She moved around in front of him, on her knees, blocking his path to the water.
"Eden," he said.
"You can touch me if you want," she said. "You can touch my blouse."
He looked at her blouse. The longing inside him was so deep and so tight it made his throat dry. He could see the pressure of her breasts against the cloth. He could tell that she wasn't wearing a bathing suit or anything else beneath her blouse. He had never touched a girl's breasts, though he wanted to and he dreamed of it—he had sometimes dreamed of touching hers. He dreamed now of touching the buttons, undoing them slowly, one by one. He looked up at her face. Her eyes, blue-green, were locked on his.
He turned his face away from her. He saw nothing—only a shimmering blur. The color was rising to his face, but there wasn't anything he could do to stop it. He hardened his fists against the grass.
"Eden," he said again.
There was a movement of her hands. He knew what she was doing, and he froze, pretending not to know. He wanted her to do it. He knew what she was doing, and he wanted it.
"Look at me," she said after a time.
And slowly he let himself turn and look at her. He made his face stay calm. It was a test of some kind, and he would make his face stay calm no matter what, though he longed to hide his face in her skin. Her breasts were very white, and the whiteness held him. He could see the tan line of her bathing suit. He brought his hand to his forehead to brush the hair from his face. He kept his face calm, but his hand gave him away.
She said, "Afraid?"
He shook his head, but he was lying. He felt dizzy—loose and big and floating. He knew that all he had to do was touch her.
He raised his face and looked up at the sky. There was a corona around the sun. She was kneeling there, in front of him, waiting. A minute longer, he knew, and they'd both be lost.
He stood up, not gracefully. "I'm going for a swim," he said. His voice was deep, unfamiliar to him. He walked to the water's edge. He bent down to untie his sneakers. He stood up and knifed through the surface of the pond and swam as if his life depended on it, though you could reach the other side in fifty strokes. And when he did, he turned and swam back again, repeating the course over and over until he could barely raise his arm above the water. And then he swam some more, treading water, really, until he knew it was safe to get out.
When he climbed onto the grass, shaking the water out of his ear, Eden was sitting with her knees up.
She had buttoned her blouse. Her face was closed, and she wouldn't look at him. He knew then, watching her, that he had not done the right thing. She looked small and lonely, a fourteen-year-old girl with nowhere to go. He wanted now to touch her skin, to tell her that, yes, he had dreamed of her, had wanted her, that he did often think of them together, that he felt for her something he had been afraid to say even to himself—but he didn't know how.
"You could have been my sister," he said instead.
She said nothing.
They walked back in silence. She was in front of him. His shirt was sticking to his chest, drying some. His hair was plastered in rivulets to his forehead.
When they drew closer to the houses, he jerked his arm forward and tried to take her hand. There was something he wanted to tell her—he would tell her now—but she chose that moment, unaware that he was reaching for her, to sprint the rest of the way to the houses. He tilted as if to run after her, but then he stopped himself. He wouldn't catch her. He remembered that she could run as fast as he could.
THE FOLLOWING WEEK, T.J. reported to Andy that Eden had suddenly dropped Sean. It was rumored, said T.J., that Jim had found the pair one night in Sean's car about one hundred yards short of the house and had strenuously forbidden Eden ever to see Sean again, but T.J. thought it unlikely, and Andy agreed. Although Jim's drinking had grown worse over the years—and particularly so in the last year—sometimes causing him to accost Andy's father and harangue him for hours on some arcane subject, or to sit mute on his own back stoop, beer in hand, waiting for Eden to come home for supper, Andy thought it virtually impossible that Jim could be capable of so decisive an act of discipline. Rather it seemed more plausible that Sean had concocted the story to salvage his pride. For from all appearances, Eden had simply tired of Sean. He had served an uncertain purpose for a time and was now no longer very interesting to her—a fate that threw Sean into a frenzy. At first he besieged Eden with pleas and questions, but when his entreaties would not move her, his fury ignited and was boundless.
