Secret Lives (31 page)

Eden didn't speak, but she nudged closer to
him, set her cheek against his shoulder.

“They tore me up with their questions,” Ben
continued. “Then they left me feeling crazy and scared. I remember
so clearly how that felt, and there was no way I could watch Bliss
go through it. She'd already been questioned and interviewed and
picked apart enough. But I think what really terrified me was
having to watch it, to feel myself going through it all over again
through her. So I guess ultimately it was myself I was looking out
for, not her.”

He ran his fingers through Eden's hair.
“Sharon's the only other person I've ever told about Randy. Even
Sam and I have never talked about it.”

“Sharon knew and she still didn't believe
you?”

“Well, you have to understand that by the
time I pled guilty, things had already fallen apart between Sharon
and me. Plus, Sharon had read somewhere that men who were sexually
abused as children stood a good chance of becoming abusers
themselves. My experience had the exact opposite effect on me. I
could never hurt a child the way I was hurt. Never.”

Eden sat up and pressed her back against the
wall. She held his hand in her lap. “You haven't had a very easy
life,” she said.

He laughed. “You must think I'm totally
screwed up now. But honestly, Eden, between the ages of five and
thirty-seven I was dynamite.”

She smiled at him, drew his hand to her lips.
“Tomorrow morning I'm going to call Michael,” she said. “I need to
tell him that I'm seeing someone else.” She lowered his hand,
leaned forward to kiss his cheek. “I need to tell him I'm in love
with someone else.”

–
30–

One week later Ben and Eden beat Kyle and Lou
at tramposo for the first time. No one said it out loud, but Eden
knew it was a milestone. Tramposo measured the quality of a
relationship, the intimacy, the teamwork. So when Ben grabbed her
in the kitchen for a kiss and said, “We beat the shit out of them,
Eden,” she knew he was talking about more than a card game; he was
telling her they were solid now.

They had fallen into an easy routine, so easy
that she'd forgotten the risk she was taking in this relationship.
Mornings, she worked with Ben at the site. In the afternoons, she
pored over old newspapers at the archives in Winchester or
interviewed the few elderly neighbors still living in the area. Or
worked on the screenplay. She wasn't reading the journal. “You need
a rest from it,” Kyle said in his “I know what's best for you”
voice, and she didn't fight him.

She and Ben spent several evenings that week
with Lou and Kyle, whose company she looked forward to in a new
way. They made dinner for the older couple on a few occasions,
followed by the heady games of tramposo. One night Kyle showed
slides from their trips to South America, and it was like watching
strangers, people she was just getting to know and care about, a
family she wanted to belong to. Ben's hair was longer, scruffier in
those old slides, and he wore a beard. “I shaved it off after the
trial,” he said. “I was too recognizable.”

She was thoroughly convinced of his
innocence. There was nothing mysterious about him. Nothing
suspicious. And nothing kinky, although he was certainly a far more
intriguing lover than Wayne had been. Well, she was not the same
woman she'd been with Wayne either. “You inspire me,” Ben said to
her one night. She doubted she had ever inspired Wayne.

When she woke up these mornings, sometimes in
her mother's old room, sometimes in Ben's cabin, she had the
feeling of being perfectly safe. The nightmares had vanished. The
only missing piece in her life was her daughter, but at least their
phone conversations had improved. Ben suggested she tell Cassie
about the things they could do when she came to visit—King's
Dominion, the dinosaurs, Luray Caverns—and Cassie was finally
looking forward to coming.

Ben was building Cassie a dollhouse. “It's
from Kyle and me,” he said the first time Eden saw the pieces
spread out on his table. “Kyle's the financial backer.” She watched
him put it together, a huge Victorian with lacy gingerbread trim,
and thought of what his own daughter was missing out on and would
continue to miss.

“Are you allowed to give her gifts?” she
asked as he glued a tiny window frame in place.

“No contact,” he said. “That would constitute
contact.”

“But even if you were guilty, isn't totally
depriving her of her father more damaging?”

“You and I are the only people who seem to
think so. And Sam. Sam's doing what he can to try to get me
supervised visitation, but I'm not optimistic. Her counselor says
it would confuse her. It's not in the best interest of the child.”
He stood back to look at the house slowly taking shape on his
table. “What color do you think I should paint it?”

