Eden Close (15 page)

He gets the ladder and lays it against the house, careful not to dislodge the gutter further. When he climbs up, he sees to his dismay that it is nearly impacted with gunk—a mix of caked silt and petrified leaves. Now is when he could use his father to tell him which task to do first: clear the gutter or refasten it? He may not be able to fasten the trough to the house with the added weight and detritus; on the other hand, any pressure in cleaning it could rip away the entire structure.

The work is irritating and annoying, unlike the pleasure of mowing the lawn yesterday. The payoff is not as immediate, not as showy. No one but him will even know the gutter has been fixed. The wood is rotted out where the nails should go; one entire board should be replaced, but he thinks that if he moves the supports, he may just be able to get away with using the wood that's there. It's not the way his father would have done it, he knows; not the way he himself was taught. But his patience is thin today. Especially thin when the only trowel he can find to clean the gutter (after nearly fifteen minutes of searching for any trowel at all) is too wide to fit into the trough.

He is returning from the garage with a chisel when he sees her open the door of the Plymouth and slip in. She pretends not to have seen him, and he doesn't wave. He wonders how she got herself past the now broken step; he must definitely fix that today. He stops to watch her. She
puts the Plymouth in reverse, angles out the drive. It will be quarter to ten; he doesn't need to check his watch. He looks again up at the window in the corner. He waits for a blur of blue to come and disappear, but there is no movement at all, no sign of life anywhere inside that house.

By noon, he has got the gutter three quarters clean. His fingers are scraped raw, and the heat, shimmering up from the tar shingles, has given him a ferocious headache. Periodically, he puts his forehead against the lip of the gutter to rest his eyes, but he doesn't leave it there long. He's nearly done now and is impatient to be finished.

He moves the ladder another two feet along the side of the house. He climbs up the rungs, inclining his head in such a way as to stop the throbbing. Perhaps he should eat something, take a couple of aspirin. What does she do all day? he wonders, unable to rid himself of the vision in the window, He examines his memory closely to see if there are details he has missed, details that might tell him something important—though what details he cannot imagine, since he sees nothing beyond an indefinite shape and an afterimage of color. He tastes the beer he had for breakfast, a beer he suspects is the real reason for the headache, exacerbated by the relentlessly bright sun overhead.

He digs the chisel into the gunk, barking his knuckles again. Wincing, he digs it in again and gets an unexpected purchase. Six inches of gunk comes away effortlessly, throwing him off balance. Panicky, he reaches for the roof, but his hand scrapes and slides to the gutter. He grabs for the gutter, which stops his fall but in doing so comes loose from its supports; and pulls away from the house, taking the downspout with it. In the mishap, Andrew has slipped two rungs on the ladder.

He curses and throws the chisel to the ground, where it lands straight up as if he had aimed it. Shaking, he descends
the ladder and gives the wrenched downspout a kick. He puts his hands on his hips and breathes deeply. He feels an urge to move fast in his car, to get away, for an hour or two, from the houses.

He'll have lunch in town, he decides, at the luncheonette.

 

A
NOTHER SCREEN DOOR
, slapping faintly behind him, and he has never left. The same orange Formica counter with the pencil-line pattern of white and blue boomerangs, the same tall metal revolving stools with their red vinyl seats, stools he and Sean and T.J. spun on endlessly, thinking, talking, cooling down after practice—the kind of soda fountain stool Billy would die for now. The same white Buffalo china mugs, the Kellogg's cereal boxes next to the coffee, the bubble gum machine—providing his first tedious lessons in the fickleness of inanimate objects, mysteriously gobbling nickels and refusing to release the five hard round colored gum balls he'd paid for. Remarkable, he thinks, but it
is
the same machine, still five for a nickel, perhaps the last uninflated buy in America. If Billy were with him now, they'd give it a try.

But, of course, it's not the same place at all. The Vietnamese woman behind the counter nods politely but without recognition. When he came here as a boy, the luncheonette was Bud's, they called it that,
See you at Bud's,
and through the years it has evolved from Bud's to Bill's to other names and now, enigmatically, to Al's—though that cannot be a real Vietnamese name, he is thinking. The place is cleaner than he remembers it ever being—a feeling more than a valid comparison, for it wasn't anything he paid attention to as a boy. But even the old ceiling fan, he sees, has been polished shiny.