"I'll get that bitch," he said, to anyone who would listen, his anger growing with each passing day. "I'll kill that bitch," he shouted, his temper ricocheting around the interior of his car. T.J. told him to calm down and get a grip on himself. Then later, when T.J. had wearied of Sean's relentless tirades, he told him to "grow up."
But Sean, enraged and bereft, would not let up. At 2 A.M. on the last day of July, he totaled his car on the road leading from town to Eden's house and was arrested for speeding and for drunken driving. On a morning in the first week of August, a summer caretaker at the high school found two windows smashed to bits in the east wing, near the music room. By the middle of August, Jim had called the police station twice to lodge a complaint against Sean, who had been standing across the road for days, waiting for Eden to leave the house to walk to the bus stop.
But that was not the worst of it, T.J. said to Andy one August evening after work when the two of them were going to a movie. The worst of it was this: When Sean had first told T.J. that Eden wouldn't see him anymore, Sean had gripped the steering wheel in his car so tightly that his fingers had turned white. And then he'd gulped once as if for air and had cried like a baby.
WHEN HE shuts the mower off, he hears the phone ringing. It's his own, inside the kitchen. He begins to run, leaping over the back stoop, letting the screen door slam, reaching it in three rings.
"Hello?" he says, breathless.
"You're outta shape, Andy-boy. Maybe you should take up jogging."
"T.J."
Andrew puts his hand on his chest, as if to slow his looping heart.
"What were you doin' anyway?"
"I was mowing the lawn," says Andrew. "I ran for the phone."
"You should get a cordless. We got a cordless in the backyard."
"Oh," says Andrew. Is it worth the effort to remind T.J. that he has no plans to stay in this house and to tell him of the cordless phone he and Martha had in Saddle River?
"So listen. I spoke to Didi. Can you come over Friday night?"
Andrew calculates. "What day is it?" he asks.
"It's Tuesday." There is a pause. "You all right?" asks T.J.
"I'm fine," says Andrew, thinking how easy it is to lose track of the time when there is no office to go to. "I'll still be around then. I'd planned to be."
"Excellent," says T.J. "Remember the Conroy place?"
Andrew has a memory of an alfafa farm about two miles east of town, a blue crop undulating like a rolling sea, a tall glistening white silo, a ship, rising from the expanse of unbroken color. "The alfafa farm, right?"
"Yeah. It's houses now. Kind of an upscale subdivision. Water's Edge, it's called. We're on Tudor Lane, the second left, number twelve."
"OK."
"We'll talk about selling your house when you come," says TJ.
"OK."
There is another pause. "You sure you're all right?"
"I'm fine," says Andrew.
"All right, all right, I believe you. See you about seven, then, OK?"
Andrew puts his hands on his hips, feels his heart jogging back to normal. It irks him, but T.J. is right: He is out of shape. He pours himself a glass of water and sits down on a kitchen chair, his legs spread out in front of him. He is trying to imagine how the Conroy place could now be houses—what did they do with that immense white silo?—when the phone rings again. He thinks it must be T.J., that he has told him the wrong time, and so he answers, casually, "Yeah," but it is a fem
ale voice on the other end.
"Andrew?"
toy
"Jayne," he says with some surprise.
"How are you?" his secretary asks. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine," he says for the third time in five minutes. "And thank you for the flowers," he adds. "Thank everyone for me, though I know it was your doing."
"We've all been thinking of you," she says. "We've all been wondering how you were. We hadn't heard from you, and we..." He can see Jayne in her gray suit with the white silk blouse, her salt-and-pepper hair cut short. Her desk will be impeccably neat. She has a gift, he has often thought, for absorbing the chaos of the office and transforming it into neat, simple packets of common sense and order.
"I'm sorry," says Andrew. "I should have called. They couldn't do the funeral Sunday, and so we had it yesterday, and I've been tied up with details here. I have to sell the house, see to my parents' things. There's no one else, really, to do it." He stops. His voice sounds unconvincing, even to him.
