Eden Close (12 page)

 

B
Y
M
AY
of his senior year, the spring before the shooting, Eden seemed to have settled, in a fairly deliberate way, and in a manner that surprised everyone, on Sean. Andy was never to know what it was exactly that drew Eden to his old friend, if, indeed, she could actually be said to have been drawn at all. For he sometimes wondered, then and later, if it wasn't in keeping with the perverse, self-destructive course she'd been on for almost a year to choose a boy known for his volatile temper and, more to the point and perhaps for Andy's benefit, to strike so close to home.

Andy was sitting on a bench in the locker room when T.J. told him. It was after a baseball game, and Andy, with a towel around his waist, was trying to untangle his underpants, when T.J. said, his back to Andy, "You know about Sean."

"Sean?"

T.J. opened his locker and hunted for a sock.

"And Eden," he said.

"Sean and Eden?" Andy didn't get it yet. Had they had a fight? Got caught smoking on school premises?

"They're like a thing," T.J. said. He looked quickly at Andy and then away. He began to whistle between his teeth.

"You mean they're going out?" asked Andy. He said the words
going out
distinctly, as if they could not possibly apply to the present situation.

T.J. scratched his chest. "Yeah. Like that."

Andy shook his head. There had to be some mistake. "That's impossible," he said. "Are you sure? I'd know if it were true."

"Oh yeah?" said T.J. "And how is that?"

"I'd have seen them together at the house or something."

"No you wouldn't. Her father won't let her bring any boy home. So they hang out in Sean's car...." T.J. stopped, not wanting to lay out the graphic details to his friend.

"But Sean never really liked Eden," protested Andy. "Of the three of us—"

T.J. snapped around. "You know, Andy-boy, half the time, I swear to God, you're livin' in a dream world, you know that? You don't see what's goin' on right under your nose."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Andy, stung by T.J.'s sudden attack.

"I'm talking about Eden," said T.J. with exasperation.

"What about Eden?"

"Anybody with two eyes could see that it's always been you she liked best, and you're either blind or you're more of an asshole than I thought you were."

"You must be crazy," said Andy defensively. "She's only
fourteen. She was one of the guys. She was like a sister...." He stopped, aware that he was contradicting himself.

"Oh really?" said T.J., buttoning his top button and picking up his gym bag. "Well, that's history now, isn't it."

T.J. slung his gym bag over his shoulder and headed for the door. He didn't wait for Andy, and he didn't say goodbye.

Andy sat on the bench, his underpants balled in his fist. He was trying to imagine Sean and Eden in a car together, she laughing, Sean reaching over to finger the collar of her blouse, but something inside him wouldn't let the image coalesce. He threw the underpants into the bottom of the locker. He slammed the door shut with his feet.

"Fuck it," he said, and pulled his pants on.

 

A
FTER THAT DAY
, without appearing to do so, he looked for signs of them together. And he concluded that T.J. had been right: he
was
blind, for how could he have failed to miss the way Sean was always dressed first after a game and out to his car, or the way Sean sidled past him with a greeting but had not really had a conversation with him for weeks? Or the way Sean and Eden sat on the steps behind the gym and smoked during third period, their shoulders touching? And as the days passed, there were more overt signs: Eden missing the afternoon school bus day after day, arriving late for dinner, saying she'd walked home from school, though Andy knew Sean was dropping her off a quarter mile short of the house. And once Andy came around a corner into an empty corridor by the music room at school and saw Sean pressing Eden into the brick wall with his body. They were kissing, and Andy was caught. He couldn't turn around, couldn't retreat. He tried to saunter past them, tried to appear intensely absorbed in the cover of his math book. Eden pulled away just as Andy passed.

"Andy-boy," said Sean, breathless.

"Sean," said Andy, moving past them.

"Hi, Andy," drawled Eden.

He heard giggling behind him.

 

H
E NOW AVOIDED
Eden as best he could, stopping short at the screen door if he saw her emerge from her house and cajoling T.J. to pick him up and drop him off for the couple of weeks left before school ended. Sean brought Eden to the graduation party, but Andy had his own date and aggressively pretended to be having a better time than he actually was. After he took his date home, he and T.J. drove for hours In T.J.'s car and got so drunk they had to park by the side of a deserted road before they both passed out. When he got home, well after six in the morning, expecting the wrath of his father to greet him at the door, his father took one look at Andy, shook his head sadly and went upstairs to bed.

 

O
NLY ONCE
, in the weeks before the shooting, was he alone with Eden for any length of time. It was a Monday afternoon, he remembers, his day off from the Texaco station. That summer he was working long hours, and his parents let him do what he wanted on his day off, an indulgence that pleased him since it seemed to suggest that he was a man now—a workingman with days off and privileges. He had slept late that morning, and when he came down to the kitchen, his mother was already dressed, already halfway into her day. It was the summer he was reading
No Exit
and
The Stranger
to get ready to go to college in Massachusetts, and he had a book with him at the table. Out in the backyard there was an aluminum reclining chair on which his mother sometimes dozed in the afternoons with
Family Circle
on her lap; and so after breakfast he went outside and lay back on
it, shielding his eyes from the sun with the paperback held over his face. It was after twelve, and the sun that day, he remembers, was ferocious. Almost immediately, he unbuttoned his shirt, fanning himself with the cloth.

He was asleep when he felt a large insect crawling over his stomach. He sat up with a jolt, flailing at his chest, trying to brush it off. And then he heard her laugh—a laugh that sounded unpleasant and grating through the fog of his sleep and the pounding of his heart. He fell back against the chair. Her face was over his, too close to his own, blocking out the sun as the book had done.

