks of blood on the barn walls and was puzzled. But then he took a sponge and a pail of water and in a few minutes the traces of blood were gone. When he mentioned it, no one had any idea how the blood had gotten there and as there was no sign of injury to either his men or their animals, he had forgotten it by the end of the day.

Chapter 8

SOME THINGS WERE planned and of course some things were not. Opportunities presented themselves all ripe for advantage, if you had the inclination and the will.

Who knows what path we would have taken if she had let them carry on as they had? Perhaps some things that eventually happened would have done so anyway; all the key players would still have been the same. But then again, maybe not.

It is this hypothetical that haunts me in the waning hours when my mind bends only to the one road leading to the past. Or the past that could have been.

I wonder if my aunt and uncle would have felt the same? If years later they, too, had lain in their beds and pored over the acts that led them to their present and how different it was from how they had once imagined it to be. I know what it’s like, that incessant need for retrospect. Twisting your body back and forth, hoping that in doing so what lies before you will twist with it and change. It’s so compelling and like all compulsions a slow poison, so that before you know it, you’ve allowed what destroyed you once, to destroy you twice.

My father said that as a boy, because his windows faced toward the east, he was always woken at dawn by the sun lighting up his room in a rush of white fire. He would rise out of bed and go to the window and look out, as he stretched, into the distance of blue sky, yellow stalks and red barn. As he did, he knew that one day when he was a man he would go out among those things and live and work there until the sun dipped below the horizon and the world turned to dark. It was a foregone conclusion. For most people who were brought up on farms in those days it was a logical step that the land that had sustained them as a child would also be the source of their revenue and employment as an adult. It was second nature—and only brought them trouble when it was questioned. Depending on the farm, they counted themselves lucky.

But not so for Jess Thorne. Jess had lived in a single-story house a few blocks from Main Street. His father was a mechanic and his mother a homemaker. His whole life he had dreamed of getting away from them, and from what people said of him, his guitar became a ticket on which all his hopes and expectations were based. So when he came back and stayed in their house and slept in his own bed while his wife slept in hers miles across town on a farm, I can imagine how he would have felt like a failure. And worst of all, how everyone around him was probably thinking the same thing.

Jess had tried California: he had had so many hopes when he got out there, but everything had turned sour almost from the start. When you look at what happened to him, it seems that as soon as he gained some distance from the one place he thought had been holding him back, he seemed to move further away from the only thing he actually wanted. There had been some moments of relief: I would come to learn that although he had been angry at first, finding out that Julia wasn’t pregnant after all became something of a blessing. Their lives had turned into such a mess that I doubt he could have handled a kid on top of it. But the question he must have been faced with on his return was what to do next. They couldn’t go back, but they couldn’t stay as they were. All Jess knew was music and Iowa and he had failed at the first and was out of place in the latter.

Jess had dreams: everyone knew that, but it was Julia who determined their future. When she entered his bedroom that morning she found him lying on his bed as lost and bewildered as he had been in a motel room in Portland. She knew there would be protestations when she told him of her plans for him, there always were. But he could think of no alternative and their situation made him feel as if he had no choice. This was a lie, but Jess was afraid of the hard thing. But that didn’t matter to Julia, as long as she got her way. And this was how, despite his childhood dream, Jess Thorne came to live and work on Aurelia.

My grandfather commissioned the building of a house for them on the farm after a month. He welcomed Jess over the threshold into the main house while it was being completed and gripped his hand so tightly that a muscle in Jess’s cheek quailed.

Lavinia watched the erection of the house’s foundations and Julia’s trips to stores nearby with her aunt and she said nothing. Not when Julia showcased the new china she’d bought on their dining table; not when Cal complained at night of how unsuitable Jess was for farming, yet still insisted that his foreman find him a good position among his hands; not even when as a present for coming back he bought Julia a white Thoroughbred from Kansas who pawed the earth when he came out of his horse box and she, laughing, threw her arms around her father’s neck as Jess summoned a smile to his mouth.

She was as silent as anyone had ever known her to be. She said nothing, only watched and waited.

Though it was bound to happen eventually, Ethan was still afraid when he suspected that Allie had begun to tell people about their relationship. He noticed the way people began to look at him in class, the newfound respect that lit up the boys’ expressions when they passed him by and the curiosity of the girls. But when Jimmy Galloway slammed a ball with both force and fury into his face during a game of dodgeball, he bit the bullet and asked her outright if she had said anything.

She didn’t seem contrite. If anything, she was spoiling for an argument.

“I’m sick of lying to everyone. It’s ridiculous. It’s not like I have anything to feel ashamed of,” she said, and stared at him, challenging him to contradict her.

But when she asked him over to her house for dinner he really grew afraid. Drawing her aside under the bleachers during recess he tried to voice his concerns, but she wouldn’t listen.

“Mom’s making a pot roast,” was all she would say in reply.

So with that he was forced to tell his parents that he had been invited to her house for dinner. He mumbled it quickly between forkfuls of chicken salad. Cal had winked at his wife over the heads of his children. She didn’t wink back.

Piper ironed his shirts and drove him to Allie’s home and, over the polished woods of her living room, he watched her with blue ribbons in her hair as she sat in a cream dress next to her father and his heart swelled with love. He was so busy enjoying himself he didn’t realize how happy he was until he came into the hall of his own home and caught his mother coming out of the kitchen bearing a basketful of laundry. At the expression on her face he felt the breath steal out of him.

“Did you have a good time?” asked his mother.

“Of course,” he said, and then winced.

“Your father and I would like to return the favor,” she said. “Could you invite that girl over next week for Sunday lunch?”

“What? I mean…pardon, ma’am?”

