The Legacy of Eden (20 page)

So he had driven back home to get his rifle, and then had walked out to the paddock and shot the white Thoroughbred he had bought from a horse farm in Kansas twice through the head.

She had screamed. She had clawed at the front door demanding admittance. This was not the tantrum of youth designed to overwhelm obstacles, this was beyond control. This was the true meaning of fear.

Theo had been the one to cave. My father—still hoping.

As soon as she was inside, she had run from room to room, slipping past the arms of her brother and the desperate hands of her aunt, who was both berating and pleading with her at the same time. She saw no one, recognized no one.

But Lavinia saw to it that she acknowledged her.

And she did by flying at her so she could dig her nails into her face. Ethan held her back but she kicked and bit, so that Theo had to help him. She was an animal. My grandmother called it her true face.

Among the curses she threw at her stepmother like stones that bounced off of her proud battlements she reared her head back and hawked a globule of spit at her, just missing her face.

Lavinia spoke.

“Anyone would think I made you get on your back and spread your legs. Come, I’m interested, what’s the reason you’re going to give me now?”

But my aunt was screaming for her father. It hurt everyone’s ears to hear her—well, almost everyone.

“He won’t come,” my grandmother said. “He’s disgusted with you. You’ve soiled his love for you. Nothing but trouble, he’ll never come to you again.”

Julia reeled in her brothers’ arms. Murder, any sentence, any penalty, anything just so long as that woman was rotting in a ground she could piss over.

Piper pleading, begging, holding the clawed hands of the niece who was more like her daughter, though she had always pretended otherwise. But what was the use in pretending now? Though she wanted to rebuke her sister-in-law, she knew her brother, she knew the truth. God had turned his face from her, she saw now, as Julia slumped forward in agonized defeat.

But then the stair at the top of the landing groaned under a familiar weight and they all looked up. He had no eyes for anyone but her. He saw her looped in the arms of her brothers, his sister hunched over her, his wife straight-backed, blocking her path. It was like a play, but he had seen the blood of the white horse course its way in rivulets onto his land and knew this was no fantasy onto which a curtain would drop. This was real.

Just like his hatred.

No, never, he could never abandon a child. He could never let a child of his throw long shadows up the walk into exile. He was not his father.

But it was so easy.

And, among the black glass shredding any love he had for her, any memory he cherished, a sense of vindication that she deserved it.

Bitch.

So he came down to her and they all parted.

He came close to her. She stood up now, but though the words tumbled from her mouth, his ears were closed to her. This body had come from his body but he had seen, had heard, what it had allowed itself to do. Polluted filth. He saw them all over her, he saw her swallowed by it, consumed by it. His firstborn, his clean daughter, nothing but dirt.

God, he needed a drink. He went past them to the kitchen but she broke free and followed him. She was shouting and crying in turn, trying to overcome the noise of his search for the scotch. And then her hand, that small hand that had hung around his neck twenty-one years ago in Oregon, on his arm…

His body knew what to do before he did.

His hand smashed itself into the side of her face, feeling no pain though it was already throbbing, just sending her crashing to the side of the room, and she caught her head on the kitchen table as she went down. And then her eyes wide with shock. Broken, she knew it now. Nothing between them.

He stared at his hand in revulsion as if it had been contaminated by her. His other was empty. He still had not found the scotch.

Piper now, here on the floor beside her niece, looking up at her brother while Julia clutched her temple where a small trickle of blood was already winding its way down her face.

No words, just half words, half-formed sentences that flared and died on the tongue before they even found the air. Cal…at last the thick-necked bottle cooling the palm of his hand as it ran down his throat. Nothing existed for him outside the amber liquid. He didn’t want it to.

And then a step. My grandmother standing by the doorway as her sons tentatively came behind her, horror finding new ways to etch itself across their faces. Their father oblivious to all of them: the crumpled figure of their aunt, the long milky legs of their sister sprawled on the floor, all but his bottle. This was the last image my father would take with him before he went to war the following week. This and the sight of Julia’s horse when he found it by the stables, its long legs folded over on the floor as its unseeing eyes bored into the hay bale in the corner, its brains and blood splattered on the wall and floor.

When our mother thought we were old enough, she would tell my sisters and I that our aunt had done a wicked thing, that she had been a bad wife and mother and had disgraced our family and her husband and that was why we were not to speak of her, not ever, and especially not to Cal Jr.

“But he mentions her all the time,” said Ava.

“What?” my mother asked. “When?”