The specials are on the blackboard: Beefeater Sandwich Served With Fries / Turkey Health Club With Sprouts And
Avocado—this last the only real clue, besides the new owners, to the passage of time. He slides onto a stool near one end of the counter. The Vietnamese woman nods, and he nods back. He orders the Turkey Health Club and a Pepsi.

There is a rustle at the other end of the counter. An older man in a gray jogging suit picks up his sandwich and his glass of milk, walks to the stool next to Andrew and lays his lunch on the counter.

"Andy?"

Andrew begins to rise. He shakes the man's outstretched hand. "Chief DeSalvo."

"Not anymore. Retired six years. Art. Call me Art. Mind if I join you? I'm here every day. Same time, same station. I get bored of my own company."

"Not at all. Please."

The Vietnamese woman brings Andrew a tall glass of Pepsi filled to within a millimeter of the rim. There is no ice in the glass. Andrew and DeSalvo look at the Pepsi.

"Some things just don't translate," says DeSalvo, and Andrew laughs.

"Sorry about your mother," says DeSalvo. "A lot of memories."

"Thank you."

"You in town long?"

"No. A few more days. Just to pack away some things. Fix up the house."

"You sellin'?"

Andrew nods. DeSalvo's hair is steely gray, clipped short, like a Roman's. A fine gray stubble covers his cheeks, hiding some of the pockmarks on his jowls, but his eyebrows are still thick and unruly and black. Beneath the jogging suit, his body is round and shapeless, what they used to call a barrel chest gone to fat. There's a wheeze in DeSalvo's voice, though the eyes are still a surprising blue and hard.

"My boy was ahead of you—what, three, four years?"

Andrew nods. "Nicky. How's he doing?"

"I dunno," DeSalvo says wearily. "Kids. They're a heartache. You got kids?"

"I have a son. Billy. He's seven."

"Great age. Terrific age. It's later they break your balls. Nicky, he's had a bitch of a time with drugs. Lost his job. His wife and kids left him. Hey, I don't blame her one bit. He's clean now, but big fucking deal. The ball game's over, and he didn't even get to suit up."

"People can change their lives," Andrew says cautiously.

"Yeah, tell me about it. My wife, she cries herself to sleep every night: her grandchildren are in California. Your boy skate?"

"Not really," says Andrew. "He lives in New Jersey. The ponds don't freeze for very long in the winter. Hockey's not the passion there it is up here."

The Vietnamese woman brings Andrew his sandwich, which is stuffed with sprouts and looks surprisingly appetizing.

"He lives in New Jersey, and you don't?"

"I live in New York City."

"You divorced or what?"

Andrew nods.

DeSalvo shakes his head. "I always say to my wife, 'You got your health, you got your family, the rest is bullshit.'"

Andrew nods again, feeling vaguely chastised.

"Anyway," says DeSalvo, "you look like you're doin' good. I seen your car. You're lookin' good. You workin' out?"

Andrew smiles. "No," he says.

DeSalvo turns and examines him. "You haven't changed much. Last time I saw you, musta been—what, ten, fifteen years?"

"More like twenty. The last time I saw you probably would have been the night of the, you know, shooting."

"Did you go to the inquest?"

"No," says Andrew. "Since my mother and I had been together the whole time, they used her testimony instead."

"Yeah, I remember now. Long time."

The Vietnamese woman appears with a cup of coffee for DeSalvo.

"Bothers me, that case," says DeSalvo. "Bothers the fuck outta me, if you want to know the truth. I'll tell you straight out, we blew that one. There was procedures we coulda done sooner—we lost ten, fifteen minutes. It makes a hell of a difference. And we shoulda gone straight for the O'Brien kid. Questioned him at the very least, had him in custody so he couldn't leave town. It had the marks of a hot-tempered son of a bitch like O'Brien—you know, some kid she turned down and he'd gotten pissed. Then he panicked and shot the father. So when she said, you know, that one time to the nurse, it was him, we were ready for it. And, of course, by then, he was already dead, so where was the problem?"

He takes a sip of coffee. He puts his cup down.

"You seen the girl?"

"Eden?"

"Yeah."

"I'm not sure. I might have seen her yesterday in a window."