As open as he was, there were times he could
not talk about Bliss, and she learned when to back off. When he did
speak of her Eden felt his helplessness and his rage.

“I can't stand the thought of Jeff being in
my house, sleeping with my wife, reading Bliss Green Eggs and Ham,
and tucking her in at night. One day I had a wife and child and the
next day Jeff strolls in out of nowhere and takes over. Finders
keepers.”

“How did Sharon know Jeff?”

“The school where she taught. He teaches
history.”

“Could Sharon have set this up somehow?” she
asked, carefully. “Maybe she wanted you out of the picture.”

“No, I don't think Sharon knew Jeff very well
back then, and our marriage was okay. Besides, even if she despised
me she wouldn't use Bliss that way.”

The phone call to Michael had been more
difficult than she'd anticipated. She was surprised at how much it
hurt her to hurt him. She cared about him more than she'd admitted
to herself.

“Is this just a summer thing?” Michael had
asked. “I mean, how serious is it?”

“I'm not sure,” she'd answered. “I'm taking
it one day at a time.”

Michael hesitated. “Have you slept with him?”
he asked.

“Yes.”

He gave a pained laugh. “You've been going
out with me for nearly a year and I get a good-night kiss if I'm
lucky. You've known this guy a couple of weeks and…Christ.”

“Michael, I'm sorry. But I never led you to
believe there would be more between us.”

“I know.”

“I still want you to play Matthew Riley. The
more I get to know about him, the more I realize you're perfect for
the part. You even look like him.”

Michael said nothing.

“Michael? You'll still do it, won't you?”

“As long as you're still playing your mother
and we get some juicy scenes together.”

She smiled. “I care about you a lot, Michael.
Please, let's stay friends. And don't let this…set you back.” She
could see him going out tonight, getting high, licking his wounds.
She thought of asking him not to spread this around, but that would
hardly be fair.

“I need to see you,” he said. “I feel like
you're changing into a different person.”

“I am changing, but not into a different
person. For once, I feel like myself.”

She got off the phone with Michael's question
sounding in her ears: How serious is it? This relationship was a
mass of impossibilities, most of which she was not ready to
face.

One afternoon, she let Ben up to her mother's
old room to type a reference letter for a former student. She sat
on the bed and watched him hunt and peck his way across the
keyboard of her word processor. He was wearing a gray-and-white
striped cotton shirt and his hair was damp from a shower. He looked
beautiful, and she felt sure of what she was about to tell him.

“Ben?”

He pushed the print button and turned to face
her.

“I want to start taking the Pill again.”

She watched his face as her words registered.
“Does that make sense?” he asked. “It won't be effective for a
couple of weeks, right? And you won't be here that much
longer.”

“Maybe I won't leave at the end of the
summer.”

He looked at her blankly for a moment. “Eden,
you really need to think through what you're doing. You told me you
were with Michael Carey to keep people from linking you with anyone
else. You said you had to protect your public image. I'm about the
riskiest person in the world for you to get hooked up with—you know
that, don't you?”

“Who's going to know what I'm doing as long
as I'm out here in the boondocks?”

He stood up and came over to the bed, put his
hands on her shoulders. “I'm not going to argue with you. I'm not
that anxious to get rid of you.” He reached into his jeans pocket
and pulled out a wrapped condom. “Might as well use these up.

She laughed. “You're carrying them around
with you?”

“I like to be prepared for anything.” He
leaned over to kiss her but she held him away.

“We can't make love here. Kyle and Lou are
downstairs.” She remembered with a clarity that pained her the
times she'd sneaked one boy or another into her bedroom in New
York. Tex, usually. Bo on one occasion. They would do it on the
floor to keep the bed from squeaking and waking up Kyle and
Lou.

Ben walked to the door and closed it quietly.
“I can't tell you how many times I had to listen to the two of them
going at it—those Colombian hotels had paper-thin walls.” He sat
next to her and kissed her softly.

“We have to be very quiet,” she said.

“Like snowflakes,” he whispered, and he stood
up to unbuckle his belt.