"Lazybones, get out of bed. The sun is up, the witch is dead."

"What?"

"Andy, it's almost one o'clock."

"
You
should talk."

"Want to go for a swim?"

She was wearing a pair of tight white shorts and a blue sleeveless blouse. Her arms were tanned, and when she moved away from his face, he noticed that her chest, where he could see it, was tanned too. His eyes strayed to her breasts and away again. He hoped she hadn't seen. It was a powerful reflex he was trying to cure himself of—the way, when looking at a girl, his eyes went immediately to the breasts rather than to the face. Instinctively, he began buttoning his own shirt.

"No," he said. "I'm reading."

She laughed. "Right," she said. She picked up his book, which had slipped onto the grass, and squinted at the title:
The Myth of Sisyphus.

"Jesus Christ, Andy. You're turning into such a fink, you know that? Anyway, you haven't been swimming in weeks. I happen to know that for a fact. It's summer, in case you haven't noticed."

She sat on the edge of the chair. "I'm not leaving until you say yes. I'm bored sick, and I want company."

"Where's Sean?" he asked, the name catching in his throat. They had never spoken of Sean.

"Oh, him," she said too casually. "How should I know?"

"You should get a job," he said, "if you're so bored."

"I'm only
fourteen,
" she whined. "And anyway, what's it to you?"

"
I
worked when I was fourteen," he said, instantly regretting it.

"Well, la-di-da. You sound like an asshole sometimes, Andy, you know that?"

"All right, all right," he said, capitulating. "Where?"

"The pond," she said. "The pool is
totally
revolting. I swear to God there's half an inch of scum on the water."

"All right," he said again, grudgingly. "I'll get my suit. You go get yours."

"I'm wearing mine," she said.

He checked his eyes just in time, but his visual memory was flawless. That couldn't be true, he thought, but he couldn't very well challenge her.

"Listen, I'll tell you what," he said. "Compromise. OK? I'll walk you down to the pond, and you can swim. I'll keep you company, but I don't think I want to swim myself." Actually what he didn't want was to go through the hassle of looking for his suit and the even greater hassle of explaining to his mother where he was going and with whom.

She shrugged and stood up. "Suit yourself," she said.

"That's good," he said, appreciative of the pun.

She looked blankly up at him.

 

T
HEY WALKED
through the cornfields, the sun baking their heads, their feet following a path so familiar he was sure he could have found his way blindfolded. Almost at once, away from the shade of any trees or houses, he wished he'd bothered to get his suit. He'd be dying for a swim by the time they got there. Well, what the hell, he'd go in with his clothes on. They'd dry in the sun on the way home anyway.

She walked in front of him, and it was impossible not to notice the way she moved—her narrow hips twitching from side to side in her white shorts. Her hair was in a ponytail, and it, too, swayed back and forth. He thought, fleetingly, of what was said about her. Of what was said about her and Sean. Phrases came into his mind, and he worked to push them away.

He
hadn't
been to the pond in weeks, not since before school let out, and he was surprised by the lush growth there: tall scarlet lilies and Queen Anne's lace and old grape vines. There were trees here at least. He sat on the grass under the shade of one, and to his surprise, she sat down beside him.

"I thought you wanted to go swimming," he said, looking at her.

"So?" She stretched her legs out on the grass and crossed them. She kicked off her sneakers. He looked at her legs. They were tanned, golden, all the way to her shorts. She had lost the bruises of the year before. Now all he saw was the long, smooth shape of her legs and the red polish on her toes. He tore his gaze away.

There was a sparkle on the water. He had learned to swim in this pond when he was a boy, no more than five. His father had taught him, patiently, over many days. Though Andy sometimes suspected his father had subtly planted the notion that there were leeches in the pond—thus hastening the process. He'd been so terrified of touching bottom that he'd learned to float the first day. It wasn't true, though, about the leeches. The pond was crystal clear, even if the color of the water was brassy from the minerals in the soil. He was thinking that any minute he'd just make a run and a flying leap, and the cool water would close in over him.

"Oooh," she said. "Ants." She twisted her body to flick
something off her thigh and in doing so brushed his bare arm with her own. The touch was electric, galvanizing, and instinctively he pulled away from her.

"What's this for?" he asked suddenly.

"What's what for?" she said noncommittally.

"This," he said, gesturing to include the space that surrounded them.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You don't?"

Maybe he was wrong, he thought. Maybe she did just want a swim. But if so, why was she sitting so close to him? The sun glinted painfully off the water.

"Andy," she said. There was a question in her voice.

"Let's hit the water," he said quickly. He bent forward, as if to get up.

"Andy, do you ever wonder what it would be like?"

There was a ringing in his ears. "What
what
would be like?"

"You know."

"No, I don't," he said irritably. "You
said
you wanted to swim."

He knew that all he had to do was stand up and begin heading for the water, and that would be that, but instead he waited for what she would say next. He wanted to hear what she would say next. Despite himself. Because of himself.

"
I
think about it," she said in an oddly quiet voice.

"Think about
what?
" he said, trying for a tone of exasperation.

"Us."

The word fell like a leaf to the grass and lay there in front of them—him with his body still poised to stand; her with her legs crossed in front of her. There was a sparkle on the water, so bright it hurt his eyes like a headache. Around
them insects buzzed and whined in the heat. The pond always seemed smaller in the summer, he thought, hemmed in by the vegetation. Looking at it, he couldn't imagine playing a hockey game on it.

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.