"Hell of a story, that one. Caught the edge of the shower of the buckshot. They say a piece of it damaged something important behind her eyes. I forget exactly. I always felt sorry for her, even before. Well, she was a little bit of a pain in the ass too, if you want to know the truth, and she coulda gone wild, real wild. I had her in for shoplifting a coupla times. But she had spunk, and I liked her. She had a screw loose somewhere was all. What a waste."

DeSalvo bends his head forward and massages the back of his neck. "This is when I could kill for a cigarette," he says. "Had to give 'em up a year ago. I tell you, though, what really bothers me. You want a cup of coffee?"

Andrew nods. DeSalvo signals the Vietnamese woman and mimes a coffee for Andrew.

"What?" asks Andrew.

"You tell me why she was completely naked," says DeSalvo. "A fellow rapes a girl, he don't wait for her to undress. Take it from me, and I seen some rapes."

"But surely, at midnight, she only had on pajamas or a nightgown," says Andrew.

"We found a long summer nightgown, a pair of underpants and a book in a heap by the side of the bed. She'd been reading."

"Reading?"

"Yeah. A real egghead book. Reardon knew it. She'd stolen it from the library, by the way. Lemme think....
The Myth of Vesuvius,
or something like that. Mean anything to you?"

The Myth of Sisyphus?
Andrew looks sharply up at DeSalvo. He doesn't know which detail he finds more unnerving—the book or the modesty of the underpants.

"He could have made her undress at gunpoint," Andrew says, testing this notion, for he, too, has been subliminally thinking of Eden naked under the sheet.

"Yeah. He could have. But she don't remember that. She don't remember anything, in fact. Wouldn't say a word then and won't now, far as I know. But you think about that. I been thinking about it nineteen years."

 

T
HE CONVERSATION
with DeSalvo is making beads of sweat break out on Andrew's forehead and between his shoulder blades. For a second or two, he feels the same way he sometimes does when he knows he's going to be sick. The fan
makes slow revolutions above his head, while beside him, beyond DeSalvo, he hears the clinking of spoons and knives on china. Men eating, a midday break from the job or the house, maybe the highlight of the day, looking forward to the slice of blueberry pie, homemade, now in season, like an earned reward. He has on the slacks and the shirt he wore yesterday to visit Edith, and he can feel the shirt growing wet at the back and under his armpits. He looks at the clock next to the blackboard with the specials, a round face set into a fake copper kettle. It reads five to two. But it might be wrong. He checks his watch. The same. Five to two.

Is it possible?

He has to try.

He stands up abruptly and reaches In his pants pocket. He pulls out his checkbook, a wad of cash, some loose change; The smallest bill he has is a ten. He puts it on the counter. "Cancel the coffee," he says to the Vietnamese woman. He has to say it loudly, because she is at the other end of the counter. One or two of the men glance up, and DeSalvo suddenly looks at him.

"What's the...?"

"I just saw the time. Jesus, I'm an idiot. I'm supposed to be at the house for a conference call from my office at two," says Andrew, improvising wildly. "I'll be screwed."

"You'll make it in that car," says DeSalvo. "But just between you and me, Matheson's got a speed trap going by the Gansvoort place. I can take care of the ticket, but getting pinched will slow you down."

"Thanks for the tip."

Andrew gives a kind of wave and walks out the door. He jogs across the street to where his car is parked. His body wants to bolt, but he fights to keep himself moving steadily and easily toward his car, as if it were only a conference call he was trying to make.

When he slips behind the wheel, however, he can barely
restrain himself. He is not thinking
why;
it is only getting there that matters. He has to make it. He puts the car in gear, guns it, makes an illegal U-turn in front of the luncheonette and, like a kid who's just learned to drive, leaves rubber on the quiet road. He checks his watch. One fifty-eight. On this straight and narrow stretch from town, it can be done in two, three minutes. He knows this from one harrowing race with Sean when they were seniors, the two of them abreast at midnight, himself in his father's car praying there wouldn't be a dog or something larger on the road.

He lets his mind become the racing engine, because he knows that if he allows himself to think about what he is doing, if he can see himself doing it in his mind's eye, he will begin to doubt, and once he doubts, he will be lost. He slows to an irritating thirty-five at the Gansvoort farm, peering out the passenger window to see if he can spot a cop car in the forest of old and rusted '55 Chevys that Gansvoort has been collecting for years, but he sees nothing. A quarter mile past the farm, he brings the car up to sixty. To sixty-five. To seventy.