The Trouble with Eden

  But how close she had come to reading the book through his own eyes.

  They talked the day away. Much of the talk concerned The Edge of Thought. She discussed its characters as if they existed, as they did in fact exist for him and for her. Years ago, Anita had read his books with the same single-minded enthusiasm. But Karen read them differently. Anita had always been the critic; she had assumed the role with One If by Land and had always felt comfortable in it. She had been a valuable critic, a sensitive one, but a critic could never satisfy you as a fan could. Even if a critic responded with wholehearted unequivocal approval, it was still an outside view, an objective view, and the success he wanted was of a subjective sort.

  So they talked a great deal about the book, but they talked of other things as well. He had felt close to her in all the months since she had moved into his house, had treasured this closeness as he treasured little else, and today he felt far closer to her than ever before. They talked through breakfast, talked over coffee, talked in the garden and in the woods. And when they returned to the house and went to the living room to talk some more she asked him if it was too early for the first drink of the day.

  “I already had the first drink of the day,” he had said, and told her how keyed up he’d been waiting for her reaction.

  “Then it can’t be too early. I’ll make them. I want to propose a toast. How do you propose a toast?”

  “You just go ahead and do it.”

  “To The Edge of Thought,” she said. They touched glasses and drank. “Now are we supposed to throw them in the fireplace?”

  “Mrs. Kleinschmidt wouldn’t approve.”

  She started to giggle. He asked her what was funny, but she kept laughing and couldn’t stop. He laughed along with her without having the slightest idea what he was laughing at.

  She said, “I was going to say … oh, this is so silly!”

  “Will you for Christ’s sake tell me what we’re both hysterical about?”

  “It’s so far-out. I thought about saying, ‘Well, screw Mrs. Kleinschmidt,’ and I thought of you saying, ‘Who in hell wants to screw Mrs. Kleinschmidt?’ and I just—”

  “Well, who the hell would?”

  She laughed again, spun around and pitched her glass into the fireplace. He hurled his after it.

  “Screw Mrs. Kleinschmidt!” he said.

  They drank their second toast to Mrs. Kleinschmidt, and this time they did not smash the glasses. Instead she filled them again and he said something about calling Mary Fradin in the morning. She said Mary Fradin would love the book, too, and he said it didn’t much matter if she did or not as long as she sold it properly.

  “Then screw Mary Fradin,” she said.

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  “Why? Were you planning to screw Mary Fradin?”

  “I already did,” he said.

  He told her that story, and then she told him a story about Anita’s husband and one of her girlfriends, and he told another story and she told another story, and then he observed that it was Sunday and that one should never finish a book on Saturday night. Happy? No man on earth had ever been so happy.

  When they returned from dinner she automatically made drinks while he filled a pipe. They had both been reasonably drunk when they left for dinner, but their euphoria was so great that the alcohol did not slow them down. He felt that he could drink all night without getting tired or thick-tongued. All the liquor did was heighten their mood.

  “We should have had wine,” he said.

  “It was a dynamite dinner.”

  “Uh-huh. Would have been better with wine, though.”

  She considered. “You know what would have been great? Better than wine? Grass.”

  “At Tannhauser’s? I can just see Trude passing around joints. What’s the matter?”

  “I was picturing it. Offering them around in that apple strudel accent. No, not with dinner. Before dinner. It really does fantastic things for the taste of food.”

  “I never heard that.”

  “Oh, sure. It makes you more aware. Even with rotten food. I mean like school cafeteria food. Not all the time, but if you happened to be into a food thing. Like one time I had this salmon croquette. They always had things like that, salmon croquettes, stuffed beef heart, all this glop, and I was really wrecked one day and I got into this salmon croquette with this goopy yellow sauce all over it, and I could taste like all the different things that were happening there. And at the same time I was aware that it was cruddy. I kept thinking, wow, this is delicious, and wouldn’t it be great if I was eating something I liked?”

  “I remember it works that way with music,” he said. “I never thought of it in connection with food.”

  “It’s the same idea. Getting right down into things.”

  “I guess that makes sense.”

  “Oh, wow!”

  “What?”

  “What you said. Do you smoke?”

  “Before you were born,” he said. “But not since.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “Ages ago. After the war, when I was living in the Village. Just two or three times. At parties.”

  “I didn’t realize people were into grass in those days.”

  “‘Those days.’ Yes, back before the Flood.”

  “I mean—”

  “It was part of the Bohemian scene, although that word was beginning to die out by then. And I was never that much of a Bohemian. I never knew anyone who smoked very frequently. It was hard to get unless you had friends who were jazz musicians or unless you knew people in Harlem.”

  “And you never smoked after that.”

  “No. It wasn’t really a part of my life. And no one talked about it.”

  “Did you dig it?”

  He sipped his drink. “I’m trying to remember. My recollection is pretty vague. I didn’t get high the first time, I remember that. The other times I did, and I think I remember what it was like. I believe I enjoyed it well enough.”