“Yeah, when, Ava? He’s never mentioned her to me,” I said.

“No, but…” She trailed off and dug her fingers into her palm, a habit she had of doing when uncomfortable. She used to come home from exams with bloody half moons all over the apples at the base of her thumbs.

“He talks to me a lot about things. He—he likes talking to me, I think.”

“Well, it’s just—you shouldn’t,” our mother said. “He was badly affected by what she did to his father. That’s why—well, that’s sort of why he is the way he is a bit. Things happened after—and he was a child, but well, there’s no need for you to know that, just be careful if he brings her up again.” She resumed her folding of the pastry in the bowl. “And never mention her to your grandfather.”

But years later when I would sit by the bed of my raving grandmother, she spoke Julia’s name often and it was here I learned what my mother really meant when she had alluded to Julia’s “disgrace” and what it did to Cal Jr.

But even though I know the truth, I cannot forgive him for what he would do, any more than I can forgive myself for letting him.

AVA

A Diseased Tree

Chapter 10

IN THE AIR-CONDITIONED meeting room of Dermott and Harrison, I thought about the last time I had been in a lawyer’s office. It had been at the reading of my mother’s will. I was nineteen and it was toward the end of the summer before my sophomore year. I had been house-sitting in New York, waiting until term began, when we were all summoned to Iowa by the lawyers. It had been the first time I had seen Claudia since…well…and I remember when I walked in, already ten minutes late, how shocked I had been at how much she had changed. Ava had refused to look me in the eye and Claudia had dropped her gaze to the table when I entered. Neither of them would sit next to each other, so I had made my way apologetically to the end of a long polished table to the only empty chair, which was between them. There we had been, a triumvirate of pain and recrimination, while the voice of the lawyer droned on above our heads, reading aloud the final words of my mother, who had hoped for such a different outcome for her daughters.

But this time it’s different.

This time instead of a graying man in a forlorn suit, I got a peppy brunette with raspberry lipstick and heels that spiked across the hallway as she came out to reception and proffered an elegantly manicured hand. She was all cool smiles and crisp suits. I was there in jeans and a blazer and could not have felt more out of place, or more nervous.

While she went over the “issues at hand” (her phrase, her opening phrase I should say. Not “how are you?” or “would you like some coffee?” Preamble not a strong point), I sat there utterly unmoved. Because what she was saying had nothing to do with the Aurelia I knew. Those digits and terms meant nothing to me, or how I felt about the farm I was raised on. I did not recognize them and I could tell that neither did she. There she was in full flow, her fingers snapping at papers, manila files openmouthed on her desk. She thought she knew what she was talking about but she didn’t. Then again, from the looks she threw my way, I could tell she felt the same about me.

“Look,” I said, leaning forward during the first available pause, nearly twenty minutes after she had asked me to sit down, “I don’t want the Queen Anne dresser or the antique pearl necklace or any of that stuff. You can keep it or sell it or whatever. I’m not interested. I’m just here because—” I felt myself falter and the words slipping away, me desperately clinging on “—because I want to make sure the important things—the really important things to me, that is—aren’t caught up in all of…of Cal’s mess.”

I leaned back. She gazed at me, those raspberry lips parted just a little.

“Of course, but for our sake we want to ensure that you know everything you need to,” she said.

“Trust me, darling,” I drawled, “knowledge is overrated. Just tell me when I can go and get my parents’ stuff.”

Much later, I was picking over the plate of mac and cheese Jane had made for me when she called. Jane had tried to ask me about my meeting with the lawyer when I first got home, but I wasn’t very forthcoming. What I did do when I came back to the house was sleep, on top of the covers, still clothed. Every little thing over this place is such a battle. A painful, ridiculous war that once again I am not equipped for. When it comes to this, all that Hathaway blood seems to clog up in the veins and starve me of some much-needed spirit. But not her, no. When I answered the phone to her I could tell those particular machinations were working just fine.

“So there you are? Finally,” she said when I answered. “Thanks for letting me know FYI, Meredith, that you’d decided to take it upon yourself to deal with the farm. That was a pretty piece of unilateral thinking.”

I stared at the floor openmouthed, brain scrambling.

“Don’t think just because you’re up there that it’s all up to you, you know? I’m getting on the next plane and we can
both
do this together. While you and Ava might like to forget the fact—you’re
not
the only descendants left and other people, other equally significant people, might also like a say. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, a courtesy, you may like to note, you didn’t offer me.”