“Are you deaf now, Ethan?” she snapped.

He recoiled.

“Do as I ask.”

The next Sunday, promptly at one, Allie arrived at Ethan’s home. She marveled as she stepped inside.

“I always wanted to come here,” she whispered. “Everyone said how beautiful your home was but—” She stopped when my grandmother and grandfather came into the hall.

At the table, my father sat in his chair, concentrating solely on wolfing down everything placed in front of him. Sunday lunch was his favorite meal and to give credit to my grandmother, even in my day she did it with style. There were always mounds of creamy mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables, roasted parsnips, a roast meat and roast potatoes cooked in butter and rosemary. It was the one meal he lived for and the only one you could never have any hope of having a conversation with him during, but for once Theo was not alone in his silence. My grandmother was noticeably reticent throughout, while my grandfather peppered Allie with questions and stories and feeble jokes that made my father choke on his crackling.

Afterward, when they were alone, Allie would say how much she liked my grandfather. Ethan would frown at his shoe and mutter something about how embarrassing he was.

“Embarrassing? At least he made an effort with me,” she snorted.

“What do you mean?” Ethan asked.

“Oh nothing, just…” Allie stopped and searched his face but Ethan, as ever, was a blank.

“Nothing,” she finished.

Jess and Julia moved into their home on the farm in 1964. It was a square, redbrick building with white shutters. Julia had had it fashioned that way and when Cal saw it he commented on how much it looked like their first home in Oregon. But when he looked over at his wife he let his voice trail off into nothing.

Jess started to help on the land and he soon became pretty good at it. Well, as my father would say, good enough not to warrant any complaints but never good enough to elicit any praise from my grandfather. While no one would ever say as much, Cal could never quite get over how Jess had come into the family. He had rewritten that entire event so that even though it had been Julia who had run away and not contacted him for over a year, Jess was somehow still to blame. In my grandfather’s mind he had driven her to it, it was he who led her on, and Cal saw his efforts on the farm not as an example of his honest nature, but as a product of his guilt.

Julia, however, was once more his golden girl. It was as if the shock of her elopement and their year apart made him need to draw her even closer. He would not talk of her elopement except to criticize Jess, and Julia let it be that way. She would walk into the white house from her own and sit at the table utterly comfortable with her surroundings, despite the hard hatred of her stepmother whenever she glimpsed her stepdaughter curled up on her settee, or baking Cal a pie using the contents from her fridge. Julia treated all as her rightful domain; the shock of California and being ripped from her comfort zone to a level of living she had only encountered once before, when she was too young to remember it fully, had taught her a valuable lesson. It was better to be queen in her small sphere, than insignificant in a larger one.

Of course, my grandmother noticed.

She took every one of these occurrences and built them up as slights to be recorded and remembered. She dipped into her legendary reserves of patience and let them feed her, rationing them for a long period of endurance. How long this would have to continue, she did not know, but a few weeks before Thanksgiving she got her answer.

Julia came into the living room, Jess’s arms shyly wrapped around her, and blushed with her eyes, though her skin remained smooth alabaster, before announcing that she was pregnant.

And a year later, on the 11th of July 1965, Cal Jr., my cousin, was born. Julia said she named him after my grandfather so that he would be as strong, as kind, as devoted. My grandfather cried there and then in the hospital room. Tears of pride coursed down his rough cheeks as he held his first grandson in his arms, utterly unashamed.

And so my grandmother drew herself inward, made a pact with her soul and stretched out her already thinning patience a little bit more.

Did Cal notice that she was not happy? Not likely, she would say later. She was too good at hiding it. Silence in her marriage was not a weapon; it was a source of respite. The quieter she was, the more secure Cal felt in his emotions. Instead of her pouring all her feelings and desires into him, he began to do it instead. Now it was he who would lie in bed next to her and tell her of his plans for the future, his ideas for the farm, his wishes for his family.

It was he who told her that whenever Ethan talked about his future, he always mentioned Allie’s name. It was he who told her that he would have to rewrite his will now that Cal Jr. was born and it was he who told her the most damning thing of all. He told her that he wanted to make peace with his brother.

At this, Lavinia sat upright.

“What on earth makes you think he’ll listen to you? He hasn’t spoken to you in nearly twenty years, Cal—he’s never even tried to get back in contact with you.”

“I know that—don’t you think I know that?”

“So
why?
” She rang out the last word in repressed fury. Cal did not look at her.

“Because if it had been the other way around, wouldn’t I have done the same? Pa gave me the land but his wishes could only have been carried out if I took it. And I wanted to take it even though I knew it shouldn’t have been mine.”

“So what?” his wife sneered. “You think by telling him this it’ll make a difference to him? You think he’ll forgive you, do you?”

“No, I don’t, but I think it’s about time I did the decent thing and asked.”

Lavinia stared at her husband, unseeing, unbelieving. “What has gotten into you?” she said at last.

“I’ve just been thinking these things over, that’s all. Family is family. I realized ain’t nothing more important. Nothing.”

And he leaned over and turned out the light.

He did not speak about this with her again. Though she probed him, he became unusually reticent. He had seen her disapproval, perhaps even guessed at her outrage, and so had drawn inward, closing his mouth and thoughts to her. It drove her mad.

“Why are you shutting me out?” she had raged at him one night when they were alone. “I’m your wife.”

“Do you tell me everything?” Cal had replied. “Of course you don’t, nor would you if I asked.”

“Someone’s put you up to this. Someone’s been turning you against me.”

“Lavinia, you’re being hysterical.”

“I’m not. You don’t think I don’t know what goes on in my own house? A husband and wife shouldn’t have secrets.”