  “Would you try it again ever?”

  “I wonder,” he said. “I suppose I might. You know, I’ve never really thought about this, but it’s surprising I haven’t tried it again in all these years. At least since, oh, at least in the past few years.”

  “Since the divorce? Is that what you were going to say? Anita smokes.”

  “Your mother?”

  “That’s weird, isn’t it? All their friends do, which is probably why she does. But I’m not supposed to.” She told him of the conversation they had had on the subject. He laughed, thinking how typical it was of Anita in recent years. He supposed it was typical parental hypocrisy and was oddly pleased that he was not hypocritical in that sort of way.

  “Daddy? Would you like to get stoned?”

  “Why, I suppose I’d try it again,” he said. “Why not?”

  “’Cause I could really dig smoking together. The two of us, I could dig that.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have a connection in the area. Is that word still current? I could probably get some in New York.”

  “You wouldn’t have to go that far.”

  “I gather there’s some in New Hope, but I wouldn’t know who to ask.”

  “Oh, you could say there’s some in New Hope. If Mechanic Street ever caught fire, the whole county would be stoned for a week.” She drank some more of her drink. Her face was thoughtful. At length she said, “You wouldn’t have to leave the house.”

  “Ah, so.”

  “Well, I have this one jay that somebody laid on me a while ago. I didn’t know how you would react so I never said anything about it. I could get it.”

  “How does it mix with liquor?”

  “I don’t know. I never used to drink. One joint between the two of us can’t do too much anyway. Should I get it?”

  He grinned. “Mrs. Kleinschmidt wouldn’t approve,” he said.

  “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He had not been able to remember the feeling. But
now he was able to recognize it, just as he had recognized the smell the instant she lit the misshapen little cigarette. And he remembered the elaborate ritual of dumping half the tobacco from a regular cigarette and dropping the roach in so that not a crumb of the marijuana would be wasted. They had called it tea then, and the cigarettes were called reefers, or sticks if you were especially hep. He couldn’t remember any special name for the butts. A roach, in those years, was something that crawled around the bathroom.

  He sat back on the couch and closed his eyes. Yes, he remembered the feeling. How could he have forgotten the feeling? For that matter, how could he have gone smugly without it all these years? It did feel nice. There was no getting away from it—it felt very nice indeed.

  “Daddy?” Her voice was so soft and lazy. “How are you feeling?”

  “Far-out,” he said, and laughed.

  “Let me look at your face. That’s such good dope. Oh, you’re so stoned!”

  “Far-out.” “Oh, wow.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Get more drinks. Throat’s dry.”

  “You didn’t take the glasses.”

  “How can I get the drinks without glasses?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “So did I.”

  “So did you what?”

  “Huh?”

  They both started to giggle. It was funny, he thought. You would get into a sentence and your mind was doing such interesting things and doing them so quickly that you forgot what the sentence was about before you could get to the end of it. He pursued this thought, considering all its implications, following them through to wherever they led him and then trying to remember what he had just thought of. One connection in particular struck him as meaningful, and he decided to tell Karen about it when she got back. Then he realized she was sitting beside him.

  “I thought you were going to get the drinks.”

  “Oh, man, are you wrecked!”

  “Huh?”

  “What have you got in your hand?”

  He looked. He had a glass of scotch in his hand and no idea on earth how it got there.

  He said, “I’m not stoned at all.”

  “Right.”

  “It’s a magic trick. A power I have. Whenever I want a drink I just wish for it and a glass turns up in my hand.”

  “You silly Daddy.”

  Later she said, “I’ve been wanting to ask all day. I read the, uh, the dedication page.”

  “And you don’t want it dedicated to you.”

  “Don’t even say it. I guess I was wondering what made you decide to dedicate it to me.”

  He put his hand on her knee, squeezed. The disorientation of the marijuana high had abated now. He was still stoned, but in a way that did not interfere with linear thought. He just felt very good, very happy, utterly relaxed.

  He said, “Do you remember when I was stuck on the book and then in the middle of a conversation with you I went in there and started writing like a maniac?”

  “Of course I remember. I brought you coffee and you didn’t even know I was there.”

  “Well, that same day I typed out the dedication page. You gave me the help I needed. I don’t even remember what it was you said, what we were talking about, but before then the book was all from the wife’s viewpoint.”

  “And you got the idea from me of bringing in the daughter?”

  “She would have been a character anyway. But now it’s a whole different book.” He explained to her some of the ways the book had developed. “I shouldn’t be telling you all this,” he added.

  “You mean like trade secrets?”

  “Hardly. No, I mean a reader should be able to think that a book happened in one particular way because it couldn’t have happened in any other way.”

  “It couldn’t have.”

  He had just been thinking that himself. In this book, more than any other he had written, the characters had insisted upon speaking their own lines.

  “So that’s why you dedicated it to me. I was wondering.”

  “Why did you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It would have wound up dedicated to you anyway. The way it turned out.”