"Geoffrey has asked me to tell you to take all the time you need, but he was just wondering ... if you should happen to know when you might be coming back. Apparently, there's some trouble with the agency ... but not to hurry, says Geoffrey." Andrew thinks he can hear some slight embarrassment in Jayne's voice. See if you can find out when he's coming back, Geoffrey, his boss, will have said, passing on this onerous task. See if you can't light afire under him.
Andrew runs his fingers through his hair and looks out the window. The patch of grass that he can see looks good—short and trim. He could say, definitely, I'll be in the office Friday morning, but he doesn't want to. He could make it by Friday easy, he is thinking; there's no pressing need to stay. T.J. would handle everything if Andrew asked him to.
"I'll try for early next week," he says, waffling.
"I'm sure there must be ... a great deal to do," she says, "and you must be feeling drained. I'll tell Geoffrey that you have ... things to attend to."
"Yes."
"Shall I say Monday or Tuesday?" she asks after a moment.
"You can say ... Jayne?"
"Yes?"
"I need some time," he says in an apologetic rush. "It's hard to explain. A few days. Tell Geoffrey Monday. But it might not be Monday. You understand?"
She misses only one beat. "Perfectly," she says.
He rolls his eyes to the ceiling. He loves his secretary. Although she has been stern with him when he has delayed overlong in returning important phone calls, she has run interference for him more times than he can count.
"You're great, Jayne," he says.
"I think you deserve a rest," she says. He knows that she is smiling. "And don't worry; I'll take care of Geoffrey."
WHEN ANDREW hangs up the phone, he is smiling too. He snaps a bongo beat on the Formica countertop and rolls his shoulders, unkinking his muscles. Another week. He feels, unreasonably, as if he'd won a prize.
Just a week ago, he was overseeing a project that was giving him sleepless nights, an unwieldy ad campaign for a pain reliever that had been his bailiwick—worse, his idea. He thinks he should be worried about the faltering project, from habit if from nothing else, but it seems too remote to fully grasp, as if the mileage alone had sufficiently distanced him from his office. He feels as if he is playing hooky—fishing when he should be taking a physics exam.
And yet, realistically, he knows there is practically nothing he can do to damage his reputation, to change his character in the ongoing soap opera at the office. He has been the unassuming protege for years—a role he has found easy enough to play, requiring only that he do his work and appear to be committed. He is not sure why he has been so successful, because he has always been aware in himself of a certain lack of an edge to his ambition; rather, he thinks, it has been a consequence of a fairly passive journey through open doors. Martha used to say that it was because Andrew did not appear to be overtly hungry that so many had been moved to open the door for him—as indeed (she often reminded him) she had done.
He finishes his glass of water, sets it down on the table, and is halfway out the door when the phone rings again.
"Jesus," he says aloud cheerfully.
"I'VE BEEN calling all afternoon," Martha says at once. "Where have you been?"
It is as inevitable as night falling. No matter how often he has promised himself he will remain immune, the sound of Martha's voice over the telephone sets up a chemical reaction in his blood, which goes immediately to his voice box. His voice withers, sounds hollow, dies.
"Martha."
"I called four times at least. I thought you were supposed to be sorting stuff out."
"I was mowing the lawn," he says quietly. He knows, as surely as he knows the effect of her on himself, that she sounds petulant in this way only with him. It is one of the things they have done to each other.
"Oh. Well, we're on Nantucket," she says.
"You said you might be."
"I called to see how it went."
"It went fine," he says.
"That's all? It went fine?"
"There's nothing to it," he says. "You say a few words, you put someone in the ground, you have a cup of coffee, and before you know it, it's over."
There is a pause. "It sounds to me like you're not dealing with it."
"I'm dealing with it. Where's Billy?"
"He's right here. Want to talk to him?"
"You know I do."
He leans against the fridge and waits for the sound of his son's voice.
"Daddy?"
It hits his stomach like a strong drink, the warmth spreading.
"Hi, Billy. What are you doing now?"
"I'm talking to you."
Andrew smiles and nods his head. "I know that, Billy. What were you doing before you were talking to me?"
"Me and Mommy and Nana were getting mussels. But ... urn ... not the kind of muscles you have on your arms. The kind ... Do you know what mussels are?"