At the breakfast table on the morning after
the tramposo upset she asked Kyle for another notebook.

“I'm begging you, Kyle, let me have it. I'm
stuck in the screenplay because I don't know how Matt finally gets
Kate to surrender.”

Kyle carried his plate to the sink, then
stood behind Lou's chair. He rested a gentle hand on his wife's
shoulder, and Lou reached up to cover his fingers with hers.

“What's your hurry?” he asked Eden.

“I'm curious. Just let me read ahead a
little, please?” He shook his head. “Sorry, honey. It'll be over
soon enough. Don't rush it.”

His words shook her. This was not a game. It
was a real life she held in limbo inside her word processor, a real
life that would end all too soon.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “It's just that
writing a screenplay still doesn't come naturally to me. I get
nervous when I'm not sure where I'm going with it.”

“You always were an excellent writer,” Lou
said. “Even as a child.”

“I never wrote anything as a child.”

“You wrote papers in junior high and high
school. You always brought home A's.”

Eden laughed. “Your memory's inflated my
grades over the years.”

Lou looked up at Kyle with a question in her
round blue eyes, and he nodded. “Come in the bedroom, dear,” Lou
said. She wheeled herself down the hall with Eden and Kyle
following.

Kyle disappeared inside the walk-in closet of
their bedroom and returned carrying a dusty cardboard box.

“Your pack-rat uncle,” Lou said as she
shifted from the chair to the bed. Eden sat next to her, and Kyle
set the box on Eden's lap. She lifted the top. The first thing that
met her eyes was yellowed typing paper: “The Pros and Cons of
Legalizing Abortion,” by Eden S. Riley, January 7, 1970.

“Oh, my God.” She laughed. “I'd forgotten I
ever wrote this. She leafed through the stack of papers. History,
science, book reports. Kyle had kept everything. And they were
indeed all A's, except for the C's from her senior year.

“I can't believe you saved all this stuff,”
she said. At the bottom she found a stack of report cards held
together with a cracked rubber band that broke when she removed it.
She glanced through them. All A's and B's until her senior year.
That year she'd even failed a couple of subjects, and the teachers'
comments were consistent.

“Eden needs to realize that her involvement
in the Drama Club this year is hampering her academic performance,”
Eden read aloud, her nose wrinkled.

“They can eat their words now,” Lou said.

“I loved reading your papers because it was
the only way we had of knowing what was going on in your head,”
Kyle said. “You never shared much with us.”

“I didn't bring you two much pleasure,” she
said quietly. She felt herself moving toward them with baby steps
of intimacy.

Kyle laughed. “What teenager does?”

“I was testing you. I wanted to see how much
obnoxious, despicable behavior you'd put up with before you got rid
of me. I was always afraid you'd send me away.”

Lou stared at her. “What did we ever do to
give you an idea like that?”

“Nothing. But everyone around me died or
shipped me out. I figured it was just a matter of time until that
happened with the two of you.”

“I wish we could have reassured you somehow,”
said Lou.

“You did everything you could. You made
enormous sacrifices for me. I know I appeared ungrateful at the
time, but deep down I was so thankful I had both of you. It was
just hard for me to tell you that.” She returned the report cards
to the bottom of the box and looked at her uncle. “I feel as though
I stole those years from you and gave you very little in
return.”

“Don't ever think that, honey,” Kyle
said.

Eden moved the box from her lap to the bed
and stood up. “Well.” She smiled at both of them. “I just hope
Cassie gets around to telling me she appreciates me before she's
thirty-six.”

The four of them went to New York for a few
days early in July. This followed a painful discussion during which
Eden persuaded Ben to let her pay for their train tickets and the
hotel. Money was the sorest point between them, and she had to
address the topic with great care.

They got rooms with a connecting door at the
Sheraton Centre. They watched the fireworks from a bench
overlooking the East River, visited the Museum of Modern Art, and
saw two shows on Broadway. Whenever they waited in line they played
games—something Ben, Lou, and Kyle were obviously accustomed to
doing. Ghost, Botticelli, Twenty Questions. The three of them were
quick with each other, taking esoteric shortcuts through the games
that left Eden dazed.