  “It’s about me, isn’t it?”

  “Did you feel that?”

  “Only on every fucking page. It was almost scary.”

  “She’s not precisely you.”

  “An awful lot of her is. To me, anyway.”

  “Yes, a great deal of her. The relationship.”

  “Right.”

  “Having you here has taught me a lot about fathers and daughters, Karen. Any honest book has to grow out of what a man knows.”

  “I was so proud of her.”

  “Were you? So was I.”

  “I was so proud that you, that you felt, that the way you think of me—I don’t know how to say it.”

  He put his arm around her. Her head settled on his shoulder.

  At one point he stacked some, records on the record player. At another point he went into the-kitchen and came back with bottles of scotch and soda and a bowl of ice cubes. “It’s the running around that gets to you,” he said then. “A person can stand a long night of drinking, but all that walking back and forth is bad for the legs.”

  And it was shaping up as a long night of drinking. They were talking less now that the music was playing, frequently lapsing into long silences with her head on his shoulder and his arm around her. He would think now and then that it was late, that they had already done more than enough drinking, that they ought to go to sleep. But it was too perfect a night to end, and neither of them ever suggested ending it.

  Eventually they were talking again about the book. He said that he would have to proofread it soon, and how he hated proofreading. She offered to do it for him.

  “I’ll have to do it myself,” he said. “So I can see what has to be revised.”

  “Nothing has to be revised.”

  “Well, I’ll have to go through it anyway and make sure.”

  “But I’ll proofread the galleys,” she said.

  “Oh, that won’t be for almost a year. That’s a long ways off.” She stiffened. “Kitten? What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did I say something?”

  “No,” she said. But her face was troubled. “I just—”

  “Tell me.”

  “You mean I won’t be here then.”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “But I won’t, will I?”

  “Where are you off to?”

  “Do you mean I can stay?”

  “Of course you can stay. This is—”

  “I’m not in the way?” There were tears in her eyes. “I just don’t want to go anywhere,” she said. “I just feel so good here. I feel guilty about it.”

  “Guilty?”

  “I just love being with you,” she said. “I don’t ever want to go away.”

  “Oh, kitten.”

  “Look at me, I’m shaking. I’m all funny inside. Oh, please hold me.” He said, “Easy, baby. Easy now.” He held her close and stroked her hair while she wept against his shirt. “Easy,” he said, touching her hair, rubbing the back of her neck. “Oh, stay forever,” he said. “Don’t ever go. Don’t ever leave me.”

  “Oh—”

  He tipped up her chin and kissed her. He kissed her, and she was his daughter, his flesh, and he loved her. He kissed her and she was every woman he had ever wanted, all he had ever wanted, and her arms were around his neck and her lips were parted and he was kissing her now with his heart pounding and his tongue in her mouth and his hands on her back, feeling her, caressing her, and her flesh trembled in response, and—

  He broke the kiss. He stared at her and saw himself reflected in her eyes. Her eyes bored into his for a long moment during which he was conscious of nothing else. Then, without breaking the stare, she nodded her head.

  He could not move.

  ??
?Yes,” she said.

  He could not close his eyes. He could not move.

  “Yes.”

  It was very like a dream. He had the sort of awareness one has in dreams when one wants to change his course but is powerless to do so. He took her clothes off piece by piece. He kissed her and stroked her body. He removed his own clothing and lay full length on the couch with her and felt her flesh against his own.

  He seemed to know her body. His hands knew how and where to touch her, and he sensed what her responses would be before she could make them. As if this were not merely a dream but one he had dreamed before.

  When he entered her, she reached orgasm immediately. Her parts rippled in climax before he was fully inside of her. Her eyes were closed at that moment, but then she opened them and did not close them again.

  He moved in and out of her slowly, lazily, entering her and leaving her in long liquid strokes, as if to make this last forever as he had wished to make the night last forever. He was lost, lost, drowned in her eyes, her mouth, her young warmth.

  Until at last he came, and all his being spurted into all of hers.

  Walking, pacing, his hand a vise on his forehead, pacing back and forth.

  How? How?

  “Daddy!”

  How could this have happened? How could he have allowed this to happen?

  “Daddy—”

  How could he have done this to her?

  “Daddy, look at me. Daddy, please, look at me.”

  But he couldn’t. He felt her hands on his arm and he stopped but could not make himself look down at her. She put her arms around his waist and hugged him and his body went cold and stiff.

  “Daddy, don’t hate me.”

  He stared at her.

  “Please,” she said.

  “Hate you?”

  “Please don’t.”

  He stood there.

  “I was the one who wanted it. I said yes.”

  “Karen—”

  “I knew what I was saying. I said it twice. Don’t you understand? I wanted it to happen.”

  A wave of dizziness struck him. He got to a chair and collapsed into it. She stood at the side of the chair looking down at him and all he could think of was how beautiful she was. He had never seen her look so beautiful. He had never seen anyone look so beautiful.