"They have blackish shells, and they're stuck to rocks in the water?" says Andrew.
"Yeah. That's them. And they're hard to get off. You should see my fingers. And Nana is going to show me how to steam them, and we're going to eat them with melted butter."
"That sounds yummy," says Andrew.
"I don't know," says Billy skeptically. "I might not like them. They look yucky."
"I miss you," Andrew says, trying to keep his voice even.
"I miss you too, Daddy. Where are you?"
"I'm at Grandma's."
There is a silence.
"Billy?"
"Mommy said Grandma's in heaven."
Andrew is surprised by this, since Martha despises religion. Or does she now? Or was it simply the easiest explanation of death to give a seven-year-old? "That's right, Billy. She is. But I'm at her house, packing away her things."
"Oh," says Billy. "Daddy?"
"What, Billy?"
"Don't pack away the car."
He knows that Billy means the wooden go-cart that Andrew's father built for Andrew when he was a boy and that Andrew's mother saved for the time when Andrew himself had a child. During a visit to his mother when Billy was five, he took his son to the high school parking lot and taught him to steer.
"No, I won't. It's safe and sound in the garage."
"Mommy wants to talk to you."
"Billy?"
"What, Daddy?"
"I love you."
"I love you too."
Andrew can hear the squelchy sound of Billy kissing the telephone mouthpiece. He bends to do the same, but the small voice is too quickly gone. He hears a shuffling of the phone, Martha asking her mother to take Billy outside. Andrew braces himself.
"So," she says. He hears a faint sigh. Fatigue? Irritation? Then there is a quick drag and exhale of cigarette smoke. He can see her as clearly as if she were standing next to him. Jeans, a white shirt, a sweater tied around her neck, sandals, her feet tanned. There will be a frown of impatience on h
er brow. Her head will be slightly inclined because she wears her shoulder-length brown hair parted to one side now, and often there is a wave of hair that wants to fall across her face.
"He sounds..." Andrew takes a quick breath of air. "He sounds good."
"He's great," Martha says. "Great. He wanted to talk to you. He was upset when I told him about your mother. But he's better now." Drag and exhale.
Holding her cigarette between her fingers, she will push the hair off her face. He has seen her on the phone a thousand times.
"I'm relieved," says Andrew.
"So listen," says Martha. "You sure you're OK?"
"I'm OK."
"How long are you going to stay there?"
"Another week."
"Oh....I guess there isn't anything I can say."
"No. Probably not."
"You'll come get Billy when we get back?"
"You know I will."
"Well, then."
There is a pause.
"Andrew?"
"What?"
"It's strange, isn't it?" she says. "What is?"
"You doing this alone."
A PERSON walks into a room and says hello, and your life takes a course for which you are not prepared. It's a tiny moment (almost—but not quite—unremarkable), the beginning of a hundred thousand tiny moments and some larger ones. A random sperm meets a random egg and becomes your child, whom you love more than life itself. Yet the meeting, that infinitesimal beginning, is no more astonishing than the division of a cell.
He had met Martha at an antiwar rally their senior year at college. Not a memorable meeting—she had asked him merely to hand out leaflets in front of the ROTC building—but he had found himself attracted to her, despite, or perhaps because of, her total preoccupation. It was her anger that he noticed, a clear blue anger, so purely defined by the effort to stop the war—an anger that gave high color to her cheeks even as it lent her speech, with its broad A's and its other New England idiosyncrasies, an articulate speed. At first he was content merely to observe her—she was ferocious without being strident in the meetings he attended—but as the year progressed he found himself more and more often paired with her on political projects. Years later, when he would be forced to examine the reasons they had come together, as if puzzling over an insolvable calculus problem, he reflected that it wasn't that the pairing had ignited a passion between them but rather that it had allowed them to drift toward a future that was as much determined by circumstance as it was by desire or will. If they, for instance, had met their junior year in school or later, in graduate school, and had not had to face together the milestone of leaving dormitories and finding another place to live, would they have been impelled to take an apartment they could share together?