And then she hung up. I was speechless and suddenly shaking with mirth. My shoulders heaved before the laughter had even reached my mouth. God, I thought, what a thing it is to be back.

“What was that about?” Jane asked when she came into the kitchen and saw me shaking my head back and forth against the refrigerator door.

“Oh, no more than I should have expected.” I was in the grip of my laughter now. I moved positions and came to lean against the sink.

“Just—Claudia’s coming home.”

Claudia. Her hair once a mixture between blond and brown before she started dying it, her eyes dark, her nose like my father’s, her legs like my mother’s. Their first child, a true combination of both. They had looked down on her when she was born and cried. She was the reason my father decided to return to Aurelia.

Claudia, the eldest, my eldest sister. Should have been my gold idol but instead was one of the clay gods. My early memories are filled with visions of her, her white two-piece with red sunglasses sunbathing on our lawn, her strawberry-smelling lip balm I used to steal and sniff until she caught me, the endless red licorice laces I would find around our house half chewed. My sister: scathing, watchful, ambitious. Destined to leave Aurelia from the moment she set foot on it, but she had always believed it would be on her terms.

Claudia Marie Hathaway. We used to call her Clo.

At a quarter to three, two days after her phone call, a white taxi pulled up on Jane’s street. Jane was sitting in the living room smoking cigarettes as she people-watched from the window. I was on the couch reading, my legs over the armrest. We were sitting in comfortable silence before the swift puncture of heels on stone steps rose in volume and then just before the sharp rap of knuckles on wood, Jane said, “Your sister has arrived.”

So I opened the door and there she was in front of me.

At first all I could see was deep dark red lipstick, burgundy-colored, the only part of her that was really exposed because the rest of her was shrouded in a mottled dark fur coat and a black felt hat slanted at an angle that covered most of her face. I stepped aside in greeting; in acknowledgment she entered, careful to take in, with a downward glance, my jeans and rumpled shirt. The first thing I could think of to say to my sister, who I had not seen in over a decade, was “You don’t have any bags.”

“No,” she said casually, as Jane stepped into the hall, “they’re at the hotel.”

No, of course, I thought, no Greyhound and hope-against-hope for her. It was never her style anyway.

“Jane,” she said, arms outstretched, mannequin-like. Jane stepped in and out of them as seamlessly and as perfunctorily as possible.

We stared at each other for a moment, not really knowing what to say. I couldn’t really bear it.

“You can shut the door now, it’s kind of cold,” Claudia said officiously. I looked up. She still hadn’t taken off her hat.

“You look well,” she said finally as I moved inside.

“I’ve been feeding her up. You should have seen how she was when she first came,” said Jane, stepping forward to take Claudia’s coat. So that’s the effect of fur, I thought. It makes servants of those not wearing it themselves.

Claudia obliged Jane, shrugging the dead skin from her back, and I saw she was wearing a jet-black suit dress, neatly tucked at the waist with a gold-colored belt, and gathered at the shoulders. She always was about the detail. Whereas I—

“Is Ava here then?” she asked sharply.

“No, of course not, why would she be?” I asked, incredulous. She looked at me with disdain.

“Well, you are, and usually where you go she follows and vice versa.”

“That was a long time ago. We’re both grown up.”

“Or grown apart,” she added with a flourish.

“Speak for yourself,” I snapped and then because I couldn’t help it, I reached over and whipped off her hat. “And take this ridiculous thing off. You’re not at New York fashion week. This is Iowa, remember?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said in a low voice, eyes fixed on mine. “It’s been a while.”

“Well, try and remember.”

“Tea?” Jane offered quickly, already walking into the kitchen.

“Green?” asked Claudia, following.

“No, brown,” I answered scathingly. She turned around and swept her eyes over me. Usually as kids this would be when she knocked me over or pinched me, tempting me into a tussle she knew I would not win but my hot temper could not resist. I have a lot to thank her for, my sister. She taught me the art of battle from the moment I could walk. And I thought, wouldn’t it be easier if I could just push her as before? If she could just throw me in a headlock and we can fight and sweat until all that is between us is spent? It would not be like it would with Ava: ours is not a fight to the death.

“I had hoped we could be civilized about this,” she said.

“Well, yours wasn’t exactly a civilized phone call, was it?”

“What did you expect from me?” Her nostrils quivered though the rest of her was in complete control. “I might have thought the two of you would have had the good grace to—”

“The two of us? Oh, you mean me and Ava? Us two, conspiring against you? Well, Ava didn’t tell me about the farm. The lawyers told me about the farm. They contacted me after going through her and finding, surprise-surprise, a brick wall.”

She blinked, disconcerted.

“Why wouldn’t they try to contact me?”

“Probably because your last name isn’t Hathaway.”

“Neither is yours,” she added maliciously.

“Legally it is, though, isn’t it, Mrs. McCulley?”

I noticed from the corner of my eye that Jane was behind us poised next to the kettle.

“So how did you find out?” I asked suddenly.

“My husband discovered it at an annual fundraiser.”

“Pardon?”

“Yes,” she said, resuming her clipped tones as she stared down at a manicured hand, splaying her fingers. “John went to a law society ball as part of a fundraiser for victims of some kind of leukemia, I forget. What I can’t forget is that one of his old friends happens to be a partner at the firm of Dermott and Harrison and over canapés and scotch, he managed to find out about the dissolution of the estate of one of their former and best clients, a case that was proving particularly troublesome as the owner had died and the last living descendants either refused to have anything to do with it or couldn’t be traced. He managed to find out enough for me to start making some calls and lo and behold what do I find?”

“I’m surprised you told him enough in the first place to let him.”

She raised her chin in defiance.

“I’m not here to go through that again.”

“Neither am I,” I said. All of a sudden I was tired.

For the first time since she arrived, for a second, the ice thawed around her and she softened her mouth.

“Why are you here?”

I could have told her, about Ava, about all of them, all the things I have kept hidden for years. I could have drawn her into my confidence, maybe this could even be the tool that undoes all the threads of bitterness she has allowed to form around us ever since the day when she sat in a pickup truck and was driven away by our uncle. But even I am at least self-aware enough to know the difference between a courageous moment and wishful thinking.

“I felt like coming home.”

She twisted her burgundy mouth into a sneer.

“Yeah, right.”

It’s ironic that Claudia should be so contemptuous of the idea, when if it wasn’t for her, there is a very good chance I would not have known Aurelia as home at all.

Theodore James Hathaway had gone to war in Vietnam in 1968. He was seen off at the bus depot by his parents and brother, who all hugged him individually but, aside from his mother, could not meet his eye. Nor did he wish them to. Though he knew as he sat down and the bus moved from under him that this could be the last time he ever saw his family, he did not wish to prolong their goodbye. The specter of his sister haunted them as much as any vicious spirit, her name burning on their tongues and in their minds in their efforts not to mention her, or the terrible scenes that had preempted the last week of his stay. He had leaned against the window and sighed. His companion had shot him a look of pity.

When he was shot by a sniper in the knee and right shoulder and discharged a year later he did not go back to Iowa. Instead, on his release he sent his family a letter, which he wrote on a train to New York telling them he would forward an address when he had one. It exhausted him to try and balance the tone between cordiality and falsifying an emotion he was not yet ready to feel. They received the letter and a month later another telling them that he was working as a clerk at Syracuse University and the address of his new basement room in a block of apartments. His mother sent him a care package, his aunt a knitted sweater for the New York winters, and so began for two years, the dance between avoidance and denial between my father and his family.

Theirs was a careful balance between what was expected and what was uncomfortable, all behind a mask of cold cordiality. They did not berate him for not coming home at Christmas and he did not ask why they did not visit. They did not push him for further news of when he would come home, and he glossed over the painful parts of their letters when they alluded to the aftermath of Julia’s actions. They did not probe each other, they did not test their sores and, aside from when he remembered where he had come from, my father learned once again how to be happy. He began to build a life for himself in New York, even started taking night classes in history. That was how he would eventually come to meet my mother, running into her in a hallway where she had signed up for classes in Italian language and literature. They had crossed paths on the way to their lessons and engaged in that oh-so-awkward he-goes-to-the-left-she-goes-to-the-left, he-moves-to-the-right-she-moves-to the-right dance, until my mother let out a peel of laughter at their collective clumsiness, and for the first time in a long time my father felt real warmth. He did not ask out the brown-haired girl in the yellow smock dress that day, even though her laugh struck a match in his soul, but he made sure to be in that corridor at the exact same time on the exact same day for the next two weeks so he could see her again. One day as she walked past him and smiled, he scratched the back of his neck and finally asked her out for a coffee. That was it: no great romance, no thunderbolt, just the tender embrace of a gentle thaw where his heart used to be. My mother did not realize the effect she had had on him until the same thing started happening with her.